· The Da Vinci Code is about to pass Forrest Gump as the second-biggest drama of all time after Titanic, though we should mention that the term "drama" seems to mean "any non-comedy not starring a Hobbit, comic book superhero, Darth Vader, Harry Potter, dinosaurs, Will Smith, Reese's Pieces-eating extra-terrestrials, or Keanu Reeves." [Variety]
· As noted earlier, Owen "The Butterscotch Stallion" Wilson will star in the Paramount comedy Drillbit Taylor, about a "low budget solider of fortune" hired to protect some nerds from a high school bully. [THR]
· Reality TV production juggernaut Endemol gets started on its plan to destroy Hispanic culture by launching Endemol USA Latino, whose first order of business is making sure that Spanish-speakers have their own opportunity to shout at briefcases containing various dollar amounts. [Variety]
· Dan Rather is leaving CBS News after 44 years. We know that this probably doesn't mean anything to you, so for some perspective, imagine how you'd feel if Mary Hart suddenly stepped down from the Entertainment Tonight desk. [THR]
· Josh Lucas takes a second-banana role as an FBI investigator in Smart, based on the life of quirkly, germ-phobic GQ and Esquire magazine founder David Smart. [Variety]

· Var declares this summer "most competitive weekend," meaning that no one is really that excited about seeing new releases Lake House, Nacho Libre,
or The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, and will probably just wind up going to Cars again. [Variety]
· Sigourney Weaver is in negotiations to join the budget-conscious cast of Matthew Fox, Dennis Quaid, William Hurt, and Forest Whitaker in the blandly titled presidential assassination thriller Vantage Point. [THR]
· Josh Hartnett seeks to continue his unquestioned dominance of movies with titles including multiples of 10 and forms of the words "days" and "night" by looking to star in the Sony horror flick 30 Days of Night. [Variety]
· THR says that Hollywood's love affair with sappy romantic dramas is over. Well, over once The Lake House tanks this weekend. [THR]
· Philip Seymour Hoffman, whom we wouldn't mind seeing in about 10 movies a year, will star in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead before moving on to shoot Charlie Wilson's War with little-known character actors Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts. [Variety]

· Eminem is attached to star in the Paramount film adaptation of the TV series Have Gun— Will Travel, which will reimagine the Western's original gunslinger-for-hire as a white rapper who excels at threatening his wife in verse. Paramount doesn't want to stretch the neophyte actor too far in his first post-8-Mile role. [Variety]
· Let us all pause for a moment to join hands and thank our infinitely benevolent maker for allowing 20th Century Fox International to be the first studio to reach the $1 billion mark at the foreign box office this year. Slaughtering a fatted calf is strictly optional, unless you are a Fox employee who wants to score some points with his or her boss. [THR]
· It is now safe to officially apply the disappointing™ and Huge Fucking Bomb™ labels to Over the Hedge and Poseidon, respectively. [Variety]
· A judge ruled that producer Bob Yari had to amend his lawsuit over being denied a Crash credit by the PGA and AMPAS, probably to include the disclaimer, "I realize that in the event I am awarded this credit I am claiming my share of the responsibility for this heavy-handed artistic disaster, even if I'm only bringing this action because the movie somehow won a Best Picture Oscar." [THR]
· ICM officially admits that top agent Chris Andrews has jilted his longtime partner for bustier, sluttier mistress CAA. [Variety]

Please clear room in your schedule for tonight's mandatory gathering:

· Donald Trump and producer R.J. Cutler are planning a Monopoly-based reality series, the specifics of which are still shadowy. All that is known that a monocled, tuxedoed Trump will end each show by stiltedly reading the phrase "Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars" to a disappointed contestant from a cue card. And if the contestant is an attractive woman, he will then invite her to retrieve a "Get Out Of Jail Free" card from his trousers with her teeth. [Variety]
· Universal rewards The Break-Up writers Jeremy Garelick and Jay Lavender by picking up two "high-concept comedy pitches" for $2-3 million. It is unknown if either project was sold with the phrase "Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston star in The Make-Up." [THR]
· "What do you mean that Russell Crowe is out? Shit! OK, get me someone who's still Australian, but far nancier." [Variety]
· Larry Hagman and Kathleen Turner, both still alive (who knew?), sign on for multi-episode arcs on Nip/Tuck. [THR]
· The Dept. of Labor is investigating the WGA for allegedly failing to pay members millions in compensation from foreign taxes, a probe that is not, as far as anyone can tell (yet, anyway), secretly funded by producers, networks, and studios. [Variety]

