New Line's Survivor Party: We regret overlooking this story Tuesday afternoon, but the news that New Line plans its annual summer party despite pink-slipping its founders (and more than 500 other staffers) in April can't really get old, can it? Especially not with the party coming up tomorrow night at SkyBar of all places — a $35,000 fete for 45 people, according to Nikki Finke, with whom "studio insiders" debate the figure and argue that "[e]ven in the worst years New Line always had that party. ... Toby [Emmerich] felt like the summer party is part of New Line's DNA and to change that is a mistake." OK, but this is the last time: Expect Warner Bros. to absorb the party planning and invitation distribution duties in 2009, only to push the event back to 2010 when its other parties that year threaten to underperform. [DHD]

· Mad Men's second season opened to a strong start for AMC, pulling in 1.9 million aspiring womanizers and the pregnant secretaries who love them. [Variety] · The Venice Film Festival announced its slate, which will include world premieres of Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married, Kathryn Bigelow’s Hurt Locker, and the Coens's Burn After Reading. [Variety] · Deposed New Line potentates Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne's first post-studio-snuffing project will be an adaptation of Isaac Asimov's sci-fi epic Foundations for Warner Bros. The duo have an eye on adapting the book's sequels into a Lord of the Rings-style franchise, with Andy Serkis playing Andromeda, a kindly robot, and the speed of light. [THR] · CBS is developing a pilot for updated version of The Streets of San Francisco. We humbly request they retain those cool diagonal stripe-wipes from the title sequence. Those rock! [THR] · Mutinous SAG splinter-group Unite for Strength agrees with the current leadership that the AMPTP's offer is unacceptable, but differs strongly in other areas, such as where they'd like to order in lunch. (Koo Koo Roo, vs. the Alan Rosenberg-championed Chin Chin.) [Variety]

1) Miguel Forbes took a cruise to Sag Harbor aboard the family-owned Highlander, along with Alejandro Santo Domingo, Dan Abrams, Dave Zinczenko and Melissa Milne, Elle Macpherson, Stella Keitel, Craig Spitzer, Fabian Basabe, Sessa Von Richthofen (pictured, right) and Richard Johnson. [NYSD/PMc]

Now you, too, can get in on the ground floor of a major Hollywood investment opportunity: Deposed New Line kingpins Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne are coming back! Maybe! That's where you come in, according to Nikki Finke:

A tip into Defamer HQ suggests that today may be the last for the majority of remaining employees at New Line Cinema, the Time Warner subsidiary that has spent the last month transitioning from a stand-alone operation to a genre cog in the Warner Bros. machine. The speculation trickled down a little bit ago from a few private industry message boards; it would be the culmination of news expected since co-founders Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne made their own departures public Feb. 28. Production head Toby Emmerich surprised most observers last month by staying on as president and COO, but he's in the minority likely to stay on as the labels consolidate. Let us know if you've heard the same — you know where to find us.

With the recent absorption by tractor beam of sputtering starship New Line Cinema into the immense Warner Borg, the LAT takes a moment to reassess the legacy left behind by its founder, Bob Shaye. Shaye was the last of a dying breed of Honchos With Heart—lumbering, larger-than-life mogulsaurs, pounding their deep footprints into the early indie landscape, and scooping smaller talents into their gaping mandibles along the way. His only crime: that sometimes he cared too much:

The forthcoming evisceration of New Line Cinema announced yesterday by founding bosses Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne was expected for a while now, but where the pieces would fall was anyone's guess. It still is to some degree, but as the grim news settles in and Time Warner overlord Jeff Bewkes' intentions come to light, we can start parsing the good, bad and the ugly wrought from New Line's demise:

Bob Shaye

Nikki Finke reports that New Line's Michael Lynne and Bob Shaye will soon be having a heart-to-heart with Time Warner boss Jeff Bewkes about their expiring contracts, which her sources are "virtually certain" will end with the men leaving the building with cardboard boxes brimming with their favorite Lord of the Rings memorabilia. Though their tenure has recently been marred by disasters like The Last Mimzy and that little feud with Peter Jackson, we prefer to remember what is inarguably their greatest accomplishment at the studio: empowering a certain visionary to make his oft-controversial Art, no matter how many many Rush Hour installments it took to reach the limits of his hacky powers. [DHD]

Yesterday, there was much rejoicing in Fanboy Middle Earth following the announcement that director Peter Jackson would return to produce two The Hobbit movies for New Line after settling his dispute over the Lord of the Rings profits the filmmaker said the studio owed him. But how much money did it take for Jackson to rescind his onetime pledge to "feed the greedy [NL co-chairman] Bob Shaye's lifeless body to a hungry Gollum and toss what's left of his well-gnawed remains into the hottest volcano in Mordor before I begin to even think about doing another hairy-midget flick"? About $40 million, according to two people involved. [NY Times]

Having signalled the beginning of a difficult revitalization process through the ceremonial sacrifice of their longtime marketing chief to the Hollywood gods earlier this week (in fairness, you try and sell something called The Last Mimzy), embattled New Line executives Bob Shaye and Tobey Emmerich sat down with the LAT's Patrick Goldstein to discuss What Went Wrong during their recent, flop-riddled run—Hairspray notwithstanding—and to share their vision for the studio's future. In a refreshing change of course, Emmerich reveals that they're ready to recognize that a screenplay is only as good as the one-sheet that condenses its ideas into a single, multiplex-lobby-friendly image and the test marketing audience that will recognize its third act problems at a fraction of the cost of a roomful of clueless development execs. Reports Goldstein:

The LAT's Patrick Goldstein profiles cantankerous New Line co-chairman/co-CEO Bob Shaye, an executive utterly unafraid to call an unimpressed reviewer "schmucky," alienate a filmmaker who's made his studio a billion dollars, or to make a controversial choice to have Rainn Wilson's tantalizingly revealed hindquarters digitally obscured so as not to pander to an audience's basest, crack-craving tastes, a principled decision that could cost his upcoming film, The Last Mimzy, untold millions in ticket sales. In talking to the Times, Shaye also demonstrates a willingness to publicly call out a certain hacky director of a hit franchise who might be taking advantage of the fact that his movie is New Line's best chance at making some money this summer: