Some top movie screenwriters are planning a secret meeting this weekend to form a coalition that would force the Writers Guild of America to accept the same deal that the Directors Guild of America negotiates with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, L.A. Weekly columnist Nikki Finke reported on her Deadline Hollywood Daily blog. The screenwriters, Finke said, "are weighing their options about how to convey their unified message and best exert pressure for this strike to be settled." However, an unnamed member of the WGA board responded in a statement to Finke: "Anyone, A-list writers or not, who would posture in public, in advance of a DGA deal, as willing to take the DGA deal before they even make it... who as DGA members would compromise the DGA's leverage by announcing this before hand... has awarded themselves the Darwin Award for the world's weakest negotiators." Meanwhile, the New York Observer has designated Finke "The Media Mensch of the Year" for her reporting on the strike. "She's demonstrated that one determined reporter -- with none of the support or backing of a media outfit, but also none of the entangling alliances -- can, in fact, beat the big guys at their own game," the Observer said. "She's broken the news of almost all of the significant strike developments since the beginning."

The box-office success of Alvin and the Chipmunks has surprised executives of 20th Century Fox, which produced it, as much as industry analysts and especially movie critics, who wrote scathing reviews about it. "I look at the numbers [box-office receipts] every day, and we just laugh," Elizabeth Gabler of Fox 2000 told the Los Angeles Times. The film had grossed $153.6 million through Tuesday and could wind up taking in as much as National Treasure: Book of Secrets and I Am Legend, the holiday's two blockbuster releases, the Times observed. But since it cost only $55 million to produce, it is likely to be far more profitable than the two other films.

With January regarded as traditionally a slow month for the movie industry, only one film, Warner Bros.' One Missed Call, starring Edward Burns and Shannyn Sossamon, is scheduled to open this weekend. The result is that National Treasure: Book of Secrets is likely to repeat as the top film for the third week in a row, earning between $18 million and $22 million, analysts predicted. Fox Searchlight's Juno, which played in only about 1,000 theaters last weekend -- but still wound up in fifth place in the box-office standings -- is due to double that number this weekend and is expected to give films like Alvin and the Chipmunks, I Am Legend and Charlie Wilson's War, which finished second, third, and fourth last weekend, a run for the money.

Universal Pictures said Wednesday that it earned more in 2007 than in any year in its 100-year history. The company said that its theatrical releases grossed $2.133 billion worldwide and $1.099 billion domestically. In a statement, Universal Chairman Marc Shmuger and Co-chairman David Linde called 2007 a "turnaround year" for the studio. "What's especially fulfilling is this record didn't result from one or two home runs that saved the bottom line, but from a diversity of successes." The company also observed that Universal's home video division had an exceptional year, grossing $2.7 billion in the U.S. alone.

The Cannes Film Festival announced Wednesday that Sean Penn will serve as jury president at the 2008 festival, which begins May 14 and ends May 25. In a statement, Penn observed that in recent years "increasingly thoughtful, provocative, moving, and imaginative films by talented filmmakers" have been produced and that the festival has "been the epicenter in the discovery of those new waves of filmmakers from all over the world."

Netflix hopes eventually to be able to stream movies over the Internet directly to high-definition TV sets, the online video rental company said Wednesday as it announced its first partnership to do so with South Korean manufacturer LG Electronics. "We want to be integrated on every Internet-connected device, game system, high-definition DVD player and dedicated Internet set-top box," Netflix CEO Reed Hastings told the New York Times. "Eventually, as TVs have wireless connectivity built into them, we'll integrate right into the television." (See related item in television section.)

Jay Leno, appearing on his first live Tonight show since the writers' strike began two months ago, surprised viewers by delivering a funny monologue that, he admitted during the course of it, he had written himself. Although Leno said, "We are following the guild thing. ... We can write for ourselves," the WGA's strike rules specifically prohibits "all writing by any Guild member that would be performed on-air by that member (including monologues, characters, and featured appearances) if any portion of that written material is customarily written by striking writers." Each of the late-night hosts asserted that they support the striking writers. At one point, David Letterman, whose Worldwide Pants company negotiated a separate agreement with the WGA, said, "You're watching the only show on the air that has jokes written by union writers." He then added, "I hear you at home thinking to yourself, 'This crap is written?'" On his show, however, Jimmy Kimmel, while also voicing support for the writers, criticized their tactics in targeting Leno and Conan O'Brien: "I don't want to depart too much from the party line, but I think it's ridiculous. Jay Leno, he paid his staff while they were out. Conan did the same thing. I don't know. I just think at a certain point you back off a little bit." Kimmel also introduced a new feature called "Greatest Moments for Which Residual Payments Are Made to Our Unemployed Writers," intended to present segments of previous projects so that the writers who created them can receive residuals. Craig Ferguson's entire show featured such material. All of which raised the question, did the late-night writers receive residuals during the previous two months while the shows were being rerun -- and won't now? (Most late-night episodes are never rerun and therefore writers on them rarely receive residuals.) NBC did not respond to an email inquiry concerning residual payments to writers and performers during the strike -- but the question could raise debate about the inherent fairness of the residual system if striking workers in the industry have continued to receive payments while other workers, who do not traditionally receive residuals, ranging from top cinematographers, lighting directors and special-effects creators to grips, production assistants, and engineers have not.

Reports spread on numerous Internet sites on Wednesday that the Writers Guild of America was close to negotiating a deal with the producers of the Golden Globes telecast that would allow it to use guild writers when it airs on Jan. 13. However, late in the day the WGA put the kibosh on those rumors when it said that it intends to picket the Beverly Hilton Hotel, where the awards will be handed out. "Dick Clark Productions is a struck company. As previously announced, the Writers Guild will be picketing the Golden Globe Awards," the WGA said. The Screen Actors Guild then indicated that it will ask its members not to cross the WGA picket lines unless they have contractual obligations to the show's producers, Dick Clark Productions. Reporting on the WGA's plans to strike the telecast, Daily Variety commented, "The move underlines WGA leaders' commitment to use bare-knuckle tactics via the strike to bring the Hollywood establishment to its knees."

Three different wireless-technology systems, each of which will enable wall-mounted, flat-panel TVs to be displayed without unsightly wires hanging from them are expected to be displayed at the Consumer Electronics Show, which opens Monday in Las Vegas, the Associated Press reported today (Thursday). The leading system, the wire service said, is called WirelessHD, being offered by a consortium of home-electronics companies, including Sony and Toshiba, the two companies whose incompatible high-definition video players are vying for dominance in the marketplace. (AP said that Intel may announce today that it will join the group.) Other electronics manufacturers showing off similar wi-fi TV technologies will be Pulse-Link and LG Electronics.

Philip B. Dusenberry, who created the Pepsi slogan "The choice of a new generation" and General Electric's "We bring good things to life" died of lung cancer Saturday in New York at age 71, the ad agency BBDO said Wednesday. Regarded as a legend in advertising, Dusenberry once wrote a book entitled "Then We Set His Hair on Fire: Insights and Accidents From a Hall-of-Fame Career in Advertising," the title referring to the production of a 1984 spot for Pepsi in which Michael Jackson's hair was accidentally set afire.