· Please don't read anything untoward into the phrase "expand their relationship" or jump to conclusions about what kind of "modestly budgeted films with local talent" that Hugh Jackman and his partner might make. You're better than that, we know you are. [Variety]
· Bacon Plots His Revenge: You either want to read about that, or you don't. [THR]
· An upfront standoff ends as ABC drops its demand that advertisers pay for viewers who watch their shows on DVRs, but the net reserves the right to later extort ad buyers over potential viewers who intend to watch a show but never get around to it. [Variety]
· Cybill Shepherd will dabble in some girl-girl action as a member of the cast of The L Word, playing a married mother who begins to question her sexuality when surrounded by incredibly hot lesbians. [THR]
· THR launches The Hollywood Reporter ESQ, a trade paper for the people in the industry who write the contracts and lovingly sign cease and desist letters. Don't miss the first issue's centerfold spread, featuring entertainment law legend Bert Fields splayed on a bearskin rug before a cozy fire, his natural state covered by nothing but one of his books on Shakespeare. A small book. [THR]

· Da Vinci Code continues to kick ass and take the names of blasphemy fans overseas (we know we harp on this, but what else are we gonna talk about, the two and a half hours of deadly, expository dialogue explaining how they wound up in the wrong church again?), takes in $52 million in its third week. [Variety]
· Touchstone TV throws bags of money to keep Grey's Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes around through the 2008-9 season, ensuring that the studio will corner the market on platitude-filled, bookending voiceovers for years to come. [THR]
· Will Smith finds some time in his busy schedule to sign up to produce and star in Seven Pounds, about "a man intent on killing himself who falls in love before he can do the deed." Unfortunately, that's not the set-up for a romantic comedy about a guy with an adorably quirky death wish. [Variety]
· Horror superfan Rob Zombie will reimagine the Halloween franchise, with an eye on de-pussifying once-scary masked maniac Michael Myers. [THR]
· HBO and producer David Milch make a deal to end Deadwood with two two-hour specials, a four-hour series-closing event that will contractually feature no less than six hundred utterances of the word "cocksucker." [Variety]

· In describing whom her studio hopes to draw to The Break-Up's opening weekend, Universal distribution executive Nikki Rocco inadvertently confirms our suspicion that there is no such thing as "a Jennifer Aniston movie fan": "I would hope we could get the Vince Vaughn fans as well as the romantic comedy audience." [Variety]
· Winona Ryder reunites with Heathers writer Daniel Waters for his Sex and Death 101, news that just made us fondly remember how important the phrase "fuck me gently with a chainsaw" was to our teenage life. [THR]
· This information means nothing to us, but we pass it along anyone because somebody probably finds it important: Don Ienner and Michele Anthony leave posts as heads of Sony Music, bringing to an end the reign of the "longest running management partnership in music." [Variety]
· Katie Couric boldly predicts an end to the "pretentious era" in the network evening news, which she will usher out by conducting her entire CBS Nightly News broadcast dressed in a bathrobe and reclining on a sofa. [THR]
· Casey Affleck does his best to keep his big brother working in Hollywood, throwing Ben his animated family film script Aardvark Art's Ark to executive produce. [Variety]

· "Bombastic" Marvel Studios head Avi Arad, the man responsible for making sure that even the most obscure Marvel comic book character had a movie deal somewhere in Hollywood, is leaving the company for a production deal, a move suspiciously timed in the wake of his selling his shares in the company for a reported $60 million. [Variety]
· The Super Bowl nipple fine stands! The FCC decides that it was correct in penalizing CBS $550,000 for the indecent exposure of Janet Jackson's armor-plated areola. [THR]
· The actual news in this story isn't nearly as important as the side-by-side pictures of Topher Grace and Imagine superproducer Brian Grazer, which looks like a worst case scenario rendering of what Grace might look like in 25 years. [Variety]
· CBS supreme leader Les Moonves reassures his network affiliates that they're focused on their on-air programs, promising that their new, token foray into internet content delivery, Innertube, would feature nothing better than low-cost, grainy webcam video of Moonves attending to various personal hygiene tasks or the occasional trip to a Mystic Tanning center. [THR]
· Brad Pitt will hardly have time to enjoy his new baby, as he has to shoot Ocean's 13 this summer and fulfill various promotional duties for Babel and his Jesse James movie in October. You know, if Angie lets him. [Variety]

