· After a decade in existence, DreamWorks is tantalizingly close to crossing the $1 billion box office mark for the first time. You know what that means: three-day weekend for everyone in the Paramount family! [Variety]
· Continuing the tradition of casting attractive female co-stars with questionable acting abilities he established in his Austin Powers films, Mike Myers has added Jessica Alba to the talent roster of his big-screen comeback, The Love Guru. [THR]
· Ben Stiller and his Red Hour Films will stay in the DreamWorks family for at least three more years, and to show how happy the studio was to renew their deal, they sent over one of their favorite creative executives for Stiller to do with as he pleases. [Variety]
· The NLRB rules that studios can't press WGA members into webisode slave-labor. Expect the studios to continue to refuse to pay for the new-media content and force PAs and writers' assistants to write the clips on their lunch breaks. [THR]
· TNT renews Saving Grace, USA reorders Burn Notice, and Lifetime picks up a second season of Army Wives. And there is still not a damn thing to watch on network TV this summer. [Variety]

· The moviegoing public's hunger for threequels has proven so lucrative that studio executives have taken to using three hundred-dollar bills at a time to wipe themselves in celebration of their incredible run of summer success. [Variety]
· Will Hollywood's mad rush to get projects into the production pipeline before a possible strike result in movies which are shittier than normal? Answer: Yup, almost certainly. [THR]
· Warner Bros. is planning a live-action, big-screen version of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Johnny Quest. Not that anyone asked us, but there's no way this gets made without Timberlake attached to star, right? [Variety]
· Just 2 million dedicated moviemaking fans tune in to Fox's absurdly low-rated—but still alive and kicking!—On The Lot on Tuesday night, as the show quickly approaches its goal of having a single viewer for each dollar in the competition's $1 million top prize. [THR]
· Imagine visionary Brian Grazer will superproduce the tentatively titled series The FBI for Fox, a project that should finally satisfy Grazer's burning desire to do "a thing about the CIA or the ATF or NSA or whichever one of those places with the cool initials will let me sleep on the floor of their offices for a few months so I can soak up the atmosphere. And maybe shoot a gun." [Variety]

· Renee Zellweger will star with Viggo Mortensen and Ed Harris in the western Appaloosa, which we hope will provide ample opportunity for a spunky, bonnet-rocking Zellweger to fire a shotgun and exclaim, "You git outta my town, ya hear?" in the direction of the movie's "renegade rancher" antagonist. We love it when she does period gritty. [Variety]
· Fox's apocalypse-quickening reality TV guru Mike Darnell consolidates his power within the network by signing a new multiyear deal, officially giving him more autonomy to launch unscripted programming without the interference of other executives who believe that shows like Are You Smarter Than This Recent Massive Head Trauma Victim? might push the envelope a little too far. [THR]
· New Line's Russell Schwartz is ankling as the studio's head of marketing. We just hope that his replacement demonstrates a similar level of vision that will allow future, groundbreaking online promotions involving the performance of virtual cunnilingus on their movie heroes' wives. [Variety]
· Local news icon Hal Fishman, KTLA's anchor of more than 30 years, dies at 75. [THR]
· AMPAS is banning the mailing of For Your Consideration film score and song CDs, decreeing that the music needs to be evaluated in the context of the movie. Composers and studio music execs have begun the process of formally expressing their outrage, possibly by the mass burning of FYC screenplays in protest of the "out of context" principle that might limit voter access to their work. [Variety]

