With all the attention being paid to the damage done to Steven Spielberg's ego when Viacom CEO Phillippe Dauman said those two terrible little words, Var's Anne Thompson reminds the Paramount powers-that-be that they'd better start kissing the DreamWorks tattoo on Stacey Snider's ass right quick if they want to save the relationship. [Variety]

Last week Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman, anticipating the departure of Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg from their deal with Paramount, suggested that if the DreamWorks pair left that it would have no effect on the company's bottom line. Yesterday, the pair slapped back at Sumner Redstone's company, naming Tom Freston, who was Dauman's predecessor at Viacom, to the board of DreamWorks Animation. It's more a symbolic gesture than anything else—what's Freston going to do, not buy Facebook for DreamWorks?—but still, every now and then it's nice to see a big fat "fuck you" played out in public. [Variety]

While Hollywood observers can rationally understand what Viacom CEO Phillippe Dauman meant when he told a room full of investors that Steven Spielberg's possible departure from his corporate family would be "completely immaterial" to his company's overall health, they also know that it was a catastrophic mistake not to immediately douse himself in gasoline after speaking those impolitic words, strike a match, and cry in anguish, "But the very thought of losing the greatest filmmaker—nay, human being!—in the history of this business we call show is so painful that this disturbing self-immolation you will now witness is the only thing that can stop my heartsickness." Slate's Kim Masters asks some insiders about Dauman's tragic failure to pay any kind of tribute to the national treasure's contributions, about Spielberg's likely feelings on the issue of immateriality, and about whether or not Paramount should just burn down the Melrose lot and start over after his inevitable departure:

· 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]

The emotional feud touched off when Viacom CEO Phillippe Dauman tried to preemptively break Steven Spielberg's heart by telling the world that the national treasure's possible departure from Paramount would not send the executive into a Valium-overdosing tailspin of despair (and which incited outraged DreamWorks partner Jeffrey Katzenberg to publicly attempt to claw out Dauman's eyes) spills into the pages of today's LAT, where studio emperor Brad Grey was induced to comment on HolyShitWhatIfSpielbergLeavesUsGate. For his part, Grey—who convinced boss Sumner Redstone to buy DreamWorks in late 2005 so that his studio might actually have some movies to release the following year—seems to be toeing the company line:

· 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]

We know that we already mentioned Var's item about DreamWorks Animation romantic enforcer Jeffrey Katzenberg's response to Viacom CEO Phillippe "Just Fucking Try And Give Me The 'It's Not You, It's Me' Conversation, I Dare You" Dauman's thoughtless comments that the possible end of Steven Spielberg's relationship with Paramount would be "immaterial" to his heart's "bottom line," but the dramatic headline hanging over the story in today's print edition has suddenly reframed Katzenberg's retort.

Deeply hurt by Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman's efforts to emotionally distance himself from an eventual break-up with an allegedly dissatisfied Steven Spielberg, DreamWorks BFF Jeffrey Katzenberg has publicly come to the defense of the director, advising the mouthy executive to tread lightly when appraising the value of his priceless longtime partner. Reports Var:

· 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]

And the official title of the project previously known as Fourth Installment of the Indiana Jones Adventures is...[drumroll, please] Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. [sound of crickets, the barely audible scratching of heads, and someone quietly muttering, "Well, they've still got time to change it. Maybe they can save face by saying they just found out it was the title of an Allan Quatermain project that was put into turnaround back in 1988."] [IndianaJones.com]

We thought it was a little strange when Sony chief Amy Pascal, THR's Most Powerful Woman in Hollywood 2006 and one of the top-rated honorees in Premiere's celebration of the industry's most influential ladies, was left off Variety's recent Women's Impact Report, but now it all makes sense: The trade didn't want to ruin the surprise that it had awarded her its highest honor, an official promotion to Man, for an incredible year of directing her studio to the lead in motion picture marketshare. We congratulate Pascal on this recognition, and can't wait until someone sends us a cameraphone photo of the many baskets of bananas her new male peers are messengering over to ceremonially welcome her into their fraternity.

