Two new releases thrown into the competition against the third week of Hannibal turned out to be so much mincemeat for the box-office champion, which added $15.8 million to its gross over the weekend. The poorly reviewed Kurt Russell-Kevin Costner thriller 3,000 Miles to Graceland took in a disappointing $7.2 million to finish third, while the animated/live action Monkeybone, starring Brendan Fraser, tanked with just $2.7 million, putting it outside the top ten. The film reportedly cost 20th Century Fox $70 million to produce. Total box-office sales for the top 12 films came to $74.7 million, off less than 1 percent from the same weekend a year ago.

The top ten films over the weekend, according to final figures compiled by Exhibitor Relations (figures in parentheses represent total gross to date): 1. Hannibal, MGM, $15, 767, 006, ($128, 512, 863); 2. Down to Earth, Paramount, $11, 211, 225, ($33, 971, 683); 3. 3,000 Miles to Graceland, Warner Bros., $7, 160, 521, (New); 4. Recess: School's Out, Disney, $6, 931, 509, ($22, 702, 837), ; 5. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Sony Classics, $6, 592, 223, ($81, 940, 326); 6. Traffic, USA, $5, 136, 889, ($86, 229, 142); 7. Sweet November, Warner Bros., $5, 125, 388, ($17, 787, 278); 8. Chocolat, Miramax, $4, 761, 167, ($40, 062, 665); 9. The Wedding Planner, Sony, $3, 952, 643, ($52, 178, 614); 10. Cast Away, 20th Century Fox, $3, 105, 171, ($220, 921, 892).

Walt Disney Chairman Michael Eisner and Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner are scheduled to hold a news conference today in New York to announce a "new entertainment venture." Both companies declined to provide further details and media writers, scrambling to learn what the "odd couple" might be up to, found themselves stonewalled. Several writers speculated that Disney might take a stake in Wenner Media's struggling US magazine.

Blockbuster on Monday signed a deal with Universal Pictures to provide the studio's films on its video-on-demand service currently being tested in Portland, Seattle and American Fork, Utah. Terms were not disclosed.

Despite its Chinese language soundtrack, Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon continues to fail to draw large crowds on the Chinese mainland and in Hong Kong, the New York Times reported today (Tuesday). In interviews with the Times, Hong Kong filmgoers angrily criticized the film. "Seeing people run across roofs and trees might be novel for Americans, but we've seen it all before," one said. However, James Schamus, a screenwriter and executive producer of Crouching Tiger, maintained that the poor showing was directly attributable to the number of pirated CDs that had already been sold in China before the movie opened in theaters.

Warner Bros. has decided to stop sending warning letters to Harry Potter fans who set up fan Web sites, Singapore's Straits Times reported today (Tuesday). In January, the studio received much criticism when it was revealed that its lawyers had threatened legal action against Christi Chan, a 15-year-old Singaporean, who had registered the Internet domain name www.harrypotternetwork.net. Similar letters had been sent to other young Potter fans, so enraging them that by last week many had banded together on the Web site www.potterwar.org.uk to urge an international boycott of the movie and all merchandise associated with it.

Citing a recent Dartmouth College study showing "a clear relation between on-screen tobacco use by movie stars and higher levels of smoking uptake in the adolescents who admire them," British anti-smoking activists are urging the country's official film censors to take on-screen smoking into account when rating films. Clive Bates, director of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) told Britain's Guardian newspaper that his group will ask the British board of Film Classification not to give less than a 15 certificate to a film showing young stars smoking. (A 15 certificate is roughly equivalent to an R rating in the U.S.) "We don't want to censor directors and actors by banning smoking in films by law, but we do call on them to think about harm they are doing," Bates said.

Francis Ford Coppola said Monday that he will screen a completely re-edited and expanded version of his 1979 film Apocalypse Now at the Cannes Film Festival in May. In an interview with Reuters in Paris, Coppola said that the film will be 53 minutes longer than the original and is "a more disturbing, sometimes funnier and more romantic film, whose historical perspective has become more forceful." Festival president Gilles Jacob said that Coppola will attend the screening but that a date has not yet been set.

