We already linked to a THR article about Touchstone's acquisition of Blowback in the trade round-up (have you already forgotten?), but we couldn't let the story about how the deal went down go without a spotlight:

· Want to read Var and THR's coverage of the Emmy nominations? Of course you do! [Variety, THR]
· Also, the nominees seem pleased just to be recognized! [THR]
· Our pals at CollegeHumor.com have pacted with The New Paramount. Congratulations, guys! You'll be remaking Van Wilder for them in no time at all. [Variety]
· Recipe for instant mediocrity: Take one C-list actress (Jordana Brewster), add a little horror franchise prequel (Texas Chainsaw Massacre), and sprinkle in some Michael Bay production (Platinum Dunes). [THR]
· Peter Berg continues to work. [Variety]

· DreamWorks Animation is in trouble with a second straight quarter of disappointing DVD sales, an SEC investigation, and six pending shareholder lawsuits. We're starting to feel like it was a bad idea to sell our car to buy into mogul-in-miniature Jeffrey Katzenberg's Shrek-colored vision. [Variety]
· THR has yet another attempt to explain the downturn on European box office decline on sun-woshipping Germans. Left unexplored is the unpleasant possibility that God kind of hated Bewitched. [THR]
· And you can stick this in your Slump: Summer numbers might be down, but overall, studios are have taken in more money than last year. [Variety]
· On a slow Monday night, viewers prefer the culinary abuse of Fox's Hell's Kitchen to rubbernecking as INXS tries to replace their dead singer on national television. [THR]
· Poker is the new poker: Warner Bros. buys the rights to the book One of a Kind: The Rise and Fall of Stuey 'The Kid' Ungar, the tragic story of a poker phenom who died of an overdose. [Variety]

· Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's coyly-handled and tabloid-friendly smoldering sexual relationship seems to have helped Mr. and Mrs. Smith at the box office, while the Insincere-Seeming Publicity Theater of whatshisname and whatshername seems not to have damaged War of the Worlds. [Variety]
· Legendary screenwriter Ernest Lehman (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, West Side Story, The Sound of Music, and many more) died Saturday at the age of 89. [THR]
· Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way will produce an adaptation of Cat's Cradle, hiring the writer of the Joycian masterwork Sahara (and his son) to tackle the Kurt Vonnegut classic. [Variety]
· Tommy Lee Jones joins the cast of thousands in the Robert Altman-directed adaptation of Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion, will be lovably grizzled alongside Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Lindsay Lohan, Virginia Madsen, Woody Harrelson, John C. Reilly, Lily Tomlin and Maya Rudolph. [THR]
· Oh, and by the way: Paris is snubbed as London wins the 2012 Olympics. [Variety]

· Clive Owen is finalizing the details to star in Shoot-Em-Up for New Line, an "ultraviolent" flick with scenes that include "a shootout during a sex scene and another in the midst of a freefall." We don't want to fall prey to the hype machine, but this may turn out to be the greatest movie ever made. [Variety]
· Director James Cameron seems torn about which 3D project to pay attention to, reportedly moving his focus from next announced project Battle Angel to mysterious, "parallel" Project 880. Also, it's been a long time, so refresh our memory—is Cameron the Titanic guy or the Cutthroat Island guy? [THR]
· Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz chooses a showrunning deal for future AD seasons over a potentially more lucrative development deal, opting to be yanked around on a single, continuing project instead of a bunch of new ones. [Variety]
· Despite news specials exploring yesterday's Jackson-related Armageddon, Fox's Hell's Kitchen still pulls good ratings. [THR]
· War of the Worlds is premiering all over the world, where canny translators provided by the studio may be able to mitigate some of the damage Cruise may do on international red carpets. [Variety]

At the risk of becoming a pawn in the effort to induce a feeding frenzy for Microsoft's Halo project, we present this picture (it's hit our inbox more times than we care to count in the last 10 minutes) of the minions dispatched by the evil lifeforms at CAA to deliver the scripts to the studios. From the assistant tracking wires:

· 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]

