Entertainment Roundup - April 23

Apr 23, 2007, 18:29 GMT

Clooney EPA/OMEGA EPA

Los Angeles - Sony is to turn the best-selling memoir The Kabul Beauty School into a movie, Variety reported Monday.

The book, by Deborah Rodriguez and Kristin Ohlson recounts what happens when the recently divorced Rodriguez decides its time for a change and leaves Michigan for Afghanistan in 2002, shortly after the Taliban had been toppled.

Once in Kabul she finds women are prepared to come out from under the veils they had been forced to wear. Helped with donations from American beauty companies, she opens a beauty school and tries to integrate into traditional Afghan society.

The Producers ends Broadway run

New York - Hit play The Producers has ended its Broadway run after more than 2,500 performances at the St James Theatre. The production, about two crooked producers who set out to make a flop Broadway show about Adolf Hitler, has played across the world and won twelve Tony awards.

'We have had six years of frolic and joy, and you have been such a good audience to give us such a rich, final performance,' said creator Mel Brooks after the final show.

The St James theatre is now expected to play host to Brooks' next show, a musical version of his 1974 film Young Frankenstein.

Clooney eyes Bolivian crisis movie

Los Angeles - Hollywood superstar George Clooney is planning a movie about the 2002 Bolivian general election when an American political consultant stepped in to help the winning candidate, according to The Hollywood Reporter on Monday.

The report said that Warner Bros Pictures bought the feature remake rights to Rachel Boynton's political documentary Our Brand is Crisis for Clooney's Smoke House to produce and British screenwriter Peter Straughan to adapt.

The report added that Clooney is considering directing and starring in the movie.

The movie will remake Boynton's work about the dangers of 'exporting' American democracy as a dark comedy.

Crisis is a behind-the-scenes look at the Bolivian presidential election of 2002, when candidate Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada hired the Washington-based political consulting firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner to help him win.

Lopez paid 2 milllion dollars for birthday show

Los Angeles - A Russian billionaire paid more than 2 million dollars for Jennifer Lopez to perform at a joint birthday party for himself and his wife Saturday night, People magazine reported Monday.

Lopez's 40-minute set - which included such hits as 'Jenny From the Block' - cost 35-year-old Andrei Melnichenko 1.2 million dollars.

He paid another 800,000 dollars to fly the singer, her husband Marc Anthony and their entourage from the US to his 27-acre estate in Surrey, England, and give them a room at the Mandarin Oriental in London.

'I can confirm that a very high-profile American singer performed at a private party in Surrey,' Melnichenko's spokesman, Brian MacLaurin, told the magazine.

Sixty guests, including Russian and Serbian tycoons, attended the bash for Melnichenko and his 30-year-old wife, former model Aleksandra Nikolic Melnichenko.

Melnichenko, who is worth 5 billion dollars, according to his spokesman, made his fortune founding MDM Bank. He's no stranger to lavish spectacle: He paid Christina Aguilera 4 million dollars to sing at his 2005 wedding in the south of France.

Nicholson celebrates 70th birthday in style

Los Angeles - Jack Nicholson has turned 70 and has celebrated the landmark birthday in style. A party for the iconic movie star at his Los Angeles home featured 70 scantily clad models and more than 600 guests including Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Wahlberg.

Budchen sells LA house for 4 million dollars

Los Angeles - Brazilian super-model Gisele Bündchen has sold her Hollywood Hills home for 4 million dollars and has moved to New York, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday.

The one-story, gated Spanish hacienda in the Sunset Strip area that she sold has a media room, a gym, city views and a pool. The home has four bedrooms.

Her personal fortune, valued at 150 million dollars, makes her one of the world's richest supermodels. But according to the paper she has had little use for the house since her split in 2005 from actor Leonardo DiCaprio.