· CBS hasn't announced its Fall sched yet, but it looks like more Bruckheimer, some Jenna Elfman, and two heaping cupfuls of Jennifer Love Hewitt's rack. We'll leave them alone until it's official tomorrow. [Variety]
· 32 million fans say good bye to something called According to Jim. Oh, we mean Everybody Loves Raymond. [THR]
· Honeymooners star Mike Epps will play Richard Pryor in a biopic, presumably because Dave Chappelle is still too busy chilling the fuck out in South Africa to take the job. [Variety]
· Fancy directors Michael Haneke and David Cronenberg are frontrunners for the Palm D'Or (that's French for "Not an Oscar") on the strength of their "very accessible" films. As a result, Cronenberg is now in the running to direct either 3 Fast 3 Furiouser or take over the Rush Hour franchise from Brett Ratner. [THR]
· Warren Beatty, producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura, and Tribune Co. fight over the rights to a comic book character everyone stopped caring about while Beatty was still banging Madonna. [Variety]

· Kicking and Screaming and Monster In Law look to "reverse an 11-week weak streak at the box office." Never underestimate the power of Will Ferrell yelling at kids or J.Lo's ass. [Variety]
· Rival networks look to gnaw NBC's carcass at the upfronts, trying to devour the last bits of the Must See TV advertising revenue meat sticking to its ratings-starved ribs. [THR]
· Viacom/Paramount buddies Tom Freston and Brad Grey recycle former Warner Bros bigwig Bob Daly to help the studio pry teenagers away from their Xboxes and rainbow parties long enough to pay attention to their movies and cable shows. [Variety]
· Hilary Duff continues to choose projects that ensure we'll never see her act before we die, signing up for the Cheaper by the Dozen sequel. This is a good thing. [THR]
· Augusten Burroughs sells the movie rights to yet another memoir, this time a still-unwritten one about his fucked up relationship with his father. Don't worry, this will probably be the last one—we think he's finally out of parents. [Variety]

· This apparently merits a red font and a Breaking News tag: DreamWorks unveils plans for the animated caveman flick Crood Awakening at Cannes, written by John Cleese. [Variety]
· Disney reports a 30-percent increase in its second quarter profits, temporarily making the uninspired choice of Robert Iger as its next CEO not look like a mistake. [THR]
· Paramount will foot the bill for Freedom Writers, which we will dismissively describe as Dangerous Minds with Hilary Swank, even if it only bears a passing resemblance to the earlier film. We're jerks that way. [Variety]
· ABC, CBS, and Fox seesaw back in forth in last night's war for viewers, but Fox ultimately wins the night on the power of the simmer sexual tension between Paula Abdul and Bo Bice. [THR]
· Meet the Parents of the Focker director Jay Roach picks up his Everyman shingle and moves it from Fox to Universal, who will get first crack at his dog-flushing comedic endeavors for the near future. [Variety]

· Spamalot nabs 14 Tony nominations, and Doubt picks up 8, thus ending our interest in the Tonys until next year's announcements. [Variety]
· CBS and Sony throw bags at money (and a feature deal) at Kevin James to do another season of King of Queens, buying at least one more year before the the network has to figure out how to turn CSI into a sitcom. [THR]
· Ousted/disgruntled former Disney board members Roy Disney and Stanley Gold sue Disney for not conducting a proper search for a new CEO; once again showing that he's no Michael Eisner, new Mouse leader Robert Iger promptly orders his lawyer to key the troublemakers' cars [Variety]
· George Clooney signs on to play the lead in Michael Clayton, a lawyer who's known for "fixing" his clients' personal problems. Also, the lawyer is very, very handsome with an undeniable, rakish charm. Sigh. [THR]
· 20th Century Fox TV signs American Dad showrunners to a two-year, seven-figure development deal to create shows that are completely indistinguishable from The Family Guy . [Variety]

· Tale of Two Headlines: Kingdom of Heaven's box office take was "far from 'Heaven', but "mighty o'seas." [Variety, Variety]
· Slow news day: Clive Barker does movie-related stuff with horror, video games, and John Woo. [THR]
· Helen Hunt will make her feature directing debut with the drama Then She Found Me; she's also convinced herself to take a chance on a first-time director and will star in the movie. [Variety]
· The 4,000th telling of the Elvis story stood no chance against the Desperate Housewives ratings juggernaut. [THR]
· HBO picks up Louis CK's multi-camera sitcom, American Dream, for 13 episodes (including the pilot), trying to find out if the traditional sitcom genre can be appreciably improved by the addition of swearing. (And breasts, please?)[THR]

