Electronic Arts and Paramount eagerly anticipate the reaction to today's release of their big-budget videogame adaptation of The Godfather; EA hopes it has a Grand Theft Auto-type hit on its hands, while Paramount fears posthumous reprisals from the ghost of Marlon Brando, who promised to haunt the Melrose lot for eternity should his partial voiceovers for the game bring shame to his legacy. [Variety]
SNL's "Lazy Sunday" put YouTube on Hollywood's radar, and ever since the industry can't decide if its wants to embrace the site or sue it off the planet. [THR]
Samuel L. Jackson and Josh Hartnett will star in Resurrecting the Champ, the story of a reporter and the homeless man who he thinks is a boxing champion, and who repeatedly swears at great volume at the crazy white boy who won't just leave him alone. [Variety]
The Cannes film festival line-up is starting to take shape, and will include the premiere of Marie Antoinette now that director Sofia Coppola has decided to jilt Venice in favor of the French. [THR]
SAG "perturbs" TV producers by still asking for strike authorization even after being offered a 14% residual increase, which would put them in line with the deals that producers already use to screw the DGA and WGA. [Variety]

The Pink Panther tops V for Vendetta at the UK box office, where moviegoers apparently preferred to watch Steve Martin destroy a beloved movie franchise to seeing a masked terrorist blow up Parliament. [Variety]
Weinstein Co. picks up the North American rights to the Beatrix Potter biopic Miss Potter, starring Renee Zellweger, Ewan McGregor and Emily Watson, giving Zellweger still another chance to show off the British accent she used in the Bridget Jones movies. [THR]
Damage control double-feature: Variety ponders the unfair judgment of Brad Grey's Paramount before any of his new regime's movies are released. [Variety] Twice. [Variety]
Still more hott pilot casting action: Catherine Bell and Gary Cole in CBS drama Company Town; Mercedes Ruehl in untitled CBS Paul Reiser comedy; Rena Sofer in ABC's Mr. Nice Guy; Kevin Hart joins CBS comedy The Weekend. [THR]
Fox resurrects King of the Hill for another year, a show they had long ago left for dead, while giving another two years to The Simpsons, a show that may still be cranking out fresh episodes long after all of our bones have turned to dust. [Variety]

New Universal chairmen Marc Shmuger and David Linde plan on working so closely together that they'll even share an office. Reports Var: "'The way we're thinking about it is we're going to reconfigure space so that it is where people will go and decisions will be made,' Shmuger said. 'Geographically and organizationally and even spiritually we'll be connected.'" It's going to be so adorable when they start finishing each other's sentences after their shared morning hot yoga sessions! [Variety]
Demi Moore is in final negotiations to play a tough detective (read: occasionally swears, wears a miniskirt) chasing the Kevin Costner/ William Hurt Jekyll and Hyde characters in Mr. Brooks. [THR]
Universal co-chair and Focus co-president David Linde's new closeness (see above) to Marc Shmuger should not upset his bliss with Focus partner Jim Schamus. This is Hollywood, after all, where mature adults reach understandings about such delicate arrangements all the time. [Variety]
"Burlesque-style dancing troupe" Pussycat Dolls are looking to break into reality TV, looking to bring their semitalented versatility in the singing and gyrating arenas to the small screen. [THR]
Perhaps the only thing the world needs less than another reality show (see Pussycat Dolls item) is another talking-heads pop-culture show. Still, E! plans their own Best Week Ever-style series, The Daily 10, featuring people rehashing the day's headlines. Not to be confused with E!'s The Soup which is a weekly series. [Variety]

This Casting the Valley selection comes from MyHeritage.

THR wins the race to quickly reword the press release announcing Marc Shmuger and David Linde's promotions to chair and co-chair, respectively, at Universal, with Variety's entry still TK. [THR]
The FCC makes its first ruling under new chair Kevin Martin, fining CBS a record $3.6 million for a supposedly indecent episode of Without a Trace and upholding the $550,000 penalty for 2004's Super Bowl "wardrobe malfunction," setting a clear (and expensive) precedent for future nipple-shield-related infractions. [Variety]
William Hurt will play Kevin Costner's evil alter-ego in Mr. Brooks, the psychological thriller with the decidedly not-so-thrilling title. [THR]
SAG is contemplating a cable strike, as their made-for-cable contract has not been revised in 16 years. Meanwhile, the local service industry salivates over the possibility of a sudden surplus of cheap labor. [Variety]
The CW assures potential advertisers that it's committed to being totally horny for the 18-to-34-year-old demographic. [THR]

