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"Trapped in the Closet," the controversial "South Park" episode that skewers Scientology and its popular proponent Tom Cruise, is hitting the airwaves again. Comedy Central plans to air the Emmy-nominated episode on July 19. It was last scheduled to rerun in March but was abruptly pulled by the network.

LOS ANGELES - “Trapped in the Closet,” the controversial “South Park” episode that skewers Scientology and its popular proponent Tom Cruise, is hitting the airwaves again.

Comedy Central plans to air the Emmy-nominated episode on July 19. It was last scheduled to rerun in March but was abruptly pulled by the network.

The network rotates its 150 episodes of “South Park” in and out of the broadcast schedule, spokesman Tony Fox said Wednesday.

“This episode just happens to be rotating back in,” he said.

The show’s co-creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, were told in May that the episode was pulled from the schedule to appease Cruise and his partners in “Mission: Impossible III,” according to reports.

“If they hadn’t put this episode back on the air, we’d have had serious issues, and we wouldn’t be doing anything else with them,” Stone said in Wednesday’s edition of the trade paper Variety.

 The Associated Press.

NEW YORK - Who knew a good Keith Richards impression could be so lucrative?

“Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest,” which earned a record haul of $135.6 million in its opening weekend, is a sequel full of special effects, plot twists and pretty heartthrobs.

But it’s Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow — the drunken buccaneer famously modeled on the Rolling Stones’ Richards — who may have propelled “Pirates” to the all-time largest opening box-office gross. It bested 2002’s “Spider-Man,” which took in $114.8 million in its first weekend.

It’s an unusual mainstream success for Depp, whose career has been mostly marked by Tim Burton’s cultish films (“Ed Wood,” “Edward Scissorhands”) and financial disappointments like 2004’s “Finding Neverland” or 2000’s “Chocolat.”

“I’m proud of those films and even though I’ve had a career of basically doing failures, or commercial failures, it never felt that way to me,” Depp told The Associated Press in a recent interview.
 NBC VIDEO

• ‘Pirates’ plunders box office
July 10: "Pirates" sequel takes in a record $132 million in its first three days, becoming Hollywood’s most successful movie opening ever.

Today show

In the 2003 original, Depp’s cartoonish pirate was a revelation. Few expected a blatantly commercial movie based on a Disney theme park ride to result in an Oscar nomination for Depp.

“I was never opposed to the idea of commercial success, in terms of a movie or whatever, but if it was gonna happen it had to happen the right way, it had to happen kind of on my terms,” the 43-year-old actor said.

The reviews for “Dead Man’s Chest” have not been what they were for “The Curse of the Black Pearl,” but Depp — who’s displayed his idiosyncratic, unpredictable skills in such movies as “Benny & Joon,” “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” and “Don Juan DeMarco” — was still clearly a great draw for moviegoers.

The Associated Press.

LOS ANGELES - Actress Angelina Jolie will star in a movie as the widow of murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, trade paper Daily Variety reported in its Thursday edition.

“A Mighty Heart,” adapted from Mariane Pearl’s memoir of the same name, will begin shooting within the next five weeks, the paper said. The book details Pearl’s search for her husband, who was abducted and beheaded by militants in Pakistan in early 2002.

“I am delighted that Angelina Jolie will be playing my role in the adaptation of my book,” Daily Variety quoted Pearl as saying. “I deeply admire her work and what she is committed to.”

English filmmaker Michael Winterbottom, famed for such war-based films as “Welcome to Sarajevo” and “The Road to Guantanamo,” will direct. Jolie’s boyfriend, actor Brad Pitt, will serve as a producer of the project, which is set up at Paramount Vantage, the art-house arm of Viacom Inc.’s Paramount Pictures.

 Reuters.