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Paramount has become the newest movie studio to make efforts to compete with pirates by offering low-cost, legitimate DVDs in China. New movie titles will go on sale some two months after their theater debut in the US, and for only $3. Paramount will also be joining forces with an unlikely partner in order to combat piracy: competitor Warner Bros., which already has outlets set up in China to sell DVDs.

Time Warner (parent company to Warner Bros.) was the first to try to undercut Chinese movie pirates by selling cheap DVDs in mid-2006. It formed Warner China as a partnership between Warner Bros., China Film Group, and Hengdian Group to sell movies just days after theatrical release for rock-bottom prices: just 10 to 12 yuan (between $1.30 and $1.60). Warner was followed by Fox a few months later, which planned to mirror that strategy but at a higher price—about 20 to 25 yuan, which translates to about $3.

The problem with $3 is that it’s more than double the typical price for illicit street copies of the same movies. But Warner Bros. and Paramount, like Fox, hope that the premium won’t deter customers from buying if they know it’s a real, legal version. As Fox’s international home-entertainment manager Keith Feldman said last November, “It comes down to our ability as marketers to convince the Chinese consumer it’s worth spending the money.”

Both Warner Bros. and Paramount say that this will be the earliest release date and lowest price that their movies have ever been sold for, worldwide. And their reason for teaming up with one another is strategic: they are competing against piracy in China, not each other. The more legit movies that are available in one spot, the more attractive the outlets will become to prospective buyers. “We’re committed to developing a legitimate market in China, and having two more Hollywood studios gives us more critical mass,” Warner Bros. managing director of China distribution, Tony Vaughan, said in a news conference, according to the Associated Press.

Whatever the price, the studios have come to realize that without affordable offerings in China, they won’t make any sales, period. Even just selling a few thousand movies at $3 per disc will be better than nothing. Plus, it helps the studios bolster movie sales numbers, which will be equally important to them while DVD sales in the West continue to go flat.

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — General Motors, no stranger to hard times and red ink, still managed to shock Wednesday when it reported an operating loss more than 11 times larger than expected and a $39 billion charge that was among the biggest profit hits ever reported.

The nation’s No. 1 automaker, which was hit with a soft U.S. auto market and a two-day strike by the United Auto Workers union during the quarter, lost $1.6 billion, or $2.80 a share, excluding special items.

Among the problems hurting GM results was a $2.3 billion loss in the home loan business at GMAC due to problems from the meltdown in subprime mortgages. GM sold a majority of GMAC but still owns 49 percent of the lender.

In addition, GM took a huge charge in the quarter related to the writedown of tax credits for losses over the last three years.

That caused it to post a net loss of $39 billion, or $68.85 a share, for the third quarter, compared with the net loss of $147 million, or 26 cents a share, in the year-earlier period. Only a gain from the sale of the Allison Transmission unit stopped the loss from being worse.

In addition, the charge is significantly larger than the $12.4 billion net loss posted by GM for all of 2005 and 2006, when the company was hammered by falling shares and labor costs far in excess of its nonunion rivals. The company had net income of $953 million for the first six months of the year before hitting the problems in the third quarter.

Revenue from auto sales rose to $43.1 billion from $39.6 billion a year earlier. That topped First Call’s revenue forecast of $40.3 billion. The automaker sold a record 2.39 million cars and trucks worldwide in the quarter, enough to edge back in front of Toyota Motor in the race to be the world’s largest automaker in terms of vehicle sold.

Cliffnotes (for those lazy mofos): GM posted a huge $39 billion loss in the third quarter due to accounting charges, even as its global auto operations reported a profit sending shares to new lows.

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Nov. 5 (Bloomberg) — Gisele Bundchen wants to remain the world’s richest model and is insisting that she be paid in almost any currency but the U.S. dollar.

Like billionaire investors Warren Buffett and Bill Gross, the Brazilian supermodel, who Forbes magazine says earns more than anyone in her industry, is at the top of a growing list of rich people who have concluded that the currency can only depreciate because Americans led by President George W. Bush are living beyond their means.

Even after the dollar lost 34 percent since 2001, the biggest investors and most accurate forecasters say it will weaken further as home sales fall and the Federal Reserve cuts interest rates. The dollar plummeted to its lowest ever last week against the euro, Canadian dollar, Chinese yuan and the cheapest in 26 years against the British pound.

When Bundchen, 27, signed a contract in August to represent Pantene hair products for Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble Co., she demanded payment in euros, according to Veja, Brazil’s biggest weekly magazine. She’ll also get euros for the deal she reached last October with Dolce & Gabbana SpA in Milan to promote the Italian designer’s new fragrance, The One, Veja reported. Bundchen earned $33 million in the year through June, Forbes reported in July.

“Contracts starting now are more attractive in euros because we don’t know what will happen to the dollar,” Patricia Bundchen, the model’s twin sister and manager in Brazil, said in a telephone interview in September from Sao Paulo. She declined to discuss details of the arrangements last week, as did Anne Nelson, Bundchen’s agent in New York at IMG Models.

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