Running rings around the original, DreamWorks' The Ring Two opened with an estimated $36 million over the weekend -- more than twice the $15 million that the original Ring took in in its debut in October 2002. (It went on to gross $129 million.) The success of the film, which stars Naomi Watts, extends the dominance of the horror genre at the box office this year. It was also the best opening for a horror movie since The Grudge opened with $39.1 million last October. Meanwhile, 20th Century Fox's animated family film Robots performed strongly in its second week with ticket sales of about $21.8 million, down a modest 39 percent from its opening. Its 10-day total stands at $66.9 million. Another family film, Vin Diesel's The Pacifier, also continued to show strength, registering $12.5 million in its third weekend, off 31 percent from last week. Opening in fourth place was Disney's female "tween"-oriented Ice Princess with $7 million. Opening only at a single theater in New York, Woody Allen's Melinda and Melinda grossed an outstanding $74,048. Meanwhile, Martin Scorsese's The Aviator, although not placing among the top ten, did become the first of the Oscar-nominated best picture nominees to cross the $100-million mark. The winner, Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby, saw its gross climb to $90 million after landing in 8th place with $4.1 million.

The top ten films for the weekend, according to studio estimates compiled by Exhibitor Relations: 1. The Ring Two $36 million; 2. Robots, $21.8 million; 3. The Pacifier, $12.5 million; 4. Ice Princess, $7 million; 5. Hitch, $6.6 million; 6. Be Cool, $5.8 million; 7. Hostage, $5.79 million; 8. Million Dollar Baby, $4.1 million; 9. Diary of a Mad Black Woman, $3.5 million; 10. Constantine, $2.3 million.

A sequel to the animated hit Robots now appears to be a certainty. Not only are the basic computer models for the lead characters ready to be uploaded again, but producer William Joyce has indicated in an interview with syndicated columnist Cindy Pearlman that a script for a sequel will likely improve on the much criticized original. "We had to spend a lot of time introducing audiences to the robot world in the first film," Joyce said. "Now that they know the world, we can just hit the ground running."

IMAX documentaries that touch on the issue of evolution have been removed by numerous science museums and other venues in Southern states following local protests, the New York Times reported on Saturday. The films include, Cosmic Voyage, Galapagos, and Volcanoes of the Deep Sea. In an interview with the newspaper, Carol Murray, marketing director of the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, said that the museum had pulled Volcanoes after receiving complaints from members of the audience. She told the Times, "If it is not going to draw a crowd and it is going to create controversy, from a marketing point of view, I cannot make a recommendation." Such decisions to bar screenings of the film are apt to affect the content of IMAX documentaries in the future, the Times indicated. It quoted Joe DeAmicis, vice president of the California Science Center in Los Angeles as saying, "It is going to be hard for our filmmakers to continue to make unfettered documentaries when they know that 10 per cent of the market will reject them."

Adding further laurels to an already abundant trove, Taylor Hackford's Ray Charles biopic Ray received four NAACP Image Awards over the weekend, including an outstanding-actor trophy for star Jamie Foxx. Accepting the award, Foxx, who had previously received best-actor awards at the Golden Globes and the Oscars, said, "This has been an absolutely wonderful ride." His costar, Kerry Washington, won the best-actress award. Meanwhile, in a surprise upset, Bill Condon has won the top prize at the Directors Guild of Great Britain awards. Condon, the director of Kinsey, who was not nominated for an Oscar, beat out the man who won it, Clint Eastwood (Million Dollar Baby). He also beat Martin Scorsese (The Aviator), who had been favored to win.

Veteran actor Christopher Lee is still stewing over the deletion of his scenes from the third Lord of the Rings film. In an interview with Total Film magazine, the 82-year-old Lee, who played the evil wizard Saruman in the first two films, said: "My point was not that, as an actor, I'd had my scenes taken out. It was the story. You can't have a man looking frantic on a balcony when everything is being destroyed and then never see him again. The audience would demand, as they did, to know what happened to him. I just didn't understand it. I was given plenty of reasons why I was cut out, none of which made sense."