· Now here's a classy problem: So many movies are making so much money that studios are having a hard time holding onto screens for their weeks-old, but still popular, product, as the flood of new releases suck up precious space at the multiplex. [Variety]
· Producers Alan Ladd Jr. and Jay Kanter win $3.2 million in damages from Warner Bros., which a jury determined screwed them out of millions in Blade Runner, Police Academy, and Chariots of Fire profits through those cute creative accounting practices studios love so much. [THR]
· Not that we don't like Steve Zahn, but it can't be a great sign for Jennifer Aniston's movie career if he's the biggest name they could get to star alongside her in a romantic comedy. (On second thought, feel free to swap their names and muse that Zahn should fire his agent.) [Variety]
· Katherine Heigl starts a production company with her mother. Adorable! (OK, she's her momager, but still. Cute!) [THR]
· Good news, karaoke fans: Fox has decided to keep Don't Forget The Lyrics on in the Fall, as part of a scheduling strategy they hope helps reverse their recent trend of throwing up their hands in defeat until American Idol saves them in January. [Variety]

· The NFL gets into the movie business, opting to launch their new endeavor with a biopic of Green Bay Packers coaching Vince Lombardi over the more timely, image-rehabilitating comedy Michael Vick's Obedience School. [Variety]
· Didn't it seem inevitable that Simon Cowell would expand his karaoke-based empire into films? He'll produce Star Struck, a Fame-inspired musical project about contestants on an American Idol-like singing competition. [THR]
· Hollywood Out of Ideas, Comic Book Vigilantism Edition: Lionsgate will "overhaul" The Punisher for yet another big-screen adaptation, futilely trying to improve upon the yeoman work turned in by Dolph Lundgren and Thomas Jane in previous film versions. [Variety]
· TV viewers desperate for even the most modest levels of entertainment give Fox a Wednesday night win by tuning in to So You Think You Can Dance and Don't Forget the Lyrics. [THR]
· Not to be outdone by the NFL's showbiz ambitions, AMC and former Laker Rick Fox (he was so good on One Tree Hill! And the hot tub/dildo scene in Dirt!) are developing a series about basketball players. [Variety]

· Ricky Gervais will star in Early Retirement, a pitch Warner Bros. bought about a a workoholic who—get ready for it—quits his job to spend more time with his family, a decision we're sure has uproariously hilarious, unforeseen consequences. [Variety]
· Hollywood StrikeWatch: The AMPTP reaches a deal with the Teamsters and several craft unions, freeing them up to dedicate all of their attention to convincing the Writers Guild that the internet is just a silly fad that will never generate reliable revenues. [THR]
· Paramount becomes the fifth member of this year's "billion dollar club," and is already busy designing the trades ad touting itself as the Highest Grossing Non-Sony/Warner Bros./Disney/Fox Studio of 2007. [Variety]
· Amazingly, Fox's On the Lot has still not been canceled, though its viewership is now limited almost exclusively to the friends and family members of the remaining contestants. It's a real shame, because Penny Marshall's largely incomprehensible stint as guest judge last night was really something to see. [THR]
· Where Are They Now? Former Children's-Birthday-Wrecking, Alcoholic Party of Five Clowns Edition: Scott "Bailey" Wolf signs a talent holding deal with ABC. [Variety]

· Var issues its tribute to Hollywood ladypower, the Women's Impact Report, as well as its Hazardous Impact Report, an inventory of the tabloid-attracting trainwrecks who seek to sabotage the work of the Stacey Sniders, Nancy Tellems, and Laura Ziskins of the world. [Variety, Variety]
· Has there ever been a worse time to be a TV viewer? CBS and Fox split the ratings race last night behind a Two and Half Men repeat and a new episode of Hell's Kitchen. [THR]
·"U[niversal] brass felt Vaughn was money and he didn't even know it." [Variety]
· Wondering what Blair Underwood's been up to? Knock yourselves out. [THR]
· Hollywood StrikeWatch, Stockpiling Edition: A report from permitting agency Film LA to be released today reveals that local TV and feature production has risen at a rate unseen since the eve of a feared 2001 strike, a figure suggesting that the studios are indeed squirreling away all the product they can in preparation for a possible work stoppage next year. Meanwhile, WGA members are making their own preparations by fighting over pallets of canned corn in the aisles of Costco. [Variety]

Fans of Scarlett Johansson — or of her cleavage — must be donkey-punching themselves with glee over rumors that the Oscar-nominated actress may bring that necessary dose of gravitas, youth, and authentic breasts to an upcoming Jenna Jameson biopic. According to the Daily Express, the self-proclaimed "World's Greatest Newspaper" and bastion of the rigidly fact-based journalism we've come to cherish from the British tabs, naturally curvy Johansson has assumed the missionary position and will cleave to the role of the surgically enhanced porn star in a Universal project:.