· Is all of this American Idol hubbub news, or just a ratings stunt devised for maximum sweeps impact? We suppose that depends on whether or not anal is involved. [Variety]
· Sure, you heard it here yesterday, but the "facts" are now in: Revolution embarks in a "new direction" without partner Todd Garner, i.e., a direction that includes making somewhat less risibly awful movies. [Variety]
· Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett are in negotiations to star in F. Scott Fitzgerald story adaptation The Curious Case of Benjamin Button for director David Fincher. We can't wait for the carefully-orchestrated release of photos from Pitt and Blanchett's inevitable, sex-soaked African safari shortly before the movie's release. THR]
· Super-publicist Leslee Dart gets three new flacks on board for her "Dart Group" venture. We're assuming that "The Fuck Pat Kingsley Group" was already taken. [Variety]
· Finding that buying the rights to ER from NBC to be needlessly complicated, ABC picks up 13 more episodes of Grey's Anatomy. [THR]
· The Sarah Michelle Gellar space meaningfully signs up for Warner Independent Picture's adaptation of the book A Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing. [THR]

· Overseas audiences make Americans look discerning for a change, as XXX tops foreign box office. We never want to hear another word about our cultural wasteland from someone with a foreign accent again. [Variety]
· MTV, buzzless and hurtling towards the upfronts, quietly prays for Newlyweds to end in a climactic murder-suicide. [THR]
· Regency and 20th Century Fox Television sign Malcolm in the Middle writer Alex Reid to a "rich" two-year development deal. (Full disclosure: As an intern, we made coffee for Reid on numerous occasions and were never once doused with our poorly-brewed Folgers, even if some grounds got into the pot.) [Variety]
· TheFamily Guy's re-debut does some nice ratings, but the crazy bitches from Wisteria Lane still have their way with Nielsen families. [THR]
· Director Todd "Far From Heaven" Haynes nabs Cate Blachett, Colin Farrell, Adrien Brody, Richard Gere, Julianne Moore, and Charlotte Gainsbourg for his "unconventional" Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There. [Variety]
· News your waiter can explain much more clearly than we can: Former AFTRA head Greg Hessinger starts today as CEO of SAG. [Variety]

· Studios cross their fingers, hoping that releasing not-really-summer-blockbusters like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and XXX: State of the Union in April will finally shake loose some more of this year's scant box office dollars. [Variety]
· "Maverick" director Steven Soderbergh signs a six-picture deal with Mark Cuban's 2929 Entertainment, which will attempt to destabilize the universe by releasing Soderbergh's independent movies simultaneously in theaters, on TV, and video. Don't worry, though, Ocean's Thirteen through Sixteen will still be released the old-fashioned way. [THR]
· The networks finally gave in to "peer pressure" and sacrificed valuable sweeps primetime slots to carry GWB's press conference, but they weren't happy about it. They cut away early to make sure the public didn't miss Trump and Paris Hilton's far more enlightening remarks on America. [Variety]
· One day, when nothing but radioactive cockroaches roam the earth, America's Funniest Home Videos and According to Jim will still get pick-ups for an additional season. [THR]
· Mos Def takes reckless chances with his acting career by agreeing to star opposite Bruce Willis in the cop drama 16 Blocks. [Variety]

· Patty Hearst files for access to grandfather William Randolph Heart's will, a document shrouded in secrecy and which contains a clause stating that anyone who challenges it will be disinherited. It further states that any heir that can spend $30 million dollars in 30 days will inherit a vast fortune; while this sounds easy, there are Byzantine rules governing the spending of the money that ensure anyone taking the challenge will be plunged into a wacky adventure in creative capitalism. [Variety]
· Sort-of-actor/sometime-director/kinda-writer Peter Berg is rewarded for not being particularly good at anything, landing a production deal for his Film 44 shingle with Universal. THR]
· Bravo goes trulydeeplybatshit insane for reality programming, announcing new shows The Daily News (about the prolonged pissing match between tabloids the NY Daily News and the NY Post), The Real Housewives (about a cynical attempt to capitalize on ABC's huge hit), and Battle of the Network Reality Stars (about the final and total destruction of Western culture). But if they decide to do another season of Project Greenlight, all is forgiven. [Variety]
· Antonio Banderas and Jennifer Lopez will star in the indie thriller Bordertown, two actors equally confounded by the prospect of reciting their lines in the English language. [THR]
· 800-pound reality gorillas Mark Burnett and Endemol USA vote agencies CAA and William Morris (respectively) off the money-island. Also, torches snuffed, "you're fired," etc etc. [THR]
· Fox manages to hold on to at least one Berman. [Variety]