· Fuck the tsunami victims, and forget about houses sliding down hillsides, Hollywood has a bigger problem: How will the pounding rain affect the Oscar parties? [Variety]
· Everybody works during pilot season! James Van Der Beek and one of the Arquettes turn in their food stamps until at least mid-April as they sign up for sitcom pilots. [THR]
· The Shield showrunner Shawn Ryan tempts severe writers' block by inking a huge three-year overall deal with 20th Century Fox TV. Poor schmuck. He may never write again, and his army of gold robots will provide scant comfort as he kicks his laptop, screaming, "Why can't you give me more edgy cop dramas?!" [Variety]
· Failing to find a sufficiently commercial project involving the sexual molestation of former child actors and cancer patients, entertainment firm Neverland Films abandons its bad-buzz name and is reborn as Code Entertainment. Next up: Michael Jackson rechristens his home "Code Entertainment's House of Prepubescent Sodomy," forcing another naming crisis for the unlucky company. [Variety]
· U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards tells off the FCC because when ordinary citizens do it, the governent cackles with delighted disregard: "Are you going to regulate washing machines next?...Ancillary [power] does not mean you get to rule the world." Awww snap! [THR]

· Variety: "Arnold is looking to terminate runaway production." It's safe to stop reading after that first sentence, since they blew their pun load by also using "Governator" in the subtitle. [Variety]
· The WGA showers their award love on the screenplays for Sideways and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which will likely go on to get shafted at the Oscars. [THR]
· Susan Sarandon joins Billy Bob Thornton in the cast of New Line's Mr. Woodcock. Again, we urge you to enjoy that title before it disappears into the ether of indecency. [THR]
· Ben Affleck's addition to the cast of Focus Features' Truth, Justice, and the American Way suddenly makes Adrien Brody and Diane Lane's decision to do the movie seem like career Russian Roulette. [Variety]
· Michael Bay signs on to direct the long-developing project Molly's World, a psychological thriller in which everything explodes for no apparent reason. [Variety]

· Brad Pitt will star in the mind-bendingly self-referential Sony pic Chad Schmidt, where he'll play an actor that can't get work because he looks too much like Brad Pitt. You know, kind of like Skeet Ulrich and Johnny Depp. [Variety]
· Fading NBC golden boy Jeff Zucker's heartsick over his network's falling ratings, but will dry his tears with all the money pouring into NBC Universal. [Variety]
· Ripped from the headlines, pooped into development: Warner Bros. buys disturbing internet chat article U Want Me 2 Kill Him? from Vanity Fair for Bryan Singer to develop and direct. Singer needn't worry—that sort of thing almost never happens on dating sites. [Variety]
· Academy members complain that technical award winners will be stuck in the ghetto of the audience instead of onstage when they're presented with awards. Hey, it could be worse, you could be stuntmen and not get an award at all. [THR]
· Fox Searchlight singlehandedly decimates the Australian film industry with its decision to postpone Eucalyptus indefinitely in the wake of suspicious-sounding "script problems." [THR]

· Jon Stewart is hot, HOT I tells ya: While Jon Stewart is tied to his The Daily Show anchor chair through 2008, Comedy Central will finance the development of other projects through Stewart's Busboy Productions. [Variety]
· Meg Ryan's agents have a sense of humor, signing her on to star in the romantic comedy Role of a Lifetime, when everyone knows she cashed in her "role of a lifetime" by having that on-screen orgasm in a restaurant an eon ago. [THR]
· Freddie Prinze Jr. works! (At least for a little while.) ABC helps Prinze silence Sarah Michelle Gellar's whining about how he sits on the couch all day by greenlighting a pilot for him. [Variety]
· Showtime to adapt British comedy Manchild for American audiences. Guys, the Brits don't work here, stick with the gays. [THR]
· Knowing that "logistical difficulties" would make getting Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines into a Running Scared sequel impossible (at least without prohibitively expensive CGI), New Line merely recycles the title for Paul Walker. [Variety]

· MGM CFO Daniel Taylor will take over as president of the studio. The elevation of the studio's chief bean counter to the top spot makes it painfully clear that MGM is now officially Sony's money-printing bitch. [insert sound of a lion being sodomized] [Variety]
· The Oscar nominations of Finding Neverland and The Aviator have Disney and the Weinsteins again holding hands and skipping around the Maypole. [Variety]
· News that five people care about: The rift between the WGA West and WGA East is about to get all Biggie-Tupac over which coast gets what share of dues. [THR]
· "Script problems" delay the Crowe-Kidman flick Eucalyptus. You'd think they would've gotten that troublesome script thing in shape before everyone showed up to shoot the movie. [THR]
· Jerry Bruckheimer lures feature directors Andrew "The Fugitive" Davis and Simon "Tomb Raider" West to his TV
drama pilots, promising them they could blow up as much shit as they like on the small screen. [Variety]

