Quick Takes: ‘Finding Dory’ to set sail

Disney is plunging back into familiar waters, announcing a November 2015 sequel to “Finding Nemo” titled “Finding Dory.”

Enthusiasts of the 2003 finned favorite will recall Dory as the friendly, slightly amnesiac tang voiced by Ellen DeGeneres, who’ll return to voice the title character.

News of a sequel had been known for some time, but the announcement Tuesday clarifies the focus, title and release date (exact day, Nov. 25). Andrew Stanton, who directed the 2003 hit-cum-animated-Oscar winner, is returning behind the camera.

PHOTOS: Celebrity portraits by The Times

The sequel will bring back other favorites, including clown fish Marlin and son Nemo, and will be set about a year after the end of the first movie, according to Disney.

—Steven Zeitchik

Journalists’ saga heads to film

The Boston Globe’s yearlong investigation into the Catholic Church’s coverup of its pedophile priests in Massachusetts will be turned into a feature film.

DreamWorks Studios and Participant Media announced Tuesday that they have acquired the life rights to the Boston Globe’s “Spotlight Team” of reporters and editors who spent a year interviewing victims and reviewing thousands of pages of documents, discovering years of coverup by Catholic Church leadership.

Their reporting led to the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law and to other unveilings of church coverups around the world. It also earned the team a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2003.

Tom McCarthy (“Win Win”) has signed on to direct and co-write the script with Josh Singer.

—Nicole Sperling

Australia hits the big ‘Leagues’

Australia is paying its biggest Hollywood inducement ever to bring “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” Down Under.

The Walt Disney Studios will film a new version of the science-fiction classic in Australia, which will pay the studio $22.6 million to film there, the government said Tuesday.

David Fincher of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” and “The Social Network” will direct, said Disney Asia-Pacific spokeswoman Alannah Hall-Smith.

“No casting decisions have been made,” she said, so the filming schedule and locations haven’t been set.

Disney’s 1954 adaptation of the Jules Verne novel starred Kirk Douglas, James Mason and Peter Lorre. And a giant squid.

—Associated Press

Another season of ‘Game’ play

Though its future wasn’t in much doubt, fans of HBO’s lavish fantasy series “Game of Thrones” can rest a little easier knowing that it will get another season.

On Tuesday, two days after the show’s third-season premiere, HBO announced that “Game of Thrones” would be getting a fourth season.

The decision came after the announcement that the show had achieved an audience high of 6.7 million viewers across all three plays of the show Sunday. That topped the previous season premiere by 7%.

For those familiar with the novels by George R.R. Martin that serve as the basis for the series, the third season was planned to cover only the first half of the third book, “A Storm of Swords.” Now fans will be able to see at least the rest of the events of that book dramatized on TV.

After the fourth season, however, things will get trickier. When the books were published, Martin made the decision to divide the fourth and fifth books, “A Feast for Crows” and “A Dance With Dragons,” by characters, with half of the story lines in one book and the other half in the other book (though there is some blending of stories in the fifth volume).

And then, of course, there’s the question of what happens after that. Martin is still at work on the series’ sixth book and intends to end it with a seventh.

—Patrick Kevin Day

ABC News snaps up CBS names

CBS News has lost two on-air personalities to rival ABC News.

Rebecca Jarvis, who reported on business and economic affairs and also co-anchored “CBS This Saturday,” will join ABC later this month as its chief business and economics correspondent.

And correspondent Byron Pitts, a 15-year veteran who covered political conventions and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for CBS, will become chief national correspondent for ABC and a fill-in anchor for various broadcasts.

—Associated Press

Songwriting fete for John, Taupin

Elton John and his longtime songwriting partner, Bernie Taupin, will be honored at this year’s Songwriters Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

John and Taupin, who teamed on most of the singer’s best-known hits, including “Rocket Man,” “Crocodile Rock,” “Daniel” and “Candle in the Wind,” will receive the Johnny Mercer Award during the June 13 ceremony in New York.

The award goes to previous inductees — John and Taupin were inducted in 1992 — whose body of work upholds the standards set by Mercer, a co-founder of Capitol Records.

—Associated Press