· Paramount is putting together a deal with Mike Myers to co-write and star in comedy about a "new age guru" character named Pitka, crossing its fingers that Myers won't eventually suffer another ugly Dieter-style freakout that ends in a bunch of lawsuits. [Variety]
· Columbia Pictures buys the top-secret "fraternal twins" script Jack and Jill for Adam Sandler's Happy Madison to produce and as a potential starring vehicle for Sandler. [THR]
· MGM already seems tired of its relationship with Sony, acting out against its loss of independence by snatching back its home video rights and messing around with Fox for DVD distribution. Next week, MGM plans on having Sony walk in while it screws the pool boy, just to make sure it gets the message. [Variety]
· Viewers in the key demographic prefer NBC's Last Comic Standing premiere to the reruns offered by other networks. Break out the champagne, NBC! A win is a win. [THR]
· Russell Crowe leaves Baz Luhrmann's Australian period epic over "disagreements" with 20th Century Fox, which we are contractually obligated to mention did not include physical violence. We think. [Variety]

· Sony shocks! the! world! by signing Da Vinci Code screenwriter Akiva Goldsman to adapt Dan Brown's Angels and Demons, and hopes to reunite the rest of the Blasphemy Dream Team of star Tom Hanks, director Ron Howard, and producer Brian Grazer for the project. [Variety]
· Teri Hatcher will provide the voice of star Dakota Fanning's mother in the animated feature Coraline. We predict a hair-yanking catfight that would put any Desperate Housewives shenanigans to shame should the two actresses' paths ever cross at the studio. [THR]
· Maybe Sony really did send someone to count up all the 60-cent pirate Da Vinci Code DVDs sold on the black market, as overseas grosses came in $8 million higher than originally reported. [Variety]
· Brokeback Mountain director Ang Lee now has "Fuck you, English" money, will make the Chinese-language espionage thriller Lust, Caution his next project. [THR]
· The season finale of 24, in which superagent Jack Bauer (SPOILER ALERT) rushed from place to place to kick people's asses and save the world, averaged about 13.5 million viewers, while Alias's series finale went out with the proverbial whimper. That Jennifer Garner really needs to get drunk and tackle a Christmas tree. [Variety]

· The Senate approves an indecency bill that would increase broadcast fines tenfold. According to precedent, the next time CBS decides to see if it can slip a teen orgy past the censors, it will cost them $30.6 million. And we don't even want to consider what a Super Bowl nipple-slip might cost in this brave new world. [Variety]
· The Reporter uncovers big news: Fewer broadcaster means fewer shows! Crazy shit, yo. [THR]
· Paramount renames its specialty division Paramount Vantage, which sounds more like a new plaque-fighting, tooth-whitening toothpaste than a movie studio to us. Then again, we were bound to be disappointed by anything other than John Lesher's House of Hugs. And no, we really never get tired of looking at that collage. [Variety]
· Casting, casting, casting: Rachel Weisz, Colin Firth, Ian McKellan and Susan Sarandon to star in the political thriller The Colossus, while Naomi Watts hooks up with Viggo Mortensen in David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises for Focus Features. [THR, THR]
· And in what will probably be the happiest news we hear all day, Conan O'Brien will host the Emmys again, after four year reprieve from awards show responsibilities. Can't wait for when Triumph invites Aaron Sorkin to join him for some crack and hookers backstage. [Variety]

· Fox plays it safe by returning 16 series to its fall line-up, adding just three new dramas, two new comedies, and a late night talk show. And The OC stays put on Thursdays at 9, with the network confident that since its fans still seem to be sticking around just because they remember how great it was the first season, they probably won't be lured away by Grey's Anatomy. [Variety]
· Kirsten Dunst is in negotiations to join Jack Black in Michael Gondry's Be Kind Rewind. You know, the one about the guy who erases all the tapes in a video store, and then he and his pals reshoot all the movies a nice old lady wants to rent so he doesn't get fired? That one. (Still sounds kind of awesome, actually.) [THR]
· The new MGM sets a December 22nd release date for Rocky Balboa. Look for the reborn studio to take full advantage of the date with a holiday-themed promotional blitz, including a Las Vegas boxing match in which Sylvester Stallone barely triumphs (he has to have both eyelids cut open halfway through to continue) over Santa Claus in a three-round exhibition. [Variety]
· Sony bravely chooses to continue on with its Da Vinci release plans despite the laughs and hisses of some critics at Cannes. [THR]
· Four words: Vin Diesel romantic comedy. And no, he's not going to star opposite a duck, though we'd probably find that chemistry more convincing than the one they try to cultivate with some brave actress. [Variety]