· The House Energy and Commerce committed passes a bill that "dramatically increases" broadcast indecency fines. Way to go, five people that file 99 percent of indecency complaints! You're officially running the country now. [Variety]
· For those who prefer their Messiah roughed up, but not graphically brutalized, Mel Gibson is recutting The Passion for a limited theatrical release. Five to six minutes of violent scenes will be cut, and instead of a crown of thorns, Christ will wear an uncomfortably tight baseball cap. [Variety]
· Hollywood Out of Ideas, Scorsese Edition: The Aviator's team of Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, and writer John Logan will remake Kurosawa's Drunken Angel for Warner Bros. [THR]
· Hollywood Out of Ideas, What the Fuck? Edition: Producer Tony Thomopolous and George Hamilton are developing a sequel to the 1979 vampire comedy Love at First Bite. Finally, all those 25-year-old loose ends will be tied up! [THR]
· The Tom Cruise Book Club: Paramount buys another book for their golden boy, Christopher Reich's as-yet-unpublished The Patriots Club. [Variety]
· Meg Ryan, apparently bitter that her agents at William Morris thought it would be a good idea to get massive plastic surgery that rendered her almost unrecognizable, bolts for CAA. [THR]

· Hey, starfuckers with wanderlust! Quick, get thee to the Land of Hasselhoff to see the likes of Keanu Reeves, Bill Murray, Will Smith, and Kevin Spacey hawking their cinematic wares at the Berlin Film Festival. [Variety]
· The New Paramount™ continues to spend, spend, spend, buying the rights to the gold-digging kids book Treasure Trove for Tom Cruise's production company. [Variety]
· Start your angry letter-writing campaign now: Fox reduces Arrested Development's episode order to make room for American Dad. Looks like the network has finally run out of patience with AD's ratings...or American Dad/Family Guy (which is being relaunched there soon) creator Seth MacFarlane has some incriminating pictures of Fox head Gail Berman. [THR]
· American Idol continues to bestride the feeble television landscape like an out-of-key Colossus, pulling in another 30 million viewers. [THR]
· Chris Noth's career comes full circle, as he returns to the Law & Order franchise (this time to the Criminal Intent flavor), giving the producers some insurance against future Vincent D'Onofrio "fainting spells." [Variety]

· Double-feature alert: There are plans to re-release Deep Throat to accompany the Universal documentary Inside Deep Throat on the [cough-cough] "seminal porn film." [Variety]
· Fox sensibly shits its pants and decides to move Fantastic Four back a week, avoiding a likely one-sided Fourth of July showdown with War of the Worlds. They're a lot less afraid of Bewitched, the new competition, which will likely feature fewer spectacular explosions. [THR]
· Now that Paul McCartney's buzzless Super Bowl halftime show has made live television safe for America, ABC will air the Oscars through 2014, and will shrug off the tyranny of the 7-second tape delay. [Variety]
· In an effort to capitalize on the runaway popularity of housewives in suburbia, ABC signs
Kristin Davis to star in the one-hour pilot Soccer Moms. The move also helps temporarily to keep former Sex in the City stars off the welfare rolls. [THR]
· Even after bothering to "reimagine" Jennifer Love Hewitt half-hour In the Game, ABC mercifully decides to finally put it down like a crippled dog. [THR]

· Actors celebrating their own: The SAG awards throw a bone to the Sideways ensemble, while Jaime Foxx and Hilary Swank warm up for their Oscar speeches. [Variety]
· John Cusack takes a break from romantic comedies to to star in the hitman thriller The Contract with Morgan Freeman. We're unclear which of them is the hitman; both have previous contract killer experience. (See Grosse Pointe Blank and Nurse Betty.) [Variety]
· The delightfully jiggly Eva Mendes will star opposite Nicholas Cage in Columbia's Marvel comic adaptation of Ghost Rider. Daredevil's Mark Steven Johnson is directing, so you know this one's going to be huge. [THR]
· Pilot pick ups: a Fox sitcom set at a used car dealership, an NBC poker comedy, and a wacky, "high-concept" WB show about Miami mermaids. In related future news, networks will reduce their slate of new comedies to record low levels. [Variety]
· Tired of all that "fake crime" bullshit on the innumerable CSI and Law & Order series? A&E is launching the Crime & Investigation network for those who like their crime to have real victims. [Variety]

