· 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]

We're not entirely sure what keeps us watching On the Lot, Fox's ratings-challenged attempt at discovering Hollywood's Next Great Tranny-Victim Director. We doubt it's the contestants' short films, however, but rather the constant tension between host Adrianna Costa's plunging necklines and her rack's ability to remain securely in place. One Defamer operative on the Westside, meanwhile, recently discovered just how badly the show's finalists want our votes:

· GLAAD's first-ever "Network Responsibility Index" rates each network for how well they "handle the still-sensitive issue of depicting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals on TV." ABC got the highest rating for shows like Ugly Betty, Brothers and Sisters, and the upcoming Cavemen, sure to stir up much constructive discussion about gay-caveman stereotypes. [Variety]
· International audiences flock to The Simpsons Movie, where the hilarious image of a grown man choking his son transcends all geocultural boundaries. [Variety]
· Kevin Reilly greenlights his first project for Fox—The Oaks, about "three different couples who inhabit the same house at three different times," all of whom are visited by ghosts. Ben Silverman reads this, secretly thinks to himself: "But where's the sexy?" [Variety]
· Scott Rudin buys the rights to best-seller The Dangerous Book for Boys, sure to inspire countless "Dangerous Book for Assistants" parodies, featuring merit badges for hurled-object ducking. [THR]
· Evil babies and flashback jokes appear never to get old, as The Family Guy wins Sunday night for Fox.

· 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]

Even though each Wednesday morning ratings report returns results so low that Fox executives periodically call up Nielsen to make sure they haven't mistakenly swapped their show's numbers with those of a Telemundo infomercial for a local used car dealership, On The Lot continues on against all odds, with each first-run episode awing us anew with Steven Spielberg's power to keep the work of his fledgling auteurs on the air. For some strange reason, we incorrectly believed that the entire series was already in the can (maybe we were made a little suspicious by the fact that the show's format seemed to change every week without explanation?), but as revealed by a current casting notice just forwarded to us, they're still busy trying to fill rolls in the mini-productions that will one day earn begrudging, qualified praise from Carrie Fisher. The notice follows after the jump, but be warned: spoilers abound.

· 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]

· 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]

Monday morning! Nope, even saying it with forced enthusiasm doesn't make it seem any less painful. Take your mind off the bleakness with the weekend box office numbers:

· 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]

· Critic-proof director/producer Brian Robbins takes on Jailhouse Rock, a film based on the real-life story of an American Idol-like signing competition (the "Inmate Idle Singing Con-Test") that took place in an Arizona jail, for Disney. While it's probably too soon to think about casting, it's hard not to imagine Robbins throwing some orange jumpsuits on his Wild Hogs dream team and letting them loose on renditions of "Summer Lovin'" and "Paradise by the Dashboard Lights." Projected opening weekend gross: $42 million. [Variety]
· Ben Stiller, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Hudson, Paulie Walnuts, Bobby Baccala, Alicia Keys,and Sheryl Crow are among those who've signed up for Elmo's Christmas Countdown, a one-hour Muppets holiday special in which the famous will help the ticklish star count down the days to Jesus's birth. [THR]
· HBO renews Big Love for a third, 12-episode season, which should be completed well in advance of a possible strike. In other HBO news, John from Cincinnati still makes no fucking sense. [Variety]
· Fox wins another uneventful, creatively barren, rerun-heavy summer Monday night behind Hell's Kitchen and Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? [THR]
· ABC greenlights Here Come the Newlyweds, a reality competition series in which six newly married couples fight to the death (or at least to the divorce) over a steadily increasing cash prize. [Variety]

Cherry Jones (it's OK, we need an IMDb consult to put a face to the name, too) inherits one of the least secure jobs on TV, the president of 24's terrorism-ravaged America. Can't wait for the first scene where she's asked to ignore the previous 6 times Jack Bauer has single-handledly saved the country from annihilation and orders his immediate arrest for treason. [THR]

· 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]

