Book Burning

The time: The future. The place: Earth. The situation: Not so good.

See, much of civilization as we know it is gone. And there’s this dangerous cult--led by Adam Ant--that bases itself on one of the few remaining books in the world: L. Ron Hubbard’s “Dianetics.”

But wait--that was the old cut of “World Gone Wild”--a sci-fi pic that Apollo Pics will release in January, directed by Lee H. Katzin, starring Bruce Dern, Michael Pare and Catherine Mary Stewart. In the new version, references to Hubbard, his book and his Church of Scientology are gone.

The reason: Seems lawyers for Scientology paid a visit to the Apollo headquarters. After screening the film sequences that pertained to their interests (“We have no idea how they heard about those scenes,” said an Apollo rep), they asked for changes.

“The whole thing was resolved in the course of a single meeting,” said Apollo general counsel David A. Smitas. “We aren’t interested in antagonizing folks. They have their beliefs--and, obviously, they don’t want them made fun of.”

Still intact: References to “Iacocca,” a department store catalogue (“I think it’s Montgomery Ward’s,” said Smitas) and a book on etiquette by Emily Post.