By Eric Kelsey LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Esther Williams, whose experiences as a young swimming champion led to a career of Hollywood "aqua-musicals" designed just for her, died on Thursday in Beverly Hills, California, at the age of 91, her spokesman said. Williams, one of the biggest box-office stars of the 1940s and 1950s, died peacefully in her sleep and had been in declining health due to old age, spokesman Harlan Boll said. Williams became known as "Hollywood's Mermaid" and "The Queen of the Surf. ...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Esther Williams, the swimming champion turned actress who starred in glittering and aquatic Technicolor musicals of the 1940s and 1950s, has died. She was 91.

By Zorianna Kit LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - After numerous starts and stops by Hollywood executives to project Judy Blume books onto the big screen, the best-selling author and her filmmaker son decided to make it happen. The film adaptation of her 1981 young adult book "Tiger Eyes" opens in theaters on Friday and simultaneously on iTunes, DirecTV and On-Demand. It was a family project, with Blume and her son, Lawrence Blume, writing the screenplay and producing the film. ...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Until he died in 2009, Michael Jackson was fiercely protective of his children (save for that one balcony-dangling incident). He covered their faces when they went out with him so they might enjoy the kind of normal childhood he missed out on as a member of the Jackson 5.

NEW DELHI (AP) — Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan says he'll make his television acting debut in a new series this year.

(Reuters) - British actor Stephen Fry attempted suicide last year, he said during a podcast interview on Wednesday in which he talked openly about his ongoing battle with mental illness. Fry, 55, told comedian Richard Herring in the interview in front of a live audience that he was "a victim of my own moods" and that he was required to take medication "so that I don't get either too hyper or too depressed to the point of suicide." "I'd go as far as to tell you I attempted it last year. ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Several weeks after overseeing the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, then-CIA Director Leon Panetta revealed the name of the raid commander in a speech attended by the writer of the film "Zero Dark Thirty," according to a draft report by Pentagon investigators.

By Brent Lang LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Ben Affleck will follow up his Oscar-winning "Argo" work by stretching his villainous muscles as an offshore gambling kingpin in "Runner, Runner." The high-stakes drama marks a departure for Affleck, who usually gets to wear the white hat even when engaging in criminality in films like "The Town." It pits him against Justin Timberlake, who at 32 looks a bit long-in-the-tooth to be playing a Princeton whiz kid who loses his tuition money playing online poker. ...

By Tim Kenneally LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - J.J. Abrams is about to enter another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous ... well, you probably know the rest. "Person of Interest" producer Abrams is adapting "The Twilight Zone" creator Rod Serling's final, unproduced screenplay, "The Stops Along the Way," an individual familiar with the project told TheWrap on Wednesday. No plot details are available, but Abrams' Bad Robot production company secured the rights for the script, which will be shopped via Bad Robot's overall deal with Warner ...

By Jeff Sneider LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Sony Pictures Entertainment has optioned remake rights to Jacques Audiard's critically acclaimed French drama "A Prophet." Neal H. Moritz and Toby Jaffe will produce the English-language remake for Original Film, which brought the "Fast and Furious" franchise to the big screen. Story follows a young man's rise to power in a criminal syndicate after he is mentored by a crime boss. "A Prophet" was nominated for the foreign language Oscar in 2010 and took home the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. ...

By Greg Gilman LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Guys Choice Awards will recognize "Man of Steel" with the honor of Most Manticipated Movie of the Year, Spike TV announced on Wednesday. Director Zack Snyder will accept the manly honor with three key cast members - Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, and Russell Crowe - when the annual awards show tapes on Saturday at Sony Pictures Studios. Cavill plays Superman in Warner Bros. highly-anticipated June 14 release, while Adams plays Lois Lane and Crowe plays Jor-El, Clark Kent's biological father from the planet Krypton. ...

