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Buzz building for "Cowboys & Aliens" gets a bit desperate - Yahoo! News

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Make no mistake: Director Jon Favreau wants you to see his pricey sci-fi western, "Cowboys & Aliens."

The actor-director is dipping his hands just about everywhere to build buzz for the $160 million film's release.

"How can I go to sleep with Cowboys & Aliens still trending?" Favreau tweeted late Thursday night.

Favreau guest-edited a recent issue of the Hollywood Reporter, and joined the likes of Quentin Tarantino, J.J. Abrams and Michel Gondry when he guest-directed "Jimmy Kimmel Live" Wednesday, which featured a Harrison Ford/Chewbecca confrontation.

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Merck to slash jobs in cost-savings drive - Yahoo! News

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Merck & Co plans to slash thousands more jobs by late 2015 to wring out additional annual cost savings of up to $1.5 billion that can be plowed back into research and deal making.

The No. 2 U.S. drugmaker cut a net 6,500 jobs last year, reducing its workforce to 91,000 employees as of June 30.

The company, which also reported quarterly earnings in line with forecasts, said on Friday it would reduce its workforce by an additional 12 percent to 13 percent from the 100,000 employees it had at the end of 2009 after buying Schering-Plough Corp.

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Hollywood wins UK piracy victory against BT - Yahoo! News

LONDON (Reuters) - Major Hollywood studios won a test case against Britain's largest internet provider in the High Court on Thursday in their fight against online piracy, the Press Association reported.

The judge said he would impose an order to restrict BT customers' access to a site that aggregates pirated material following the legal action taken by the Motion Picture Association of America.

The victory for studios including Paramount Pictures and Disney Enterprises is believed to be the first case in the UK in which an internet provider has been forced to block access to a website under the 1988 Copyright, Design and Patents Act.

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Brian Helgeland to write "Here There Be Monsters" - Yahoo! News

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Brian Helgeland has been hired to write "Here There Be Monsters," a movie about Revolutionary War naval hero John Paul Jones -- except with sea monsters, individuals close to the project confirmed.

Producers of the Warner Bros./Legendary project are in talks with Robert Zemeckis to direct.

"Here There Be Monsters" is based on a concept by Legendary Pictures CEO Thomas Tull.

Tull is producing along with Legendary's Jon Jashni and Mandeville's Todd Lieberman and David Hoberman.

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UBS to cut costs and rethink fixed income unit - Yahoo! News

ZURICH (Reuters) - Switzerland's UBS will slash jobs and review the future of its fixed income business after the underperforming unit hit second-quarter profits and forced it to push back targets.

The bank said on Tuesday it would cut costs by 1.5 - 2.0 billion Swiss francs ($1.9 billion - $2.5 billion) in the next two to three years and would likely book "significant restructuring charges" later this year.

"The new capital and regulatory environment will weigh on banking profits and we cannot rely on markets to boost our profits when global economic growth looks to have stalled," Chief Executive Oswald Gruebel told a results presentation.

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Greek debt swap process to start in August: deputy finmin - Yahoo! News

ATHENS (Reuters) - Procedures for a voluntary swap of privately-held Greek government bonds for longer maturity paper will start in August, Greece's deputy finance minister said on Tuesday.

Greece's private sector creditors will take a 21 percent loss on their bond holdings as part of a 37 billion euro contribution to a rescue plan for the debt-stricken country, agreed at a euro zone summit last week.

"In the coming days, in collaboration with (bank lobby) IIF, talks outlining the exact procedure that will be followed so that holders of Greek government bonds choose one of four options and proceed to a debt swap will be completed," Deputy Finance Minister Filippos Sachinidis told Mega TV.

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Lawmakers split as debt deadline looms, markets uneasy - Yahoo! News

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A sharply divided Congress pursued rival budget plans on Monday that appeared unlikely to win broad support, pushing the United States closer to a ratings downgrade and debt default that would send shockwaves through global markets.

With an August 2 deadline little more than a week away, lawmakers have steadfastly refused to compromise and talks once again collapsed in acrimony at the weekend. Democrats and Republicans split into two camps to work on their own proposals.

Financial markets were uneasy in Asia and Europe on Monday about the prospect of a first-ever U.S. debt default, which Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has said would be a "calamitous outcome" for the U.S. and the global economy.

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Amy Winehouse: "I'll be dead in a ditch, on fire" - Yahoo! News

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap) - When the news of Amy Winehouse's death hit, I couldn't help but thinking of how she'd told me that, in 10 years, she'd be "dead in a ditch, on fire."

It's important to emphasize that this was a joke, not a prophecy. It's hard to know whether she was really self-aware enough to be as worried about her own fate as everyone else would soon become.

She was one of the toughest nuts I've ever tried to crack. I eventually came up with plenty of quotable material, but it took hours of interviews over two frustrating days, filled with awkward silences, to come up with those quotes.

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Timberlake, Seyfried talk "In Time" at Comic-Con - Yahoo! News

SAN DIEGO (Reuters) - By now, most anyone who knows anything about Comic-Con International knows it has become a grand platform from which Hollywood's studios launch promotional campaigns for upcoming films and television shows.

A problem, for reporters and bloggers trying to cover those launches, is that having seen only brief clips of the films or TV shows, it's often hard to discuss them in a serious way.

But Reuters sat down with Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried on Thursday for a brief chat to ferret out the details of their upcoming action film, "In Time," which is set for release in October of this year.

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Andrew Garfield calls Spider-Man a role for life - Yahoo! News

SAN DIEGO (Reuters) - He may change his mind later, but right now Andrew Garfield says the role of comic book superhero Spider-Man in the upcoming reboot of the hit film franchise is a part that could last a lifetime.

"I could play this character for the rest of my life," an enthusiastic Garfield, 27, told Reuters at Comic-Con on Friday, where the first few clips of the film were revealed to fans.

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