The settlement puts an anticlimatic end to a trial that had been closely watched by TV profit participants and studios alike. And it also caps off an unusual series of developments that took place Wednesday, when L.A. Superior Court Judge Warren Ettinger granted a motion to dismiss jury foreman Dean Hartwell. Having deliberated for over a week, the jury on the case -- in which Mutchnick and Kohan sued NBC Studios over money they believe they're owed -- had already rendered a verdict on the case.

But L.A. Superior Court Judge Warren Ettinger did not reveal the decision, because of the jury misconduct motion. Hartwell was removed after it was revealed that he runs a Web site known for taking a harsh stance against major corporations. Ettinger spent Thursday afternoon interviewing each juror to determine whether the dismissed member had a major impact on their decision. Because Ettinger indicated that Hartwell's strong opinions might have swayed jurors, it was generally assumed that the jury had ruled in favor of the plaintiffs.

The judge was set to tell the courtroom Friday at 9 a.m. if a mistrial has been declared, or if the jury would be sent back to deliberations with an alternate juror. Instead, the court was told that a settlement had been reached. Kohan and Mutchnick (and their agent, Scott Schwartz) filed suit against the Peacock in 2003, claiming that series producer NBC Studios failed to negotiate a fair license fee from its sibling network buyer -- costing the scribes tens of millions of dollars.

At the time, NBC countersued, alleging that Kohan and Mutchnick breached their contract by failing to take part in negotiations at the net to renew "Will & Grace."

Forte and Pullman had a "dream casting session" a decade ago, when she negotiated an option to Pullman's work, to which Pullman added: "I always wanted Nicole Kidman for her extraordinary quality of being warm and cold, terrifying and seductive." He also envisaged Laurence Olivier, circa 1945, as Lord Asriel, a role eventually taken by Craig because Olivier "wasn't available".

*****

Although Lewis's and Pullman's religious beliefs are radically different, Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia shares much with The Golden Compass: talking animals, witches and child protagonists travelling to fantasy worlds. But Pullman's coup is all his own: the daemon, pronounced "demon". In The Golden Compass, almost everyone has a daemon, an animal that is another version of the person to whom they belong. They feel the same things, mentally and physically. The daemon is an idea borrowed from Socrates, who believed he had a divine presence within himself. He called it a "daimon" and it would warn him if he was about to do something bad.

*****

For Pullman, the daemon was also a great literary device. As he told the Oxford audience: "The moment I thought of daemons was on the 16th draft of the first chapter. Before that I had to tell the reader what Lyra was thinking. I realised then I didn't have to explain so much. You don't need exposition. Exposition kills the flow of the narrative.

"The best advice ever given to a writer was by Raymond Chandler, who said, 'When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun.' This works. If you're stuck with the story, it moves it on like nothing else." Lyra's daemon, Pantalaimon, "was my man coming through the door with a gun. It was a wonderful moment when I realised that."

....Marvel Studios is putting the pieces together for a musical on the Great White Way starring the popular superhero, which will be directed by Tony winner Julie Taymor, with U2's Bono and the Edge creating new music and lyrics for the project. Auditions are taking place, and a reading is scheduled for the summer. No dates for a Broadway opening have been set.

Producing are Hello Entertainment/David Garfinkle, Martin McCallum, Marvel Entertainment and Sony Pictures Entertainment. In addition to co-producing the show, Hello Entertainment is arranging all financing for the project.

While the Spider-Man musical marks the first time a Marvel character has been the subject of a Broadway show, it's not the first time a superhero has hit the stage. Superman was in the spotlight of "It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman," which opened at the Alvin Theatre in 1966. Despite fairly positive reviews, it closed a few months later.

Before becoming Marvel chairman, David Maisel spearheaded the 1999 best musical Tony winner "Fosse." Taymor won two Tonys for direction and costume design for the Broadway production of "The Lion King."

