· Finding The View to be an unacceptably highbrow discussion of topics of concern to the modern woman with the free time to watch TV during the day, Debi Mazar, Aida Turturro, and Karen Duffy are shopping around a "New Jersey take" on the format. [THR]
· As fleetingly exciting as it was when the studios dropped that residual-rollback proposal they never would have followed through on, the threat of a strike remains "high." Keep stockpiling those canned goods, everyone! [Variety]
· The CW's Online Nation earns the distinction of being the first new Fall show to be canceled. Somewhere, a trio of underachieving, modern-day Neanderthals breathe a sigh of relief that they've survived the initial round of network executions. [THR]

· The trades discuss yesterday's big strike news that's allowing Hollywood its first glimmer of hope that a walkout might be avoided. (Please, no one say anything about the internet and digital downloads and ruin the town's brief buzz.) Also, THR unveils its stunning, strike-related news logo (at left). [THR, Variety]
· You know who hasn't had an unfunny family sitcom for far too long? Damon Wayans! Don't worry, ABC is busy filling this gaping hole in its primetime lineup. [THR]

· The studios and networks are "outraged" with the WGA's strike rules, which AMPTP president Nick Counter says are "filled with threats of fines, punishment and blacklisting," and have threatened to sue the Guild if tries to interfere with its members' contractual delivery of all the rushed material they're trying to stockpile to help them survive a work stoppage. Unsurprisingly, the WGA has told the producers to invest the time they're spending worrying about its rules coming up with less ridiculous proposals. [Variety]
· A&E casts Benjamin Bratt as the lead in its pilot The Cleaner, instantly giving the project a legitimacy on the level of an average network series likely to be canceled after five poorly rated episodes. [THR]

· Ray director Taylor Hackford convinces "very busy" wife Helen Mirren and semi-retired actor Joe Pesci to star in Love Ranch, the heartwarming tale of the man who established Nevada's first legal brothel, his madam spouse, and the boxer gunned down by a bodyguard for his suspected sexual involvement with the aforementioned Mustang Ranch proprietress. [Variety]
· Justice League director George Miller is auditioning virtually every young actor in Hollywood (Adam Brody! Minka Kelly! Mary Elizabeth Winstead!) during a "marathon casting session" running through today, hoping that the cattle call will help him fill coveted parts like Superman, Batman, the Flash and Wonder Woman with talent cheap enough to stay together for several movies. [THR]
· Led Zeppelin is finally making their music available online, with the band's entire catalogue hitting the internets on November 13. Also: the "Black Dog" ringtone you've been wanting since you were sixteen will soon be made available. [Variety]
· CBS wins Sunday night after the Patriots-Cowboys game runs long, though ABC's Desperate Housewives and Brothers & Sisters both put up better numbers than last week. [THR]
· Overseas moviegoers continue to delight in Pixar's animated story of a talented rat who saved a fading French bistro by flouting Paris's overly restrictive restaurant cleanliness laws. [Variety]

· Showing a Baueresque level of self-sacrifice, Kiefer Sutherland takes one for his TV team, pleading out to 48 days of jail time that can be served on a two-stint schedule that won't interrupt the shooting of 24, even though he probably could have served fewer days if he'd opted for a consecutive sentence. If eighteen months of being tortured by the Chinese couldn't break him, seven weeks should be a breeze. [THR]
· After putting up "solid" premiere numbers, ABC's bold Cavemen experiment falters, dropping off 25 percent in its second week. Enjoy your lovable, squash-playing, Swedish-furniture-hawking Neanderthals while you still can. [Variety]

· Jake Gyllenhaal joins director Doug Liman on DreamWorks' Untitled Moon Project, in which Gyllenhaal is dispatched to populate a lunar colony with a super-race of dreamy-eyed pioneers. [Variety]
· NBC Universal is acquiring Oxygen Media, including the Oprahcentric Oxygen network, for $925 million, a piddling sum Winfrey will merely toss on the cash pile occupying much of her 25-acre Santa Barbara backyard. [THR]
· Pablo Escobar is the new Harvey Milk: Oliver Stone is producing his own biopic on the life of Colombia's most lovable drug-cartel kingpin, a project that will try to race into production ahead of the recently announced, competing Killing Pablo feature. [Variety]
· Lisa Kudrow joins the cast of "let's just squeeze in one more job before the strike" flick Hotel for Dogs, joining fellow speedy-paycheck-chasers Don Cheadle and Emma Roberts. [THR]
· Apatow Comedy College alumni Michael Cera and Kat Dennings sign on to star in a film adaptation of the novel Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. [Variety]

