Movie News & Gossip

It's good to be a wolf -- just ask the men of the "New Moon" wolf pack.

"We come in, it's a party," Chaske Spencer told Access Hollywood's Shaun Robinson at the Los Angeles junket for the "Twilight" sequel.

Disney kick-started the holidays on Friday with the release of “Disney’s A Christmas Carol,” which led the boxoffice listings for the day as it took in an estimated $8.97 million in 3,683 locations in North America.

Director Robert Zemeckis’ latest motion-capture creation, the PG-retelling of Charles Dickens’ time-tested tale, with Jim Carrey playing Scrooge and other assorted roles, is unspooling in 3D in almost two-thirds of its playdates. While Saturday matinees will determine how strong the film is playing, its opening day fell well short of Carrey’s last Christmas movie, “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” which bowed to $15.6 million on its opening Friday on Nov. 17, 2000.

LOS ANGELES - Nick Counter, a longtime negotiator for Hollywood producers who led the studios through two grueling writers' strikes last year and in 1988, has died. He was 69.

The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers says Counter died at a Los Angeles hospital on Friday.

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Depicting an awkward romance between two young misfits set in the backdrop of a traveling carnival, "Splinterheads" mainly comes across as a low-rent version of "Adventureland." Although Brant Sersen's comedy, which opened Friday (November 6), has amusing moments, they come too far between to elevate the film above the standard indie level of quirkiness for its own sake.

The romance is between Justin (Thomas Middleditch), a twentysomething slacker who lives at home with his mother (played by Lea Thompson, and doesn't that make you feel old?), and Galaxy, a comely tattooed con artist whom he meets when she scams him at a convenience-store gas station. It's certainly not hard to see what Justin sees in the gorgeous and sexy Galaxy, whom he later encounters at the carnival, where she works as a game-booth operator, or "splinterhead."

WARWICK, R.I. - Two-time Oscar-nominated actor James Woods has sued a Rhode Island hospital over the 2006 death of his younger brother.

Woods on Friday would not discuss the lawsuit in detail, but told The Associated Press he wants "justice" for his brother, Michael, who was 49 when he died at Kent Hospital in Warwick of what was believed to be a heart attack.

NEW YORK - Broadway has found its Spider-Man — rock singer Reeve Carney.

Carney will portray celebrated web-slinger Peter Parker in "Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark," producer Michael Cohl announced Friday.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Matthew Broderick says he's puzzled by the bashing he's received for his actions during the first New York preview of "The Starry Messenger," a new play by good friend Kenneth Lonergan.

"We had to rush to our first preview and then I guess we got some press just after one show, which I don't really understand," the actor says.

Robert Pattinson doesn't need to show his six-pack, the star joked with Access Hollywood's Shaun Robinson at the "New Moon" junket in Los Angeles on Friday.

"I don't walk around with my shirt off all the time!" he joked, poking fun at the often bare-chested "New Moon" wolf pack. "It's like driving a fancy car - you're insecure about something."