Trade Round-Up: The Return Of Mike Ovitz
· Michael Ovitz will produce a feature version of the Tom Clancy videogame Splinter Cell for Paramount. Ovitz is back, baby! By the end of next week, he'll demand that Paramount make him president and erect a bronze statue in his likeness on top of their famous water tower. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· Diane Keaton, Sarah Jessica Parker and Dermot Mulroney join Claire Danes, Rachel McAdams and Luke Wilson in the Fox 2000 romantic comedy formerly known as Hating Her, and now tentatively titled Kind of Like Meet the Parents Meets Anything That Meg Ryan Was In Before The Surgery. [THR]
· Working Title Productions has picked up the spec feature Suicide Squad, a caper where a suicide hotline operator "recruits a ragtag group of suicidal outcasts to help him knock over a horse track." You know what? We kind of love this idea, but it's only going to end in disaster when they cast Josh Hartnett. [THR]
· Fox hires former Golden Girls showrunner Mort Nathan to write the sitcom Spirit of America, which will mine endless laughs from the hilarious situation in Iraq. [Variety]
· Fox fails to learn the lessons of this TV season and keeps moving forward with the Fox Reality Channel, hiring David Lyle to run the network that will provide a new outlet for their low-rated reality show flops. [THR]