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In this epic tale Micheal Moore stars as the lead of a hardy special forces leader.

...While the controversy-generating doc director doesn’t like Sniper or snipers, he is a big supporter of fellow Best Picture nominee Selma..."

But Academy members seem to be paying attention to the criticism that Eastwood and star/producer Bradley Cooper shouldn’t be celebrating a man who wrote that killing hundreds of Iraqis was “fun.” “He seems like he may be a sociopath,” one Academy member told TheWrap, adding he had not yet seen the film but had read the article, which is being passed around. Neither distributor Warner Bros. nor the filmmakers have responded to TheWrap’s request for comment, though the studio said they intended to make someone available. A piece in The Guardian by author Lindy West was an early critic of...

Angry liberals have taken to social media to declare that if you like the movie American Sniper over the movie Selma, you are a racist. The comments have come on the heels of an extremely successful opening weekend for American Sniper, which has received favorable reviews from critics, and has gained considerable buzz for its tense trailer. Selma, which also has received favorable reviews from critics, but also criticism for inaccurately portraying major characters, is not doing nearly as well at the box office. Liberals on social media have decided that the trailer, controversy, and merit are not why American...

The electrifying $90.2 million wide opening of “American Sniper” – shattering records for the best January openings by tens of millions of dollars — stunned box office analysts and even distributor Warner Bros. Sunday. “We’ve never seen anything like this,” Dan Fellman, head of domestic distribution at Warner Bros. told TheWrap. The Clint Eastwood-directed Iraq War saga starring Bradley Cooper was on pace to top $100 million over the four-day Martin Luther King holiday weekend, uncharted territory for a movie at this time of year. It was an explosive and historic start for Village Roadshow’s R-rated “American Sniper,” which was...

Warner Bros. Entertainment chairman and CEO Kevin Tsujihara has told Warner Bros. employees that layoffs are coming at every level across the studio. The cuts are coming in the wake of a failed bid by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. to buy parent Time Warner and amid disappointing box office performance. Tsujihara did not disclose how many cuts will take place or which of the three divisions — films, TV and home entertainment — would be most impacted. He sent the memo out late Thursday afternoon, just as the studio’s “The Judge” was opening the Toronto Film Festival, following media reports...

While Michigan taxpayers prepare to dole out $35 million to Warner Bros. for the filming of the expected blockbuster Superman-Batman movie sometime early in 2014, the company could be in for record profits. In 2012, Warner Bros. had an operating income — profits that exclude interest and income tax expenses — of $1.2 billion, according to The Hollywood Reporter. That's about the same amount the state of Michigan gives in general fund dollars to higher education and community colleges. Warner Bros. is projected to spend $131 million in Michigan while filming the Superman-Batman movie, according to the Michigan Film Office....

<p>Warner Bros. ended their panel with a big surprise, or two. After Tom Cruise and company had shuffled away, out came Zack Snyder to take the chairman’s lectern.</p>

EXCLUSIVE … UPDATE 9:30 AM: Warner Bros is now telling me that its outside non-studio spokeswoman failed to tell me the whole and accurate story about the process that led to the studio taking down its offensive Gangster Squad trailer this morning. A Warner Bros executive now tells me how the studio was scrambling to deal with the Aurora theater shooting crisis in the pre-dawn hours of the morning. Then, at 5 AM, one of the top distribution execs remembered that Warner Bros’ Gangster Squad trailer was playing “loose” this weekend timed to the studio’s The Dark Knight Rises release...

EXCLUSIVE: I’ve learned that the Motion Picture Association Of America representing the Hollywood movie studios will be co-hosting a tribute to Ronald Reagan’s film career on November 14th in Washington DC. The other host will be the Ronald Reagan Centennial Celebration, which is the year-long commemoration of Reagan’s 100th birthday in 2011. All the movie studios are obtaining old footage of Reagan’s 53-movie legacy from 1937 to 1965 and are putting together around 5 cinematic profiles of the former Screen Actors Guild president for the bipartisan event. But I suspect the real reason behind this Reagan tribute is to remind...

