Starr-Crossed

The long-shelved “Brenda Starr,” based on the plucky reporter/comic book character, briefly came off the shelf Friday--for a “world premiere” showing in Jacksonville, Fla.

The screening marked the Florida Film Festival’s salute to filmmaker Robert Ellis Miller (“The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter,” “Reuben, Reuben”), who requested that “Brenda Starr” be screened.

“I wanted to finally get her out of jail,” Miller tells us. “It’s always misunderstood when a picture doesn’t come out. ‘Brenda’ deserves her day.”

Starring Brooke Shields as Starr and a pre-James Bond Timothy Dalton as her mysterious rescuer, Basil St. John, the $16-million “Brenda Starr” was filmed in late 1986, with an early 1988 release planned. Then it got ensnared in legal entanglements involving video rights. Things were further complicated when New World, which had distribution rights, was sold and phased out its domestic division.

Now, reports Miller, the British consortium that financed the film is acquiring it from New World “and there are currently negotiations for a major release--at last.”