Travolta as JR Ewing? Yeah, not so much. But Benicio Del Toro as the Wolf Man, well, we can get behind that. [Variety]
Desiring his own 8 Mile or Get Rich or Die Tryin', Kanye West hooks up with New Line to produce a film inspired by his music. [THR]
MPAA head Dan Glickman plans a "Got Milk?"-esque PR campaign for a beleaguered film industry desperate to revive the public's interest in the moviegoing experience. The campaign is still in its early planning stages, with creatives trying to distill the phrase, "What are you going to do, stay at home and talk to that bitch wife of yours?" into just a couple of pithy words. [Variety]
Pilotmania! Stanley Tucci will star in an untitled CBS drama pilot, Campbell Scott is in negotiations for ABC's Six Degrees, Andrew McCarthy joins CBS drama The Way, and Marla Sokoloff leads ABC's comedy A Day in the Life. [THR]
Sarah Jesscia Parker will produce a half-hour comedy series based on Washingtonienne, blogger Jessica Cutler's novel about her DC-based, anal-tastic sexcapades (first brought to light by Original Wonkette Ana Marie Cox) for HBO. [Variety]

Still smelling of rose water and cardamom from his Journey of a Lifetime, Jeremy Piven has perhaps gotten a little spoiled by India's "all the girls you can bag in an hour for 5000 Rupees" policy. A quick meeting with the Entourage producers and one Craigslist posting later, and suddenly a "female models"-only mass casting opportunity is born:

Hollywood Out of Ideas, Part LXVII: As if news that Ice Cube is going to remake Welcome Back, Kotter wasn't troubling enough, try this on for size: J. Lo, Luke Wilson, John Travolta and Shirley MacLaine are all in various stages of the offer/negotiations process for a movie version of Dallas, with Travolta trying to pour his fifteen-gallon head into JR Ewing's ten-gallon hat. Someone please burn down this place immediately (Hollywood or Dallas, whatever works best). [Variety]
Universal vice chairman Marc Shmuger in in talks to take over the departed (for DreamWorks, not dead) Stacey Snider's job at the studio. Though he's silent on the matter, we assume he's not at all interested in taking Gail Berman's gig at Paramount. [THR]
But what I really want to do is create immersive, movie-inspired experiences for giant casinos: Director James Cameron will "executive produce" the iPort theme park for a Singapore gambling concern. [Variety]
The ratings numbers from Sunday night are in, and it appears that Desperate Housewives took a Nielsen baseball bat to the knees of HBO's The Sopranos. Not that you can really compare premium cable apples to network oranges, especially when our beloved mobsters come out looking not as good as we'd like, but there you have it. [THR]
The conservative watchdog kooks at the protest-happy American Family Association had no troubling following Las Vegas' move to Friday nights, urging its members to carpetbomb the FCC with more than 100,000 complaints about a strip club scene. [Variety]

Paul Haggis is in final negotiations to direct and produce the adaptation of counterterrorist adviser Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies for Columbia. Before you sigh with relief that Haggis isn't writing the project, take note: he's "supervising" writer James Vanderbilt, leaving plenty of opportunity for him to spin the tale of terrorists who blow things up because that's the only way they can truly connect with their fellow human beings. [Variety]
Even Alicia Silverstone gets another chance during pilot season: Silverstone joins ABC women-in-the-workplace comedy Pink Collar, Jennifer Coolidge signs up for Fox's comedy If You Lived Here, You'd Be Home Now (real title TBD, we'd guess), and Shawn Hatosy also goes for Fox comedy in Southern Comfort. [THR]
Variety Censorship Minute: The Stone in China, The Simpsons in the Middle East, Catholics vs The DaVinci Code, and more! [Variety]
· Everyone without access to The Sopranos premiere (or without friends with HBO) watched Grey's Anatomy last night, which pulled an even better number than fading lead-in Desperate Housewives. [THR]
Diddy, Ben Silverman, and NBC team up for television's latest foray into the hot Celebrities Performing Tasks For Which They're Ill-Suited genre for Celebrity Cooking Showdown, a mix of (do we even need to explain?) Iron Chef and Dancing with the Stars. The lineup of washed-up celebs willing to scald themselves in the name of programming fads has yet to be announced. [Variety]

After a "stunningly weak" return to the schedule this week, NBC has again yanked Joey, signalling that the network has probably euthanized the comatose series. NBC, however, will maintain its commitment to programming featuring the mentally challenged by picking up eight more episodes of Deal or No Deal., the gameshow in which contestants scream at briefcases for no apparent reason. [Variety]
The Weinsteins are bringing a musical version of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to Broadway—hopefully, this will be a classy production and not just a flimsy excuse for Harvey Weinstein to sing showtunes in a kimono. [Variety]
Old TV faces in new pilot places: Dylan "I'm Not McDreamy" McDermott, Kim Cattrall, and Wendie Mallick all sign up for ABC projects. [THR]
Two Ryan Adams fans are indicted for premature enthusiasm after leaking some of Adams' new album on the internet before its release.[THR]
Revisiting The Slump (or if you prefer, "The Slump"): The MPAA reports that marketing costs rose 5.2% last year while attendance and ticket sales fell, indicating that the studios' ploys to cover up for shitty movies with increased promotion was largely unsuccessful. We'd feel good about this, but we know that they're just going to blitz us with more Shaggy DA ads until we return to the theaters in acceptable numbers. [Variety]

