Actor Heath Ledger was found dead in his downtown Manhattan apartment by the police. Some reports say he died from an overdose. UPDATE 5:00PM :According to the NYPD spokesman, Ledger, who was living in an apartment at Broome street, "had an appointment for a massage...The housekeeper who went to let Ledger know the masseuse was there, and found him dead at 3:26 p.m" with "pills strewn all around him." The housekeeper and masseuse tried......

Former Ramones manager and most recently a real estate agent "to the stars," Linda Stein, was found murdered yesterday. The character who shows Charlie Sheen apartments in the movie Wall Street was reportedly based on her, and Michael Gross published a profile on her in NY Mag in the early '90s. Mrs. Stein was also the ex-wife of music industry mogul Seymour Stein. The NY Sun reports her body, which had "blunt impact injuries," was......

Earlier this year, I Am Legend, the latest Will Smith extravaganza took over the Brooklyn Bridge. Warner Bros. spent around $5,000,000 for a 6 night shoot in New York, after getting approval from 14 government agencies, with hundreds of extras, including 160 members of the National Guard in full combat gear. The plot: "Robert Neville (Will Smith) is a brilliant scientist, but even he could not contain the terrible virus that was unstoppable, incurable, and......

Rejoice all you fans of Gilmore Girls / Veronica Mars slash fiction! Your dreams of saphic teen-friendly erotica are one step closer to fruition with the merging of the WB and UPN networks. CNN reports: Warner Brothers and CBS Corp. announced plans Tuesday for the creation of a new broadcast television network, called CW, that would replace the WB and UPN networks in the fall of this year. The new broadcast network will draw......

Ah, the ongoing fight between stores that sell adult materials and the neighborhoods that don't want them anymore. A number of stores that sell "adult materials" have successfully appealed a lower court ruling which held up a city law that said any business that sells any bit of porno is an adult business. Previously, the city had allowed stores to operate under a "60/40 rule": If 60% or more of their floor space/inventory was non-porn-related,......

The long vacant One Times Square may find a tenant in Pepsi. The Post reports that Pepsi is negotiating to take over the space, which once housed a Warner Bros. Store (remember when those were all the rage - the one on Fifth Avenue and 57th, with clear elevator and Batman or Superman "carrying" the elevator up), with a strategy to make it a Pepsi brand museum. Gothamist can only chalk that up to museum......

Two people were hit by falling debris in Times Square yesterday morning. A 7-8" chunk/2-by-3' (depending on which report you read) fell from 1 Times Square, the building best known as where the NBC Jumbotron and Cup of Noodles billboard are, and where the Warner Bros. Studio Store was, a highly trafficked part of NYC if there ever was one. The victims were bruised and had cuts, but were otherwise okay. The Daily News reports......

Right on the heels of the latest class of NYPD cadets graduating, it seems that Warner Bros. is bringing back the Police Academy franchise. According to the Hollywood Reporter, series creator Paul Maslansky said, "I felt it was time to start again. I saw that 'Starsky & Hutch' and a number of other revivals were doing really well. 'Police Academy' has such a great history. I thought, 'Why not?'" Gothamist isn't totally sure of the......

Gothamist has not read every single review of the latest Harry Potter film, but we wanted to point out something in Jami Bernard's Daily News review: Charismatic Daniel Radcliffe (Harry) and the appealingly goofy Rupert Grint (Ron) are posterready for the ceilings of adolescent girls everywhere. And the seriously beautiful Emma Watson (Hermione) is developing nicely, not only in her acting abilities.We're guessing if a male movie critic wrote that last line, people would be......

Newsday reports that the Time Warner Center doesn't want to be called a mall. Hello, boutiques, atrium, food court...MALL! Big deal if there are high end stores in there - the Mall at Short Hills has John Varvatos, Armani, and Burberry. So what if the TW Center doesn't have a big department store anchoring it and does have expensive restaurants and an expensive hotel? There's an A/X, Williams Sonoma and Tumi Luggage. Do the math.......

