Beginning breaks on 'Twilight's' $710 million take

"The Twilight Saga: Breaking Beginning, Part 1" Within their first announcement as heads of Lionsgate's film group, Take advantage of Friedman and Patrick Wachsberger says the 4th "Twilight" film has transpired $700 million in worldwide grosses.The duo stated "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Beginning -- Part 1" will end up the greatest earner from the franchise to date, surpassing the $709.8 million worldwide cume in the third pic, "New Moon." This provides the vampire tentpoles a combined worldwide gross of $2.5 billion using the finale, "Breaking Beginning -- Part 2," going to be out November. 16. "Breaking Beginning -- Part 1," which has not yet opened up theaterically in China and Japan, is going to be on Blu-ray, DVD and VOD on February. 11.Wall Streeters expect Summit's "Twilight" franchise to inject $500 million of fresh cash into Lionsgate within the next 5 years.Lionsgate introduced Friday that Friedman and Wachsberger had decided to run the film division as co-chairmen, per week after Lionsgate completed its $412.5 million purchase of Summit.Joe Drake, prexy of Lionsgate's film group, decided to remain on with the discharge of Lionsgate's "The Hunger Games" on March 23 before departing.Friedman and Wachsberger now are accountable to Lionsgate co-chair and Boss Jon Feltheimer, who's established that some consolidation will occur. The combined company has about 500 Lionsgate employees and 160 from Summit.Moody's Traders Service stated Friday that Lionsgate's credit score had been examined for any possible upgrade following a Summit buyout. Standard & Poors introduced 2 days earlier it had been thinking about improving its Lionsgate rating.Lionsgate shares returned 9% greater following a Jan. 13 deal announcement. They closed Thursday at $9.48 before retreating Friday to $9.36. Contact Dork McNary at dork.mcnary@variety.com