· Hollywood Out Of Ideas, Feature-to-TV Recycling Edition: Demonstrating a company-wide commitment to reducing its new-idea-footprint, NBC Universal's USA Network plans a TV series based on Thank You for Smoking, while its NBC flagship will try to adapt Outsourced into a primetime workplace comedy. [Variety, Variety]
· If this doesn't stoke your interest in the upcoming Ashton Kutcher/Carmeon Diaz comedy What Happens in Vegas... (not to be confused with the recently announced, Kutcher-free Dude, Where's My Groom?) nothing will: Queen Latifah has signed on for a cameo so hilarious that if the details of her participation were to escape, the entire project would be doomed to turnaround. [THR]
· Just in case you hadn't heard, last week's WGA contract talks weren't as friendly as they could have been. [Variety]
· NBC wins Sunday night behind its Packers-Bears football game, beating lineups from ABC and CBS that dropped off from last week's numbers. [THR]
· While American moviegoers largely shunned this weekend's offerings, overseas ticket-buyers turned out for Rataouille to the the tune of $19.7 million. [Variety]

· Universal is pushing the release of George Clooney's Leatherheads from December to April, so that Clooney can "incorporate additional footage and honor previous commitments," hoping that the extra four months will be more than enough time for the director/star to fix all the things they can't publicly admit they don't like about the film. [Variety]
· 30 Rock's season premiere Jerry Seinfeld stunt-cameo pays off, as the show set its series record for 18-49 viewers. CBS, however, won the night over ABC behind CSI and Survivor. [THR]
· Fox makes a series commitment to spooky, X-Files-ish, Twilight Zone-y J.J. Abrams show Fringe, which he plans to kick off with a $10 million, two-hour pilot. [Variety]
· About $20 million worth of people who were entertained by There's Something About Mary are expected to turn out to be disappointed by the Farrelly brothers' reunion with Ben Stiller in The Heartbreak Kid. [THR]
· Warner Bros. shells out $2 million for the bachelor party spec script Hangover (logline: Dude, Where's My Groom?), which they hope director Todd Phillips can crank out before the strike that may or may not be on its way. [Variety]

· Comedy Central decides not to renew The Showbiz Show for a fourth season, officially freeing David Spade from the conflict-inviting hosting duties that sometimes put him in the uncomfortable position of having to use puppets to explain how Heather Locklear's marriage was already over by the time he was banging her. [Variety]
· APA signs Graham Greene, Chris Kattan and Heather Matarazzo, a trio of "gets" that should help the agency to finally put the days of having to endure dismissive "Who the fuck invited APA?!" jokes on Entourage behind them. [THR]
· Pushing Daisies—which we enjoyed quite a bit despite the crushing hype—posts the best debut numbers of any new 8 pm timeslot show this season. (Can't ABC just funnel the entire Cavemen budget into Daises to keep that expensive, Burtonesque look?) Meanwhile, NBC's Bionic Woman pumps-and-dumps, falling off 30 percent from its first-week ratings. [Variety]
· Ehren Kruger joins Alex Kurtzman and Robert Orci in writing the screenplay that director Michael Bay will use as a rough guide for where to place his giant fucking robots on Transformers 2. [THR]
· DreamWorks is wisely trying to keep their Norbit dream team of Eddie Murphy and critic-proof producer Brain Robbins intact, entering final negotiations to reunite them for the comedy A Thousand Words, the story of a guy who "only has 1,000 words left to speak before he dies." [Variety]

· Oh, Johnny Drama, you're so much better than this: Kevin Dillon will star in the 300 spoof National Lampoon's 301: The Legend of Awesomest Maximus Wallace Leonidas. Will someone please book him for some personal appearances and save him from this kind of strike-insurance slumming? [Variety]
· Cavemen's overhauled series premiere "performed OK" in the Tuesday night Nielsens, while House lead Fox to victory in primetime. [THR]
· Natalie Portman joins the cast of the remake of the Danish love-triangle drama Brothers, in which she'll play the sister-in-law boinked by dreamy-eyed homewrecker Jake Gyllenhaal while sleepy-eyed soldier Tobey Maguire is off fighting in Afghanistan. [Variety]

· Confident that Medellin left enough of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar's life unexplored to warrant another biopic, the Yari Film Group is fast-tracking passion project Killing Pablo (starring Javier Bardem in the role immortalized by Vinnie Chase), though they likely won't be able to squeeze it in before a possible strike next summer. [Variety]
· Comedy Central thinks that Carlos Mencia has at least ten more episodes' worth of Arab and Mexican jokes in him, renewing its inexplicably high-rated Mind of Mencia for a fourth season. [THR]