Since his split with Nicole Kidman, Tom Cruise has stepped up security on the set of his latest movie, Vanilla Sky, directed by Cameron Crowe, MSNBC.com gossip columnist Jeannette Walls reports. Walls quoted one unnamed insider on the Paramount set as saying, "All the extras are supposed to pass through metal detectors -- I've been on lots of movie sets and I've never seen that." The insider said that guards are particularly on the lookout for cell phones and recording devices and have even searched handbags looking for them.

On the heels of renewed notoriety garnered at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this month, the film Don's Plum, featuring Leonardo DiCaprio as a bisexual who appears nude in one scene, is becoming what Reuters calls "a hot item internationally." The movie, shot on a $100,000 budget in 1995, is barred from distribution in the U.S. by a legal settlement, but distributors have bought overseas film rights for numerous other countries, Reuters reported.

CORRECTION: In Monday's edition we reported that the murder case against Stephen Downing, the subject of a forthcoming movie, had been overturned. In fact, Downing, after serving 27 years in prison, has been released on bail pending an appeal.

ABC execs were no doubt over the rainbow Monday after ratings for the first part of their miniseries, Life With Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows, topped all others on Sunday night. The film drew a strong 15.1 rating and a 22 share, the best ratings for a TV movie this season. Nevertheless, the Washington Post reported today (Monday) that television networks are abandoning their longtime commitment to original movies. "It's a dying genre," an unidentified network veteran told the newspaper. "Judy Garland did well, but anybody in this business who thinks it's an indication that the genre has in some way turned itself around -- they're smoking some major dope." However, Judy co-executive producer Craig Zadan said that the problem lies with TV executives who insist on big-name TV stars to play the leads in TV movies. "The whole TV movie business is cast-contingent. ... The idea of cast-contingent pickups is absurd," Zadan said. "Without Judy Davis [starring as Garland], it could have become Mommie Dearest or Valley of the Dolls."

Friends costar Matthew Perry has entered an undisclosed rehabilitation hospital, the actor's publicist, Lisa Kasteler, announced Monday. She provided no further details. NBC issued a separate statement saying that Friends "will remain in production and original episodes will continue to air as scheduled at NBC."

Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura has defended his weekend work as an announcer on NBC's XFL telecasts. "The great thing is I can govern without strings attached," he told the National Press Club in Washington Monday. "I am not a puppet and I will never be a puppet on a string." Ventura, who recently touched off a new controversy by issuing press passes bearing the inscription "official jackal," also said that the media were to blame for the XFL telecasts' poor ratings. "The media assumed it would be football players hitting each other with chairs," he said. "When it turned out they were fooled, then it was 'Well it's not the NFL; the talent isn't as good.' We never said we were going to be the NFL." However, NBC affiliate execs told the Associated Press Monday that the problem is that nobody really knows what the XFL is. Alan Frank, president of Post-Newsweek stations, which includes the NBC affiliates in Detroit and Houston, said: "They have to decide -- is it a sport or is it a show?"

The Australian network that airs Survivor II -- The Australian Outback has rejected calls by animal activists to cut a scene from an episode set to air Wednesday night in which one of the contestants stabs a pig to death and smears blood on his face. The episode touched off similar protests among U.S. animal activists when it aired here two weeks ago. Patty Mark of Action Animal Rescue Team, who is organizing a protest of the episode to be aired on the Nine Network, told the Melbourne newspaper The Age: "Whether it's a dog, a pig or a chicken, there are cruelty laws in this country. You're not allowed just to go out and have fun with knives and animals." Meanwhile, James Cromwell, who starred in the movie Babe, has made public a letter he has sent to CBS protesting the same episode. "These were not the desperate actions of a person truly struggling to survive but the calculated action by a contestant on an entertainment program, eager to curry favor with other members of his so-called 'tribe,'" Cromwell said.