Giovanni Ribisi on Playing Villains and Ways to Tell Stories

Giovanni Ribisi on Playing Villains and Ways to Tell Stories By Jenelle Riley January 11, 2012 Photo by Sebastian Piras From all appearances, Giovanni Ribisi is a really nice guy. He's polite and soft-spoken and can talk at length about the importance of values and family. He's described by co-stars as a dedicated and generous actor. He insists on paying for lunch. So why is he so good at playing such vile characters onscreen?When asked this, Ribisi laughs good-naturedly. "I don't know; it's a funny question," he says. "Maybe I'm so nasty onscreen, I get it out of my system." He takes it as a compliment that one interview described his "Avatar" character, corporate slimeball Parker Selfridge, as "the world's biggest douchebag." But in his new film "Contraband," Ribisi's lowlife drug trafficker Tim Briggs makes Selfridge look like a Boy Scout. Adorned with menacing tattoos on his face and body, Briggs sports a scruffy goatee and hair slicked back with God only knows what. Briggs would just as soon run into someone with a truck than bother to talk things out, and he isn't above inflicting violence on women and children to make his point. Though the star of the movie is Mark Wahlberg as a smugglerturnedfamily man lured back into one last heist, Ribisi's loathsome villain steals the film. Ribisi almost talked himself out of the role. When Icelandic filmmaker Baltasar Kormkur set out to adapt his 2008 hit "Reykjavik-Rotterdam" for American audiences, he asked Ribisi to audition. "I said I would love to meet with him, but I couldn't read for it because it was going to take time to prepare the character," Ribisi says. "If you had another actor familiar with this type of experience, maybe they could come in and do a read. But I would like to build this from the ground up." Ribisi was a little surprised when he got the call to do the film. "He really put his trust in me," he says. "And it went from there." Briggs was originally written as a more physically intimidating specimena "bigger, more oafish" sort. "I felt like I had seen that before," Ribisi says, "and didn't want to do something clich. I wanted somebody who was a little bit more severe in all aspectshis violence, his intellect, where he comes from."When the actor arrived in New Orleans for the shoot, he set about finding Briggs' voice. He worked on the accent with dialect coach Carla Meyer, who helped form the alien language in "Avatar," and used recordings from Tim Monnich, who worked with Leonardo DiCaprio on "Blood Diamond." Adds Ribisi, "But the most helpful thing is when you find an individual who has your accent and you can record it. It can take days, weeks, monthsbut when you find the right guy, you do everything you can to get them to read the script." In this case, Ribisi found his right guy in a bar. The stranger agreed to record his dialogue on a tape recorder for him. Before shooting began, Ribisi tried out his character in public, complete with the accent and 18 tattoos. "It was interesting because I'm not the biggest, most muscular guy on the planet, but I saw what a psychological thing it was to walk as this guy," he says. "And people definitely crossed the street when they saw me like that." Early Influences Ribisi has been acting for more than 30 years. He was born into an artistic family; his father was a member of the one-hit-wonder band People!, which had a hit song in 1968 called "I Love You," and his mother was an artist who became a manager and now represents actors such as Jason Lee and Elisabeth Moss. Ribisi describes his household as having a "hippie mentality" and encouraging the arts, though he says he was never pushed into acting. Rather, when he was 4 he began begging his mother to let him go on auditions. "About five years later, she finally acquiesced and we went looking for an agent," he says. Ribisi says he believes he began booking roles pretty quickly, not because of his talent but because of a lack of competition. "Back then, there really weren't as many child actors, so it was kind of in demand," he says.Ribisi says he was just having fun at first, not thinking of acting as a career. After appearances on such series as "Married With Children" and a recurring role on "My Two Dads," Ribisi went through a rebellious phase during which he didn't want to act anymore. "You know how it is when you're 13 or 14," he elaborates. "I was trying to figure out who I was, and I didn't like being forced to wear certain things and told what to do." Then he met aspiring filmmaker Lightfield Lewis, brother of actor Juliette Lewis, who introduced him to a whole new world of actors. "He showed me the films of Marlon Brandospecifically 'Streetcar Named Desire'and Laurence Olivier, and all these people I'd never heard of," Ribisi says. "And I began to see things in a different light. I began to see acting as something that might be a potential challenge and worthy of working towards something." So at 16, after years of working in the business, Ribisi decided he wanted to be an actor. His first step was to find an acting class. A family friend recommended Milton Katselas of the Beverly Hills Playhouse. "I ate it up," Ribisi says. "I don't know what happened; there was a light that turned on in me, and I just became devoted to that. Milton was like a second father to me; he was such an intelligent, perceptive person." Ribisi credits Katselas, who died in 2008, with teaching him to embrace the audition process. "I hated it; it was so nerve-racking and odd," he says. "But while studying with Milton, my mentality changed so that I looked at it as an opportunity to get to do what I love, which is act."Role Call As Ribisi was about to enter his 20s, he wanted to move away from television and get into film. "It was a time when people like Quentin Tarantino were really stretching the boundaries of film," he says. "And I sort of got this attitude that I wouldn't do television; I didn't care if I was homeless. Luckily, I got a movie, so that didn't happen." The film was "The Grave," and the then-19-year-old Ribisi played a convict on a chain gang who had three lines, one being "Hey, man." His biggest break came a couple of years later, when Richard Linklater was adapting Eric Bogosian's play "SubUrbia" for the big screen. "I went in and auditioned, and they said no," Ribisi says. "And Milton had said to me that the auditioning process was not