· Microsoft brings out the million-dollar check to snag Alex Garland to translate the Halo videogames into some kind of coherent script. We get the feeling that everyone's favorite monopoly ain't gonna settle for an Alone in the Dark kind of adaptation. This will probably be a REALLY EXPENSIVE kinda flop. [Variety]
· David James Elliott, star of JAG, the longest-running show that no one we know has ever seen, gets a development deal with ABC and Touchstone TV for his 10 years of service. In the corporate world, you'd get a nice watch. [THR]
· Dustin Hoffman signs on for the Will-Ferrell-hears-hilarious-voices-in-his-head comedy Stranger Than Fiction. He'll play another wacky professor type, a la I Heart Huckabees. [Variety]
· Hey, did you forget that they're still making James Bond movies? They are! The next one will be Casino Royale, even though they don't know which guy with a funny accent will get to wear the golden tuxedo yet. [THR]
· Studios shuffle around the release schedule for their summer-flavored crap. But don't bother paying attention yet, it will all change four or five more times in the next few weeks. [Variety]

· MGM picks its final four films before their new masters at Sony take over. Strangely, one of the chosen films is Breaking Vegas, a directing vehicle for Brett Ratner. Wouldn't it have been less painful to burn down the place before Sony gets to run the show? [Variety]
· Tina Fey will write the script for and star in an NBC pilot about "the head writer of a SNL-like variety show, focusing on her efforts to control a volatile star and executive producer." Don't stretch yourself too much, Tina. [THR]
· Ray director Taylor Hackford seems to know he's got no shot at actually winning the Oscar, as he signs up to direct Jerry Bruckheimer's "West Wing at the Pentagon" pilot E-Ring. [THR]
· Aspiring actors willing to do anything for your careers, take heart: unionizing casting directors have decided not to strike, and are still willing to accept your sexual favors in return for a break. [Variety]
· American Idol's huge ratings continue to distract everyone from thinking about how horrible the rest of Fox's schedule is. [Variety]

· A&E wins the bidding war with TNT for Sopranos basic cable reruns, ponying up $2.5 million an episode. They pledge to "preserve the integrity of the show" while presumably editing out much of the nudity and violence, i.e., the good parts. [Variety]
· Everybody Loves Raymond's Patricia Heaton signs a development deal with ABC and Touchstone TV, who will immediately try and shoehorn her into a sitcom where she plays a sassy wife who must endure the antics of a schlubby husband. [THR]
· Disney is financially propped up by ESPN and theme parks, while home video revenues head toilet-ward. Hey, why don't they try convincing that Eisner guy to step down or something? [Variety]
· Medium continues to beat up on its mostly-rerun competition, giving NBC a win on the 18-49 demographic, [THR]
· Agent Dance Mini Edition: 23-year William Morris TV veteran Steve Glick dumps WMA for the greener ten-percent pastures of ICM. [Variety]

· Take the cannoli, leave the huge bag of cash: HBO will probably announce today whether TNT or A&E paid through the nose for reruns of The Sopranos. The offer they couldn't refuse (groan) is expected to be at least $2.1 million per episode. That's-a spicy meatball. (Kill us now.) [Variety]
· Angelina Jolie signs up to star with Matt Damon in the Robert DeNiro-directed The Good Shepherd. Let the sweaty trailer sex and destruction of longterm relationships begin! [Variety]
· Now we feel a little better about not sticking around Sundance long enough to catch the Strangers With Candy movie, as Warner Independent snaps it up for a fall release. [THR]
· The SAG/AFTRA establishment will allow opponents of their recently negotiated labor contract (heretofore referred to in the legal paperwork as "The Ass-Blasting") with the studios to complain about the soreness of their hindquarters in a public referendum. [THR]
· Spider-Man 2 and the Seinfeld DVDs bury Sony Pictures under an avalanche of cash. [Variety]