· The Cannes line-up features established directors such as David Cronenberg, Wim Wenders, Atom Egoyan, Jim Jarmusch, Gus Van Sant, and Lars Von Trier. Von Trier will be shunned at the opening night gala, when he kills a donkey just to show off for his peers. [Variety]
· Breaking! Actors still love easy voiceover paychecks! Nick Nolte, William Shatner, Steve Carell, Avril Lavigne,
Catherine O'Hara, Eugene Levy, Wanda Sykes and Allison Janney sign on to voice the DreamWorks animated feature Over the Hedge. [THR]
· The NFL goes feces-flinging insane, moving Monday Night Football to ESPN, while giving the Sunday night game to sports-starved NBC. [Variety]
· The Parents Television Council finds more to complain about, bitching that broadcasters do a bad job of properly labeling the violence and smut content (i.e., the good parts) of their shows. [THR]
· Disney makes up the absolutely darling title of "Chief Creative Officer" for marketing exec Oren Aviv. We love it when marketing people start thinking they're creative! It's so darn cute! [Variety]
· Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo, and Jake Gyllenhaal sign up for David Fincher's Zodiac, a serial killer flick for Paramount and Warner Brothers. Beware: the entire film could collapse from its critical mass of hunky dreaminess. [Variety]

· As previously discussed, Viacom's Redstone, Freston, and Moonves pull in a "shitload" of money in their executive overcompensation packages. [Variety]
· Holly Robinson Peete joins UPN's Shannen Doherty project, French Stewart is cast in the WB's Best Laid Plans, and Hollywood inches ever closer to 100 percent employment during pilot season. [THR]
· Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes Productions takes up the fool's errand of remaking the C. Thomas Howell/Rutger Hauer horror classic The Hitcher. Scuttle this one now, before more money is wasted—you just can't improve on a bloody finger in a plate of French fries (even a fingertip in chili doesn't cut it). [Variety]
· Tyrese signs on to play the prettiest ex-con ever in Waist Deep for Focus Features. We can think of nothing semi-clever or interesting to say about this; enjoy the link anyway. [THR]
· NBC Universal brings in profits for corporate parent GE with a strong showing in theme parks, movies, and DVDs—but not so much with the television part. [Variety]

· We're linking to the THR story about yesterday's Universal shake-up (yeah, we know, it's old news) instead of Var's because they have a hotter pic of Mary Parent on the front page of their website. [THR]
· Mark Wahlberg is in negotiations to play Eagles-fan-turned-Eagles-player Vince Papale for Disney, in the soon to be renamed Invincible. It's just like Rudy, but with lucrative NFL tie-ins! [Variety]
· Melanie Griffith will get to show off her comedy chops and remaining control of her facial muscles as a member of the cast of a Kohan-Mutchnick comedy pilot for the WB, the tentatively- titled Our Will & Grace Lightning Will Strike Twice, We Promise. [THR]
· Fresh off a winning turn as a tone-deaf, angry Moses here in LA, Val Kilmer signs up for a theatrical version of The Postman Always Rings Twice in London's West End. [Variety]
· The Masters and the NCAA Tournament might help CBS threaten Fox's American Idol-powered hegemony in the key 18-49 demographic. Expect Fox to announce plans to run Idol three times a night from now until the end of the ratings period. [Variety]

