Trade Round-Up: MPAA Asks Pets To Fetch Stick, Halt DVD Pirate Menace
The MPAA introduces its latest agents of movie pirate doom: Lucky and Flo, the two cutest, DVD-sniffing black Labs you've ever seen! The pups can't distinguish between pirated and legitimate disks, and can also be thrown off the trail by traffickers clever enough to pack dummy boxes full of frisbees in the same shipment as their contraband product. [Variety]
Certified series-killer Rena Sofer gets recurring roles on both 24 and Heroes, but we imagine the cancellation curse that accompanies her casting will only be strong enough to take down Heroes, the newer, weaker show. [THR]
Dreamy-eyed hunkbot Jake Gyllenhaal will join pointy-chinned ingenue Reese Witherspoon in New Line's Middle East political thriller Rendition, which we fully hope will evolve into a romantic comedy so as not to waste the crippling adoreableness of its leads on weighty matters. [Variety]
Rob Cohen cleverly deleted Stealth from his resume before going in for a meeting about helming the prison movie Scared Straight, tricking New Line into giving him another opportunity to direct. [THR]
FX's relentless pursuit of the self-consciously edgy leads it into a deal with Nip/Tuck creator Ryan Murphy for 4 oz., a drama about the "metamorphosis of a married sportswriter who is a transsexual." [Variety]