Writing a chapter in box-office history that could be called "How to Thumb Your Nose at Critics in 3 Days," How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days took in $26.1 million over the weekend, the biggest February debut since the opening of The Wedding Singer in 1998. It marked the fourth romantic comedy in two months to perform strongly at the box office despite mostly negative reviews by critics. (The others were Maid in Manhattan, Two Weeks Notice, and Just Married.) The action comedy Shanghai Knights took second place with $19.7 million, more than $4 million more than the original, Shanghai Noon, which had the benefit of opening on Memorial Day weekend in 2000. In expanded release, the musical Chicago grossed $10.4 million to place third. Overall, the top 12 films grossed $103.1 million, up 22 percent over the comparable weekend a year ago.

The top ten films for the weekend, according to studio estimates compiled by Exhibitor Relations: 1. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, $24.1 million; 2. Shanghai Knights, $19.8 million; 3. Chicago, $10.7 million; 4. The Recruit, $9.5 million; 5. Final Destination 2, $8.7 million; 6. Deliver Us From Eva, $7.1 million; 7. Kangaroo Jack, $5.9 million; 8. Biker Boyz, $4 million; 9. Darkness Falls, $3.8 million; 10. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, $3.4 million.

Ted Turner has not only put up the entire $60-million cost of producing Gods and Generals, a three-and-a-half-hour Civil War drama, he's also personally promoting it. "When I greenlit this film three years ago, it represented 1 per cent of my net worth," Turner said in an interview with the Toronto Globe and Mail. "Now it's more like 15 per cent of my net worth. That's how much of my other assets I've lost." The film is due to premiere in Washington tonight (Monday) and to open in the rest of the country on Feb. 21. Some reports have said that Warner Bros.' decision not to release the film late last year -- when it would have qualified for Oscar nominations -- infuriated Turner and contributed to his decision to shed his title of vice chairman of Time Warner. In a separate interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Turner remarked: "I'm a movie man. ... It's very important that [Gods and Generals] do well and be critically acclaimed because I'm playing for the history books. I'm writing the final chapters of the Ted Turner story." Nevertheless, Turner's movie is likely to embroil him in further controversy. The Globe and Mail described it as "a rambling and often incoherent ... drama that is sympathetic to the pro-secession rebellion and makes heroes out of Confederate leaders General Robert E. Lee and Thomas 'Stonewall' Jackson."

The box-office success of last year's Spider-Man enabled the producers of the upcoming Daredevil, starring Ben Affleck, to persuade 20th Century Fox and New Regency to boost the budget of their film from $50 million to nearly $80 million, the Los Angeles Times reported today (Monday). "Spider-Man did us a big favor," Daredevil producer Gary Foster told the newspaper, noting that Daredevil's special effects budget was bolstered, fight choreographer Cheung-Yan Yuen (Matrix Reloaded) was brought in, and several critical scenes were added. In fact, Foster says, Fox executives encouraged the additions. As soon as Spider-Man opened, Foster told the newspaper, Fox "was suddenly saying, 'We need more "wow" moments. We need bigger effects.'"

Paris-based Vivendi Universal has abandoned plans for an IPO of its U.S. entertainment units, including its Universal movie, TV, music, and theme-park companies and instead may sell them as a group or break them apart and sell them piecemeal, the New York Post reported today (Monday), without citing sources.

Breaking ground for a new $300-million studio at San Francisco's Presidio, the former U.S. Army base in San Francisco, George Lucas said Saturday that he was putting "a stake in the ground for San Francisco as a filmmaking community, as a creator of world cinema." The 850,000-square-foot project, due to be completed in 2005, is expected to house Lucas' special effects unit, Industrial Light & Magic.

Angered by a one peso (about nine cents) levy added to the price of movie tickets in Mexico to help underwrite local filmmakers, MPAA President Jack Valenti has fired off a letter to Mexican President Vicente Fox warning that unless the levy is removed, the U.S. film industry intends to retaliate. According to the British trade publication Screen International, Valenti wrote, "The adoption of such a measure without previously consulting [the MPA] ... could force us to cancel our backing for the Mexican film industry. ... This also would cause difficulties to our mutual relations."

