Clooney to attend Italian theater opening

ROME, July 8 (UPI) -- U.S. actor George Clooney, who owns a home in Italy, is to make an appearance in L'Aquila to show his support for earthquake victims, officials said.

The Italian news agency ANSA reported Clooney is scheduled this week to meet with people who have been living in tents in the small village of San Demetrio since a quake killed nearly 300 people and left thousands homeless last April.

ANSA said the film star and human rights advocate is to help Nobel Peace Prize winner Betty Williams christen the Nobel for Peace Hall, the town's new movie theater and community center, as part of this week's Group of Eight summit.

The theater-opening event is co-sponsored by the Secretariat of Nobel Peace Prize Summits -- an organization created in 1999 by then-Rome mayor Walter Veltroni and the Mikhail Gorbachev Foundation -- and Twentieth Century Fox, the producers of Clooney's upcoming animated film, "Fantastic Mr. Fox," ANSA said.

Clips from "Fantastic" reportedly are to be shown at the theater's inauguration ceremony after which the Italian premiere of "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" is to take place.