It remains to be seen how much money will flow to the 165 plaintiffs who participated in the class-action suit, and attorneys for both parties involved in the 10-year battle say they are not allowed to talk about Friday's settlement, which is subject to final approval by California Superior Court for the County of Los Angeles.

Sources close to the situation calculate that those who joined the class action early are eligible for amounts ranging from $70,000-$140,000, and in some cases more. Those who joined later could get about 40% less, and a minimum amount has been set at $250.

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Of the $70 million, $43 million will be used to pay the class members and taxes on their awards, to fund required reserves and to "activities beneficial to the settlement class members." Two-thirds of the settlement will be paid by insurance companies.

The Writers Guild of America confirmed his death. The cause was Crohn's disease, a chronic gastrointestinal disorder that Mr. O'Bannon endured for 30 years, his wife, Diane, told The Los Angeles Times.

Mr. O'Bannon had an early start as a screenwriter when he and the director John Carpenter, students at the time at the University of Southern California film school, wrote the low-budget film Dark Star, which was released as a feature in 1974. After working as a computer animator for the director George Lucas on Star Wars and trying, unsuccessfully, to develop a film based on the Frank Herbert novel Dune, Mr. O'Bannon created the story of Alien with the screenwriter Ronald Shusett and wrote the screenplay on his own.

The film, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Sigourney Weaver, is about a spaceship with a vicious monster loose onboard. (The creature begins as a parasite that explodes from a crew member's chest.) It became a box office hit, a classic of science fiction and horror, and the progenitor of a lucrative Hollywood franchise, with its several sequels.

"I love gore films and I grew up with '50s monster movies," Mr. O'Bannon told the journal Cinefantastique in 1979, speaking of the film's origins. "The idea for the monster in Alien originally came from a stomach ache I had."

Pulp Fiction" screenwriter Roger Avary won't be tweeting again any time soon, a Ventura County sheriff's official said Monday. Avary probably will serve the rest of his yearlong sentence for a fatal drunken driving accident in the county jail instead of a lower-security work furlough program, said Sheriff's Department spokesman Ross Bonfiglio.

He's expected to be released next July. Until last week, Avary had been permitted to leave the furlough program daily to work at a production office, where he sent out tweets about strip searches, lockdowns and talks with gangbangers, officials said.

But after The Times published reports about the short messages, Avary was transferred on Thanksgiving to county jail. The tweets played a role in the decision, Bonfiglio said, but he said probation officials also had "security issues." "He really messed up," Bonfiglio said. "He could have done nine months out of a year sentence, and not even in lock-up, for killing someone. Now he is going to do the remainder of that time in county jail."

Lloyd died of prostate cancer Tuesday at his home in Beverly Hills, said his son, writer-producer Christopher Lloyd. "I do think he was the preeminent writer of television comedy," said Les Charles, co-creator of "Cheers," for which Lloyd wrote numerous episodes. "If you consider how long his career was and how much he wrote for such really popular shows, he's got to have been responsible for a record number of laughs in this world," Charles said.

His four-decade comedy career began with writing jokes for Jack Paar on "The Tonight Show" in 1962 and included writing for "The Bob Newhart Show," "Phyllis," "Rhoda," "Lou Grant," "Taxi," "Frasier" and many other shows. "He was a remarkable writer," said Allan Burns, who created "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" with James L. Brooks and began working with Lloyd when he moved to Hollywood from New York in 1974 to write for the series.

"The word 'wit' doesn't come up an awful lot when you're talking about television comedy, but that's what David was: a genuine wit," said Burns. "And he was just remarkable in his ability to write wonderful stuff very quickly. "I would sit at my desk and laugh out loud, which I don't do often. His drafts always made me laugh out loud and with such unexpected, off-the-wall humor."

I've learned that writer's assistant-turned-staff writer, Robin Veith, quit Mad Men before she could be let go by Matthew Weiner. A source tells me: "It was at the very worst mutual. She needed to move on and see how she would do after leaving the nest. Matt is a genius, and he gave lots of people an opportunity, but never let's anyone forget it. I'm sure he'd never tell anyone she quit, because that is a rejection of him. Anyway, they are friends and made a mutual decision."

A show insider replies, "There are staffing changes every season. It is the nature of television shows to fine tune. Why is it news this season?" Because the show won two best drama Emmy's in a row, and with success comes attention. Deal with it.

Producers Nick Wechsler, Steve and Paula Mae Schwartz have used their own money to acquire screen rights to "The Host," the first adult novel written by Stephenie Meyer, author of the "Twilight" series. Andrew Niccol will write the script and direct.

Meyer's novel is a love story set in the near future on Earth, which has been assimilated by an alien species of benevolent parasites that call themselves "Souls." One such soul, the Wanderer, is fused with a dying human named Melanie Stryder, in an attempt to locate the last pocket of surviving humans on Earth.

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In addition to writing four volumes of the "Twilight" series, Meyer has been heavily involved in the screen transfers, and she spurned several overtures for "The Host." The producers continued lobbying the author and her UTA reps with a significant offer, a strong vision for the project and a collaborative spirit. Meyer eventually said yes.

In fact, Niccol first came under consideration after Wechsler and the Schwartzes asked Meyer what her favorite science fiction films are. "Gattaca" and "The Truman Show" were in her top five; Niccol wrote and directed "Gattaca" and scripted the Peter Weir-directed "The Truman Show."