After experiencing a steady ratings decline in recent years, the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship Tournament has staged an impressive comeback, drawing its highest ratings in more than a decade. CBS said that the first three days of the tournament averaged a 5.6 rating and a 12 share, up 6 percent from last year and tying the 1993 average. Saturday night's final games registered a 7.8/13. "This confirms the theory that if you get great games involving great teams, you get outstanding ratings," CBS Sports President Sean McManus told USA Today. "Plus, I sense a greater overall interest in college basketball."

Desperate Housewives finally met its match on Sunday night -- in fact, an exact match. The first hour of the CBS movie Spring Break Shark Attack at 9:00 p.m. tied a repeat of ABC's Housewives in the ratings with an 8.7 rating and a thirteen share. However, the movie fell behind in the 10:00 hour, which was led by ABC's Boston Legal, followed by NBC's Crossing Jordan.

The environmental activist group Friends of the Earth has posted on its website two video news releases that were produced by the Department of the Interior and calculated to look like legitimate TV news features, with the narrators signing off, "In Tampa, Pam Forrester reporting" in one and "This is Porter Versfelt reporting," in the other. "The American people deserve to know when their tax dollars are being used to create government propaganda that they are unknowingly watching on TV," FOE policy analyst Korey Hartwich said in a statement posted on the website. The posting comes on the heels of an opinion by the Government Accountability Office that such video news releases violate laws prohibiting the government from engaging in covert propaganda, an opinion subsequently countermanded by the Justice Department. The New York Times alleged last week that government agencies have produced hundreds of such fake news reports during the past four years. But in an Op-Ed piece appearing in today's (Monday) Miami Herald, Edward Wasserman, professor of journalism ethics at Virginia's Washington and Lee University, asks: "Where is the outrage? We have Congressional hearings over doped-up outfielders and not this? We have regulators bleeding from the eyeballs over a naked breast but not over systematic deceit suckering millions of TV viewers? Why don't the same newspapers that pulp acres of woodland to carry Monday's weekend sports roundup and Thursday's Model Homes Bazaar devote some serious space to exposing this assault on the late, great media?"

Billionaire Robert F.X. Sillerman has bought 19 Entertainment Ltd., the British company best known for producing American Idol, for $211 million in cash and stock. The company, founded by Simon Fuller, also has a production and management contract with soccer star David Beckham, and his wife Victoria Beckham, the former Spice Girl. Sillerman said Saturday that he plans to market the Beckhams in the U.S.

The BBC announced today (Monday) that it will cut 2,050 more jobs -- in addition to the 1,750 previously announced. They would bring the total workforce reduction to nearly 20 percent. The reductions are expected to bring about an annual savings of $675 million. In a statement posted on the BBC website, BBC Director General Mark Thompson said that the funds would be shifted to programs and content, "both to improve the services we deliver to audiences right now and to build strong BBC services in the future." Cuts in the BBC's news operations will amount to 12 percent, prompting Jeremy Dear, general secretary of the National Union of Journalists to ask, "How does the BBC believe it can maintain high standards and quality in the face of such massive self-inflicted cuts? You can't sack thousands and then ask hard-working staff to take on huge amounts of extra work and still expect to maintain high standards."

The BBC has risked a new confrontation with the Tony Blair government by airing a new program alleging that Richard Dearlove, head of MI6, Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, had briefed the prime minister on July 23, 2002 that George W. Bush was determined to invade Iraq and was prepared to fit the intelligence to support that decision. Reporting on the program, Britain's Guardian newspaper commented, "Despite the humiliation of losing its director general, Greg Dyke, over [similar allegations], the film contained [a] powerful condemnation of the government." The program claimed that Dearlove had told Blair that the source of U.S. claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction "remains unproven." It also included an interview with the former Mexican ambassador to the U.N., Adolfo Zinser, who said that he had asked MI6 officers whether they had proof of such weapons. "It was very very clear they didn't have proof," Zinser said. "They had circumstantial evidence of a funny behavior, of a suspicious behavior."

From the time he landed in India on Saturday, Rupert Murdoch was being treated as a veritable head of state. Following meetings in Bombay (Mumbai) over the weekend, the News Corp chairman is due to meet with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday, along with Sonia Gandhi, chairman of the ruling United Progressive Alliance coalition, and Information and Broadcasting Minister S. Jaipal Reddy. In only three years, Murdoch's Star TV has emerged as the dominant broadcaster in India.