By Lucas Shaw NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) - Universal has acquired the rights to adapt "Vexille," a 2007 Japanese animated film about the titular female agent who must investigate whether the Japanese are illicitly developing robotic technology, multiple individuals with knowledge of the project told TheWrap. Evan Spiliotopoulos, who wrote MGM's upcoming "Hercules" moving starring Dwayne Johnson, will adapt the film for a live-action film. Tripp Vinsion, who will produce alongside Beau Flynn, initially optioned the rights and brought Spiliotopoulos on to write. ...

"The Internship" — There are really three movie stars headlining this movie: Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson, and Google. Actually, it's a surprise Google doesn't get top billing over the humans, so adoringly is the company displayed. But if you can get past this Mother of All Product Placements, you'll likely find yourself chuckling a lot during Shawn Levy's silly but warmhearted film, with a script by Vaughn and Jared Stern. Sure, it could be shorter, less predictable, more believable. But this is Vaughn and Wilson, and if their onscreen banter doesn't quite live up to the 2005 "Wedding Crashers," it's still pretty darned funny. Billy (Vaughn) and Nick (Wilson), watch salesmen, lose their jobs, and implausibly apply for an unpaid internship at Google. Which they implausibly get. (Their job interview, via video chat, is one of the funniest scenes.) A stern supervisor (the terrific Aasif Mandvi) describes the "Hunger Games"-like contest ahead, with only the winning intern team attaining Google employment. (Perhaps because Google helped out with the film, it is never once questioned that this is the ultimate place to work — from the free food to the nap pods to the adult-sized slides.) Generation gap jokes abound. Vaughn's Billy keeps saying "on the line" instead of "online" — really, if he knew enough about Google to apply there, wouldn't he know the term "online"? Still, it's amusing. Will Billy and Nick survive their trial-by-technology? Do we really need to ask? PG-13 for sexuality, some crude humor, partying and language. 119 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.

By Tony Maglio LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Joss Whedon has earned the right to do what he wants. His latest film, "Much Ado About Nothing," is not quite "The Avengers." The modern-day retelling of the Shakespeare classic was shot in just 12 days at Whedon's home in Santa Monica, California. It's a black-and-white film, and it exists simply because Whedon wanted it to. Marlow Stern of The Daily Beast interviewed the red-hot director in New York. He discussed being raised on the BBC, his love of "Much Ado," and the need for more female protagonists - including, of course, superheroes. ...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - British actress Helena Bonham Carter will play late screen icon Elizabeth Taylor in a TV movie that will explore Taylor's tempestuous relationship with actor Richard Burton which captivated audiences and headlines. The first photograph of Bonham Carter as Taylor and British actor Dominic West as Burton was released by BBC on Wednesday, ahead of the premiere of "Burton and Taylor" on BBC America in fall this year. ...

Paris Hilton lost over $2 million worth of personal belongings as the victim of a celebrity home burglary ring in 2008 -- events which inspired Sofia Coppola's upcoming crime drama, "The Bling Ring."

Paris Jackson, the 15-year-old daughter of the late Michael Jackson, was hospitalized on Wednesday following a suicide attempt, a source claimed to Access Hollywood .

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Newseum in Washington is poking some fun at TV anchors with a new exhibit about the 2004 comedy "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy" starring Will Ferrell.

By Piya Sinha-Roy LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Comedian Craig Robinson won over audiences as the warehouse manager Darryl on NBC's long-running sitcom "The Office" but now the actor is taking on the apocalypse as he moves into films. Chicago native Robinson, 41, will star in two comedies centered around the biblical end of the world, playing a megalomaniac Satan in indie comedy "Rapture-Palooza" that is out in theaters on Friday. In "This is The End," out next week, Robinson will play himself in a cast of celebrities forced to deal with the apocalypse after attending a party at James Franco's ...

(Contains some sexual content) By Tim Kenneally LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Michael Douglas had a public-relations headache when the Guardian newspaper reported that he blamed oral sex for his cancer - and his representative quickly contested the story. But the "Behind the Candelabra" star has found a silver lining, he said Monday. ...