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US actor Chris Tucker will team up again with Hong Kong action star Jackie Chan for the third installment of the Rush Hour franchise, industry press reported.

Filming for Rush Hour 3 will start next year in France and the US for a mid-2007 release, according to the trade publication Daily Variety.

The Rush Hour action-comedy franchise stars Tucker as a mouthy Los Angeles detective who teams up with Chan's acrobatic Hong Kong cop to crack cases.

The first film was released in 1998 and the 2001 sequel made US$329 million worldwide.

A string of box office duds dragged Walt Disney's film business down to a US$313 million loss in the fourth quarter. The entertainment group chiefly blamed its Miramax division as it cleared out the production backlog put together by the Weinstein brothers, who have left to set up a new company. Poorly performing titles included The Brothers Grimm and The Great Raid. Losses were higher than the US$250 million to US$300 million expected in September.

Disney hopes for a change in fortunes with the recent release of its first home-generated computer animation feature Chicken Little and the first instalment of the Chronicles of Narnia, due for release next month. Chicken Little has so far taken US$83 million at the box office despite a lukewarm reception by critics.

The creators of the irreverent US cartoon South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, have sealed a deal to develop movies for Hollywood's Paramount Pictures, the studio said.

Under the three-year pact, Parker and Stone, who also masterminded last year's controversial puppet-driven political parody Team America: World Police, will write, direct and produce films for the studio.

The creative duo will serve as chief executives of a newly formed Paramount-based production company called Trunity.

"Trey and Matt are some of the most original voices in entertainment," the studio's president, Gail Berman, said in a statement.

"They are funny and brilliant, and we are extremely happy they want to continue to make movies with us at Paramount," she added.

Movielink, a joint venture of five Hollywood studios to offer movies over the Internet, has signed a deal with Twentieth Century Fox, allowing it to offer movies from all major studios for the first time.

The deal, announced earlier this week, comes at a time when studios and TV networks are looking at alternative ways to distribute programs, including video on demand and portable devices, such as Apple's iPod.

While Fox has offered some of its content online at sites such as CinemaNow.com, it waited until more homes had high speed Internet access and could view downloaded movies on large screen TVs before signing a deal with Movielink.

``I think you're going to see us be a lot more aggressive in the next few months,'' said Peter Levinsohn, president of Worldwide Pay Tele-vision and Digital Media at Fox, a subsidiary of New York-based News Corp. ``This marketplace is really going to start to grow.''

Academy Award-winning actor Russell Crowe pleaded guilty last Friday to reduced misdemeanor charges for hitting a hotel clerk with a telephone in June and was fined US$160 and told to stay out of trouble. Crowe, the star of such movies as A Beautiful Mind and Gladiator, was given a conditional discharge by Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Kathryn Freed and told he must avoid arrest for a year.

Rocker actress Courtney Love, who was confined to a lock-down substance abuse center earlier this year after violating her probation, can leave the facility for an outpatient program, a Los Angeles judge ruled. "You're doing really well. I'm really pleased with the reports," Superior Court Judge Rand Rubin told the 41-year-old singer during a hearing. "I certainly hope you keep up the good progress. You're definitely going in the right direction."
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