• The writer of the upcoming Scooby Doo (pictured) movie has been discussing his big screen adaptation of the famed cartoon. Says James Gunn, "the problem with most cartoons-to-movies is that they attempt to be exact replicas of the cartoons - people speaking like cartoons, etc. I never wanted to simply watch a couple hundred episodes of Scooby-Doo and then vomit them out in a different order, longer and with real people. Instead, I wanted to say: let's take it as fact that there's this dog that can talk, and this group of mystery-solving teenagers who've come up against numerous men in masks posing as supernatural entities, and that all the other traditions of Scooby-Doo really happened as well. If that were all real, what would these people be like? What would be their strengths and weaknesses? What problems would they have between them? What are they like between mysteries? What don't we see on the show? In essence, if they are real, who are they?" The film will star Sarah Michelle Gellar and Christina Ricci and is expected to be released at the end of 2001.

• Al Pacino may take the lead role in People I Know, to be directed by Dan Algrant. Pacino would play a press agent whose practice is waning, and who gets involved in a mystery involving New York politics and celebrity.

• A Massachusetts man is being sued by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), writes the Hollywood Reporter, for selling unauthorised copies of films over the internet. The case marks the first ever lawsuit by the MPAA against web bootleggers, and is being heralded as a big step in the battle against piracy.

• A teaser poster for the movie of JK Rowling's massively popular Harry Potter stories has made it onto the web. The poster, which can be seen in all its glory at Dark Horizons, features an owl carrying a letter addressed to the bespectacled teen sleuth.