Ridley Scott is planning to add about an hour of unused footage to Hannibal when it airs on CBS in 2003, Daily Variety reported today (Thursday). Jim Griffiths, president of worldwide TV distribution for MGM, told the trade paper that Scott will, in effect, be offering his first theatrical cut of the movie. The question of whether the longer version will actually air -- or if indeed the shorter version will be aired uncut -- is still a matter of speculation. It was also not clear whether the longer version would be released theatrically in advance of the TV broadcast. Variety said that CBS retains the option to run its own edited version of the movie.

Senator Joseph Lieberman, the former Democratic vice-presidential candidate, plans to introduce legislation next week that would authorize the Federal Trade Commission to regulate the marketing practices of the motion picture industry, the online entertainment magazine Inside reported today (Thursday). The bill presumably is intended to address the issues raised by an FTC report last September that found that movie studios frequently developed marketing plans for R-rated films aimed at underaged children. Although the Motion Picture Association of America has drafted guidelines that include the setting up of a compliance committee to monitor the studios' marketing practices, Lieberman is reportedly unimpressed. Dan Gerstein, a Lieberman staffer, told Inside, "That's like having the fox guard the henhouse."

Disney and Coca-Cola announced an alliance Wednesday under which Coke's Minute Maid juices and punches will be marketed under the Disney brand and prominently feature Disney characters on the packaging. Under the deal, the products, bearing such names as Mickey's X-treme Coolers and Pooh's 100 Acre Wood Apple-Berry Juice, will be jointly promoted in the U.S. beginning this year, with an international rollout set for 2002.

Warner Bros. is giving Harry Potter fans their first glimpse of the characters in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. The studio has posted the first trailer for the film on the Internet (http://harrypotter.warnerbros.com/web/dailyprophet/article.jsp?id=movie _trailer1), featuring a montage of characters played by Daniel Radcliffe (Harry), Julie Walters, Maggie Smith, Richard Harris and others. (A trailer for 20th Century Fox's upcoming Planet of the Apes was scheduled to be posted on the Internet on Wednesday, but had yet to appear as of early this morning -- Thursday.)

George Lucas has revealed that onetime horror film star Christopher Lee will play a character named Count Dooku in Star Wars: Episode II. In an introduction to Christopher Lee: the Authorized Screen History by Jonathan Rigby, Lucas writes: "When it was time to cast the role of Count Dooku in Star Wars: Episode II my casting director suggested Christopher Lee and I jumped at the opportunity to work with him. I knew that I needed someone who could convey evil. But in addition, I needed someone to bring stature, strength and wisdom to the role. His villainous resume speaks for itself." Lee himself directed a writer for Britain's Empire magazine to the book after explaining that he himself was bound by a confidentiality agreement not to discuss his role in the movie. "If George has revealed [the name of the character], that's where I leave it, " Lee remarked. "I don't want to get into trouble with George, because there's [Episode III], don't forget."

The Loews Cineplex theater chain is planning to raise ticket prices by as much as 50 cents in many locations on Friday, with a top price of $10 per adult admission being posted in Manhattan. The price hikes come on the heels of similar ones by General Cinema last month. A spokesperson for Loews commented: "The price of operating the theaters increases from year to year, and we have to pass along some of those costs to our customers, unfortunately."

Top industry analysts are predicting that the XFL will not last beyond a single season, despite NBC's substantial investment in the organization, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday. "This is not good football and there's no way [General Electric Co. Chairman] Jack Welch or [NBC President] Bob Wright are going to allow it on NBC for a second season; it's not going to happen,'' Jerry Solomon, former president of national broadcast for SFM Media Corp. and now an industry consultant, told the wire service. NBC affiliate executives were also adamant that the network must bail out of the league. "We aren't going to live with crappy numbers forever," Pap Patton program director of KRON San Francisco, told Bloomberg. Some analysts predicted that NBC might move the games to Saturday afternoon or to one of its cable channels for the remainder of the current season.

The WB said Wednesday that it had offered to pay 20th Century Fox all the money it earns from Buffy the Vampire Slayer but that Fox has rejected the proposal. Today's (Thursday) New York Post said that the offer translates to about $1.5 million per episode but that Fox is holding out for $2.5 million. WB chief Jamie Kellner told reporters during a telephone conference Wednesday, "We've done all we're gonna do, so now they can make up their minds." For its part, 20th Century Fox maintained that the show has helped build the WB brand and that Buffy creator Joss Whedon ought to be rewarded as a result.

Ed O'Neill, who returns to series television tonight (Thursday) on the new CBS cop drama Big Apple, has told the New York Post why he selected a series so different from Married ... with Children for his comeback. O'Neill, who played Al Bundy on the long-running Fox sitcom, remarked, "I'm glad I did Married ... with Children and I liked making all that money and we all had a lot of laughs. But there's that dramatic side, which people seem to respect more. There's that level of respect that dramatic actors get that comedic actors often don't."

Temptation Island ended its run on Fox Wednesday night with each of the couples indicating that they really weren't very tempted by the singles they dated during their two-week stay on a Caribbean Island, and that indeed, being with someone else made them appreciate their original partners even more. New York Post TV writer Adam Buckman commented: "The couples' decisions to stay together, followed by their tearful embraces, must have come as a shock to critics of the show who had complained even before it premiered Jan. 10 that the Temptation Island concept -- in which committed couples are tempted to break up by accessible singles -- was crude and tacky, representing a new low in prime-time network TV. In fact, far from tasteless, the couples' renewed devotion came across as surprisingly touching."

Meanwhile, analysts are trying to figure out why virtually all of the network reality series have clicked especially strongly in Philadelphia. Ratings in the nation's fourth-largest market for Big Brother, Survivor, Survivor II The Australian Outback and The Mole are substantially higher than they are in any other major city in the U.S., the Philadelphia Inquirer reported today (Thursday). (Temptation Island is an exception; Philadelphia is tied for sixth.) Lynne Spiegel Spillman, casting director for Survivor and a native of Philadelphia, told the Inquirer: "It's shocking to me, because Philadelphia had some of the lowest numbers of people that applied [to be contestants]. ... I just think Philly is a lot of different groups, and people there seem real, down-to-earth, and I guess they relate to ordinary people." Former Inquirer TV critic David Bianculli, who now writes for the New York Daily News, told the newspaper: "I think it's like the Abominable Snowman. There are some mysteries that are just better left unexplained."

Bernard Shaw's retirement as a CNN anchorman was preempted Wednesday by the 6.8 earthquake that shook the Seattle, WA area. Plans to air an on-air tribute to Shaw, who is leaving his CNN anchoring duties after 21 years, had been scheduled to be included during CNN's Inside Politics program. Shaw is due to return to CNN's Washington bureau on Friday for the tribute.

India's finance minister, Yashwant Sinha, presented a mixed bag of measures affecting the country's entertainment industry Wednesday. Winners of cash on popular TV game shows will see 30 percent of their winnings go into government coffers "at the source." Foreign channels that beam programs into India via satellite will be required to pay income tax. On the other hand, domestic film and TV companies were granted a reduction of customs duty on professional equipment from 25 to 15 percent. And the government set up a fund to aid journalists injured while covering "terrorist and other violence-prone incidents."