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It's a Britney Spears musical, b*tch!

Before you grab your Catholic schoolgirl uniform or red patent leather jumpsuits, this won't be a musical based on the singer's life. Similar to Broadway classic Mamma Mia!, the musical comedy will incorporate 23 songs from the 37-year-old's iconic musical catalog to fit the story. Titled Once Upon a One More Time, the musical follows several fairy-tale princesses, including Snow White, Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Sleeping Beauty, who are working through a collection of the Grimms' fairy tales with their fortnightly book club.

A rogue fairy godmother hears their wish for new reading material and brings them the feminist classic The Feminine Mystique, which spurs a "royal revelation." I just had a vision of Snow White cracking a whip at the Seven Dwarves while singing "Work B*tch," and I'm not sure how I feel about it.

The show will kick off performances in Chicago at the James M.

Lee is perhaps best known for starring in Yeon Sang-ho’s Train To Busan.

South Korean sales company Finecut has picked up Warner Bros Korea’s arm-wrestling comedy Champion, starring Don Lee (a.k.a. Ma Dong-seok), whose credits include Train To Busan.

Previously noted as a solid supporting actor in films such as Ryoo Seung-wan’s Veteran and Yoon Jong-bin’s Nameless Gangster: Rules Of The Time, Lee is perhaps best known as the brawny husband with a pregnant wife who survives a zombie outbreak in Yeon Sang-ho’s Train To Busan. The film clocked up $93.1m at box offices worldwide,...

MUNICH -- Tom Tykwer's adaptation of the international bestseller, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, has become Germany's biggest local success since the comedy 7 Zwerge -- Maenner allein im Wald (7 Dwarfs - Men Alone in the Forest) two years ago. In its third weekend of release, Perfume climbed above the three million-ticket hurdle, selling 600 thousand of a weekend national total of 1.9 million tickets and more than a million in a single week. Even the Oscar-nominated The Downfall, about Hitler's final days, had only sold 2.2 million tickets after three weeks. The film, which stars Dustin Hoffman and newcomer Ben Whishaw, outpaced the Adam Sandler starrer Click and Oliver Stone's World Trade Center, both of which opened well under the 300 thousand-ticket mark this past weekend.

COLOGNE, Germany -- Germany's largest regional film subsidy board, the Filmstifftung NRW, announced Wednesday that it has extended the contract of managing director Michael Schmid-Ospach for another five years. Schmid-Ospach took over as managing director in 2001, replacing Dieter Kosslick who moved to Berlin to become director of the Berlin International Film Festival. Under Schmid-Ospach's direction, the Filmstifftung has backed a wide range of German productions, from such local boxoffice hits as Manitou's Shoe and 7 Dwarves to international crossover successes including Good Bye, Lenin! and Mostly Martha.

CANNES -- Independent German production and distribution giant Constantin Film said Thursday that it booked a profit of €1.8 million ($2.3 million) on revenue of €57.1 million ($73.2 million) in the first quarter, a slight drop from its results for the same period a year ago. The Munich-based group, which also announced it has sold U.S. and foreign rights to its upcoming werewolf feature Skinwalkers to Lions Gate, said it expects to book pretax profit of at least €9 million ($11.5 million) and revenue of €190 million ($243.5 million) for the full year. That would be well below the €246.9 million in sales and €14.8 million in pretax profit that Constantin made last year. However, the year ago strength came on the back of the phenomenal boxoffice performance of in-house productions Dreamship Surprise and Downfall, which were the first- and fourth-most successful films, respectively, last year in Germany. Not that Constantin's 2005 lineup is without promise. On July 17, the company will bow Tim Story's comic book adaptation Fantastic Four, which Constantin co-produced with 20th Century Fox and Marvel Enterprises. And July 21 sees the release of the fantasy film spoof Siegfried, featuring German comedy star Tom Gerhardt and director Sven Unterwaldt Jr., whose debut 7 Dwarfs was another breakout blockbuster, earning €38 million at the German boxoffice.

CANNES -- Independent German production and distribution giant Constantin Film said Thursday that it booked a profit of €1.8 million ($2.3 million) on revenue of €57.1 million ($73.2 million) in the first quarter, a slight drop from its results for the same period a year ago. The Munich-based group, which also announced it has sold U.S. and foreign rights to its upcoming werewolf feature Skinwalkers to Lions Gate, said it expects to book pretax profit of at least €9 million ($11.5 million) and revenue of €190 million ($243.5 million) for the full year. That would be well below the €246.9 million in sales and €14.8 million in pretax profit that Constantin made last year. However, the year ago strength came on the back of the phenomenal boxoffice performance of in-house productions Dreamship Surprise and Downfall, which were the first- and fourth-most successful films, respectively, last year in Germany. Not that Constantin's 2005 lineup is without promise. On July 17, the company will bow Tim Story's comic book adaptation Fantastic Four, which Constantin co-produced with 20th Century Fox and Marvel Enterprises. And July 21 sees the release of the fantasy film spoof Siegfried, featuring German comedy star Tom Gerhardt and director Sven Unterwaldt Jr., whose debut 7 Dwarfs was another breakout blockbuster, earning €38 million at the German boxoffice.

The foreign market is not so foreign anymore.When Warner Bros. Pictures chalked up an industry record of $2.2 billion last year in boxoffice revenue from the overseas market, $167 million of that total came from the release of foreign local-language films. Among a slew of local-language films released in 2004, Warners retrieved $31 million in boxoffice revenue from France alone for the French-language A Very Long Engagement, $20 million in Japan for the Chinese-language House of Flying Daggers, and $17 million in Turkey for the native-language G.O.R.A. Other examples of foreign-language activity by the majors saw Universal, via international distributor UIP, extract about $51 million from Germany, Austria and Switzerland for the German-language Seven Dwarfs. Buena Vista International is tabulating $8.2 million to date for Germany's Barfus and $10.5 million for Wild Bunch 2, and Sony is picking up $7 million in Brazil for the native-language Cazuza.

COLOGNE, Germany -- Downfall, Oliver Hirschbiegel's controversial depiction of Adolf Hitler's final days, has won the Bavarian Film Prize's audience award, one of Germany's top film honors, prize organizer Bayerische Fernsehen said Wednesday. Downfall beat out such lighter comedy fare as sci-fi spoof (T)Raumschiff Surprise -- Periode 1, the Snow White parody 7 Dwarfs, lowbrow comedy The Wanker and children's animation film Laura's Star. The drama was chosen by viewers of Bayerische film magazine Kino Kino, listeners of radio station Bayern 3 and readers of regional newspaper the Abendzeitung. Hirschbiegel will receive the award Jan. 14 at a gala ceremony in Munich.

SYDNEY -- The surprise hit this weekend, Seven Dwarves (Sieben Zwerge -- Manner allein im Wald), a German family comedy that United International Pictures acquired for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, went off to work in those territories with a terrific opening weekend total of $12.5 million, according to estimates. In Germany, Seven Dwarves opened No. 1 with a 53% market share and a spectacular weekend gross of around $11.3 million at 752 dates. UIP says this is the third-biggest opening weekend of the year behind another local hit, (T)Raumschiff Surprise -- Periode 1, with $15.4 million, and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban at $14.8 million. In Austria, the spoof of the Grimm Brothers' classic fairy tale was No. 1 with a 50% market share and a weekend estimate of $900,000 at 81 dates. Information from Germany-Switzerland is limited but the guesstimate is an "excellent" $250,000 at 39 dates, according to UIP.