Sony's Hancock showed the strength of a superhero in its debut on Tuesday, grossing $6.8 million during two screenings in 3,680 theaters. (It adds 280 more this weekend.) While the preview screenings took in more than an earlier superhero movie, Iron Man, in May ($5.5 million), it fell well below last year's previews of Transformers ($8.8 million), which set the stage for a Fourth of July holiday haul of $155.4 million. Box-office forecasters are predicting that Hancock should wind up with $100-120 million through Sunday. However, many analysts are waiting to see how word-of-mouth will affect the film. Reviews of the film were mostly negative, and if audiences react the way the critics did, ticket sales could drop by Sunday. Meanwhile, Disney-Pixar's WALL-E continued to pick up steam, actually earning more than Hancock on Tuesday ($7.6 million), and although it played throughout the day, a large percentage of its tickets were sold at discounted children's prices.

Representatives of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers met for four hours on Wednesday with leaders of the Screen Actors Guild to answer questions about their final offer to the union. The AMPTP later issued a statement saying that the union had asked for more time to study the offer and would contact the producers on Monday. "We remain hopeful that SAG will advise that it is accepting our final offer. No further meetings are scheduled," the statement said. A formal response from SAG is not expected until after AFTRA announces the results of its ratification vote on Tuesday. Meanwhile, SAG members manned the phones Wednesday, phoning fellow members who also hold AFTRA union cards to urge them to vote down the "terrible contract" that AFTRA had negotiated with the AMPTP. Other dual cardholders received a recorded phone message from Sean Penn, which said that the AFTRA deal amounted to "corporate appeasement."

Paramount Pictures is being criticized for the way it has dealt with the Afghan children who appeared in director Marc Forster's critically praised film The Kite Runner. Although the studio located four of the young actors and their families or guardians to Dubai for their safety before the movie was released, at least one, 12-year-old Zekeria Ebrahimi, who stars in the film, has been forced to return but has become the target of gangs who say that the film denigrates the Afghan culture, according to a report broadcast Wednesday by National Public Radio. (Although banned in Afghanistan, the movie has been distributed on pirated DVDs.) The boy's guardian and aunt, Waheeda Ebrahimi told NPR that she and Zakria had to leave Dubai because their passports had expired and that the small stipends and $400-a-month job she was offered were not enough to support her family. In Kabul, she said, schoolmates threatened to kill Zakria for appearing in the movie and a gang attempted to force their way into her home. Rich Klein, whose consulting firm was hired by Paramount to relocate the families of the stars, told NPR, "I don't think anybody is happy with the fact that ... Zakria is not doing well." However, he added that his family needs to be realistic about what Paramount can do for them.

David Cronenberg has successfully transposed his 1986 horror movie The Fly into an opera with music by the film's composer, Howard Shore (best known for his Lord of the Rings score), and a 75-piece orchestra conducted by famed tenor Placido Domingo. The production received a standing ovation at its opening in Paris Wednesday night, according to published repordts. It is due to play for two weeks in Paris before moving on to Los Angeles in September.

The writer of a book about Miramax founders Harvey and Bob Weinstein has sent the New York Post a 1996 recording of a telephone conversation between Harvey Weinstein, whose company had been acquired by Disney, and Joe Roth, then president of Walt Disney Studios. In it, the two jokingly discuss the decision by the Walt Disney Co. to pay Michael Ovitz $140 million to leave the company. Part of the conversation appears in the Post's "Page Six" column: "Please fire me," Weinstein quips. "I'll split whatever I get. ... If you don't fire me, then I think we should make bad movies next year. Let's make a series of [bleep]y movies." Roth replies: "I obviously made a mistake. I made good movies." Harvey says, "Joe, you are a success, so therefore you are a failure in this town." The two then name several top producers who won huge golden parachutes. "Everybody got wealthy on failure," Weinstein says. Roth replies: "You know what the problem is with you and me? We care about the movies." Weinstein laughs: "We have character flaws that must be overcome."

Although some analysts and investors groups have been urging General Electric to sell NBC Universal, noting that it makes a poor fit with the company's primary businesses, John Rice, president and CEO of GE's infrastructure division, has told Forbes magazine that the entertainment unit can open doors that would otherwise be shut to company executives. A particular case in point, Rice told the magazine, is China where the network's Olympics coverage has given GE an opportunity to expand its relationship with Chinese officials and build power plants, water-treatment facilities, rail projects, airplane engines, and other infrastructure projects. Indeed, Forbes indicated, GE's deals in China since NBC's Olympics staff set up shop there are worth more than the $1 billion in revenue that the company figures the Olympics are worth. Forbes says that GE anticipates that as a result of the NBC Olympics telecasts overall sales to China will rise to $10 billion by 2010.

One month after reporting exclusively that Angelina Jolie had given birth to twins, Entertainment Tonight has yet to acknowledge that it was the victim of a hoax by a person posing as the actress's assistant, the New York Times observed today. The newspaper, citing no sources, said that at one point the show's producers considered addressing the matter on the air but decided not to. "The story became a black eye for ET," the Times observed. Since the original report aired, it said, ET has been avoiding any mention of Jolie but on Tuesday did note that she had checked into a maternity clinic in France without mentioning the earlier report that she had already given birth.

Challenging the local news mantra that "if it bleeds, it leads," a new study examining 34,000 news stories broadcast by 154 stations in 50 markets has concluded that content and presentation is far more important in corralling an audience than sensationalistic tabloid fare. In the study, "The Local News Story: Is Quality a Choice?" political science professors Todd L. Belt and Marion Just demonstrate that newscasts that posted high scores on quality garnered higher ratings than those that focused on criminal acts and celebrity items. The study also found that it was important to combine quality content with a quality presentation. "How you tell the stories is important," Belts said.

The decision by Fox News Channel to alter and distort the facial features of two New York Times reporters in a photo aired on Fox & Friends on Wednesday was "beneath comment," Times culture editor Sam Sifton told Editor & Publisher Wednesday. Fox aired the photographs of Times reporter Jacques Steinberg and TV editor Steven Reddicliffe as Fox & Friends personalities Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade referred to what they called "a hit piece" by the writers that noted that ratings for the all-news cable network were exhibiting an "ominous trend." Sifton, however, told E&P: "It was straight news. This was a hit piece by Fox News."

At least two child-welfare groups have criticized NBC's reality show The Baby Borrowers, which is intended to give teenage couples a taste of what it is like to be parents of babies and toddlers. The group Zero to Three charged that the program "exploits young children with potential harmful consequences." And the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry warned that the show could put children under stress if their natural parents are not present. "A child's sense of security should not be gambled with," the AACAP said. Responding to the criticism, NBC said, "The producers of The Baby Borrowers took all the necessary precautions to ensure the safety and welfare of the children participating in the series."

Howdy Doody, the freckle-faced marionette who fronted one of the first network children's programs on TV beginning in 1947, is coming to DVD. Mill Creek Entertainment said Wednesday that it has signed a deal with NBC to release 40 episodes of The Howdy Doody Show in a five-disc boxed set on Nov. 4. Details were sketchy. Although the show was one of the first to be broadcast in color, it ended its run on NBC in 1960 when electronic video recording of color television broadcasts was in a primitive state.