· Johnny Depp continues in his quest to wash the bitter, piratey taste of commerce out of his mouth, signing on for an adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's novel The Rum Diary. [Variety]
· Brett Ratner, Billion Dollar Director Day also sees the announcement of a new two-year deal with 20th Century Fox TV, for whom he produces Prison Break and the upcoming Women's Murder Club, establishing that there is no visual medium safe from his boundless ambition. [THR]
· The Simpsons Movie takes in $96 million at the foreign box office, setting a number of single-day and opening weekend records and crushing competition like Transformers and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. [Variety]
· Perhaps because nearly every Simpsons fan in America was watching the World's Favorite Dysfunctional Family at the multiplex, a repeat of the TV show finished behind CBS's Big Brother in the Sunday night ratings race. [THR]
· All hail your new global leader: Variety editor-at-large Elizbaeth Guider jumps to THR as editor, where she'll be "the global leader responsible for the editorial vision and strategic direction of The Hollywood Reporter's daily and weekly editions, digital content offerings and industry-leading executive conferences while overseeing its staff of editors and reporters worldwide." [THR]

· Johnny Depp may get to fulfill his childhood fantasy of becoming the "vampire patriarch" of the 60s bloodsucker soap opera Dark Shadows, as he's developing a feature based on the series for Warner Bros. [Variety]
· Hollywood tries to make the filthy little whores of YouTube jealous by openly flirting with DailyMotion, the French video sharing site that's now setting up shop here and starting to cut deals with content producers. [THR]
· Fred Claus star Vince Vaughn continues to work the holiday-themed direction of his recent career, signing on alongside Reese Witherspoon for New Line's comedy Four Christmases, the story of a couple who tries to visit all four of their divorced parents on Christmas day. Yuletide hilarity to ensue. [Variety]
· Rob Estes joins the cast of the upcoming ABC drama Women's Murder Club, giving the show the shot of Melrose Place credibility it so desperately needed. [THR]
· And in this round-up's last bit of casting news, Susan Sarandon has joined Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones adaptation, which promises to be the most visually arresting story of a raped and murdered teenager ever made. [Variety]

· Disney becomes the first major studio to kowtow to the anti-smoking lobby's crusade against the innocence-corrupting depiction of smoking in films, banning the super-fun, status-conferring activity of enjoying a delicious cigarette from its family films bearing their flagship brand. They'll also "discourage" their Touchstone and Miramax productions from showing the act unless, of course, shooting an actor languidly puffing away on a sexy-stick somehow enhances the vaguely dangerous appeal of their character . [THR]
· As previously rumored, Jim Carrey signs on to star in the Warner Bros. comedy Yes Man, the story of a guy who "aims to change his life by saying yes to absolutely everything that comes his way" (we've already burned off the easy joke about how he's choosing his roles these days), which he hopes to shoot before disappearing into the parts of nearly every character in A Christmas Carol. [Variety]
· Because we must: Variety dares to ask, "Could Lindsay Lohan's troubles affect career?" [Variety]
· Woo-hoo, indeed: Fox has won back the URL thesimpsonsmovie.com from a cybersquatter who was using the address to drive visitors to a site "that included sexually explicit depictions of several characters from The Simpsons," a decision which now forces fans to find graphic images of Chief-Wiggum-on-Comic-Book-Guy action on their own. [THR]
· Beware, comic fans, for the TV networks and studios have colonized this year's Comic-Con. Telling quote from a Warner Bros. TV marketing exec: "It's not just about fans of comicbooks. There are fans there of all kinds of entertainment. And these are people who communicate what they like through blogs and the Internet." [Variety]

