SUNDAY AM, 8TH UPDATE: It’s another huge weekend for the North American box office with $150M, or +25% from last year. Lionsgate’s humongous holdover The Hunger Games won the weekend domestically and nearly internationally again despite two new major releases opening against it. Warner Bros/Legendary Pictures’ 3D…

Al Jazeera Media Network has appointed former Reed Midem and Endemol executive Paul Johnson as executive director marketing and distribution. The company said Johnson will oversee the expansion of Al Jazeera’s global footprint and brand, working closely with all Al Jazeera executive directors and offices worldwide to…

UPDATE, 7:50 PM: Tribune confirms that its stations and WGN America will vanish from DirecTV at midnight in their local time zones. Tribune “simply cannot get fair compensation from DirecTV and we cannot allow DirecTV to continue taking advantage of us," the company’s broadcasting president, Nils Larsen, says. Tribune…

The actress suing Amazon.com and IMDb.com for publishing her real age on the web retailer’s popular entertainment information web site has dismissed her allegations of fraud, invasion of privacy and request for $1 million in punitive damages, but allowed her case to proceed on charges of breach-of-contract and…

The only thing riskier than being an enemy of Liberty Media’s John Malone is to be his friend — as Sirius XM’s Mel Karmazin is discovering. They developed a corporate bromance in 2009 when Malone rescued the satellite radio company as it struggled to keep up with its debt payments: Liberty invested $530M, and received…

RHI Entertainment Inc. has rebranded as Sonar Entertainment Inc. and appointed Stewart Till CEO, board chairman Gabriel de Alba announced at MIPTV in Cannes. The company also unveiled a package of disaster-themed and other miniseries, regular series and and a quartet of two-hour TV movies. Following the departure of…

UPDATE SUNDAY: Since I posted the story yesterday, several people working on the show have come forward to confirm Chase’s version of the events. One noted that the show indeed was “suffering through a ‘non-script day'” when Chase walked off. Another claimed that most of the cast and crew members who attended the wrap…

There are not that many cases when a 1.2 demo rating wold be a cause for celebration. This is one of them — last night Fox’s bubble sci-fi drama Fringe  posted a 1.2/4 in adults 18-49, shooting up 33% from the series low it posted in its return from hiatus last week. Fringe also matched its lead-in, Kitchen…

Now that Harry has hung up his Firebolt, Warner is looking to keep the multi-billion dollar franchise alive. Welcome to The Warner Bros Studio Tour London – The Making Of Harry Potter, a new attraction that opens today at its Leavesden studios in Watford, England. There, Muggles will get a glimpse at the…

After his abrupt exit from MSNBC last year, Keith Olbermann made his first TV appearance on CBS’ Late Show With David Letterman. He will do it again after his latest acrimonious departure, this time from Current TV. Olbermann will sit down with Letterman on Tuesday. During his previous visit, Olbermann called the…

EXCLUSIVE: Mike Jones will write Second Act based on a story by Teddy Grennan. Alexander Payne, Jim Burke and Jim Taylor’s Ad Hominem will produce the project, which is being kept under wraps. David Greenbaum will oversee Second Act for Fox Searchlight. Payne, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash recently received an Academy Award…

Dermot Mulroney has been tapped for a major recurring role on the upcoming second season of Mike White's HBO series Enlightened. The single-camera comedy stars Laura Dern as Amy, a self-destructive woman who has a spiritual awakening and decides to live an enlightened life, which creates havoc at home and work…