Hollywood Returning to Obama Fold

President Barack Obama is starting to lure Hollywood donors back into the fold after his decision earlier this year to side with Internet companies over an antipiracy measure angered the entertainment industry and left many of them slow to open their checkbooks.

Actor George Clooney said that a fundraising dinner at his Los Angeles home on May 10 would raise $10 million for the president's re-election, the largest amount ever for a single Obama campaign event. If true, that would exceed the sum the Obama campaign raised from the entertainment industry in the 2008 presidential race. The Clooney event may signal that President Obama successfully mollified dismayed Hollywood executives when he personally called them in the wake of the January antipiracy decision. President Obama rankled Hollywood donors, a mainstay of Democratic fundraising, by opposing the Stop Online Piracy Act, a measure entertainment executives believed to be crucial to the industry's financial health.