Kudos were presented to the composers and songwriters of the top box office film music and the most performed television music of 2006. Film nods went to Jon Brion, Erran Baron Cohen, Chris Cornell, Ramin Djawadi, Paul Westerberg, Michael Giacchino, Rupert Gregson-Williams, Andrea Guerra, Mark Isham, Henry Mancini, Randy Newman, Douglas Pipes, John Powell, Howard Shore, Alan Silvestri and Hans Zimmer.

TV gongs went to J.J. Abrams, Giacchino, John Adair, Paul Bessenbacher, Lee Aronsohn, Grant Geissman, Sean Callery, Jeff Cardoni, Adam Cohen, Steve Franks, John Robert Wood, Lisa Coleman, Wendy Melvoin, Catherine Dennis, Julian Gingell, Barry Stone, Rob Duncan, Marc Fantini, Steffan Fantini, Scott Gordon, Elizabeth Fraser, Matthew Gerrard, Robbie Nevil, Alex Greenwald, Jason Schwartzman, Matthew Hawkins, Maurice "M.O." Jackson, Neil Martin, Reinhold Heil, Johnny Klimek, John Keane, Russ Landau, David Vanacore, Michael Levine, Franz Vonlichten, Helmut Vonlichten, Richard Markmann, Daniel Pinnella, Daniel McGrath, Josh Phillips, Blake Neely, Newman, David Porter and Mark T. Williams.

Drawing honors for most performed TV themes were Joel Beckerman, Michael Karp, Russ Landau, Branford Marsalis and Vanacore. Most performed underscore nods went to Callery, Landau, David Nichtern, Mark Snow and David Vana.

Marissa Jaret Winokur performed "Good Morning, Baltimore" from the musical "Hairspray" to honor Shaiman. He accompanied her on piano and then performed "Fifty Checks," from his new musical, "Catch Me if You Can."

The estate of Nicole Brown Simpson is seeking a court order for permission to bid on the book rights to O.J. Simpson's "If I Did It" at a sheriff's auction Tuesday in Sacramento. In the book, the former NFL star explains in graphic detail how the killings of his ex-wife and her friend, Ron Goldman, might have been carried out.

Greg K. Hafif, the attorney for the Nicole Brown Simpson estate, said the estate wants the judge in the case to allow it to take a portion of the $33.5-million civil judgment won from O.J. Simpson and use it as a "credit bid" on the book during the auction. He added that the goal would be to "make sure this book is never published." Hafif called on Fred Goldman, Ron Goldman's father, to join with them in making the bid. But David J. Cook, the lawyer who won a court order in February that gave the Goldmans the rights to the book, objected to the legal maneuver by the estate.

Cook noted that the Goldmans have spent the last decade trying to collect from O.J. Simpson — the judgment has since grown to nearly $40 million — and criticized the Brown estate for coming in so late. Maybe the estate has "a beef with their lawyers," Cook said, "but they didn't have the savvy or the intelligence or whatever to go out and do this." He added: "We all share the tragedy for the Browns, and they have lots of tears, and our tears are their tears, but they have to stop crying and move forward."

Last month, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Gerald Rosenberg ordered the auction, specifying that all proceeds from the sale and any profit from a resulting book be given to the Goldman family. In November, HarperCollins canceled the book's publication amid protests and fired Judith Regan, the high-profile editor who had shepherded the project. Sacramento was chosen as the auction site because that is where the California headquarters of HarperCollins is.

The question my colleagues kept asking is why was Picoult signing books at a Costco?

"Do you want the politically correct answer or the truth?" she said. "Well, the politically correct answer is because they sell a ton of books. And these all will go, which is very, very cool." And the truth? "I actually go to Costco, Sam's and BJ's because they sell a lot [of] books and because of that are allowed to have author signings."

Melissa Anelli of The Leaky Cauldron: One of the things in this report said that Jo had mentioned that there would be some cuts that would come back to haunt the film makers in later films. I know that wasn't true, but what was the feeling about elements that you had to keep to serve the rest of the films? Did they ever become an encumbrance?