over until you say it's over. So I basically begged and convinced them to see me, to give me five minutes of their time. They were already in NY, so I took the last $800 I had in my bank account, and I bought a ticket." Ribisi says he stayed up all night, pacing the aisles of his red-eye flight, working on the scene. After his second audition, he was told he got the part.A variety of roles followed, and Ribisi seemed to never repeat his work. Highlights included playing the sensitive medic in Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan," scoring an Independent Spirit Award nomination for "The Gift," and last year's adaptation of the Hunter S. Thompson novel "The Rum Diary," with Johnny Depp. A fan of Thompson and Depp, Ribisi had a great time making the film and says the late Thompson maintained a presence on the set. "There was a chair that had 'Hunter Thompson' on it on set, with a bottle of Scotch and a cigarette holder," Ribisi says. "It was there every day. We would be up in the mountains; that chair would be there." Of course, there was "Avatar," the highest-grossing movie of all time. Perhaps most interesting about Ribisi's involvement is that it didn't end with his performance. A few years back, Ribisi had taken a break from acting to study computer graphics at the Gnomon School of Visual Effects. In 2008, he formed a small visual effects company called Stereo D. When "Avatar" director James Cameron's company, Lightstorm Entertainment, was looking for houses to convert a shot from "Avatar" to 3-D, it contacted several companies. "We delivered five versions of the shot in 24 hours," Ribisi says. "Other companies were taking a week to do one version." Cameron, unaware that one of his stars was involved with the company, hired Stereo D to convert several more shots. "It was one of my proudest moments," Ribisi says. "I've since moved on, but the company remains, and it's actually doing the 3-D conversion on 'Titanic.' " Lest anyone think Ribisi wasn't hands-on, he personally spent hours converting the shots. "The first shot we converted is one of the first things you see in the movieit's Sam Worthington's eyeball," he reveals. "I can officially say he has 53 lashes on his bottom left eye." Ribisi has more interests on the other side of the lens; he recently directed a music video for Cat Power's "King Rides By," featuring boxer Manny Pacquiao. He's directing a film about youth culture and skateboarding with Steve Berra and Eric Koston, the founders of the private skate park The Berrics. But Ribisi says he will never leave acting behind. "My focus has always been on film, and I'll participate in different ways," he says. "I just want to be a part of telling great stories." Outtakes Other films include "Cold Mountain," "Middle Men," and "Lost in Translation" also made memorable appearances on "Friends" as Phoebe's brother and "My Name Is Earl" opposite his good friend Jason LeeSays his most difficult role was in the 2002 Tom Tykwer film "Heaven," in which Ribisi had 12 days to learn to speak Italian and was dealing with a lot of stress in his personal life. As a result, he has not seen the final film: "From what I hear, it's a good movie; I'm just not ready."Has two French bulldogs, Mona and Abuela Giovanni Ribisi on Playing Villains and Ways to Tell Stories By Jenelle Riley January 11, 2012 PHOTO CREDIT Sebastian Piras From all appearances, Giovanni Ribisi is a really nice guy. He's polite and soft-spoken and can talk at length about the importance of values and family. He's described by co-stars as a dedicated and generous actor. He insists on paying for lunch. So why is he so good at playing such vile characters onscreen?When asked this, Ribisi laughs good-naturedly. "I don't know; it's a funny question," he says. "Maybe I'm so nasty onscreen, I get it out of my system." He takes it as a compliment that one interview described his "Avatar" character, corporate slimeball Parker Selfridge, as "the world's biggest douchebag." But in his new film "Contraband," Ribisi's lowlife drug trafficker Tim Briggs makes Selfridge look like a Boy Scout. Adorned with menacing tattoos on his face and body, Briggs sports a scruffy goatee and hair slicked back with God only knows what. Briggs would just as soon run into someone with a truck than bother to talk things out, and he isn't above inflicting violence on women and children to make his point. Though the star of the movie is Mark Wahlberg as a smugglerturnedfamily man lured back into one last heist, Ribisi's loathsome villain steals the film. Ribisi almost talked himself out of the role. When Icelandic filmmaker Baltasar Kormkur set out to adapt his 2008 hit "Reykjavik-Rotterdam" for American audiences, he asked Ribisi to audition. "I said I would love to meet with him, but I couldn't read for it because it was going to take time to prepare the character," Ribisi says. "If you had another actor familiar with this type of experience, maybe they could come in and do a read. But I would like to build this from the ground up." Ribisi was a little surprised when he got the call to do the film. "He really put his trust in me," he says. "And it went from there." Briggs was originally written as a more physically intimidating specimena "bigger, more oafish" sort. "I felt like I had seen that before," Ribisi says, "and didn't want to do something clich. I wanted somebody who was a little bit more severe in all aspectshis violence, his intellect, where he comes from."When the actor arrived in New Orleans for the shoot, he set about finding Briggs' voice. He worked on the accent with dialect coach Carla Meyer, who helped form the alien language in "Avatar," and used recordings from Tim Monnich, who worked with Leonardo DiCaprio on "Blood Diamond." Adds Ribisi, "But the most helpful thing is when you find an individual who has your accent and you can record it. It can take days, weeks, monthsbut when you find the right guy, you do everything you can to get them to read the script." In this case, Ribisi found his right guy in a bar. The stranger agreed to record his dialogue on a tape recorder for him. Before shooting began, Ribisi tried out his character in public, complete with the accent and 18 tattoos. "It was interesting because I'm not the biggest, most muscular guy on the planet, but I saw what a psychological thing it was to walk as this guy," he says. "And people definitely crossed the street when they saw me like