Star TV, the Asian broadcaster owned by Rupert Murdoch, has begun slashing staff numbers at its Hong Kong headquarters, reflecting how the media mogul's ambitions in China have been eclipsed by the business opportunities in emerging rival India.

For all the success that the Lord Of The Rings trilogy enjoyed on the big screen, the ongoing bad blood between film executives and the family of JRR Tolkien, who wrote the books, has proved an unfortunate sub-plot.

New Zealand film-maker Peter Jackson may have more in common with JRR Tolkien's heirs than he thought - they are also complaining about big studio accounting methods.

Tim Walker: Perez made his name by being vile about celebrities, but he seems finally to have gone too far

The mega-merger between Time Warner and AOL, which defined the dot.com euphoria at the opening of the decade, will be unwound by the decade's close at the end of this year, the company decided yesterday.

Film studios are cutting staff and taking fewer risks with releases as recession bites, says Nick Clark reports

Time Warner, the media giant whose businesses include Time magazine, CNN, AOL, HBO and the Warner Bros film studio, will plunge to its first annual loss in six years, it warned yesterday.

SCi Entertainment, the games company that brought the world Lara Croft, is raising £60m in a rights issue that could see Time Warner and property billionaire Robert Tchenguiz add another £15m each to their already significant investments in the company. Both investors could also take seats on the board.

From 'Nightmare on Elm Street' to 'Lord of the Rings', New Line Cinema created some of Hollywood's most influential blockbusters. But now its 40-year history is in tatters following a string of big-budget box-office flops. Andrew Gumbel charts the unlikely rise and fall of a Tinseltown institution, while Tim Walker identifies the films that did the damage

The 'mini-major' that gave us Freddy Krueger and <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> has been swallowed up. James Mottram reports

The epic legal battles over profits from The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy long ago eclipsed anything raging on Middle Earth, but New Line Cinema, the films' producer, has just got sight of its most formidable foe to date: the family of J R R Tolkien himself.

When the blockbuster computer games dried up, SCI's 'too optimistic' chief lost her way &ndash; and then she lost her job. Lauren Mills reports

The best way to combat greedy power companies is to shop around, says David Prosser

The Government failed properly to investigate claims that the CIA secretly transported al-Qa'ida suspects through Britain to face possible torture overseas, MPs and peers will say today.