· ABC orders up six shows in advance of next week's network upfronts, the dramas The Nine, JJ Abrams' Six Degrees, and Daybreak, as well as comedies In Case of Emergency, "TV warhorse" Ted Danson's Help Me Help You, and Notes from the Underbelly. [Variety]
· Meanwhile, NBC is expected to pick up Friday Night Lights, Raines, Heroes and The Untitled Tina Fey Comedy (code name: Fuck Sorkin, There's Room For Two SNL Shows) today. [THR]
· The Da Vinci Code's global "day-and-date" release next weekend will be a crucial test for Hollywood's new strategy of unleashing its product simultaneously on international populations softened up by a coordinated media carpetbombing. We predict total box office victory, especially in places that want to piss off Catholics. [Variety]
· Viacom posts a 9% drop in first quarter profits, a loss they tragically can't blame on Paramount, Tom Cruise, and M:i:III. [THR]
· Showtime is developing an hour-long biographical drama series on Billy Joel's life, Big Shot, but its producer insists that the show "...isn't a love letter to Billy. He actually is pretty insistent that we tell the whole story." Look for the series to demonstrate that commitment to the unvarnished truth by employing a framing device in which each episode begins in a bar ands ends with a different drunken car wreck on a Long Island road. [Variety]

· The USA Network announces that it's given Mel Gibson's Icon Productions the go-ahead to develop Peace Out, a MASH-like dark comedy miniseries about the Iraq war. There shouldn't be too much controversy surrounding the project, as Gibson's hasn't publicly disclosed his polarizing belief that the war didn't actually happen. [Variety]
· Not Another Teen Movie writers Adam Jay Epstein and Andrew Jacobson will write (with the help of the Lonely Island SNL faction and a team of thousands) and direct Parental Guidance Suggested, a sketch-based film in which Frankie Muniz plays a guy who finally gets his girlfriend to put out, "only to find she wants to take things much further, including farm animals and midgets." We've always secretly wanted to see Cody Banks fuck a chicken in the presence of a little person, so we couldn't be more excited. [THR]
· HBO is looking to pick up a one-hour "surf noir" pilot from crazed Deadwood genius David Milch and writer Kem Nunn, which should provide Milch with the fresh challenge of sprinkling his trademark "fucks" and "cocksuckers" in with a liberal amount of "dudes" and "bras." [Variety]
· Activision will open a dedicated studio on the DreamWorks campus in order to facilitate its work with DreamWorks Animation to properly translate the next fifteen Shrek sequels into video games.. [THR]
· Perhaps not realizing that Spain is not located within either Japan or Korea, Universal will remake the 1987 Spanish horror film Anguish. [Variety]

· A bright red "breaking story" tag lets us know that we're supposed to care about this more than other news right now: The Beatles (Apple Corps) have lost their trademark case against Apple Computers, but plan to appeal. You can continue to indulge your iTunes addiction without interruption. [Variety]
· Benicio Del Toro is onboard and Halle Berry is in "negotiations" to join him in the highly buzzed about DreamWorks project Things We Lost in the Fire, about a recent widow who invites her dead husband's "troubled best friend" to live with her. We suspect that sweaty, troubled-best-friend-sex will be crucial to the grieving process. [THR]
· All is not lost for M:i:III, which takes in $70.3 million abroad. South Koreans seem especially excited for Tom Cruise's return to blockbusterdom. [Variety]
· TiVo is launching a service which will allow its users to search for and watch "extended commercials" from one minute to one hour in length. Meanwhile, they're perfecting technology that will summon a representative from one of their featured advertisers to a viewer's home with a single button press, where the rep will kick the targeted consumer in the genitals while shouting their product's jingle through a megaphone. [THR]
· News to us: M:i:III wasn't the only movie screening at last week's Tribeca Film Festival. [Variety]