He died in Los Angeles, his talent company, Creative Artists Agency told Reuters. The Emmy-winning "M*A*S*H" lasted 11 seasons, becoming one of the most honored shows in U.S. television history before ending in 1983, with a final episode that set a record by attracting more than 106 million viewers.

Gelbart penned the 1972 pilot for "M*A*S*H," a comedy set in the 1950s Korean War, which used that conflict as an allegory for the Vietnam War, in which the United States was embroiled during the early years of the series. The show, based on a 1970 movie of the same name by director Robert Altman, was about wise-cracking doctors operating on the wounded just a few miles from the front lines, in what they called "meatball surgery," because it called for quick action.

Producer and director Gene Reynolds called on Gelbart to write the pilot script for "M*A*S*H," and he went on to write for other episodes. He also served as executive script consultant and shared an Emmy award with Reynolds when the series won for outstanding comedy in 1974.

I will not read your fu***ng script.

That's simple enough, isn't it? "I will not read your fu***ng script." What's not clear about that? There's nothing personal about it, nothing loaded, nothing complicated. I simply have no interest in reading your fu***ng screenplay. None whatsoever.

If that seems unfair, I'll make you a deal. In return for you not asking me to read your fu***ng script, I will not ask you to wash my fu***ng car, or take my fu***ng picture, or represent me in fu***ng court, or take out my fu***ng gall bladder, or whatever the f*** it is that you do for a living.

You're a lovely person. Whatever time we've spent together has, I'm sure, been pleasurable for both of us. I quite enjoyed that conversation we once had about structure and theme, and why Sergio Leone is the greatest director who ever lived. Yes, we bonded, and yes, I wish you luck in all your endeavors, and it would thrill me no end to hear that you had sold your screenplay, and that it had been made into the best movie since Godfather Part II. But I will not read your fu***ng script.

Ventura County Sheriff's Department officials said Avary was driving the car when it slid into the pole about 12:30 a.m. Jan. 13, 2008, fatally injuring a passenger, Andreas Zini, 34, a resident of Italy who was staying at the Avary residence. Avary's wife, Gretchen Avary, 40, was ejected from the car and treated for nonfatal injuries.

His lawyer, Mark Werksman of Los Angeles, said after the accident that Avary was "grief-stricken" about the death of Zini.

Schulberg suffered breathing problems Wednesday afternoon and was rushed from his Westhampton, L.I., home to Peconic Bay Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead, a family spokesman said. The legendary writer had been in good health, even attending a reading last week in Hoboken, N.J., of "On the Waterfront" put on by members of the cast of "The Sopranos." "I thought they did an excellent job. I was very pleased with it," Schulberg told the Jersey Journal in what turned out to be his last interview.

Born Seymour Wilson Schulberg in New York City, he was raised in Hollywood, where his father, B.P. Schulberg, was a movie pioneer and head of Paramount Pictures. Struggling throughout his youth with a speech impediment, he became a good listener with an ear for poetry. While at Dartmouth, Schulberg collaborated with F. Scott Fitzgerald on a script based on the school's annual winter carnival.

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Schulberg was also the former chief boxing correspondent for Sports Illustrated and was elected to the Boxing Hall of Fame in 2002.

Top showrunners such as John Wells ("Southland"), Ron Moore ("Battlestar Galactica"), Victor Fresco ("Better Off Ted"), Ed Bernero ("Criminal Minds"), Carol Mendelsohn ("CSI"), Clyde Phillips ("Dexter"), Doug Ellin ("Entourage"), Seth MacFarlane ("Family Guy"), Jason Katims ("Friday Night Lights"), Shonda Rhimes ("Grey's Anatomy"), David Shore ("House"), Damon Lindelof & Carlton Cuse ("Lost") and others have signed a statement opposing shifting two TV writing categories out of the live Emmy telecast (writing for a dramatic series and writing for a movie/miniseries).

The TV Academy announced changes to the show's format Thursday in an attempt to make the program more expedient by time-shifting eight of the 28 categories out of the live telecast. The moves will cut about 15 minutes from the three-hour program.

"Our job is to make an entertaining show that appeals to the maximum number of people but, most importantly, maintains the integrity of the Emmy brand," executive producer Don Mischer said at a teleconference last week.

Though the axed categories were split among directing, writing, acting and producing, writers point out that there were only four writing categories in the primetime telecast to begin with.

Anschutz's attorneys notified a Los Angeles court that Anschutz's Bristol Bay Productions - formerly known as Crusader Entertainment - had received the final $8.1 million check from Cussler, the Los Angeles Times reported online Monday. The legal battle began with Cussler's unsuccessful lawsuit over the movie flop Sahara, which Crusader produced. The 2005 action-adventure film starred Matthew McConaughey and Penelope Cruz.

Cussler - whose 1992 book in his Dirk Pitt adventure series was the basis for the movie - had sued for about $8.5 million from Crusader, alleging that the company violated an agreement to let Cussler approve the movie's screenplay. Crusader counter-sued, claiming that Cussler had hurt the film's prospects by demanding script changes and criticizing the movie in public, according to Variety.

Crusader also claimed that it had agreed to buy the rights to Cussler's book and another Dirk Pitt novel - a $20 million combined deal - based on sales figures that turned out to be exaggerated. Sahara lost about $80 million at the box office after expenses, Variety reported. After a 14-week trial in Los Angeles that garnered national publicity, a jury in May 2007 ruled in favor of Anschutz's company, and Cussler was ordered to pay $5 million in damages.