· Agenting's Evil Empire joins forces with its baseball equivalent, luring the New York Yankees into their nefarious embrace with the promise of brokering lucrative new corporate sponsorships and keeping the clubhouse buffet stocked with the most delicious babies the Bronx has to offer. [*Full disclosure: As a lifelong Yankees fan, this one really hurts.] [Variety]
· Now using fifth-grade English reading lists to fill out his development slate, NBC perfect storm Ben Silverman has ordered 13 episodes of a drama series based on Robin Crusoe. [THR]

· The Writers Guild, SAG, AFTRA, and the Teamsters picketed FremantleMedia yesterday over the game show Temptation, a protest that followed four writers walking off the show last month because they are working way too hard on a Sale of the Century clone not to have Guild benefits: "'We worked 14 to 18 hours a day on 'Temptation' for two months,' said guild member Aaron Solomon, head writer for Temptation and one of the four who walked. 'The fact that Fremantle wouldn't negotiate with the WGAW felt like a slap in the face.'" [THR]
· The Office's hourlong premiere—which is sure to inspire a resurgence of rabies-awareness 5K fun runs at places of business all across the country, complete with stripper nurses and huge checks—tied its best-ever rating in the 18-49 demo. [THR]

· Rob Reiner officially endorses Hillary Clinton, immediately embracing her campaign's talking points on Barack Obama: "Based on the experience I have had in politics, and I have been on the front lines in a lot of these fights, I came around to realizing that we do need the most experienced and most qualified person to run the country." [Variety]
· The much-anticipated premiere-night Nielsen deathmatch between NBC's Bionic Woman remake and ABC's Grey's Anatomy spin-off is won by Bionic; meanwhile, Kid Nation dropped off from its unspectacular debut numbers of last week. [THR]
· Mark your calendars, Michael Bay fans, because giant fucking robots are coming again, eventually: Paramount and DreamWorks have staked out June 26th, 2009 for Transformers 2. And the project stays even if Spielberg and his pals go. [Variety]
· Bonnie Hunt is getting a daytime talk show. [THR]
· And on the development battlefront, NBC and ABC set up competing, Famesque projects about young people chasing their performing arts dreams in NY. [Variety]

· NBC angers its network rivals by working some technically allowed, but "morally" questionable, Nielsen voodoo by repeating its Heroes premiere on Saturday night and adding that showing's ratings to the series' original Monday night number. We think. This developing feud over ratings-reporting gamesmanship is as confusing as it is scintillating. [Variety]
· In simpler Nielsen-related news, House is still huge, averaging 18.1 million viewers in its best-ever performance not artificially enhanced by an American Idol lead-in [THR]
· Creative triple-threat Kevin James will write, produce, and star in Mall Cop. We'll refrain from relating the logline and let your imaginations run wild with the comedic possibilities evoked by the combination of America's most beloved schlub and that offbeat occupation. [Variety]
· Fox calls up Nip/Tuck creator Ryan Murphy from its FX basic-cable farm team to their network major league club, giving a series commitment to Murphy's female workplace drama Queen B. [THR]
· NBC will bottle up eight midseason episodes of Mark Burnett's latest reality TV brain fart, My Dad Is Better Than Your Dad, which seeks to combine "the family fun and kid empowerment of '[Are You Smarter Than A] 5th Grader' with the universally relatable concept of bragging that your dad is best." It's still unclear whether or not the proud fathers in question will be required to beat each other senseless at the end of each show to truly prove their paternal supremacy. [Variety]

· Thumbing its nose at coldhearted, Spielberg-disrespecting corporate partner Viacom, DreamWorks Animation names legendary Sumner Redstone shitcanee Tom Freston to its board of directors. That'll teach you not to fuck with a national treasure, unfeeling new CEO Phillppe Dauman! [Variety]
· Now here's some casting chatter we can get behind: Jessica Biel is "in talks" to play Wonder Woman in Warner Bros.' comic book megamovie Justice League of America, a project that may include other DC heroes like Superman (but not Brandon Routh), Batman (ditto on Bale), the Flash, and Aquaman. [Variety]
· In lower-budgeted comic book project news involving stars further down Hollywood's alphabetical hierarchy, Dominic West, Doug Hutchison and Wayne Knight join Lionsgate's new Punisher feature. [THR]
· The season premieres of Heroes and Dancing with the Stars both build on last season's debuts, while new CBS "look at how socially inept smart people are!" sitcom Big Bang Theory (seriously, will those geeks ever get laid? We can't handle the delicious tension!) actually drawing a bigger number than lead-in How I Met Your Mother. [Variety]
· Conspicuously silenced Emmy blasphemer Sally Field is attached to play Mary Todd Lincoln opposite Liam Neeson's Abe in Steven Spielberg's slow-developing Lincoln biopic. [THR]

