Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, March 8, 1991                   TAG: 9103080305
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK                                LENGTH: Medium

COMING SOON IN MOVIES, BOOKS AND VIDEOS: THE WAR

Some are set for release nearly a year from now, part of the entertainment industry's big bet that interest in Gulf War-related subjects will not fade with victory's afterglow.

Agents say they are pursuing offers of up to $2 million for rights to such potential book and film stars as Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell.

One weekly supermarket tabloid says it offered $100,000 on Monday to the Newaygo, Mich., family of former prisoner of war Melissa Rathbun-Nealy for the exclusive rights to interview her.

"As the first American female POW she has a hell of a story to tell," said Phil Bunton, editorial director at The Globe, but there's no word yet on her response. "There are a lot of Gulf War heroes we'd like to tie up."

Doubleday said it signed a book contract with CNN's Baghdad producer Robert Wiener in a deal one literary agent puts at $50,000 to $75,000. That's small potatoes compared with offers reportedly swamping CNN correspondent Peter Arnett, who spent the war in Baghdad.

Bookstore shelves are bulging with some 30 Persian Gulf works. Sales of some war-related books are starting to drop off at Barnes and Nobles' 800 stores, said spokeswoman Donna Pasananti.

But publishers are hoping the public's waning interest in so-called "instant" books will be reinvigorated by more substantial works.

Houghton Mifflin Co. has signed on investigative journalist Kenneth R. Timmerman and Washington Post Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Atkinson for books due in stores later this year.

Houghton also accelerated the release date of Richard Setlowe's fictional "The Black Sea," about a new world order where superpower technology is useless in the face of Muslim fundamentalism.

Hollywood is also getting into the act.

A number of independent production houses are working on action movies with Persian Gulf themes, including one in Dolby stereo on Americans kidnapped in Iraq titled "Human Shield."

To allay concerns that films may become outdated as gulf developments unfold, producers are rewriting scripts at the last minute.

An independent producer, 21st Century Film Corp., finished shooting a Gulf War film starring Rob Lowe in late November, then added an epilogue using President Bush's late February speech declaring the war's end. The tentatively titled "Desert Shield" movie should hit screens this summer.

Likewise, scriptwriters for the CBS sitcom "Major Dad" tried to explain why characters Maj. John MacGillis and fellow Marines were not in Saudia Arabia by reassigning them from an infantry base to a fictional U.S. supply base.

ABC, CNN and NBC said they are all either releasing or planning to distribute home videos recycling highlights of their war coverage.

Several music videos have been distributed or are in production that include war messages from well-known music stars. And newcomer Boston Dawn has a remake of the Shirelles' oldie "Soldier Boy" that includes a rap rendition of the soldier stationed overseas answering her tearful ode to him.

Wally Roker of American Sound Records, a Glendale, Calif., record company, says the singer's message is genuine because her brother, Lt. Col. Michael Deegan, is stationed in Saudia Arabia.

Besides a back-order of 25,000 copies because of the record's unexpected popularity, the company says Deegan is beseiged for photos of his kid sister by fellow servicemen who view Dawn as a new pin-up girl.