Hollywood To Get Movie Museum

Film executives are moving forward with a long-planned movie museum they hope will lure more visitors into the heart of America's film industry.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which is building the museum, has selected a site for the $200 million film archive about a half mile south of the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Streets, said Bruce Davis, the academy's director.

"I think it has a chance of being enormously successful in getting visitors," Davis said.

Groundbreaking is set for 2008 on the museum that will occupy 75,000 square feet next to the film academy's Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study.

The academy's museum committee hasn't considered an architect yet, but Davis said committee members want the displays to be shown in pavilions spread over an outdoor space, "since the weather is what attracted the movies here in the first place."

Some of the pavilions would house exhibits on the history of film, while others would be used for changing exhibits on different subjects, he said.

The academy already owns much of the land at the planned site, but still needs to acquire some parcels along an adjacent commercial strip of chain restaurants and discount shops, Davis said.

"People come to Hollywood and look for things that teach them about the art form of movies, and it is astonishing that there are only a few things," he said.