· Hollywood's out-of-work writers are given a ray of hope as scripted series seem to be selling at this year's Mip TV market in Cannes. Pull your heads out of the ovens and start wistfully browsing the WGA health plan brochure, boys, help may be on the way. [Variety]
· More Mip: "Not so fast, Yankees!" says some German media mogul we've never heard of. "Most of your puny American shows don't carry the market share that my powerful broadcasting company requires, and the DVD format has changed the game. Sprechen to the hand, Hollywood! I am so angry I've lost all command of my mother tongue!" [THR]
· Les Moonves brings to bear his infernal powers on the Masters, rigging it for an exciting Tiger Woods win, and boosting the ratings for CBS. [Variety]
· Riffling through the junk drawer of pilot casting, we discover that Shannen Doherty is in negotiations to star in the UPN comedy pilot Wingwoman. [THR]
· Alfre Woodard joins the cast of Desperate Housewives for next season, as a "seemingly normal" woman who eventually learns to despise Teri Hatcher for all of the media attention she receives as a stand-in for the show's fine ensemble cast. [Variety]

· Feeding tubes are red-hot right now. The Pope's deteriorating health and Terri Schiavo's death provided a tube-related field day for the news media yesterday. Today, CBS has announced plans to rush a Schiavo biopic to air during May sweeps, with Keri Russell to star as America's tragic heroine and Dean Cain as the husband who wants to let her die in peace. The net anxiously awaits the Pope's death to announce the casting of Ben Kingsley as the Holy Father. [Variety]
· Tired of making quirky comedies that are enjoyed by a handful of Spanking the Monkey incest fanboys, David O. Russell, the headlockingest director in Tinseltown, teams up with comedy hearthrob Vince Vaughn for a shot-by-shot slapstick remake of Saving Private Ryan. [THR]
· In a shocking move for fem-centric cabler Lifetime, recently-acquitted star Robert Blake is named CEO of the network. A press release announcing the unexpected hiring featured the tough-talking thesp-turned-exec vowing to "shut up them puking, Valerie Bertinelli-wannabe breast cancer whiners, or they're gonna get one in the back of the head between the antipasti and the spaghetti, if you know what I mean." [Variety]
· ER hearthrob Noah Wyle announces that he's leaving the show that made blood-splattered white labcoats the must-have fashion of 1996 after this season. Wyle plans to rejoin former castmate Eriq LaSalle in a touring musical theater production in which the two actors perform a dub-reggae version of the Jackson/McCartney smash "Say, Say, Say" at rural high schools throughout the country. [THR]
· Seth Green signs up to have his genitals sandblasted off for Will & Grace creators Max Mutchnick and David Kohan's new NBC pilot, Dry-Humping Eunuchs. [Variety]

· M. Night Shyamalan is close to corralling Paul Giamatti and Bryce Dallas Howard for the latest foray into his signature brand of Gotcha! cinema, Lady in the Water. Spoiler alert: Paul Giamatti is revealed to be the lady in the final frames. [Variety]
· It's official: Hitch is the winter's box office champion, with Meet the Fockers finishing second. To commemorate the occasion, Will Smith will ceremonially flush Ben Stiller down a giant toilet on the the Hollywood Walk of Fame. [THR]
· Network cockfight! ABC and Fox are planning to pit the Lost and American Idol season finales against each other in a bloody Nielsen deathmatch. [Variety]
· Today's actors being recycled through the magic of pilot season: Wendy Malick, Tom Everett Scott, Rhea Perlman, and Dabney Coleman are cast in pilots. [Variety]
· Chinese star Gong Li is drafted for the usual Hollywood duty as an all-purpose Asian actress in Miami Vice (Chinese/Cuban) and the Hannibal Lecter sequel Behind the Mask (Japanese). [Variety]

· FX's Peter Liguori is the frontrunner to replace Gail Berman atop Fox. We can only hope that he will exercise prudent stewardship over surefire hits in the pilot pipeline, like the one with Tara Reid running a Vegas wedding chapel. Don't fuck it up, Pete! That would be like flushing a gold brick down the crapper! [THR]
· This is no longer breaking news: HBO and New Line team up to create a new indie distributor, led by Newmarket Film's Bob Berney. [Variety]
· M. Night Shyamalan takes his hacky/twisty talents away from Disney and gifts them to Warner Brothers, where he'll make his next project, Lady in the Water. Spoiler alert: The lady will not be a lady at all, then the water kills the lady. [Variety]
· The American Idol voting snafu potentially fucks over the buzz-deficient Life on a Stick, which will now premiere tonight against the buzz-building The Office. [Variety]
· The pilot casting pool is getting dangerouly thin, as CBS gives Scientology adherent/acting castoff Jenna Elfman a job. We suppose this was preferable to Les Moonves letting Eflman clean his mansion. [THR]

