When American Media chief David Pecker hired Bonnie Fuller away from Us Weekly last summer, he told everyone who would listen about his intention to have her remake the flagging Star in the image of the hot Wenner Media title.
   He's lived up to his commitment -- and then some.
   Fuller’s glossy remake of the Star, the first copies of which hit newsstands in New York yesterday, is essentially Us with a different name on the cover and some minor design changes.
   Seeing as it was Fuller who came up with the Us formula in the first place, it’s not exactly copycatting, but the practical result is the same: a pair of indistinguishable magazines.
   Pecker's strategy in repositioning the Star is to move it away from the tabloids, a segment long in decline, and toward People and Us, which are infinitely more successful as ad vehicles.
   But Us succeeded precisely because Fuller -- unlike her predecessor, Terry McDonell -- was effective in distinguishing it from People. The Star, in contrast, seems to think it can simply out-Us Us. 
    Where Us has “Faces & Places,” a lineup of celebrities in like-hued gowns, Star has “Style & Error.” Where Us has a panel of comedians cracking wise in “Fashion Police,” Star does the same with “Style Stalkers.”
   At times, the resemblance is uncanny. Both magazines have a spread featuring celebrities who spent Christmas in Aspen and another of stars who spent it on the beach.
   Star editor in chief Joe Dolce says it was not the intention to clone Us. By the end of February, when the rollout is complete – for now, only New York and Los Angeles are getting glossy copies – the magazine will look significantly different, he claims.
   “The major hurdle has been to get the glossy mag produced,” he says. “The next hurdle will be to refine and distinguish ourselves as much as possible from the competition.”
   This week was not an ideal one for differentiation thanks to Britney Spears, whose Las Vegas  marriage and subsequent annulment was such earth-shaking news, at least in celebrity magazine terms, that Us, People, In Touch and the Star all felt compelled to put it on their covers. 
   But Dolce argues that the Star took a newsier approach to the story than Us, running a photo of the bride and groom as its cover shot, whereas Us went with a stock photo of just Britney.
   “Our story is about ‘Britney’s Wild 55 Hour Marriage.’ Their story is ‘Britney out of Control.’ Subtle as that may be, we wanted to focus on the news of the moment,” he says.
  “I had four reporter teams in four different cities in a day and a half. We pulled out all the guns to make this story the best story.”
  Another difference, he says, is that the Star covers a broader range of celebrities, including older people who are of little interest to Us’s 20-something demographic.
   As for “Style Stalkers,” Dolce acknowledges the similarity but says it will evolve into something quite different from “Fashion Police.” “We just didn’t have the time to resolve it the way we would have liked.”
   But some degree of resemblance will always be inevitable, he says, given that four books all rely on the same pool of paparazzi photographs.
  “We are only basing our content on what is available to us, picture-wise,” he says. “We’re all dealing with the same information. It’s the way we package it that’s different.”
   The Star’s circulation has actually fallen slightly since Fuller took over as editorial director last July. It now averages between 950,000 and 1 million, according to Dolce, who attributes the drop to a cover price increase, from $2.39 to $2.99. With the new format, the price goes up again, to $3.29.
   “With the glossies out there, there’s going to be another small slice of shedding going on,” he says. “But I think we’re going to pick up a huge new group of readers.”