that." Early Influences Ribisi has been acting for more than 30 years. He was born into an artistic family; his father was a member of the one-hit-wonder band People!, which had a hit song in 1968 called "I Love You," and his mother was an artist who became a manager and now represents actors such as Jason Lee and Elisabeth Moss. Ribisi describes his household as having a "hippie mentality" and encouraging the arts, though he says he was never pushed into acting. Rather, when he was 4 he began begging his mother to let him go on auditions. "About five years later, she finally acquiesced and we went looking for an agent," he says. Ribisi says he believes he began booking roles pretty quickly, not because of his talent but because of a lack of competition. "Back then, there really weren't as many child actors, so it was kind of in demand," he says.Ribisi says he was just having fun at first, not thinking of acting as a career. After appearances on such series as "Married With Children" and a recurring role on "My Two Dads," Ribisi went through a rebellious phase during which he didn't want to act anymore. "You know how it is when you're 13 or 14," he elaborates. "I was trying to figure out who I was, and I didn't like being forced to wear certain things and told what to do." Then he met aspiring filmmaker Lightfield Lewis, brother of actor Juliette Lewis, who introduced him to a whole new world of actors. "He showed me the films of Marlon Brandospecifically 'Streetcar Named Desire'and Laurence Olivier, and all these people I'd never heard of," Ribisi says. "And I began to see things in a different light. I began to see acting as something that might be a potential challenge and worthy of working towards something." So at 16, after years of working in the business, Ribisi decided he wanted to be an actor. His first step was to find an acting class. A family friend recommended Milton Katselas of the Beverly Hills Playhouse. "I ate it up," Ribisi says. "I don't know what happened; there was a light that turned on in me, and I just became devoted to that. Milton was like a second father to me; he was such an intelligent, perceptive person." Ribisi credits Katselas, who died in 2008, with teaching him to embrace the audition process. "I hated it; it was so nerve-racking and odd," he says. "But while studying with Milton, my mentality changed so that I looked at it as an opportunity to get to do what I love, which is act."Role Call As Ribisi was about to enter his 20s, he wanted to move away from television and get into film. "It was a time when people like Quentin Tarantino were really stretching the boundaries of film," he says. "And I sort of got this attitude that I wouldn't do television; I didn't care if I was homeless. Luckily, I got a movie, so that didn't happen." The film was "The Grave," and the then-19-year-old Ribisi played a convict on a chain gang who had three lines, one being "Hey, man." His biggest break came a couple of years later, when Richard Linklater was adapting Eric Bogosian's play "SubUrbia" for the big screen. "I went in and auditioned, and they said no," Ribisi says. "And Milton had said to me that the auditioning process was not over until you say it's over. So I basically begged and convinced them to see me, to give me five minutes of their time. They were already in NY, so I took the last $800 I had in my bank account, and I bought a ticket." Ribisi says he stayed up all night, pacing the aisles of his red-eye flight, working on the scene. After his second audition, he was told he got the part.A variety of roles followed, and Ribisi seemed to never repeat his work. Highlights included playing the sensitive medic in Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan," scoring an Independent Spirit Award nomination for "The Gift," and last year's adaptation of the Hunter S. Thompson novel "The Rum Diary," with Johnny Depp. A fan of Thompson and Depp, Ribisi had a great time making the film and says the late Thompson maintained a presence on the set. "There was a chair that had 'Hunter Thompson' on it on set, with a bottle of Scotch and a cigarette holder," Ribisi says. "It was there every day. We would be up in the mountains; that chair would be there." Of course, there was "Avatar," the highest-grossing movie of all time. Perhaps most interesting about Ribisi's involvement is that it didn't end with his performance. A few years back, Ribisi had taken a break from acting to study computer graphics at the Gnomon School of Visual Effects. In 2008, he formed a small visual effects company called Stereo D. When "Avatar" director James Cameron's company, Lightstorm Entertainment, was looking for houses to convert a shot from "Avatar" to 3-D, it contacted several companies. "We delivered five versions of the shot in 24 hours," Ribisi says. "Other companies were taking a week to do one version." Cameron, unaware that one of his stars was involved with the company, hired Stereo D to convert several more shots. "It was one of my proudest moments," Ribisi says. "I've since moved on, but the company remains, and it's actually doing the 3-D conversion on 'Titanic.' " Lest anyone think Ribisi wasn't hands-on, he personally spent hours converting the shots. "The first shot we converted is one of the first things you see in the movieit's Sam Worthington's eyeball," he reveals. "I can officially say he has 53 lashes on his bottom left eye." Ribisi has more interests on the other side of the lens; he recently directed a music video for Cat Power's "King Rides By," featuring boxer Manny Pacquiao. He's directing a film about youth culture and skateboarding with Steve Berra and Eric Koston, the founders of the private skate park The Berrics. But Ribisi says he will never leave acting behind. "My focus has always been on film, and I'll participate in different ways," he says. "I just want to be a part of telling great stories." Outtakes Other films include "Cold Mountain," "Middle Men," and "Lost in Translation" also made memorable appearances on "Friends" as Phoebe's brother and "My Name Is Earl" opposite his good friend Jason LeeSays his most difficult role was in the 2002 Tom Tykwer film "Heaven," in which Ribisi had 12 days to learn to speak Italian and was dealing with a lot of stress in his personal life. As a result, he has not seen the final film: "From what I hear, it's a good movie; I'm just not ready."Has two French bulldogs, Mona and Abuela