Fans of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report not satisfied by the fifteen times a day the shows are played on Comedy Central can now download episodes through iTunes, either on an a la carte basis or through a monthly subscription of $9.99 for a month's worth of episodes. [Variety]
The success of My Name is Earl and The Office fill trendfucking networks execs wild with single-camera lust, as nearly half of all comedy pilots ordered will eschew the laugh track. [THR]
Despite the fact that CBS is trying to sue him back to the telegraph era, Howard Stern will appear on Letterman on Monday to battle Les Moonves on his turf. [Variety]
More pilot casting madness: Dennis Miller and Joe Mantegna join the cast Bonnie Hunt's untitled detective comedy (detectives are the new psychics) for ABC, Chris Elliott signs up for a semi-autobiographical comedy with CBS, and The CW risks comedy crib death by talking with Nick Lachey about starring in its first sitcom pilot. [THR]
John Cusack will star in the adaptation of the Stephen King short story 1408 for Dimension, granting him a temporary stay of romantic comedy career execution. [Variety]

We feel your pain: Sure, you're completely comfortable with your body, but maybe you haven't quite been staying in shape lately, depressed that all the good vagina-focused roles are going to younger, hungrier women. Take heart; the anonymous virtual casting office of Craigslist proves that Hollywood still has a place for you:

MGM is inviting the press to its "lavish" Century City offices to unveil up to an 18 picture distribution slate from various indie studios, such as Weinstein Co., Bauer Martinez, and Lakeshore. Junket whores, get ready to get your minds blown by the Sony-powered MGM! [Variety]
Anyone who's spent more than a few minutes watching the Nickelodeon family of channels knows that what their networks really need is some adorable thugging up by the Wayans brothers. [THR]
Crash sells 17,500 DVDs the day after the Oscars. Sure, it's a spike, but is that a lot? We honestly have no idea, and we want to know whether we're supposed to be upset or not. [Variety]
They're just going to keep casting pilots until they run out of actors: John Lithgow goes to the NBC pilot Twenty Good Years, Jay Mohr joins NBC's Community Service, and Justine Bateman signs on with ABC's untitled Patricia Heaton project, which to the best of our knowledge is not about how tasty the steaks at Albertson's are. Yet, anyway—we'll see how the network notes go after the table read. [THR]
It took approximately a decade of regular cellphone use for Stephen King to finally embrace the technology as a murderous plot device in one of his novels, and Dimension far less time to commission a movie version of the idea. But do we really need them to tell us that cellphones turn people into zombies? [Variety]

Fox captured the online market for Adderal-abusing teens with its MySpace purchase, leading NBC Universal to pay $600 million to try and enslave the internet's female population by snapping up iVillage. [Variety]
Pick this one up, NBC, and the sins of Emeril and Good Morning Miami will be forgotten: NBC greenlights a pilot for Andy Barker, P.I., starring Andy Richter and co-written by Conan O'Brien, about an accountant who becomes a detective. [THR]
Jack Black joins Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Jason Leigh in Noah Baumbach's follow-up to The Squid and the Whale (the Best Picture of our hearts, not that it matters) for Paramount Classics. [Variety]
Phillip Seymour Hoffman gets his first post-Oscar gig (hopefully with his fancy new post-Oscar salary), starring with Laura Linney in The Savages for Fox Searchlight. [THR]
In case you weren't one of the chosen 130,000 few who got a screener—or even someone with $15 bucks to drop on the DVD— Crash will be re-released on 150 screens starting this Friday. [Variety]

New Line signs up John Travolta and Queen Latifah to star in the movie adaptation of the Hairspray musical, with Travolta logically playing the role originated by Divine, John Waters' cross-dressing muse. What? Travolta and Divine both have unusually large heads, OK? [Variety]
THR notes that this year's Oscar season is full of "serious" nominees, relatively devoid of dirty campaigning. Yeah, we kind of miss Harvey Weinstein, too. [THR]
Hollywood proves it can be generous when promised a big party, as Variety and Jeffrey Kazenberg's Night Before event has raised $6 million for the Motion Picture and Television Fund. [Variety]
MTV2 makes a content deal with YouTube, enabling the website to serve up annoying Andy Milonakis clips alongside its already impressive catalogue of Brokeback parodies. [THR]
The Idol ratings juggernaut has a dark side (well, besides the obvious ones): Wednesday night's show drove Lost to a season low number for a first-run episode. Not cool, Fox. Hey, how about counterprogramming Desperate Housewives instead? [Variety]

