· The NY premiere of United 93 is a huge success! Reports Var: "After the film's devastating final scene, the screen abruptly went dark and a cacophony of loud, uncontrollable sobs could be heard coming from the back of the theater, where many of the nearly 100 family members of 9/11 victims were seated." Universal explores the possibility of rotating the still-grieving family members through theaters across the country, allowing non-NY-based moviegoers the chance to feel the film's full impact. [Variety]
· Former William Morris agents Steve Glick and Gregory Liptsone sue WMA for "artificially reducing the value of the company's stock" by labeling executive bonuses as operating expenses, leading to underreported profits. It's always sad when agents lose sight of why the got into the business in the first place: to fuck over other people, not their own employees. [THR]
· Will Smith signs up for his seemingly tenth job in the last two weeks, will star in the perpetually-in-turnaround project I Am Legend for Warner Brothers. [Variety]
· Casting genius must be acknowledged: Jason Lee will be the voice of Underdog in Disney's live-action adaptation. Still no word on what role will be offered to Lee pal and fellow Scientologist Giovanni Ribisi. [THR]
· Ben Stiller re-teams with the Farrelly Brothers, the zipper-wielding genital torturers who made him a big star in There's Something About The Mary, in Seven Day Itch, a "loose remake" of The Heartbreak Kid. [Variety]

· Warner Bros. determines that the cast of Ocean's Thirteen really needs a big-name actor to chew the scenery being ignored by the other big-name actors phoning in their performances, adds Al Pacino to the project. [Variety]
· Jack Valenti supports a $300 million media ad campaign to educate parents on being responsible for their kids' viewing habits by using the V-Chip, warning them that "not utilizing this crucial barrier against inappropriate adult content is like throwing open the front door to your home and inviting in your neighborhood's sex offenders for a kindgergarten-diddling play date." [THR]
· "Ambiguous" tracking info on Universal's United 93 has the studio anxiously awaiting the movie's reception at itsTribeca Film Fest premiere, which may give them a sense of how it might fare against this weekend's other new release competition. Good news: RV's late tracking says that audiences feel it's "too soon" for another Robin Williams movie after the tragedy of House of D. [Variety]
· Studios pray that their coming onslaught of animated family films can distract overseas audiences from the World Cup. Possible marketing slogan: "Why not trample each other at Garfield's A Tale of Two Kitties instead?" [THR]
· Touchstone TV and the three major guilds come to an agreement on residuals for a long-delayed Lost spinoff for mobile phones, allowing the regular cast to participate and saving fans from having to watch "mobisodes" consisting entirely of silent background actors wandering around in dirty clothes. [Variety]

· Paramount hands over its Star Trek movie franchise to JJ Abrams for a resurrection, who will write, produce, and direct (with a host of his Lost and M:i3 cohorts) a Trek prequel. Abrams, respectful of Trekkie devotion, plans to adapt this piece of fan art into the story of Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock's early, experimental days at Starfleet Academy. [Variety]
· And in other JJ Abrams-related news, Alias and Lost producer Jesse Alexander signs a two-year overall deal with NBC Universal TV Studios. [THR]
· Hollywood NepotismWatch: Ron Howard will direct The Look of Real, and "hopes" that the movie will star his daughter, Bryce Dallas Howard. Yeah, we think we like the kid's chances of getting the gig. [Variety]
· Gilmore Girls showrunners Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino leave Gilmore Girls after Warner Bros TV refuses to play ball on a new contract as the show shifts to The CW for its probable last season. [THR]
·The Lifetime Network enables Shannen Doherty to become professionally bitchy, signing her up for a reality series in which viewers can hire the actress to dump their boyfriends or terrorize other people in their life. Yes, for real. We can't wait. [Variety]

