Filmmakers in Bollywood, India’s movie industry, are notorious for borrowing liberally from foreign films far and wide, especially Hollywood.

Even when they don’t copy an entire film frame by frame, Bollywood directors often borrow from several films at once, melding story lines and adapting them to an Indian setting, complete with song and dance. They do this, of course, without buying the remaking rights. Despite a lot of original cinema coming out of Bollywood, plagiarism is rife.

Hollywood hasn’t cared until now, The Washington Post’s Emily Wax reports. Twentieth Century Fox recently settled a lawsuit with BR Films — a well-known banner — over its remake of the 1992 hit “My Cousin Vinny.” Fox accepted $200,000, paving the way for a release of the Hindi version, called “Banda Yeh Bindaas Hai” or “This Guy is Fearless”.

The Times of London has reported that a lawyer representing major American studios has recently sent warning letters to producers who he believes are copying Hollywood films. Among the titles are “Ghostbusters”, “Jerry Maguire”, “The Departed” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, the paper reports.

Will Fox’s action finally put a stop to the widespread plagiarism in Bollywood? More likely, Bollywood producers will just have to cough up the money to buy remaking rights, which is how it should be.

Keep an eye on:

• Nokia plans to tackle Apple’s iPhone with a bet on Linux software. (Reuters)
• Channel 4 will drop Big Brother as it focuses more on public service broadcasting. (Financial Times)
• Alcatel-Lucent shares jump on rumors of Chinese bid. (Reuters)

Photo: www.moviegoods.com

What’s going to happen to MGM?

On Tuesday, the Hollywood studio announced it was replacing its chief executive Harry Sloan with a team that includes a turnaround expert. It’s a well-known fact that MGM, which is owned by private equity firms and Comcast, has struggled with a massive debt load. It has payments due on $3.7 billion of debt and the future isn’t looking too good, given the down market and shrinking DVD demand.

Media and entertainment industry analysts believe MGM won’t last much longer as an independent studio, according to a story in the Los Angeles Times:

Most industry watchers believe that MGM will not survive much longer as an independent studio and is likely to be sold to a bigger media company such as Time Warner Inc. or merged with another movie and TV studio like Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. Qualia Capital, a private investment firm headed by Amir Malin and Ken Schapiro, is actively looking at MGM, said a person with knowledge of the situation.

Who else could be a buyer? There were rumors earlier that investor Carl Icahn, who is a major shareholder in Lions Gate, was buying up MGM’s debt in the open market with the intention of forcing a merger between the two studios.

Then, there’s Comcast, which already owns a stake in MGM and could potentially be interested in owning MGM’s rich content librabry, which includes the James Bond films. Reuters’ Yinka Adegoke recently wrote that investors worry that Comcast will make a splashy acquisition soon. Could this be it?

Keep an eye on:

• Travel Channel bids were due on Tuesday. Who’s going to buy it? (CNBC)
• Virtual cooking is a hit on Facebook. (Los Angeles Times)
• The New York Daily News bumped the Wall Street Journal off most-visited sites list. (Editor & Publisher)

Photo: Actor Daniel Craig. the current James Bond/Reuters

Marvel Entertainment Inc executives and investors heaved a sigh of relief after “Iron Man” smashed box office records in its opening weekend.

The movie about a billionaire industrialist turned super hero was the tenth biggest weekend box office performance of all time and the second biggest non-sequel. The expectations had been building up. The stock kept climbing steadily from the start of the year to hit a 52-week high on Friday.

“Iron Man” won the praise of critics — It has a 94 percent fresh rating on RottenTomatoes.com, which has taken a consensus of 163 reviews. The movie critic website says that Iron Man is the best-reviewed movie of 2008 so far.

Marvel managed to please them all: critics, audiences and, today, investors. For a company that emerged from bankruptcy in 1998, it has been a remarkable turnaround story. Its shares rose further today on the box office numbers.

Marvel has been planning this for years. And now that “Iron Man” has succeeded at the box office, all eyes are on the irritable green giant, who has been lying low since “Iron Man” took center stage. Marvel is planning a barrage of marketing for “The Incredible Hulk” when it gets closer to the movie.

Few analysts are as excited about “Hulk”, which has yet to generate a similar level of buzz.

The company also said it will not release any movie in 2009, when the company will have to look for trickle-down revenue from “Iron Man” and “Hulk.”

Marvel fans should watch 2010. That’s when the “Iron Man” sequel is planned. And so is, as some speculate, “Spider-Man 4.” There’s also a movie on “Thor” in the same year and two “Avenger”-themed films slated to hit theaters in 2011.

Reuters coverage:
Analysis
Box office performance
First quarter financial results

(Photo: Reuters)