· A video game version of The Sopranos is going forward with much of the show's cast, and with David Chase co-writing a story about Big Pussy's bastard son fighting with Philly mob. However, to get to the action, gamers will have to sit through an unskippable two-hour sequence involving Tony's strange dream about an unconsummated hunt for a cheesesteak. [Variety]
· Catherine Zeta-Jones in negotiations to play Harry Houdini's "exotic" psychic (will she ever escape such pernicious typecasting?) love interest in the in the biopic Death Defying Acts. [THR]
· CW head Dawn Ostroff will gather her lieutenants today in a secret bunker underneath the Warners Bros. lot, where they will decide which select few programs will be doomed to the obscurity of their new network's schedule. [Variety]
· Benicio Del Toro, Michelle Williams, Forest Whitaker, and Catherine O'Hara have all been recruited to provide voices in Spike Jonze's adapation of Where the Wild Things Are. [THR]
· Fox continues to bludgeon mercilessly all comers with American Idol, but last night upped the Nielsen brutality with the second part of a two-hour House special. [Variety]

· Sirius' one-time, $225 million stock payment to Howard Stern contributes to the company's $459 million loss. Still, the company's stock rose six percent, supporting the perceived value to satellite radio of having porn stars ride orgasm-inducing machinery. [Variety]
· An MPAA study claims that piracy cost the film industry $6.1 billion last year. But not having read the report, we don't know if that total counts every time someone illegally download Deuce Bigalow or Stealth for a goof as a lost DVD or ticket sale. [THR]
· Emma Roberts will star in the Fox teen flick Rodeo Gal, which writer Katie Wech will "rewrite and tailor" for Roberts, i.e., make sure there's a juicy cameo for Aunt Julia. [Variety]
· ABC yanks the once-promising, much-troubled Commander in Chief for the rest of the season. [THR]
· ABC's alternative programming chief describes the upcoming Summer Share as "'The Real World' meets 'Laguna Beach' for adults." We love it when a pitch lets you know you'll never have to watch a show. [Variety]

· The success of NBC's Deal or No Deal has erased every network's institutional memory of the primetime gameshow flops following the Who Wants to be a Millionaire? craze, as the nets scramble to once again get their copycat offerings on the air. Especially promising is Fox's obligatory knockoff, Yelling At Sequentially Numbered Duffel Bags Full Of Cash. To be hosted, of course, by a soul-patched Chuck Woolery. [Variety]
· Jack Black joins director Michael Gondry for the suitably surreal comedy Be Kind Rewind, about a man who must remake all the movies in his friend's video store after his magnetized brain destroys them all. [THR]
· Richard Gere and Terrence Howard are in talks to star in Spring Break in Bosnia, the (apparently seriocomic) tale of some journalists who are mistaken for a CIA hit squad in Bosnia. [Variety]
· ABC picks up a third full season of Boston Legal, a development that may temporarily slow William Shatner's enthusiasm for bizarre side business as he worries a little less about not having a steady paycheck. [THR]
· Fox plans to sell downloads of individual American Idol performances in both video and audio formats, allowing the modern entertainment consumer to never be far from his favorite Chris Daughtry cover of a Creed song. [Variety]

· Lionsgate picks up the worldwide distribution rights to Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged, with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie rumored to be thinking about taking the lead roles. Pitt's wanted to play John Galt ever since he pretended to read the book at the urging of his freshman year girlfriend. [Variety]
· American Idol continued its soul-crushing, monotonous domination of the ratings, as 27 million viewers tuned in to watch Simon Cowell and Ryan Seacrest exchange "No, you're gay!" jokes. [THR]
· Warner Bros. TV starts its new Warner Horizon TV division meant to specialize in lower-cost cable TV and reality fare," moving Hollywood ever closer to its goal of producing programs in which no one involved in a show's production is paid any money at all. [Variety]
· Sony continues to find the going rough, but expects to ahve its corporate ass saved by The Da Vinci Code. [THR]
· We were just about to get on board with Mike Myers starring in How to Survive a Robot Uprising from a script from Reno 911 guys Thomas Lennon and Ben Garant, but then we hit this sentence: "Studio has received notes from Myers on the Lennon and Garant draft." Uh oh. Sample note: "What if the head evil robot had a really abrasive Scottish accent?" [Variety]