· Sofia Coppola's Marie-Antionette, Richard Linklater's Fast Food Nation, Richard "Donnie Darko" Kelly's Southland Tales, Pedro Almodovar's Volver, and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Babel all land in competition at Cannes, while hack-helmed, big-budget blockbusters Da Vinci Code and X-Men: The Last Stand appear just for the free trip to France. [Variety]
· Mick Jagger digs deep to find a piece of his soul he hasn't already sold, then offers it to ABC in exchange for a role in a sitcom pilot. [THR]
· Suspicious that the folks at CAA must know about a secret warehouse full of fresh babies somewhere in Century City, ICM follows the juggernaut toddler-gobbling agency out of Beverly Hills and into new office space in the MGM building [Variety]
· KristieAnne Reed (not a typo, there's no space in her first name as far as we can tell) is promoted to executive VP of Bruckheimer TV. "KristieAnne is one of the brightest and most talented executives I've had the pleasure of working with," said Jerry Bruckheimer, who then brutally murdered her as a tie-in for a planned CSI episode taking place in Hollywood, defying his forensic detective stars to connect him to the slaying. [THR]
· Legendary Pictures is developing a live-action film adaptation of Paradise Lost, which will be reimagined as a romantic comedy between Adam and Eve in hopes of attracting Matthew McConaughey and Reese Witherspoon as stars.. [Variety]

· The ascendance of more militant leadership factions at the Writers and Screen Actors Guilds has Hollywood fearing that the unions may strike instead of just rolling over and accepting their usual buggering over residuals when their contracts are up. [Variety]
· Matthew Perry signs on to play a depressed screenwriter who only seems perky (i.e., a successful writer) in the dark comedy Numb. [THR]
· Concierge-battering roughneck Russell Crowe invites jokes about ironic movie titles by signing up to star in the "indie thriller" Tenderness. [Variety]
· Renee Zellweger takes a bold career step backwards, joining the cast of Paramount's creepy-kid-who-will-wind-up-stealing-every-scene-she's-in horror flick Case 39. [THR]
· Woody Allen dumps his Parisian mistress and returns to the comforting bosom of his recent London-based fling. [Variety]

· Paramount and Tom Cruise will premiere M:i:III in Rome on April 24, a fitting tribute to the city that so warmly hosted hosted the coming out party for the world's most suspicious relationship. [Variety]
· William H. Macy will class up Touchstone's City Slickers Meets The Hell's Angels flick Wild Hogs, joining a casting-by-dartboard ensemble of John Travolta, Tim Allen, and Martin Lawrence. [THR]
· Disney pushes Mel Gibson's Apocalypto from a late summer to a Dec. 8th release, perhaps downgrading the film from "blockbuster" to "holiday heartwarmer" or "Oscar bait" status. The studio is also considering dubbing the movie from Mayan into its proprietary Atlantean dialect, hoping the move from obscure to fictional language might impress Academy voters. [Variety]
· ABC finally proves that not everything can be a hit following Desperate Housewives, as new series What About Brian shed 27% of its cherished key demographic viewers. [THR]
· The casting of Kate Winslet in Elton John's CGI Gnomeo and Juliet (just what it sounds like—Shakespeare with "tacky garden gnomes") may have saved the project from the cutest circle of Miramax's development hell [Variety]

· Variety quotes an internal McDonald's memo about the company's preparations for a publicity war against Fox Searchlight's forthcoming Fast Food Nation: "'A lot of work is going on behind the scenes... from a crisis management standpoint,' the memo said. Though no specifics were spelled out, McDonald's is planning a 'campaign to tell the real story,' including mobilizing a 'truth squad' and possibly attempting to 'discredit the message and the messenger.'" Should early attempts at counterspin fail, the "truth squad" will be dispatched to execute Super Size Me's Morgan Spurlock as a warning to future Big Mac suppressives. [Variety]
· Woody Allen hires longtime Allen impersonator David Krumholtz to star opposite Michelle Williams in his new Paris-set movie. [THR]
· Will Smith is attached to star in Greenbacks, a "Morocco-set action thriller revolves around an American ex-pat who stumbles across a plot to destabilize the world's economy by mass-producing perfect counterfeit greenbacks." We're going to assume that the omission of "charming" from the character description was merely an oversight. [Variety]
· Veteran TV directors watched helplessly as a record number of feature directors snapped up their pilot gigs. [THR]
· Queen Latifah signs up for Welfare Queen, a "fact-based story of a woman who scammed the welfare system out of a fortune." We're going to assume that the omission of "large and sassy" from the character description was merely an oversight. [Variety]

