Stigmata may have been a box-office hit in the US, but in El Salvador the Exorcist-style horror film has become a picture non-grata. Government officials last night slapped an immediate ban on the movie by British director Rupert Wainwright, which had opened in the city of San Salvador last Friday.

Wainwright's film concerns a Pittsburgh stigmatist ( Patricia Arquette ) on the run from a corrupt Vatican establishment and has outraged the authorities in this predominantly Catholic country. Last night Morena Serpas, director of El Salvador's office of Public Performances, damned the movie as "an attack on public order".

In brief

New Line Cinema has secured the domestic distribution rights to the eagerly anticipated new film from Happiness director Todd Solondz. The project is as yet untitled and swathed in secrecy, although Variety reports New Line spokesman Michael De Luca describing it as "Todd's most commercial venture yet." The picture will again be produced by Solondz's Happiness collaborator Christine Vachon and is due to begin shooting in the summer.

The amount of money spent producing pictures in Britain rocketed 35% during 1999 to a record $922m. Of this figure, some $641m is a result of foreign investment - principally American studios electing to shoot in the UK with a British cast and crew. "The UK has always demonstrated it had the best talent in front of the camera and behind it," film minister Janet Anderson told the Daily Express. "We're now recognised internationally as a centre of excellence for film-making."

Casting couch

$#149; Ed Furlong yesterday signed up to the lead role in The Knights of the Quest, an 11th century epic to be directed by Italian director Pupi Avanti. The pallid star of T2, Pecker and American History X will play a lowly errand boy who sets off to recover a missing relic. Principal photography begins next month across a globe-hopping set of locations: Italy, Tunisia, France and Scotland.