After the orgy end, the hard work begins. There are vomitoriums to be scrubbed and receipts for Transformers 2 to be counted. The summer belonged to Michael Bay and Megan Fox, but this week belongs to the accountants.

Limping back from summer vacation, plumes of smoke hanging over Burbank, Hollywood may be in flames, but for Hollywood the Land of Dreams, nothing gets the brain churning again like erasing the past and starting afresh.

While the box office savants are impressed with the better-than-expected grosses of this weekend's horror flicks — Final Destination 3-D and Halloween Rebooted 2 — the question on many lips is why did this slasher showdown have to happen?

• Get ready for the Spider-Man ride at Disney World: Walt Disney has agreed to pay $4 billion in cash and stock to acquire Marvel Entertainment. [NYT, WSJ]
• Because she was clearly the very best person for the job, Jenna Bush has signed on with the Today show. The daughter of the former president will be contributing stories "about once a month on issues like education." [THR]
• The Final Destination was No. 1 at the box office this weekend with a $28.3 million take; Inglourious Basterds came in No. 2 with $20 million. [THR]
• Newsstand magazine sales continue to fall. Single-copy sales fell 12 percent during the first half of the 2009 compared to the same period in 2008. [AP]
• NBC's new slogan for its fall marketing campaign? "More colorful." [Variety]

• Last night's long-delayed premiere of the sixth season of Project Runway—on Lifetime, not Bravo—earned the show its highest ratings ever. [NYT, THR]
• Breathe easy: Anna Wintour's travel itinerary for the fall fashion shows in London, Paris and Milan will not be affected by the recent round of budget cuts at Condé Nast. She'll be staying at the Ritz in Paris, as usual. [NYP]
• The cuts have claimed Condé's supply of coffee stirrers, however. [P6]
• Another member of the Sulzberger clan is joining the New York Times. [NYO]
• News Corp. has been meeting with newspaper publishers to discuss forming some sort of "consortium" to charge people for access to news online. [LAT]
• News Corp. is also in talks to sell its Dow Jones stock market index. [NYT]
• Harvey and Bob Weinstein have a lot riding on the success of Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. How is the movie expected to perform at the box office this weekend? Not too bad, per early estimates. [THR]

• Another media company falls: Reader's Digest Association, the publisher of Reader's Digest (duh) and a handful of other titles (like Every Day with Rachael Ray), says it will file for bankruptcy protection shortly. [Reuters]
• As you may have heard, things haven't been too well for Harvey Weinstein and his brother, Bob. So what will happen if they don't turn the mini-studio around? "I'll be... making cheap hamburgers, or selling trailers, or refrigerators, or something," says (a refreshingly honest) Harvey. [NYT]
• Fashion mags are looking a bit thin this fall, in case you haven't heard. [WSJ]
• Don't expect the feud between Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann to dissipate: Ratings for both have been up since the war of words began anew. [LAT]
• Comedian Steve Harvey is joining Good Morning America. In related news, comedian Mo Rocca is hosting a web-based show for CBS News. [ABC, NYT]
• District 9 was No. 1 at the box office this past weekend. [ABC News]

• Two years after he was booted from MSNBC and CBS Radio for making racist comments, Fox Business is now in talks to team up with Don Imus. [LAT]
• Is Hachette selling Elle? The company seems to be hedging. [AdAge]
• Magazine publishers are allowing advertisers to slap their ads just about any place they want these days. They're also planning to keep printing those annoying subscription cards until the end of time. [NYT, AdAge]
• ABC is planning a big programming push for the fall with seven new series set to debut, which is roughly double what NBC and CBS have planned. [USAT]
• CNBC's ratings are down big, in case you haven't heard. [Guardian]
• G.I. Joe was No. 1 at the box office this weekend, grossing an estimated $56 million. Julie and Julia came in second place with $20.1 million. [Variety]

Hollywood's been waiting for the answer to the question Does Judd Apatow have what it takes to be a "serious film" filmmaker? or at least wants to know about his bankability in drama. Take a guess what happened.

