WHAT’S UP WITH MARIAH?

All that glitters is still gold, but for Mariah Carey the sparkle has been delayed.

20th Century Fox has bumped the diva’s big screen debut, Glitter, to Sept. 21. At press time, the soundtrack is still scheduled for an Aug. 21 street date, though rumors abound that it will be pushed back as well. The singer’s Virgin bow is shipping 1.2 million.

The promotion machine rolls on, with "Never Too Far," the second single from the album getting early adds ahead of next Monday’s impact date, including Z100, WKTU, WLTW, WBLI and B96.

Virgin’s New Media Department has cooked up the Mariah Carey Jukebox, which allows users to hear 90-second clips of all the tracks from the upcoming album. The site has links to pre-purchase the CD (from neutral sites such as Amazon.com, TWEC.com, BestBuy.com and others), view the movie trailer and to Carey’s official website. It uses Macromedia’s Flash plug-in, playing in near-CD quality right from user’s browsers.

According to VP Marketing Eric Ferris, "Because this is a soundtrack record and she’s done a lot of collaborations with a lot of artists, we had to figure out a unique way to use the Internet to promote the fact that this is a strong album."

Virgin is building custom pages for third-party websites for VH1.com, MTV.com, KUBE.com, House of Blues, Get Music and RollingStone.com, with more retail and radio station sites following suit. The jukebox will stay up through the first week of the album’s release.

Says VP New Media Ty Braswell: "A ton of people are going to buy this record on day one. We’re trying to reach the ones who are like, ‘I don’t know…I need to hear another single on the radio before I plop down my money.’ Those are the ones we’re trying to get to."

Adds National Promotion Director Lisa Hackman: "We wanted to give people an opportunity to see what’s on the album and really get a taste ahead of time and to build excitement for the project. That’s the best thing that we could do with an artist like Mariah."

Carey has been under psychiatric care since July 25. She checked in just days after she made a series of bizarre public appearances and posted several rambling messages to fans on her official website.

After spending about two weeks in a hospital, Mariah was discharged Wednesday (8/8) morning. "Mariah is feeling better," said Carey publicist Cindi Berger. "She is resting under a doctor's care at an undisclosed location with her mother."