Show Business: Entebbe Derby

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The scenario might go like this: a hostage who looks amazingly like Shelley Winters searches the sky above Entebbe Airport. "Only a miracle can save us," she says, "and miracles only happen in the Bible." Cut to a tough, determined James Caan briefing his men for the rescue. "Our mission," he intones, "is impossible. But we dare not fail."

Hollywood is sky-high over the Israeli rescue of 104 hostages at Entebbe Airport in Uganda. "The mission reads like a movie script," rejoiced MCA President Sidney Sheinberg. Thus, only 72 hours after the commandos struck, the studios were plotting missions of their own—to see which would be the first onscreen with a film version. At Shein-berg's Universal Studio, where action and disaster epics (Earthquake, Midway and Airport) are house specialties, Producer-Director George Roy Hill is casting Rescue at Entebbe. Over at Paramount, Paddy Chayefsky has been signed to write the script for 90 Minutes at Entebbe, to be directed by Sidney Lumet. Independent Producer Elliott Kastner, meanwhile, is making Assault on Entebbe by revising a script he already had about an Arab-Israeli confrontation. Says a Kastner staffer: "We're ahead and can have the first picture out." But not if 20th Century-Fox rushes into production with its made-for-television film, Mission to Uganda.

Rescue Derring-Do. Not every studio has joined the race to Entebbe. Says United Artists Production Boss Michael Medavoy: "I have serious reservations about capitalizing on a news story like that. It cheapens everybody." That criticism notwithstanding, at least one project offers hope of exceptional accuracy: Merv Griffin Productions' Odyssey of 139, which will focus on the ordeal of the hostages rather than the derring-do of the rescue. Reason: Griffin President Murray Schwartz was aboard the hijacked plane and was among the group of hostages released prior to the Israeli rescue mission.