· Fox picks up the reality competition show On the Lot from Steven Spielberg and Mark Burnett, in which undiscovered filmmakers will compete in an Apprentice/American Idol-style competition for a development deal with DreamWorks. Unfortunately, Spielberg won't be a Trump- or Cowell-like presence on the show, robbing us the joy of watching him fumble through badly written narration or berating the contestant's work. Perhaps a better idea for a Spielberg reality vehicle would've been a Survivor-inspired series in which the director votes hacks like Michael Bay out of Hollywood. [Variety]
· George Lopez joins the cast of ping pong comedy Balls of Fury, drastically lowering any excitement we might have felt about the project. [THR]
· The British courts rule in favor of Dan Brown in the Da Vinci Code copyright infringement case, allowing millions to throw money at Ron Howard's big-screen interpretation this summer without fretting that the source material was misappropriated from another work. [Variety]
· Potential box office disasters The Benchwarmers and Take the Lead shouldn't even bother opening against CGI talking-animal juggernaut Ice Age: The Meltdown this weekend. [THR]
· Good news, bad news department: Danny DeVito and Matthew Broderick will star in New Regency's
"neighbors in a fight over Christmas decorations" comedy All Lit Up, but the Big Momma's House 2 team is still writing and directing it.. [Variety]

· Because merely propping up a Kate Couric RealDoll in a chair next to Matt Lauer would be too creepy for the morning show demo, NBC steals The View's Meredith Vieira to replace Couric on Today. And nope, still can't make ourselves care. [Variety]
· Great news for Lost fans: Touchstone TV throws piles of money down the hatch to keep showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse with the show for at least another season. [THR]
· Var beat us to the Extreme Makeover joke, but ABC's comedy development team is on the way out. We suppose that someone had to pay the price for the Jake in Progess/Emily's Reasons Why Not no-see TV block. [Variety]
· Seemingly Bizarre Studio Choice That May Only Make Sense Two Years From Now Of The Day: Bend It Like Beckham and Bride & Prejudice director Gurinder Chadha will take over the big screen remake of Dallas for Fox. [THR]
· CAA will branch out to eat babies on behalf of sports stars, poaching IMG agents Tom Condon and Ken Kremer (who between them have clients like Peyton and Eli Manning) from IMG. [Variety]

· After three weeks at the top of the box office in Hong Kong, Eight Below star Paul Walker's march towards international superstardom seems more inevitable than ever. [Variety]
· In other news involving huge international stars, John Stamos joins ER (apparently still on TV!) with a full-time gig as "a flirtatious paramedic who also is a medical student and a Gulf War veteran." Yeah, that sounds about right. [THR]
· New Line plans an interactive "Thrill Ride" edition of the Final Destination 3 DVD—think Choose Your Own Adventure, but instead of being captured by a suspicious old miner, you suffer a ridiculous and gruesome death at the hands of Fate. [Variety]
· Deal or No Deal continues to mystify us with its success, drawing 17.5 million viewers last night. Fox is rumored to be in the planning stages of its obligatory hybrid knockoff, Celebrities Screaming At Briefcases Full of Money. (We're going to keep making that "screaming at briefcases" joke until America comes to its senses and banishes Howie Mandel to QVC.) [THR]
· When two things you don't care about collide: French strikes affect the MIP international TV market meetings. [Variety]

· Crown/Harmony Books buys former MPAA head Jack Valenti's memoir, which the superannuated lobbyist promises is not a "get-even book." However, he promises that Jack Valenti: My Life Dueling The Rapethirsty Pirates Bent On Repeatedly Violating The Entertainment Industry's Virginal Maids With Their Digital Instruments Of Unparalleled Evil will contain "a lot of interesting stories about some famous people." [Variety]
· PilotWatch, Dead Guys Resurrected Edition: Recently nerve-gassed 24 player Sean Astin is in negotiations to star in ABC's comedy The Guys, while Roger Bart, the creepy, gay-seeming Desperate Housewives pharmacist recently suicided off Wisteria Lane, joins CBS' comedy My Ex-Life.[THR]
· Precocious SNL star Andy Samberg and his Lonely Island partners quickly cash in on their "Lazy Sunday" buzz, signing up to star in and direct Hot Rod, "about an accident-prone daredevil who plans to jump Snake River on a moped in an effort to emulate his hero Evel Knievel and win over his hard-to-please stepfather." Sounds a little iffy, but luckily they've got to wait a little longer before they have access to Jimmy Fallon-level career-killing scripts like Taxi. [Variety]
·A twenty-nine second clip premiered before Ice Age: The Meltdown announces that fans of The Simpsons will have to wait until July 27, 2007 to see Homer delightfully sociopathic tendencies on the big screen. [THR]
· The WB/UPN hybrid network abomination The CW jilts Los Angeles proper to set up its headquarters in Burbank, leaving Fox and CBS as the only major nets remaining on the right side of the hill. [Variety]