Rankings: The Firm Sets An Exciting-Time Low to have an NBC Regular Season Drama

Josh Lucas, Molly Parker No terra firma for that Firm. Its two-hour debut stands about this shaky ground - 46 percent underneath the demo rating from the Cape's premiere last year, which makes it the worst all-time oncoming of an NBC regular season drama. Quite telling: the show lost audiences with every succeeding half-hour. Surely, the network is missing Sunday Evening Football already. Preliminary Nielsen data also demonstrated that Not so long ago returned strong - 28 percent above its last first-run episode on 12 ,. 11. And CBS loved a large boost in the one-play overtime heroics of Tim Tebow leading the Colorado Broncos for an upset within the Gambling, tugging in 25.23 million audiences with is overrun in to the 8 o'clock hour. It gave CBS its greatest-ranked Wild Card game in 24 years. Within the 7 o'clock hour, the overall game had 41.89 million audiences along with a 14.8 rating one of the industry-valued 18-to-49-year-olds. Catch on present day news 8 p.m.CBS: an hour 25.23 million audiences (7.9) National football league overrun much like the relaxation of CBS overnight amountsABC: Not so long ago 10.33 million (3.7)Fox: The Simpsons 5.a million (2.3) The Cleveland Show 4.37 million (2.1) NBC: Dateline NBC 7.42 million (1.5) 9 p.m.CBS: The Great Wife 12.68 million (3.)ABC: Desperate Average women 8.79 million audiences (3.)Fox: Family Guy 6.04 million (3.) American Father 4.59 million (2.1)NBC: The Firm 6.29 million (1.4) [9-11 p.m.] 10 p.m.CBS: CSI: Miami 10.76 million audiences (2.7 demo rating)ABC: Pan Am 4.04 million (1.3)

Fox at TCA: House's Future, the Glee Spin-Off and Scoop on The American Idol Show