· While underappreciated Aaron Sorkin masterwork Studio 60 was not, as we falsely represented earlier, a nominee for the Best Drama Emmy, the show did pull in a respectable five nods, including one for Eli Wallach in the role of Blacklisted, Alzheimer's Afflicted Writer Who Tries to Steal a Photograph That Has Meaning to Him. [Variety]
· Hollywood NepotismWatch: Shari Redstone, daughter of semi-mummified Viacom overlord Sumner Redstone, may leave the board of the company over a "falling out," though her spokesperson denies she's going anywhere, "even if she has to wait another 300 years for the old man to collapse into a pile of dust in his desk chair" to finally get control of his empire. [THR]
· Ray Liotta now old enough to play Jessica Biel's father. Oh, how the years fly by! [Variety]
· A two-hours So You Think You Can Dance handily defeats ABC's talent-show block of Do People Really Do Celebrity Impressions Anymore? and Insane Asylum Show and Tell: The Search For America's Next Top Inventor. [THR]
· Emmy voters virtually ignore network abomination The CW, which earned a single nom for sound editing in Smallville. [Variety]

Advancing the story of Mandy Patinkin's unexplained absence from yesterday's table read for CBS procedural Criminal Minds [Ed.note—Is that the one with David Caruso and the sunglasses or the one with Vincent D'Onofrio and the perverts? Have an intern look that up.] broken on E!'s Watch with Kristin blog, TVGuide.com's Ausiello Report says that the show's producers are retaliating by writing the actor out of their episode:

· Onetime NBC Messiah Aaron Sorkin has signed on for a three-picture deal with DreamWorks. First up is a script for The Trial of the Chicago 7, a period political piece about the clash between protestors and police at the 1968 Democratic convention that Sorkin was able to adapt from an unaired Studio 60 sketch in which Lobster Boy and new character Pigasus the Immortal argue over who might be the better Yippee candidate for president. [Variety]
· Katherine McPhee is, by far, the hottest American Idol runner-up in Hollywood right now, landing a role in the still-untitled Anna Faris comedy about the Playboy bunny who teaches some lame sorority girls how to unleash their inner tart. In an empowering way! [THR]

· ABC's Steve McPherson on Monday's announcement that pal Kevin Reilly is headed to Fox: "I hear when they fire me, he's going to come run this place," McPherson said. He then continued, his face rapidly draining of blood, "Haha, I'm just kidding guys, my job is completely safe. Guys? Guys? We're fixing Cavemen, I told you that yesterday!" [Variety]
· Every basic cable Christmas special should find a place for former 90210 star Shannen Doherty, whose very presence announces the arrival of a magical Yuletide spirit. [THR]
· Finally: Desperately Seeking Susan: The Musical! Featuring, bizarrely, music from Deborah Harry and Blondie's back catalog. Will the story still play with "Heart of Glass" instead of "Into the Groove"? Developing... [Variety]
· Fox's beleaguered On The Lot, airing a night earlier than usual because of tonight's All Star game, comes in fourth place in its timeslot against only rerun competition. Even we didn't watch it last night, and it's our job to monitor its death-throes. [THR]
· Speaking of Fox, the renegade network plans to use its Emmy awards telecast to launch its fall season, a week before Nielsen's officially decreed start date for the ratings race they will largely concede until the next season of Idol premieres. [Variety]
· Universal buys the rights to Vanity Fair article about Barbaro, Gone Like the Wind, for triple-threat-hack Peter Berg to direct. Somewhere, our buddy Will at Deadspin faints dead away with delight. [Variety]