· Fox's new teen-obsessed division is starting to pull its shit together, finally choosing a name (Fox Atomic) that seems like it's trying to capture the attention of Nickelodeon-obsessed 11-year-olds. But what do we know? We didn't spend tens of thousands on branding research, so we probably would've gone with Fox's Rainbow Party. [Variety]
· Either Arrested Development's Jeffrey Tambor or MPAA head Dan Glickman has been cast in the NBC comedy pilot Twenty Good Years. [THR]
· Warner Bros. casts Mandy Moore and Robin Williams in the romantic comedy License to Wed, but you can swallow down the bile rising in your throat—The Office's John Krasinski is in talks to play the love interest, sparing us all the thought of Moore and Williams making out. [Variety]
· With American Idol giving up Thursdays after it downshifted to just two episodes a week, CSI gets back to the business of kicking in the teeth all other shows daring to broadcast on its night. [THR]
· Yeah, we mentioned this at the end of the day yesterday, but Warner Bros. announced that at least 20 minutes of
Superman Returns will be converted into IMAX 3-D, allowing fans to believe that various super-appendages might break free of the giant movie screen and slam them in the face. [Variety]

· Arrested Development's studio, 20th Century Fox TV, finally announces that the series isn't coming back, but still insists on torturing diehard fans by trotting out the Family Guy example and winking, "We'll always be a little hopeful that this is not quite the end for this amazing show." [Variety]
· Pilotmania, Part The Twelfth: The CW picks up the Wayne Brady comedy Flirt, Kelsey Grammer
will direct the pilot for the CBS comedy My Ex-Life, and Bo Derek provides barely convincing proof that she's still alive by signing to star in My Network TV's drama Secret Obsessions. [THR]
· Breaking! Other cultures sometimes prefer their own movies to the crap that Hollywood forces on them. [Variety]
· YouTube makes a deal with E! to spin a The Soup segment into an online channel called Cybersmack, which will feature user-generated video clips that satirize pop-culture. The best clip gets $25,000, while the others get the satisfaction of knowing they've contributed to the TV network that wouldn't allow The Simple Life to die. [THR]
· You might think that a movie about "a man wrongly accused of murder who goes undercover as a mail-order bride in an attempt to prove his innocence" writes itself, but you'd be wrong. It requires the subtle touch of the Are We There Yet? team. [Variety]

· Universal picks up the rights to the forthcoming memoir How Starbucks Saved My Life, about an ad exec who loses his job and becomes a professional macchiato slinger, with the intention of having Tom Hanks don the green apron. Of course, the book's author was in his 60s during the personal crisis, but fudging the age downward should make the whole story that much more poignant as the humbled, middle-aged Hanks struggles to master the frappuccino blender. [THR]
· Nicole Kidman and writer Simon Kinberg will "team up" (can't you see them high-fiving after he delivers some rewrites?) for a spy thriller already acquired by Regency Enterprises and 20th Century Fox. Think the Bourne Identity, but with a hotter—and more female—Matt Damon. Those killing-machine superspies are always losing their memories! [THR]
· Walken. Ping pong. Balls of Fury. Choppy grammar meant to express overwhelming excitement. [Variety]
· Think the underdog-filled Final Four totally screwed your brackets? Think about what they might do to CBS's ratings. [THR]
· SAG members have "strongly backed" a strike against cable TV over residuals, threatening to shut down Monk, Nip/Tuck, The Shield, and whatever other shows we should be watching when we're killing our souls on Blowout reruns. [Variety]

· Warner Bros. sets a July 21st start date for Ocean's 13 (George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh can now start salivating over what crazy, artistic thing they're going to do with their dirty Hollywood money), with celebrity choking victim Ellen Barkin joining the cast as an urban cougar whose designs on lesser gang members Scott Caan and Casey Affleck will result in several loosely plotted double- and triple-crosses necessitating that one of the young thieves has to dance through a matrix of laser beams. [Variety]
· 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Fantastic Voyage director Richard Fleischer dies at 89. Hollywood braces for the sudden loss of two more of its own to complete the deadly rule of three. [THR]
· Apple Corps, the Beatles' record company, is suing Apple Computer for violating an agreement that Apple (Computer) wouldn't operate in the music industry, thereby threatening the Apple (the Beatles one) trademark. [Variety]
· Time Warner in talks with the Big Four networks to create an on-demand "hits" channel, which would give viewers too lazy to TiVo their favorite shows access to episodes they may have missed on their first run for a reported $10 monthly fee. [THR]