USA Today looks at the new trailer for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and producer David Heyman says about Alfonso Cuaron's direction, "Alfonso really understands the nuances of being a teenager, and that's vital to this film. It's much more grounded in reality. This is a magical world, but not a fantasy world. This film has the magic of A Little Princess, but the reality of Y Tu Mamá. But I can assure......

With the release of Matrix Revolutions this week, Gothamist spied this photograph of Larry Wachowski taken by movie columnist Jeffrey Wells at the premiere the other week. Now, after we looked at his rumored interest in getting a sex change, we can't help but think Wachowski does seem like that matronly Algebra II teacher we had in high school (Alan Horn, Warner Bros. CEO, is on the right). The Smoking Gun's document of the......

If it's fall, it must be time for the New York Film Festival. This year, the opening night film is Mystic River, the ensemble drama directed by Clint Eastwood. The cast is ridiculously loaded with great actors: Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon, Tim Robbins, Laura Linney, Marcia Gay Harden, and Laurence Fishburne. The story is dark, eliciting comparisons to Eastwood's tour de force western, Unforgiven, but its present day setting makes it more wrenching. Sean......

According to Michael Fleming in Variety, former Warner Bros. head Lorenzo DiBonaventura is going to be pitching a live-action movie based on G.I. Joe. Yes, the Real American Hero! Gothamist wonders who will play Cobra Commander, because based on some analysis maybe it'd be great to see Alan Cumming in the role. Other thoughts: Vin Diesel as Destro, Julianne Moore or Alicia Witt as Scarlett, maybe Paul Walker as Duke, Catherine Zeta-Jones as the Baroness.......

"What I see in Christian is the ultimate embodiment of Bruce Wayne. He has exactly the balance of darkness and light that we were looking for." - Batman "prequel" director, Christopher Nolan, on casting Bale as the Dark Knight. This Batman film will start lensing next February. Gothamist is glad that Warner Bros. chose Bale, who was our pick to play Bruce Wayne. We can't wait for the first leaked photographs of Bale in costume.......

The Daily News scores a copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - obviously a hot copy - from a health food store in Brooklyn. The owner, whose name is being withheld by the Daily News (ah, yes, they hope to fall on the sword of their journalistic code for Harry Potter when Scholastic comes a-knocking) says, "I didn't receive notification that I should hold off until the 21st. I didn't......

Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston's Warner Bros.-based production company, Plan B, just bought the rights (Variety.com - registration required) to James Frey's memoir, A Million Little Pieces. Michael Fleming writes, "The memoir opens as Frey finds himself aboard a Chicago-bound plane, missing four teeth and with a hole in his face, unable to remember how he got that way. Strung out on booze and crack at age 23, and wanted by authorities in three states,......

Someday, Gothamist will go to the Cannes Film Festival. But until then, we will continue to get excited about films that premiere there and eagerly await for them to come Stateside. Like Mystic River, Clint Eastwood's adaptation of Dennis Lehane's bestselling novel. Gothamist had heard how wonderful a book Mystic River was ("Don't mind the 'New York Times Bestseller' and mass-market paperback size, Jen."), both in terms of the thrill and emotional story telling.......

The Matrix Reloaded will be shown at the Cannes Film Festival this May. It will be shown out of competition on the same day it's released around the world, May 15. Official Matrix website......

Gothamist has been looking for a way to talk about What a Girl Wants, the new Princess Diaries-ish movie starring Nickelodeon star Amanda Bynes, if only to talk about Colin Firth, making the transition to playing fathers of teenage girls. Warner Bros. is backtracking and trying to eliminate the peace sign from WAGW posters according to the Hollywood Reporter. No matter that there are tons of posters that have been up for weeks. Gothamist is......

To promote the Civil War film, Gods and Generals, Warner Bros. staged a re-enactment of a battle in Central Park on Wednesday. The publicity department didn't factor in Mother Nature's decision to dump 20 inches of snow, but that didn't deter the hearty from participating. The film is the first from Ted Turner, who apparently put his own money (a reported $100 million) into the film, as the Civil War is a personal hobby......