· Hollywood Out of Ideas, Unoriginality Is Easy As 1-2-3 Edition: Denzel Washington will star in director Tony Scott's sure-to-be incomprehensible remake of The Taking of Pelham 1,2,3, assuming a role originally played by Walter Matthau and not-so-memorably reprised by Edward James Olmos in a 1998 made-for-TV version. [Variety]
· NBC throws money at big-name screenwriters for its Heroes: Origins spinoff, signing up X2/Superman Returns co-writer Michael Dougherty and Hostel's Eli Roth to script episodes tackling the backstory issues of the hit series' characters, such as why Ali Larter's evil reflection is so angry all the time. [THR]
· Samuel L. Jackson and Bernie Mac will star in the Dimension comedy Soul Men, a project that regrettably is in no way related to the classic, similarly titled C. Thomas Howell/Rae Dawn Chong self-tanning farce of 1986. [Variety]
· The Family Guy's Very Special Star Wars-Themed Episode posts a "strong" performance in its ultimately doomed Nielsen attack against NBC's Sunday Night Football. [THR]
· Kevin Spacey will return to TV (well, sort of) after a 16-year hiatus, starring in HBO's Recount as the Gore campaign chief of staff who challenged the disputed balloting in Florida during the 2000 presidential election. [Variety]

· It's a Hollywood abs-off! Extravagantly six-packed superstar Brad Pitt is in talks to replace Matt Damon and appear opposite famously washboarded former underwear model Mark Wahlberg in the Darren Aronofsky boxing drama The Fighter. Shirts will be doffed, and stomach muscles menacingly flexed! [Variety]
· NBC orders four episodes of the Christmas-themed reality show, Clash of the Choirs, in which celebrities return home to assemble armies comprised of their towns' best amateur singers, then pit these muscial warriors against each other in a primetime TV deathmatch. [THR]
· In perhaps today's most touching news, Katherine Heigl options the rights to adapt bestseller Lost & Found, a project she will produce with the very same mother who didn't believe she would win that Emmy. [Variety]
· Light-fingered sometime actress Winona Ryder joins the ensemble cast of the big-screen adaptation of novelist Bret Easton Ellis's The Informers. [THR]
· And this one is going right on our Season Pass list: VH1 is planning the series Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, where the Loveline physician will help former reality stars get off the drugs and back to dealing with their semifame in a more healthy manner. [Variety]

· What showbiz name evokes Rat Pack-era Hollywood cool more than any other? That's right: Brett Ratner. The singularly hacky Rush Hour 3 director, continuing his ongoing mission to diminish the legacies of legends whose lifestyles he desperately wishes to emulate, will reteam with screechy muse Chris Tucker for an adaptation of Mr. S: My Life With Frank Sinatra, a tell-all bio about Sinatra's relationship with his valet. "I think [Ratner's] channeling Frank sometimes," says one the book's authors, rolling around in a pile of New Line's option cash. [Variety]
· Dan Rather opens a can containing $70 million worth of legal whoop-ass on CBS, claiming that the network scapegoated him for the Memogate scandal. [THR]
· DreamWorks Animation runs screaming from a May 2009 box office confrontation with James Cameron's Avatar, moving their Monsters Vs. Aliens to a safer Easter '09 release date. [Variety]
· Fox picks up Raffik, a police procedural about a Borat-like Albanian detective dispatched to the US Americas to amuse the LAPD with his observations about the differences in their law enforcement techniques. [THR]
· The premiere numbers for Kelsey Grammer's Back to You, Gordon "Scorched Bollocks" Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, and the New Mexico Child Welfare Department's Kid Nation are uniformly "solid" but "unspectacular." Also, as expected, plenty of female teenagers watched Gossip Girl. [Variety]

· Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman prepares for the jilting DreamWorks partners David Geffen and Steven Spielberg may inflict upon Paramount, calling their potential departure for a new studio venture "completely immaterial" to his company's happiness and inviting the pair to "go ahead and fuck whoever you want, you disloyal little tramps, see if I care! My heart will go on!" [Variety]
· Jimmy Kimmel will host the AMAs* for an amazing fourth time. [*the American Music Awards, more popularly known as the "Retarded Grammies."] [THR]
· Happy news: AMC is about to pick up the awesome Mad Men for a second season, the network's tribute to the drinking—Scotch-in-the-office, secretary-banging heyday of the 1960s advertising world. [Variety]
· Eddie Haskell is mad as hell at SAG over undisbursed foreign Beaver residuals and not going to take it anymore [THR]
· It's Matthew McConaughey's Hollywood, and we're all just living in it: Jennifer Garner is in negotiations to star opposite a "charmingly womanzing" McConaughey in New Line's Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, and McConaughey takes Owen Wilson's place in Tropic Thunder, from which Wilson recently withdrew due to, um, "creative differences" or something. [Variety, Variety]