Michael Jackson may be planning a real thriller of a legal battle against Martin Bashir, the journalist who, Jackson has charged, betrayed him when he raised questions in a documentary film that aired in the U.K. and the U.S. last week about Jackson's competence to raise his own children and his relationship with other children whom he has brought into his home in Santa Barbara, CA. Jackson claimed over the weekend that film shot by his own cameraman during the production of Bashir's documentary will show the ITV journalist complimenting Jackson on the way he goes about raising his children and telling him "about how he feels it is a pity that the world is so quick to criticize" the singer. He said the film will air on CBS Wednesday night. Once again, Jackson denied that he has ever sexually molested any child, adding: "I am bewildered at the length to which people will go to portray me so negatively. I will say again that I have never, and would never, harm a child. It sickens me that people have written things that portray me as a child abuser." Meanwhile, Jackson's friend, the psychic/magician Uri Geller, who claims that he helped arrange the interview with Bashir, said during a radio interview in London Sunday that Bashir had shown him a "thank you" letter from Princess Diana that eventually persuaded Jackson to agree to the interview. "He also said he would bring justice [to Jackson]. ... I have been around for a long time, but I have learned a very big, big lesson," Geller, who once claimed to bend forks with his mind, said.

Martin Bashir has reportedly turned down an offer of $5 million per year to go to work for ABC News. The London Daily Mirror reported today (Monday) that Bashir, who earns $800,000 a year from ITV, does not want to uproot his three children. The newspaper also observed that Bashir is likely to earn millions from sales of his Michael Jackson documentary.

Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch, media moguls who are polar opposites politically, voiced contrary positions over the impending war with Iraq over the weekend. Interviewed by the Toronto Globe and Mail in Washington, Turner said that the war would represent "the high-tech wealthy Western nation against the Third World country; it's kind of a foregone conclusion that we'll win. It's a question of how many civilians get killed over there -- that's what worries me. We're trying to get one man, right? And we're going to kill tens of thousands of people to get him. It seems like a pretty inefficient way to do things." Meanwhile, Murdoch, in an interview with the Australian news weekly The Bulletin, voiced staunch support for U.S. policy on Iraq. "Oh, I believe Bush is right," he told the magazine. "We can't back down now. I think Bush is acting very morally, very correctly, and I think he is going to go on with it." Murdoch owns the Fox News Channel.

Robert Wiener, who produced CNN's coverage of the Gulf War from Baghdad in 1991 (and was later profiled in the HBO film Live from Baghdad), says that he quit the news network a year ago because he had become "disillusioned." In an interview with the Salt Lake City Tribune, Wiener said. "The guiding philosophy behind CNN had changed, that the news was no longer the star, and the network became more personality-driven. ... The people from AOL are not news people and don't give a damn about news. They are really concerned about demographics, ratings." In an interview with the Toronto Globe and Mail, CNN founder Ted Turner raised similar objections about the direction of the news channel. "Connie Chung's just awful," he told the newspaper. "I'd love to get [CNN] back. I just don't see how I can make it happen."

Reversing the methods of companies like CleanFlicks and ClearPlay, which delete coarse language from home-video releases of movies, the release of The Osbournes -- The First Season on DVD will include all the language and raunchy segments that were covered with bleeps or not aired originally on MTV. DVD technology will also allow viewers to bring up a translation of Ozzy Osbourne's often incomprehensible mumblings. They'll also be able to see a special reel titled "Too Oz for TV" -- featuring segments that apparently were so raunchy, they couldn't be aired on MTV. For those who might be offended by the original language, the DVD will also provide the original broadcasts, with language and other sexual shenanigans deleted.

Internet portal Yahoo is said to be close to taking the wraps off a broadband Internet video service that would feature clips from Fox TV, CBS and ABC News, the online CNET News reported Friday, citing sources familiar with the plans. The website said that the new service will likely offer excerpts from reality shows and packages of news clips and features.