UPI NewsTrack Entertainment News

Military jet surprises Warner Bros. studio

LOS ANGELES, June 2 (UPI) -- The Warner Bros. lot in Los Angeles was buzzing after a military jet made a low-flying maneuver, appearing as if it may crash into the studio.

Witnesses said the plane came within a few hundred feet of the ground Friday afternoon -- rattling windows and setting off car alarms -- before climbing swiftly, Daily Variety reported Saturday.

"I looked outside my window and you could almost touch it," said one studio worker.

"It scared the hell out of everyone here," said another witness.

An hour after what appeared to be a near-miss, studio officials sent an e-mail explaining the jet was "performing an approved fly-over maneuver as a part of a funeral ceremony at Forest Lawn Cemetery."

"The studio did not receive prior notification of the fly-over, which we usually do. We are looking into the reasons that such notification was not made. In the meantime, we wanted to apologize for any concern or discomfort you may have experienced," read the e-mail.

'Battlestar Galactica' coming to a close

LOS ANGELES, June 2 (UPI) -- The Sci-Fi Channel's Peabody Award-winning and critically acclaimed series "Battlestar Gallactica" is coming to a close.

Although the show's ending was not officially announced until Friday, "Battlestar Galactica's" executive producers, Ron Moore and David Eick, said they began feeling several months ago the show was nearing its end, Zap2it.com reported.

"This is a decision that took some time to arrive at, and like all decisions this large, there were a number of questions we had internally and a creative agenda we wanted to serve. I think we all had to collectively decide when we wanted to be definitive about it. That time is now," Eick says.

Although Sci-Fi reportedly was not exactly thrilled with the idea of giving up the show, Moore said once he and Eick made their case, the network didn't stand in their way.

Arcade game 'Spy Hunter' goes Hollywood

LOS ANGELES, June 2 (UPI) -- Universal Pictures' "Spy Hunter," based on an arcade game from the 1980s, has found a director in Los Angeles-based writer-director Paul W.S. Anderson.

The new action film is being produced by Chuck Gordon, Adrian Askarieh and Anderson's partner, Jeremy Bolt, said The Hollywood Reporter Saturday.

Anderson will write an outline to be used as a blueprint for the film's script, after which a writer will be brought on board.

"Spy Hunter" was an arcade game in which the hero drove the G-6155 Interceptor, a car that must defeat a wide variety of enemy vehicles.

Gordon and Askarieh also are currently in production with Twentieth Century Fox on the big screen adaptation of the video game "Hitman," starring Timothy Olyphant.

Chicago man arrested for pirating '24'

CHICAGO, June 2 (UPI) -- A Chicago man may face up to three years in jail after allegedly pirating unaired episodes of Fox's "24" and uploading them to an online video site.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation filed a criminal complaint against Jorge Romero, 24, Friday, accusing him of uploading four episodes of "24" to LiveDigital.com just eight days before they started airing on television, said The Hollywood Reporter.

The complaint charges Romero "with uploading copyrighted material to a publicly accessible computer network knowing the work was intended for commercial distribution, a felony that carries a statutory maximum sentence of three years in federal prison."

The show's producer, Twentieth Century Fox, issued a statement in support of the FBI's investigation.

"We are grateful to the FBI and U.S. Attorney's offices in Los Angeles for aggressively pursuing this matter, and we hope it will serve as a powerful warning that uploading copyrighted TV shows and movies to the Internet can be a crime with significant penalties and will be prosecuted as such," said the statement.