Michael Goldenberg: Not at all. In fact, as I said, Jo couldn't have been more supportive and permissive. She gave free rein. It was quite the opposite. The last time I saw her, I was sort of begging her for notes and saying, "Please! If there's anything, I would love to hear your thoughts on this or that!" And she did, finally, come through with a few, all of which I think were immediately put into the script. Tiny little things, for the most part. But as I said, we could not have asked for more in terms of a collaborator.

MA: It sounds almost as if she's battling some instincts to make suggestions so that she didn't encumber your process.

MG: I think so. And I think there was respect for that. I wouldn't speak for her, but I think she trusts that, having met us, that we're all - we really do want to make a movie that she's thrilled with. I mean, nobody wants that more than we do. So, it almost didn't need to be said, you know? It's just the baseline we're all starting from.

The relationship between achievement and happiness yields a mixed bag. There's a common misconception that people who are high achievers are happier. For example, actors who won an Academy Award lived on average four years longer than other nominees. Those who won two lived six years longer. But screenwriters who won an Academy Award lived three years shorter than the other nominees. Even though the Award-winning screenwriters had longer careers, they didn't live as long.

'Literature,' [Philip] Roth goes on, 'takes a habit of mind that has disappeared. It requires silence, some form of isolation, and sustained concentration in the presence of an enigmatic thing ... the writer is only interesting in terms of how much money did he get and what's the scandal? The mysterious side of existence is not the urgent problem.'

Mailer's elegy for a lost world of high seriousness is echoed by another of the surviving American greats, Gore Vidal. In his classic memoir Palimpsest, Vidal writes: 'Television, movies, journalism claim the general audience. Today, publishers are reluctant to publish first novels by anyone who has not been a movie star or a serial killer.' It goes without saying that chick, hen and lad lit - and a lot of what passes for 'literary fiction' - will never qualify as the 'enigmatic thing'.

*****

It certainly requires a prodigious effort of imagination to see Virginia Woolf signing books at Hay or James Joyce giving a reading at Cheltenham. Or, better still, Sartre in the Brighton Pavilion. But wind the clock back another 50, or even 100, years and it's not difficult to picture Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope, Twain, or even Disraeli, indeed almost any Victorian writer, promoting his or her new book to an audience under canvas. Dickens, of course, pioneered the reading tour. Twain made his name as a popular lecturer of genius. A generation later, that supreme aesthete, Oscar Wilde, drank the miners of the Wild West under the table while promoting his career.

*****

Literature has always oscillated between the cloister and the marquee; at the moment, the spirit of the age favours the public arena. Perhaps it is the role of the literary festival to remind writers and readers that literature has always had a human face. Meanwhile, it may be the task of the next generation to renew the exploration of the 'enigmatic thing'.

"To my mind, Saul Bellow and William Faulkner form the backbone of 20th-century American literature," Roth said in a statement given to The Associated Press. "The initial selection of Philip Roth sets a very high standard and bodes well for the establishment of this prize as one of the pre-eminent awards of American literature," historian and recent PEN American president Ron Chernow said in a statement issued by the U.S. center for the international writers organization.

The Bellow prize, to be officially announced Monday, was conceived during Chernow's time as PEN president, a one-year term that ended in March. He declined to seek re-election, citing personal reasons, and has been succeeded by author Francine Prose. The 74-year-old Roth, known for such novels as "Portnoy's Complaint" and "American Pastoral," has won the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle prize. He recently became the first three-time winner of the PEN/Faulkner prize, chosen for "Everyman," a novel about illness and mortality inspired in part by the death of Bellow, in April 2005.

*****

"I make this claim not only because of my admiration for its astonishing literary properties but because it has had the widest influence of any book from that period on any number of excellent novelists, not only in America but throughout the English-speaking world. How could I be anything but thrilled to receive an award bearing Saul Bellow's name?"