BBC - Films - High Noon - 13th January 2004

		Big Whopper It may have escaped your attention, but Tim Burton's Big Fish has knocked The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King off its throne at the US box office. Well... for about a minute, anyway. This is another one of those creative accounting stories, with Sony Pictures claiming to have netted $14.5m while the official box office tracker worked out the final figure at $13.8m. That puts them just behind Return Of The King, which accrued the princely sum of $14.2m over its fourth weekend. The big fish at Sony says: "I had no idea what [New Line] had reported." Yeah, yeah, yeah. "We never anticipated that Big Fish would beat Lord Of The Rings this weekend," he adds. "We were quite happy to be No.2." Oh, in case you didn't know, Big Fish is the fantastical story of an economical-with-the-truth storyteller - and that's what they call irony, folks.

		Nude Neve Scream queen Neve Campbell is breaking her self-imposed ban on nude scenes for improvisational director James Toback. Campbell stars in Toback's When Will I Be Loved, which Campbell describes as the story of "a young woman's sexual exploration". She's decided to bare all because, she says, "If it has to do with the rawness of a character, then that makes sense to me." Dollars and cents to be more precise - and isn't raw just another word for nude? As if reading our cynical little minds, she firmly states: "I don't believe in doing nudity for the sake of being a box office draw and when it has nothing to do with the movie itself."

		Blonde Ambition Legally Blonde helmer Robert Luketic tells BBCi FILMS that he's bringing super spy Matt Helm back to the big screen. Based on a series of novels by Donald Hamilton, Columbia Pictures used these as a vehicle for crooner Dean Martin back in the 60s. Luketic is hoping to make a more lasting impression with his take on the series, enthusing: "It would be a character-based, action adventure-driven franchise of films, unlike contemporary spy genre films where there really isn't any emotional attachment. "If you remember Spielberg's Indiana Jones," Luketic goes on, "he bled and he was so real, and you were with him during the adventures. You really felt peril for him. So I think that's something we want to try." And who will fill Dean Martin's shoes? Luketic mentions Josh Duhamel, the lead in his upcoming comedy Win A Date With Tad Hamilton!. Ain't that a kick in the head...

		Bit Players In other news, Jeremy Irons is joining the cast of Ridley Scott's Kingdom Of Heaven. Set against the 12th century Crusades, the Luvverly Orlando Bloom^TM stars as a knight who saves a kingdom and woos a princess - oops, did we ruin the ending for you? Irons will play some bloke called Tiberias... The official deadline for completed Oscar ballots is Saturday, but many European voters have yet to receive their forms - 241 of those being UK Academy members. AMPAS are therefore extending the deadline for Euro votes till 5pm the following Tuesday, but the brouhaha is one strike against this year's shortened awards season. Oscar night, which traditionally happened at the end of March, is now being pushed up to Sunday 29th February.