MOVIES - Feb. 7, 1989

A jury is expected to decide within the next couple weeks whether MGM owes actor Timothy Hutton $1.5 million in salary and more than $10 million in damages stemming from the studio’s cancellation of a film he was to star in six years ago. In 1983, MGM dropped the movie about a modern-day cattle drive--called “Roadshow”--after determining that its 71-year-old director, Richard Brooks, was “physically incapable” of completing it. Hutton argues in his suit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, that MGM owes him his salary, as well as compensation for projects he turned down while waiting for the start-up of “Roadshow,” which was repeatedly delayed before being canceled.