· Jamie Foxx effectively pre-nominates himself for a future Oscar by signing on to star in the DreamWorks drama The Soloist, based on a true story of Nathan Ayers, a homeless, schizophrenic Julliard dropout who plays his violin and cello on the streets of downtown LA, and who developed a special friendship with LAT columnist Steve Lopez. Our hearts are already warmed on the logline alone. [Variety]
· We're overjoyed by the news that HBO has picked up Flight of the Conchords (for our money, the funniest show on TV) for a second season, but thoroughly ambivalent that Entourage is getting a fifth. [THR]
· Former ICMer Ed Limato and his A-list roster of clients (Denzel Washington, Mel Gibson, Richard Gere, Steve Martin, Michael Biehn. Wait, Michael Biehn?) end up at William Morris. But most importantly, Limato and new boss Jim Wiatt are still deciding whether or not they'll continue the agent's geriatric pre-Oscar blowout. [Variety]
· Scarlett Johansson is trying to book every available job in town before the strike hits. [THR]
· Dakota Fanning will team up with Djimon Hounsou and that guy from the Fantasic Four (the firey one, not the rubbery one, we think) on the thriller Push, about "a group of young American ex-pats with telekinetic and clairvoyant abilities who hide from a U.S. government agency in Hong Kong and band together to try to escape the control of the division." Whew, no mention of rape. We're relieved Fanning's doing something lighter and not revisiting that regrettable phase of her career. [Variety]

We're nothing if not suckers for a nice feel-good story, especially when it's accompanied by a fun chart where Spider-Man scales a pillar representing the obscene amounts of money some of our favorite movie studios are making: With four different films crossing the $300 million mark, Hollywood is enjoying its Best Summer Ever, a period of prosperity that is erasing all memory of that nasty, alleged "Slump" of 2005, when executives were forced to answer all kinds of rude questions about why their shitty product wasn't selling. During this new Golden Age of Very Profitable Threequels, they instead get to crow about how smart they are in the pages of Variety:

· 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]

On a conference call about how much richer Shrek the Third is making him, DreamWorks Animation's Jeffrey Katzenberg passes up a perfectly good opportunity to throw Paramount emperor Brad Grey under the bus: "'We feel they have done an outstanding job of marketing and distributing our products to date,' Katzenberg said. 'We continue to have very, very good relationships over there with all of the management from Brad on down.'" [Variety]

· 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]

Following Thursday's controversy-kickstarting BusinessWeek story "Paramount and DreamWorks: Splitsville?," in which it was suggested that a strained relationship between Steven Spielberg and Paramount might cause the director and his partners to jilt Brad Grey's DreamWorks-dependent studio empire when Spielberg's contract expires late next year, has seemingly induced much pants-soiling from within the walls of the Melrose lot. Hoping to halt the spread of further bowel failures over the rumored state of the DW/Paramount union, votes of confidence have been issued by Spielberg and David Geffen, who took breaks from their filmmaking and shuffleboard-playing duties, respectively, to (at least temporarily) envelop Grey in a warm, reassuring hug. In a story about the alleged looming split, Var's Peter Bart passes along Geffen's regards for the Paramount team:

· 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]

Following the precedent he recently set to celebrate Shrek the Third's "spectacular" late May opening, Paramount emperor Brad Grey has once again offered his hard-working underlings a special treat, recognizing the "amazing" performance of the franchise-kickstarting Transformers over the six-plus-day extended Fourth of July frame by opening the gates of his Melrose compound and sending his well-behaved studio children out for their weekend Rumspringa a day early. Unfortunately, Grey is not, as we predicted at the time of his supersized Memorial Day holiday, flying the entire company to Cancun, an act of generosity he was clearly reserving for the event that Transformers set a significant box office record that didn't have a clunky "nonsequel" qualifier attached. Better luck in 2010 with Transformers 2: More Giant Fucking Robots Are Coming, Dreamamount gang.

· In earning $27.4 million on its first full day of release, Transformers sets the utterly meaningless record for the biggest Tuesday ever. Equally exciting and inconsequential box office milestones are sure to follow the conclusion of the movie's six-and-a-half-day "opening weekend." [Variety]
· Following an unexpected volume of complaints about how many commercials clogged the feeds of MTV and VH1's Live 8 concerts in 2005, NBC Universal pledges that the ad load for this weekend's Live Earth telecasts will be "significantly lighter than what a normal hour of network television would be." Hooray for somewhat reduced corporate greed! [THR]
· Can Tom Cruise and the German government fuck already and put all this weird tension behind them? It's really getting a little uncomfortable for everybody at this point. [Variety]
· 8 million shut-in pyrotechnics fans tune in to NBC's Macy's Fourth of July Fireworks Spectacular, giving NBC a Wednesday night ratings win. [THR]
· Foreign nations are enjoying American cultural imperialism about as much as the military kind. [Variety]