· While it seemed that Steven Spielberg had ended the race for the Democratic presidential nomination in throwing his support behind Hillary Clinton, an undeterred Barack Obama has gone above the Hollywood kingmaker's head by getting Oprah Winfrey, the beneficent daytime TV deity Herself, to host a fundraiser for him at her Montecito compound. An expected $14 billion will be raised for the Obama campaign in a single night when Winfrey commands the heavens to open up and shower bundles of hundred-dollar bills upon her chosen candidate. [Variety]
· In the short term, the stockpiling of projects in anticipation of a multi-union strike may increase the number of entertainment industry jobs, but overall, the threat of a walkout could cause an employment slowdown whether or not the guilds and producers usher in the End of Hollywood Days with a prolonged work stoppage. [THR]
· CBS sets its fall schedule, but will hold risky musical drama Viva Laughlin until October 21 in order to buy more time to figure out how the hell to market the show to inevitably confused audiences. [Variety]
· Despite having his TV show let go to make more room on the schedule for caveman-related programming, George Lopez doesn't seem to be having too much trouble finding movie work. [THR]
· Beleaguered Fox/Spielberg collaboration On The Lot now only being watched by accident. [Variety]

· At the TCAs, non-rock-star NBC co-chairman Marc Graboff repeats the hilarious party line on Kevin Reilly's non-firing "'He wasn't fired,' Graboff revealed, inspiring instant guffaws. 'What happened was when Ben [Silverman] became available, about three months after we made Kevin's new deal, we jumped at the opportunity to bring Ben on board to the company. We thought he would be able to be the person that was going to take us to the next level. Kevin, when that happened, realized or determined, frankly, that there was just no role for him at the company and decided to move on.'" In fairness, it does get a little hard to do your job when the new guy keeps interrupting your meetings to replace another piece of your office furniture with his own. [THR]
· Acquisitive News Corp. mogul Rupert Murdoch moves closer to buying Dow Jones and adding the Wall Street Journal to his ever-growing pile of media playthings. [Variety]
· Producers open their negotiations with the WGA by offering the guild a choice: either get down on your knees and put off the issue of internet compensation until a study about new media can be completed or bend over and let us recoup whatever costs we think are fair before we pay you any residuals. Talks have been convened until Wednesday to give the writers time to craft a counterproposal that doesn't start with the words "Go fuck yourself, greedy maniacs." [THR]
· Says Var on the tenor of those initial negotiations: "The gloves have already come off." But, as noted above, not the pants. Yet. [Variety]
· Hell's Kitchen still inexplicably popular. [Variety]

Not everyone is as tickled as the residents of Springfield, VT over their victory in The Simpsons Movie premiere contest—particularly Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon, who, in a letter to the memory-deficient head of the Department of Justice that begins, "Heidely ho, Attorney General Gonzalez," demands to know how his own state's nominee could have lost to a town with a population of a mere 9000.

We suspect generations of USC film marketing majors will be required to study The Simpsons Movie campaign, whose out-of-the-Slurpee-container approach to creating buzz for the feature film debut of the familiar yellow clan scores points for both its originality and ambition. But not even retrofitting select 7-Eleven locations across the nation into living Temples of Apu can match the sheer audacity of drawing a giant, donut wielding Homer beside a centuries-old fertility symbol carved into the landscape of Dorset, England.

· Universal Pictures extends its 21-year marriage with Imagine Entertainment, signing a five-year deal that gives the studio first-look access to the fascinating contents of superproducer Brian Grazer's mind through 2013, and which ends a rumored flirtation with those homewreckers at Paramount. [Variety]
· The AMPTP has issued a clarification about its recent "let's nuke the residuals system" musings, a proposal that the Writers Guild is expected to dismiss as merely "crazy," a downgrade from yesterday's "batshit insane." [THR]

There is a new web site focused on unbiased coverage of high-definition entertainment. The only problem: it's a Blu-Ray promotional campaign — exclusively covering Blu-Ray — created by its backers: Sony Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Walt Disney Studios, and others. Hi-def fans spotted the campaign immediately and are decrying the site as propaganda.

Springfield, Vermont beats out 13 other Springfields across the U.S. to host the premiere of The Simpsons Movie, thanks in no small part to the nearby nuclear power plant, and a healthy population of three-eyed trout. [Reuters]