Costner Will Direct Hbo Miniseries

HBO Pictures has signed Kevin Costner to direct and star in “The Kentucky Cycle,” the company’s single biggest production and first original miniseries, HBO Pictures Senior Vice president Robert Cooper announced last week.

Shooting on the six-hour miniseries, based on Robert Schenkkan’s Pulitzer Prize-winning six-hour play, will begin in summer 1996 with an eye toward a premiere as a three-part program in late 1996 or early 1997, Cooper said.

It is the first project Costner has committed to after his self-imposed respite from production, which began recently following his work on the film “Waterworld.” It is also the first directorial project for Costner since his Academy Award-winning “Dances With Wolves” in 1990.

“The ideas and feelings were so strong that I knew this was the voice I was waiting to hear when it came to directing again,” Costner said in a statement.

Casting has yet to be determined except that Costner will have a starring role in each of the three segments of the story that spans 200 years and chronicles three feuding families in the Cumberland Mountains of Kentucky, Cooper said. Costner may play two or more characters in the various generations of families, but Cooper said he would at least play the central role in the overall production.

CBS wins daytime again

Like it has been every week for six full years - years - CBS was again No. 1 in the daytime ratings.

The streak is now 313 weeks - six years and one week.

Also streaking: CBS’ “The Young and the Restless” soap opera, which has been the top daytime show for seven years. It moved into the top spot on March 7, 1988, and while it hasn’t been on top every week, it has been the No. 1 show overall ever since.

CBS started its daytime streak, which has become the longest such ratings run of any sort on any network, on March 6, 1989.

Daytime has long been a CBS powerhouse: Going back 39 years, CBS has won or tied for the season crown 30 times.

$20 billion spent on videos

Consumer spending on the rental and purchase of prerecorded videocassettes in 1994 crossed the $20 billion mark for the first time, according to an annual study by New York research firm Alexander & Associates.

Rental activity also showed its first increase in two years to $11.5 billion, while the sell-through side of the business continued to make extraordinary leaps, growing another 25 percent in 1994 to $8.6 billion. The yearlong study was drawn from consumer responses in a sample audience of 86,000 VCR households.

HBO-Dreamworks team up

Eighty to one hundred films. Ten years. One billion dollars.

Those are the pertinent numbers in the deal announced Thursday between cable giant HBO and DreamWorks, the new Hollywood studio formed by moguls Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen.

The agreement kicks in next year.

HBO will get the rights to all of DreamWorks’ films, which will then air on HBO and sister channel Cinemax after they have run in theaters and been released on video cassette.

DreamWorks was created last October. Its first three theatrical releases are expected in 1996, which means they’ll probably land on HBO sometime in 1997.

Previously, DreamWorks linked with ABC to develop and produce programing for television.