· Most unintentionally homoerotic opening line ever for a trade story on the weekend's movie releases: "Can Spike Lee manhandle Larry the Cable Guy?" [Variety]
· Thank You For Smoking director Jason Reitman (whom we just heard humbly tell Adam Carolla that his film's limited-release opening weekend was in the top 50 in per-theater average all-time, but neglect to mention his batting average with a man on second and less than two outs) and his partner sign a two-year first-look deal with Fox Searchlight. [THR]
Samuel L. Jackson gets right to work squandering some of his Snakes on a Plane buzz by agreeing to narrate a Bob Saget-produced documentary parody of March of the Penguins, Farce of the Penguins. Were those guys who remake movies with their thumbs too busy to get to this target first? [Variety]
Has it really come to this for Patricia Heaton? The Everybody Loves Raymond wife is in talks to host a The View-style daytime talk show. Still, it's better than discussing the quality of Albertson's steaks in those commercials. [THR]
Woody Harrelson as the gay, 50-year-old incarnation of American Gigolo's iconic man-whore? That's kind of genius. [Variety]

We're sure it's just a coincidence that we came across two notices for potential E! shows on today's Craigslist job listings, and that the network, no matter how frugal it may be, hasn't fired its entire casting department in favor of these more cost-effective online solicitations:

Viacom CEO Tom Freston says Paramount is considering co-production of movies in Bollywood. Should that plan yield positive results, Freston said he wouldn't rule out buying one of their studios and laying off some employees to really explore the potential of the Indian market. [Variety]
Not even Oscar winners can escape the pull of pilot season: Marcia Gay Harden is cast in ABC's drama pilot, Drift, playing the Dr. Melfi role for the series' insomniac detective protagonist. [THR]
Finally, an agency purchase! Sure, it's no UTA-Endeavor or ICM-Endeavor, but Gersh's acquisition of the sports management firm Steve Feldman and Associates is...really boring, actually. Nevermind. [Variety]
· Spike TV finds its old, cursive logo insufficiently "manly," and will debut a new one in May, featuring bolder block lettering tattooed onto an erect penis with a prominent Prince Albert piercing. [THR]
Because there is perhaps no activity more dramatic and telegenic than feverishly typing away on a laptop, MTV picks up an Apprentice-style reality series where writers vie against one another for a staff position at Rolling Stone. [Variety]

Could the father of podcasting (one of so many — it takes a village) and famed Yahoo blogger be related to Kevin Covais, the bookish little American Idol star nicknamed "Chicken Little" (because "Harry Potter" is so 2004)?

In perhaps the least surprising development in the continuing story of Paramount's shakeup, Stacey Snider might be sprung from her Universal contract and working at DreamWorks in as little as a few weeks. We hope she gets back her security deposit for the 10-month vacation she'd been planning. [THR]
Will Smith will star in the feature adaptation of the TV series It Takes a Thief for Universal, in which he will play "a charming rogue who is blackmailed by the government into doing covert larceny for the good of his country." After stretching to kiss a fat man in Hitch, it's nice to see that Smith continues to challenge himself with different kinds of charming roles. [Variety]
Variety analyzes the closing of theatrical windows, which dropped 11% for films that grossed over $50 million in 2005. Bored yet? You shouldn't be—the closing of the theatrical window foreshadows an entertainment industry apocalypse that will once again plunge us into the days of communal cave painting viewing. Cave paintings directed by Brett Ratner. Yeah, now you're listening. [Variety]
· Big Love drops about 1.2 million viewers between its premiere and this week's episode, and isn't holding its Sopranos lead-in audience well. How many more times does Bill Paxton have to show his ass to please you people? Don't make the man resort to full frontal. [THR]
Mid-seasons The Unit, The New Adventures of Old Christine, American Inventor and Deal or No Deal (for our money, the stupidest show on television, yet we've now watched it twice, powerless against the spectacle of people yelling at briefcases held by supermodels) are scoring well for their respective networks. [Variety]