• Reed Elsevier is planning to sell a bunch of publications, including Broadcasting & Cable, Publishers Weekly and Multichannel News. [THR]
• Rodale's president and CEO, Steve Murphy, has resigned. [Gawker]
• Disney reports third-quarter profit fell 26 percent from the same quarter a year ago. Sony posted a loss for the quarter, as well. [AP, Reuters]
• Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia reported a loss, but beat estimates. [NYP]
• TLC's been having a pretty good year, in case you haven't heard. [LAT]
• Amy Poehler is coming back to SNL. Just part-time, though. [Vulture]
• Maria Bartiromo has locked in a new five-year contract with CNBC. [VF]
• Dustin "Screech" Diamond's tell-all memoir will be published, after all! [NYO]

Sure, sure, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince raked in a gazillion dollars this weekend. But who are these people who went to Ice Age? Our guess: creationist parents who wanted their kids to watch a nature documentary.

• News of Walter Cronkite's death on Friday evening didn't generate a Michael Jackson-like reaction, but the hour-long CBS News special honoring him on Sunday proved a ratings winner. In related news, the network will continue airing Cronkite's voice-over introducing the CBS Evening News. [NYT, NYT]
• Is Janice Min leaving Us Weekly? That's the rumor, at least. [P6]
• Fashion magazines are looking a little thin this fall, not surprisingly. [MW]
• Padma Lakshmi is in talks with NBC to star in a sitcom. [Variety]
• More changes are afoot at Interview: Evan Schindler is the troubled mag's new president. And Stephen Mooallem has been named editor-in-chief. [NYT]
• As expected, the new Harry Potter movie mopped up at the box office this weekend with $79.5 million in ticket sales. The big loser? Brüno, which fell to fourth place as sales plummeted 73 percent. [EW, Variety]

• It looks like Vogue is finally taking note of the recession. The July issue features a $40 Gap hat and $50 pair of J. Crew shorts. Ouch. [NYT]
• The Transformers sequel topped the box office once again this week, raking in $42.4 million to edge out Fox's 3D movie Ice Age by a smidge. [THR]
• Some retailers have been covering up the new issue of GQ featuring a semi-nude Sacha Baron Cohen. Not that GQ minds the "controversy." [NYT]
• Casey Kasem counted down the hits for the last time this weekend. [ABC]

• Despite unkindly reviews from most critics, the Transformers sequel racked up $112 million at the box office over the weekend, bringing its five-day gross to more than $200 million. [THR]
• Don't worry too much about the New York Times going under. AdAge reports the paper should be in business until at least 2011. [AdAge]
• Viacom is not going to buy MySpace from News Corp., alas. [Reuters]
• NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker is so concerned about the situation at the company's film division, he's sending his CFO to LA to crack skulls. [NYP]
• More bad news for the TV biz: According to a new report, the industry faces a $2 billion ad slump over the next four years. [FT]
• Not only did the New York Times keep news of reporter David Rohde's kidnapping a secret, the paper kept it off of Wikipedia, too. [NYT]
• MSNBC's is hoping broadcasting in HD boosts ratings. [B&C]
• Kate Gosselin's next book has been postponed; you can guess why. [NYP]
• VH1 has two new hip-hop-themed reality shows in the works. [THR]

Pixar continues its eerily strong success streak with its latest picture, about a floating house. Terminator is in trouble, while the Ben Stiller bubble has yet to pop. It probably never will.

• How is Twitter going to make money? With a reality TV series, naturally. The show will involve "putting ordinary people on the trail of celebrities in a revolutionary competitive format," in case you were wondering. [Variety]
• The primetime lineups for next year "are chockablock with shows meant to make recession-weary viewers laugh and feel better." How encouraging! [NYT]
• Ratings are down for CNN's Anderson Cooper as well as for Roland Martin, who has been subbing for Campbell Brown recently. [Page Six]
• Bravo's next Real Housewives installment: Washington, DC. [Daily Intel]
• Fox News nut Greta Van Susteren may not be around for long. Rumor has it her contract won't be be renewed and Megyn Kelly will replace her. [NYT]
• New York lost close to $5 million last year; with ad pages down 37 percent thus far in 2009, "losses are expected to be even higher this year." [NYP]
• A Russian investment firm has dropped $200 million into Facebook's bank account in return for a 1.96 percent stake in the company. [NYT]
• Ben Stiller's Night at the Museum sequel beat out the fourth installment of the Terminator franchise with a four-day pull of $70 million. [Reuters]

