TELEVISIONABC Makes a Homefor ‘Home Alone 4’After...

TELEVISION

ABC Makes a Home

for ‘Home Alone 4’

After three theatrical outings, the “Home Alone” franchise is moving to television. ABC said Thursday that it has scheduled a new installment, “Home Alone 4,” to air on “The Wonderful World of Disney” on Nov. 3, 2003.

Mike Weinberg will star as 11-year-old Kevin McCallister, and French Stewart, co-star of the long-running sitcom “3rd Rock From the Sun,” will play his nemesis, Marv.

It’s the second sequel announcement for Stewart this week: Disney said earlier that he’ll star in “Inspector Gadget 2,” a movie that will go directly to video in March.

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Letterman at Crossroads in Indiana Suburb

The City Council in Lawrence, Ind., an Indianapolis suburb, unanimously approved a resolution this week renaming a portion of a street after CBS late-night star--and Indianapolis native--David Letterman.

A portion of what used to be 59th Street near the former Fort Harrison is now called David Drive. It crosses an existing street called Letterman Road--named years ago for a hospital in San Francisco--which runs through an area that once was part of the fort.

As a result, there is an intersection of David Drive and Letterman Road. Deputy Mayor Chuck Ricks said the signs are designed so that the words “Drive” and “Road” will be small, allowing “David Letterman” to stand out.

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THE ARTS

Warm Homecoming

for Ousted Director

Simone Young returned to Sydney this week for the first time since being ousted as music director of Opera Australia and got what Melbourne’s newspaper the Age described as a rousing response from the audience when she attended a performance of “Carmen” at the Sydney Opera House.

Young had been here, conducting Los Angeles Opera’s “Girl of the Golden West,” when she learned last month that the board had voted unanimously not to renew her contract beyond 2003, saying her vision for the company was too expensive.

She expressed hope that her supporters would not take out their anger on the company. “If people want to support me,” she told the Age, “then the best thing they can do is make sure my performances are full, that all our performances are full.”

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Florida Orchestra Reports Budget Surplus

Not all of the financial tunes emanating from classical music halls these days are negative. The Florida Orchestra reports that for the fiscal year that ended in June, it had a surplus of $480,000 on its cash budget of $7.8 million.

“The industry as a whole suffered shock as the result of Sept. 11,” the orchestra’s executive director, Leonard Stone, told the St. Petersburg Times. “Many orchestras took weeks to recover, some took months to recover and some did not recover, with red ink all over the place. Our sales held the line and even increased. Somehow, we didn’t experience anything from which we had to recover, and contributions moved along at a steady pace.”

The Florida Orchestra may have benefited, however, from having made course corrections the previous year, when it ran a $600,000 deficit and cut $650,000 from its budget to bring it into balance.

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New Look for London’s Royal Festival Hall

Royal Festival Hall, the 50-year-old home of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, has received a $23.3-million lottery grant for renovation.

Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell said she was delighted by news of the grant--about a quarter of the estimated cost of $83.7 million--and that it was “wonderful to see this project moving ahead.”

Plans have been on the drawing board for six years. Some work has begun to create a new cafe and improve access to the building, part of the national arts complex on the south bank of the River Thames.

The entire hall will close for 15 to 17 months beginning in 2005.

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PEOPLE

Bail Denied for Indian Actor in Fatal Accident

A Bombay magistrate on Thursday refused to release on bail Indian movie star Salman Khan, who is facing charges of culpable homicide for allegedly driving his car onto a Bombay sidewalk and killing one person sleeping there.

Three other people were hospitalized with major injuries in the Sept. 27 accident. If convicted, Khan can be jailed for up to 10 years.

The muscular actor, who has played tough-guy roles and romantic leads in more than 20 blockbuster movies, was arrested several hours after the accident and initially charged with rash and negligent driving, which carries a maximum sentence of two years in prison. He was released on bail, only to be arrested again this week on the more serious charges following criticism that the police were being too lenient.

Khan’s attorneys have said he was not driving the car at the time of the accident.

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QUICK TAKES

Johnny Mathis, who already has recorded five Christmas albums--most recently in 1986--will release another on Oct. 22, “The Christmas Album,” featuring new renditions of “Joy to the World,” “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas” and “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm,” among others.... Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International, will become an analyst and round-table panelist on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos”.... Singer Justin Guarini, the runner-up on “American Idol,” has signed a recording contract with 19 Recordings Ltd., the United Kingdom label run by the show’s creator, Simon Fuller.