LOS ANGELES -- To further cut costs at its movie studio, The Walt Disney Co. said Friday that it will shut a San Francisco-area facility used to capture the performance of Jim Carrey for his digitally animated character, Scrooge, in "A Christmas Carol."
The closure of the facility in Marin County, north of San Francisco, will be completed by January and result in the loss of 450 jobs.
The facility was built by ImageMovers Digital, a company co-founded by "A Christmas Carol" director Robert Zemeckis and partially owned by Disney. Motion-capture technology in that facility was used to make the movie; Carrey wore sensors as he acted out scenes, and the data were used to recreate his character on the screen.
Before it closes, the complex will continue to be used by Zemeckis and his team to complete production of "Mars Needs Moms!," a 3-D movie set for release in March 2011.
Disney said it hoped to come to a new long-term production deal with Zemeckis and his ImageMovers partners, Jack Rapke and Steve Starkey, including one for a future project called "Yellow Submarine."
Netflix cancels contest to settle privacy suit
SAN FRANCISCO -- DVD-by-mail service Netflix Inc. has canceled a sequel to a $1 million movie-recommendation contest, avoiding a potential courtroom drama over the privacy rights of its subscribers.
The retreat announced Friday settles a lawsuit alleging Netflix's plans to release millions of movie-rental records that could have illegally exposed sensitive information about its subscribers' tastes and lifestyles.
The Federal Trade Commission also had raised questions about the company's ability to protect customers' privacy, Netflix disclosed Friday.
FTC spokeswoman Claudia Bourne Farrell declined to comment.
Netflix intended to release the movie records without any names or other personal information attached to the data, but critics contended that the protections wouldn't be enough to guarantee anonymity.
Those arguments were supported by two University of Texas researchers who said they were able to sift through data that Netflix released in its first movie-picking contest to identify certain people who rated movies.
The class-action lawsuit filed in a San Jose federal court had also alleged Netflix's first contest, which ran from October 2006 through August 2009, had violated a federal law prohibiting video rental firms from publicly sharing their customers' movie preferences.
Leno back on top after return to late-night
NEW YORK -- After a smashing return, Jay Leno appears headed to a battle with David Letterman for late-night television supremacy.
The Nielsen Co. says Leno averaged 5.6 million viewers last week, his first back at NBC's "The Tonight Show" following the ill-fated prime time experiment. Letterman had 3.7 million at CBS. Leno took advantage of curiosity over his return and a strong lineup of guests, including Olympic stars and Sarah Palin. It was a half-million more than he averaged his last season at "Tonight."
It's been much closer the second week. Through four nights, Leno is averaging 4.3 million viewers and Letterman has 4 million.
Considering Leno usually beat Letterman by a million and a half during their last season of competition, that's a sign of erosion for NBC's late-night franchise. Letterman consistently beat Conan O'Brien after O'Brien took over last year.