Damon Wayans has been very busy lately, what with trying to get his catchily named clothing line off the ground while readying his new Showtime comedy sketch show, Damon Wayans' The Underground. We thought we'd pass along one of their recent Craigslist casting notices:

· Jessica Biel will star with Nic Cage and Julianne Moore in Next, a sci-fi flick directed by Lee Tamahori, the gender-bendingest director this side of Larry Wachowski. Please refrain from even considering the awkwardness sure to plague the women's wardrobe trailer on that set, as you are much better than that. [Variety]
Mark Wahlberg will star in Paramount's Shooter as a marksman "living in self-exile in the Arkansas wilderness after causing the death of an innocent person — who is persuaded by his former associates that they need his help to prevent an assassination and who is subsequently double-crossed and framed for the presidential assassination he was trying to prevent." If the movie's source material weren't a novel written in 1993, we'd point out the striking similarities to this season's 24 plot. [THR]
Warner Bros. is ready to once again pimp out its tights-wearing duo of high-earning superwhores, solidifying plans for sequels to for Batman Begins and Superman Returns; directors Christopher Nolan and Bryan Singer are expected to return to shoot their respective superheroes. [Variety]
· NBC executives once again wake up to news that American Idol absolutely trounced the Olympics in the ratings. Just sleep in, guys, the pain will still be there when you get up. [THR]
Shockingly, Paramount's procession of late 2005 bombs (Elizabethtown, Aeon Flux, Get Rich or Die Tryin') was not great for Viacom's bottom line. [Variety]

Fox has revealed its evil plans for what it will do with affiliates stripped of programming when UPN and The WB merge: the creation of a "21st century," "localized," "station-friendly" network called My Network TV (it didn't take long to come up with a name worse than "The CW," did it?) that will finally give Fox a place to dump programming too awful even to plug holes on the parent network. [Variety]
· Aquaman already shitcanned: A "major recasting" turns over the orange tights to Justin Hartley, sending original super-fishboy Will Toale to the unemployment line. [THR]
China takes a stand against the worrying social ill of human-toon miscegenation, banning all animation that shows cartoons cavorting with live-action actors. Plans to publicly steamroll extant copies of Space Jam and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? with tanks are still being finalized, however. [Variety]
Chris Rock will star in I Think I Love My Wife, a remake of the French film Chloe in the Afternoon. Clearly making a break with the Head of State era, Rock declared, "I can't wait to make a sophisticated comedy with all the good people at Fox Searchlight." [THR]
In an effort to prevent the continuing Emmy-hogging tyranny of TV shows that people actually watch, the TV Academy will let a "blue ribbon panel" decide the ultimate nominees for the best comedy, drama, and major acting categories. [Variety]

King Kong star Naomi Watts will serve as honorary chair of this year's Independent Spirit Awards, where up-and-comer Peter Jackson's intimate tale of the love between a struggling actress and a gorilla with a severe glandular disorder was curiously shut out. [Variety]
Saffron Burrows, Jada Pinkett Smith and Liv Tyler are in final negotiations to star in Reign O'er Me, the Adam Sandler 9/11 movie we still can't quite wrap our minds around. [THR]
NBC has posted the pilot episode of the Dick Wolf series Conviction to iTunes Store, where potential viewers can download it for free, then spend the two weeks until the show's premiere telling friends how totally awesome it is, thus making the series a huge hit for the struggling, technology-crazy network. [Variety]
Agents are livid about some new language in actors' pilot contracts, fearing that the networks will use their clients' in-character images to whore for Pepsi on cell-phones. [THR]
The American Cinema Editors reward Crash's editor for saving Paul Haggis' movie from becoming a movie-of-the-week on the Heavy-Handed Race Parable Network. [Variety]

At the BAFTAs, Brokeback Mountain gets four awards, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Reese Witherspoon win best actor and actress, and cowboy bottom Jake Gyllenhaal shows up more extravagantly praised co-star Heath Ledger by winning the supporting actor trophy. [Variety]
Studio heads stock up on adult undergarments in anticipation of the bowel-loosening stress of the coming summer blockbuster season. [Variety]
Agents help out-of-work execs land their next gig out of the kindness of their hearts, not in hopes they'll be able to later leverage the career assistance into personal gain. [Variety]
Harrison Ford and red-hot Eight Below star Paul Walker team up for Hollywood Homicide 2: Blood on the Boulevard. OK, we made this one up. It's not our fault the trades are on vacation today. [Variety]