· Dennis Hopper, Nathan Lane, Kelsey Grammer, Stanley Tucci, and George Lopez join the cast of Swing Vote, the "populist" comedy in which a presidential election hilariously rests on Kevin Costner's ballot. [Variety]
· Despite the occasional drop-in by environmentally conscious Hollywood megastar Cameron Diaz (wow, we're really picking on her today, aren't we?), NBC's coverage of the Live Earth concerts draws even worse ratings than the network's typical summertime Saturday night slate of reruns and NHL playoff games. [THR]
· Hoping to spur weak sales, Sony drops the price of the Playstation 3 by $100. Fuck you, early adopters! [Variety]
· Jennifer Esposito will star opposite Val Kilmer in the indie drama Conspiracy, gaining a lifetime of junket-enlivening anecdotes about what it's like to work with Hollywood's most lovably batshit castmate. [THR]
· Here's a link to a detailed summary of the WGA's annual report on guild member compensation in 2006. Enthralling? You bet! [Variety]

· Casting genius or casting insanity? You make the call*: Jim Carrey will play Scrooge and all three ghosts in a 3-D/motion-capture Robert Zemeckis reimagination of A Christmas Carol for Disney. [*And we bet we know what you're going to say!] [Variety]
· Some more details about Cloverfield, the supertopsecret Paramount/JJ Abrams project introduced to the world by means of a mysterious trailer playing before Transformers. [THR]
· After making meaningless Tuesday box office history, Transformers took in $29.1 million on Wednesday to claim a record of somewhat greater import: The Biggest Fourth of July Ever. [Variety]
· The folks at Nielsen continue to measure summer TV ratings, even on nights when virtually no one is watching. [THR]
· Paramount tries to save Angelina Jolie box office failure A Mighty Heart by cutting its number of screens in half, hoping that this will somehow help the movie build word-of-mouth and extend its run in some markets. [Variety]

"Count Gottfried von Bismarck, who was found dead on Monday aged 44, was a louche German aristocrat with a multi-faceted history as a pleasure-seeking heroin addict, hell-raising alcoholic, flamboyant waster and a reckless and extravagant host of homosexual orgies." [Telegraph.co.uk]

· In the latest development in the increasingly hard-to-follow story of Valkyrie's Tom Cruise and Bryan Singer's attempts to obtain shooting permits for German government sites in Berlin, the production has been denied permission to film in the historic Benderblock building, where the revered Nazi-hunter to be portrayed by the actor was executed. But not because Cruise is a Scientologist! Government officials understandably just want to preserve the dignity of their memorial, realizing that everything Hollywood touches is instantly desecrated. [Variety]
· Actors who may or may not be joining the cast of Desperate Housewives: Dana Delany, Nathan Fillion, and Lyndsy Fonseca. Fun fact: Delaney was the first choice for the role eventually given to Marcia Cross. [THR]
· Transformers gets a "six-day weekend" to squeeze as much money as possible out of the Fourth of July holiday. [Variety]
· Sad news: We may be falling slowly out of love with the most promising show of the summer, NBC's Kittens Vs. Cougars: The Battle To Bone Onetime Tennis Star Marc Philippoussis, which felt a little desperate and saggy after last night's low-rated, back-to-back installments. (And what happened to companion show Boner Vs. Science?) [THR]
· Spike Lee angry. [Variety]

· Deciding that their Ritalin-addled viewers' comedy needs are not being met by episodes of My Super Sweet Sixteen and Yo Momma, MTV is developing three American Pie/Ferris Bueller's Day Off-inspired movies to air on the network. [Variety]
· Richard "Shaft" Roundtree joins the cast of Speed Racer, hopes to avoid the vicious chimp attacks that have plagued other actors on the set. [THR]
· In an effort to keep its leadership intact for the world-ending, multi-guild strike about to wipe Hollywood off the face of the Earth, the DGA elects Michael Apted to a third term as President. [Variety]
· Despite having Sunday night's most watched show in Some Famous People Sing Nice Songs for the Dead Princess, NBC loses the primetime race to CBS. [THR]
· Shrek the Third takes the overseas box office crown with $69.6 million, but Transformers still managed to pull in $34.7 million. [Variety]