· Fox "flummoxed" over Gail Berman's exit, and now the network needs to figure out who to plug in as a replacement. FX's Peter Liguori, 20th Century Fox TV president Dana Walden, and a cast of thousands from Fox's many inscrutably named divisions are under consideration. [Variety]
· "No shit?!" news analysis: Berman's jumping ship comes at an inopportune time for Fox. [THR]
· ABC wants to horn in on NBC's monopoly on bad remakes of British TV hits by bastardizing the UK's celebrity ballroom dancing show Strictly Come Dancing. [Variety]
· Looks like P. Diddy's not getting the top Fox job, as his Bad Boy Entertainment signs with MTV for a TV producing deal. [THR]
· 90210 survivor Brian Austin Green will co-star in Freddie Prinze Jr's ABC comedy pilot. Should the series ever go to air, the network may find it necessary to distribute welder's masks to protect the project's star power from blinding viewers. [THR]

· Spider-Man 3 director Sam Raimi announces that Sideways star Thomas Haden Church will play the Spidey's new archenemy, though he didn't disclose the villain's identity. We're going to play it safe and guess he'll be donning the spandex overalls of the wine-swilling Possibly Retarded Airplane Mechanic, a truly chilling foe. [THR]
· If he can't have his acting career back, what he really wants to do is direct: Ben Affleck will direct his own adaptation of the Dennis Lehane novel Gone, Baby, Gone for Touchstone. [Variety]
· Fox chooses mostly unknown British director (and Guy Ritchie disciple) Matthew Vaughn to direct X Men 3. Somewhere in Australia, Bryan Singer is laughing his ass off. [Variety]
· Not content to remake Curb Your Enthusiasm without the funny parts and with a fat, whiny stand-in for Larry David, Showtime poaches some HBO talent to keep the good times rolling. [THR]
· Paul W.S. Anderson, the auteur behind such masterpieces as Resident Evil and Alien Vs. Predator, brings his skillset to writing and directing a remake of Deathrace 3000 for Paramount. We thought that the New Paramount™ was going to lay off the remake crack-pipe, so we'll have to assume that this project is an artifact of the Sherry Lansing era. [Variety]

· Hugh Jackman signs on for the film adaptation of the C.P. Taylor play, Good, and will play a professor in 1930's Germany who gets "caught up in the fervor of nationalism." We're going to assume that's a euphemism for "getting all Nazi'd up." [Variety]
· DreamWorks and Imagine hire the writers of Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle for the Eddie Murphy vehicle Johnny Blaze. The writing duo will spend the next two months trying to rediscover the exact combination of psychotropic drugs and junk food that birthed their first hit. [Variety]
· FilmEngine purges the original cast of the Butterfly Effect and will go ahead with the development of a Kutcher-less sequel. Wilmer Valderrama, your moment has finally arrived. [Variety]
· And in other ridiculous sequel news, New Line has picked up a couple of disposable actors for Final Destination 3. Before you laugh, this one features an amusement park accident. Dude—killer Ferris wheels! [THR]
· Reason for rejoicing; Bravo orders a second season of Project Runway. [Variety]
· Everyone gets a poker project! Janeane Garafalo to star in the NBC poker comedy pilot All In. [THR]

· News to bore you to incontinence: Four longform and three music/comedy/variety categories are demoted to the fake, unbroadcasted Emmys. [Variety]
· NBC concedes the ratings ass-whupping that's been the current TV season, as freshly-beaten president Kevin Reilly confesses, "Trust me, I'm acutely aware we need the next generation of hits," before promising advertisers that September will be better. [THR]
· Kevin Reilly Day continues! The network may release its Poseiden Adventure TV movie before Warner Bros. can unleash Wolfgang Petersen's big-budget version in movie theaters next summer, hoping that their all-star lineup (we're not making this up) of Rutger Hauer, Peter Weller, and—get ready for it—Steve! Fucking! Guttenberg! will steal some of the "real" movie's thunder. [Variety]
· Assemble your own joke from these spare parts we found laying around in the trades: Tara Reid, Las Vegas, wedding chapel, Fox pilot. [THR]
· HBO picks up fourth season of The Wire, a show that everyone insists is brilliant but which we've never seen. Who has time to watch something that's actually good when gay-seeming singers are quitting America Idol every week? [Variety]