• Monthly mags continue to suffer: Ad pages have dropped by 23 percent on average, although the situation is particularly dire at Condé Nast. [NYP]
• Maureen Dowd landed in a bit of hot water after it was revealed she'd "borrowed" from blogger Josh Marshall for her op-ed column yesterday. She's since offered a (dubious) explanation and apology. [E&P, HP, Politico]
• Television networks start selling ads for the fall season today as part of upfront week, although the economy is putting a damper on things. [NYT]
• Despite few successes and many failures, NBC golden boy Ben Silverman still has a job. For how much longer, though, is anybody's guess. [NYT]
• Angels & Demons was No. 1 at the box office with a $48 million haul. [WSJ]
• If you can't find Newsweek on newsstands, that may be because the magazine has totally redesigned itself. [Newsweek, WaPo, HuffPo]

• Execs at CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox are supposedly "seething" that the president's three news conferences have cost them $30 million in ad revenue. [THR]
• Is the New York Times Co. heading towards bankruptcy? [E&P]
• More budget cuts at the Star Ledger and San Francisco Chronicle. [E&P, HP]
• The LA Times introduces a new weekly magazine this Sunday. [Folio]
• Star Trek is off to a fast start. The pic grossed $7 million last night alone. [EW]
• It looks like television and radio advertising is rebounding a bit. [MLM]
• Former Radar editor Maer Roshan is now the editor of TheWeek.com. [NYP]
• The Simpsons got its own series of postage stamps yesterday. [Reuters]

• The 2009 Pulitzer Prize winners were announced today. [Pulitzer.org]
• It's been six years since the release of The Da Vinci Code, but Knopf says Dan Brown's latest, The Lost Symbol, will hit stores in September. [AP]
• Hollywood agencies Endeavor and William Morris appear to have cemented a merger, although an official announcement is still forthcoming. [THR]
• With the radio business struggling, some commercial stations are now following the lead of public radio and asking for donations. [WSJ]
• 17 Again was No. 1 at the box office with a gross of $24.1 million. [THR]
• Fran Drescher says she's in talks to host a cable TV talk show. The program would cover politics, culture, and health issues, and she claims she's in discussions with MSNBC, PBS, and Oprah Winfrey's OWN. God help us. [USN]

• Amazon.com is in the hot seat for stripping gay and lesbian books of their sales rankings, something the bookseller is now calling a "glitch." [EW, WSJ]
• MSNBC is reportedly in the process of developing a weekend political show to be moderated by chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd. [NYO]
• More bad news for barely-living BlackBook: its longtime fashion director is out. And Jann Wenner's marketing chief is leaving Wenner Media. [WWD]
• Alpha Media has laid off a handful of employees at Maxim, including deputy editor Chris Wilson and editor-at-large Steve Garbarino. [NYO]
• Magazines are looking to raise subscription rates to save themselves. [NYT]

• The Chicago Sun-Times filed for bankruptcy protection today. [BN, NYT]
• Nielson is planning to cut 1,600 jobs, or 5% of its workforce. [AdAge]
• NBC is keeping the lights on at Friday Night Lights, after all. [NYT]
• Because it has precious other good news to report as it sits in fourth place, NBC says it saved $2 million last year by "going green." Congrats. [AP]
• MTV has ordered up four more seasons of The Real World. [THR]
• Sad news, soap fans: CBS is thinking about pulling the plug on Guiding Light, the longest-running daytime drama on television. [NYM]
• The MPAA reports global box office revenues were up 5.2% in 2008. [THR]
• Disney's TV unit has inked a distribution deal with YouTube. [NYT]
• How bad is the situation at CNN? "It's gotten so bad that Fox's Bill O'Reilly has actually taken to saying kind things about CNN, possibly out of pity." [MM]