"Casting him as a director or perhaps as the star of 'Judah Maccabee' is like casting Madoff to be the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission," says Rabbi Marvin Heir. Prominent Jewish leaders are beginning to speak out against Mel Gibson and Warner Bros. over their planned movie based on the life of religious icon Judah Maccabee. SNIP

Whenever you remake a revered Hollywood film, there’s bound to be controversy, but going right to the original material is certainly an interesting approach. Warner Bros is in early talks with Robert Zemeckis to direct a live-action remake of the The Wizard of Oz and plans to use the original script from the 1939 classic. Warner Bros owns the screenplay because Ted Turner bought it along with the MGM library before Warner Bros bought Turner’s empire. This latest Oz twist comes as Disney is trying very hard to mount The Great And Powerful Oz. Sam Raimi is developing that film...

THE ACTOR who played the DC Comics character Swamp Thing in two films and a television series has died at the age of 72. Dick Durock, a 6ft 5ins former Marine, passed away at his home in Oak Park, California, after a long battle with pancreatic cancer, according to his official website. Durock wore a latex bodysuit and make-up to play the monster in 1982's Swamp Thing directed by Wes Craven; its 1989 sequel The Return of Swamp Thing; and a subsequent Swamp Thing series that ran for 71 episodes from 1990 to 1993. The actor appeared in dozens of...

In what turned out to be a nightmare for the defendant, a federal jury on Thursday ruled that Jammie Thomas-Rasset willfully violated the copyrights on 24 songs. Record companies were awarded $80,000 per song, for a total of $1.92 million. This is the second time Thomas-Rasset went to trial on the matter. The single mother from Minnesota had planned to appeal the first ruling that came down from a different federal court in October 2007. But the judge in that case decided he had given the jury erroneous instructions and a new trial was ordered. Thomas-Rasset may wish she had...

It has been said that director Howard Hawks made Rio Bravo (1959) as a reaction to two popular westerns which angered him - High Noon (1952) and 3:10 to Yuma (1957). His comment on the former was, "I didn't think a good sheriff was going to go running around town like a chicken with his head off asking for help, and finally his Quaker wife had to save him." Hawks also considered 3:10 to Yuma, which had outlaw Glenn Ford playing psychological games with lawman Van Heflin, "a lot of nonsense." So Rio Bravo was the director's take on heroism...

Warner Bros. today will launch a service giving the public the opportunity to custom-order DVDs of films never before released via the medium. The move is seen as a response to dwindling DVD sales and also to customer demand for titles that while not totally obscure, didn't necessarily generate enough heat to merit a full-on DVD release. The Warner Archive Collection, available at WarnerArchive.com, includes films dating back to the silent age and for $19.95 per disc Warners will burn, package and ship for receipt within an estimated five days. Currently there are 150 titles available with for a total...

Warner Bros. is reaching into its film vaults so it can sell old movies on made-to-order DVDs, in a move it hopes will goose sales of a vital product in a downturn. Starting today, the studio will sell copies of 150 films from the silent era to the 1980s Brat Pack that have never been released on DVD. Internet downloads of the movies will cost $14.95, while DVDs sent in the mail are $19.95. Both can be ordered at www.warnerarchive.com. The initiative, which Warner claims is the first of its kind for a major studio, is an effort by the...

If Sen. John McCain has more to say publicly about his time in a North Vietnamese prison before next month's election, it will not be with help from Warner Brothers. The studio moved quietly over the last few weeks to block any promotional showing of an interview — tied to the release of the first DVD version of the 1987 film Hanoi Hilton — in which McCain spoke of his imprisonment in the Hoa Lo prison during the Vietnam War. The studio is concerned that any pre-election showing might embroil the project in electoral politics. "It's just us trying to...

The WB brand, born as a broadcast network in 1995 and closed in 2006, will return as an online video Web site, combining short original series with classic shows, the Warner Brothers Television Group announced Monday. TheWB.com, and a complementary site for children called KidsWB.com, are part of a “digital destination” strategy by Warner Brothers, a subsidiary of Time Warner, to tailor Web sites to specific audiences. In trying to compete for consumers’ time, Warner and other media companies have sought new outlets for content, sometimes bypassing the traditional network structure and creating broadband Internet channels. “My 20-year-old daughter and...

BOOST FOR BLU-RAY! Warner Bros Will Release High-Def Titles Exclusively In That Format This is a huge development in the Blu-ray versus HD-DVD format war currently raging on. Warner Bros, which had been producing its high-def DVD titles in both formats, will start the Blu-ray exclusive later this year. The decision was made in response to stroing consumer preference for the Blu-Ray format, according to WB's announcement. I'd been hearing rumors for months that Warner Bros had been offered in the neighborhood of $250 million to go exclusively with HD-DVD. Less lavish but still big payments already had been offered...