Fox logo design Will Fox close the doorways on House's Princeton-Plainsboro? Is Glee still planning for a spin-off following the McKinley High senior citizens graduate? And seriously, Ryan Seacrest is not departing The American Idol Show, right? Have more scoop in your favorite shows within our Winter TV preview Get all of the latest Fox news in the winter TV previews below: Kiefer Sutherland returns to TV in contact: Leave behind Jack Bauer Alcatraz's J.J. Abrams: New Fox drama is with an island, but it is not Lost Fox at TCA: What's going on with House, Fringe, Terra Nova and also the Glee spin-off? The American Idol Show jams its music show competition, discloses new performance challenges 8 things we learned from Fox's comedy panel: Zooey Deschanel, Megan Mullally and Raising Hope

'One for that Money' Trailer: Katherine Heigl's 'Midnight Run'? [EXCLUSIVE]

Credit Katherine Heigl for trying something a little from her wheelhouse? In 'One your money can buy,A the questionable leading lady -- last seen onscreen included in the ensemble in 'New Year's Eve' -- assumes the role of Stephanie Plum, the famous Regular Jane-switched-fugitive hunter in the centre of Jesse Evanovich's best-selling number of books. Translation: this is not a romcom! Actually, Heigl is not even blonde she's packing warmth and putting on a leather jacket, however, with what appears like a distaff undertake Robert P Niro's fugitive hunter role within the now-classic 'Midnight Run' (minus all of the ex-cop items that would go to Jason O'Mara as her charge/ex). A brand new trailer for that Jan. 27 comedy-thriller-romance has first showed solely at Moviefone, highlighting Heigl's bad-ass turn, in addition to Darlene Reynolds' dinner-shooting ways and Sherri Shepherd like a hooker having a heart of gold. Watch below. 'One for that Money' has gone out in theaters on Jan. 27. [Photo: Lionsgate] Follow Moviefone on Twitter Like Moviefone on Facebook

Utility player orchestrates 'Miracle'

'The Greatest Miracle'McKenzieFor the past 20 years, accomplished orchestrator Mark McKenzie has been the go-to guy behind-the-scenes for such top film composers as Jerry Goldsmith, Hans Zimmer and Danny Elfman. But now the guy who's orchestrated such hits as "Spider-Man," "Ice Age: The Meltdown" and "Star Trek: Nemesis," and a talented composer in his own right, is finally grabbing the limelight thanks to an obscure indie Mexican 3D animated spiritual film titled "The Greatest Miracle," which recently won him the indie/documentary/short film score award at the Hollywood Music In Media Awards."The whole thing is a miracle," says McKenzie of the faith-based family film directed by Bruce Morris and produced by Mexico City-based Pablo Barosso and Claudia Nemer, "as they had no money, and were also throwing out a previous score when I met them. And they thought I'd come in and save them with a relatively cheap synthesizer score."Instead, McKenzie insisted that the film, budgeted at just $1 million, deserved a full symphonic score -- a costly proposition. "And amazingly, they called back and told me to go for it," he recalls.Following through wasn't so easy. "For a start, they didn't even have a copy of the film in English without the music of the prior composer," he reports. "So I literally was writing music without any dialogue, and then I'd turn it up slightly, so I could hear enough of the dialogue to make sense of it all, but without hearing the music underneath it."McKenzie spent six weeks writing the new score and doing his own orchestration, and then experienced another minor miracle when he played the unfinished material to Morris and Barosso on three separate visits to his L.A. studio. "Without fail, they loved everything I played them, and I've never had that happen before," he reports.To record the score, McKenzie used an 80-piece orchestra, the acclaimed London boys' choir Libera and a women's choir. "And then I wrote a 15-minute suite based on the score, which premiered last August in Madrid, as part of World Youth Day, in front of Pope Benedict XVI," he adds. "Everything about the film's been amazing."Eye on the Oscars: Song & Score Are acad rules out of synch? | 'Muppety' but not too 'Flighty' | Pinch hitter | Elizabethan notes culled from rubble | Utility player orchestrates 'Miracle' | Powell animated by quartet of pix | Animal, mineral mix in 'Apes' score | Gregson-Williams relishes the chase | Byrne scores big 'Albert Nobbs' | O'Connor in tune with 'Albert Nobbs' Contact the Variety newsroom at news@variety.com