Now, It May Even Play in Peoria

It’s a risky strategy that doesn’t always pay off, but this week a number of films that debuted in limited release in the final weeks--or even days--of 1998 will be expanding to reach a wider audience across North America. Among these films are the John Travolta legal drama “A Civil Action,” the Irish comedy “Waking Ned Devine,” the World War II drama “The Thin Red Line” and the Elizabethan romantic tale “Shakespeare in Love.” In large part, Hollywood studios do this because they want to make it under the wire to qualify for Academy Awards nominations. “But it’s also a good way to test the waters and look at theater averages and see how films are playing in limited release,” said Paul Dergarabedian, president of the box office tracking firm Exhibitor Relations Co. Then there’s the prestige factor. “If you have a film come out around Christmas just in New York and Los Angeles, certainly to people in the film industry it smells like an Oscar contender. With a good film that a studio is confident in, they know that good word-of-mouth will trickle out to the press and to the rest of the country before they release it wide,” Dergarabedian said. But the best-laid plans don’t always work out. Take Sony Pictures Entertainment. On Christmas Day 1996, it released “The People vs. Larry Flynt” in 16 theaters, taking in $523,295 for a healthy per-screen average of $32,706. The film captured Oscar nominations for best director and best actor, but after it went wide in 1,233 theaters on Jan. 10, the film sank at the box office, taking in only $20.1 million domestically. On the other hand, Sony released the Brad Pitt western “Legends of the Fall” on Christmas Day 1994 in only six theaters, but the film went wide a few weeks later on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend and soared to No. 1, grossing $14 million.

Once a Sports Dude, Always a Sports Dude

He’s back! Or, as onetime partner Chris Berman would put it, he’s backbackbackbackbackback. In either case Keith Olbermann, the cynical, wise-cracking former ESPN anchor, returns to TV sports news Tuesday night on Fox Sport Net. In November the cable network hired Olbermann away from MSNBC, where he spent a year in exile from sports after 5 1/2 sometimes tumultuous years at ESPN. “It was probably the most educational year of my life since I learned to walk,” he says. “I figured out what I liked about sports and what was part of me that was sports. And a lot about what would satisfy me professionally.” For Fox, the hiring is just the most recent--and probably most expensive--in a long series of moves designed to lift it past ESPN as the leader in sports television. Since going on the air 26 months ago, “Fox Sports News” has been steadily chipping away at “SportsCenter,” ESPN’s nightly sports-news show. Over the last year, “Fox Sports News,” which is based in Los Angeles, has seen its audience grow 62% for its main two-hour block, which airs from 10 p.m. to midnight. And those numbers figure to get another boost with the addition of Olbermann and 10-year ESPN veteran Chris Myers, who jumped to Fox in December. For Olbermann, the move to Fox marks a homecoming of sorts since he served as the sports anchor at both KCBS-TV and KTLA-TV in Los Angeles before joining ESPN. For those of you scoring at home, or even if you’re watching alone, Olbermann will initially be paired with co-anchor Kevin Frazier, although both the network and Olbermann said that could change. “We’ll have to see how the personalities mesh,” said a network spokesman. “We’re looking for good chemistry.” Added Olbermann: “We’re going to look at a bunch of different people and hope that we catch that sort of lightning in a bottle. And the experiments, I imagine, will be rather inconsistent.”

Next Up, Headbangers: Mr. Hetfield’s Opus

Moshing in the orchestra pit? Listen Wednesday for the sounds of gasps from Bay Area classical music fans as heavy metal kingpins Metallica join noted film composer and arranger Michael Kamen (“Mr. Holland’s Opus,” “Die Hard”) in San Francisco to announce an upcoming performance by the rockers and the San Francisco Symphony. Sources close to the band are mum on the nature of the offbeat teaming, but plans reportedly include releasing the performance as a recording as well. The concept fits with Kamen’s history--he’s worked with Pink Floyd, Eric Clapton and Aerosmith--but is a big departure for the high-decibel band. “They like to push the audience,” a spokesman for the band said. “They like to mess with their fans.”

--Compiled by Times staff writers and contributors