· Sony shocks! the! world! by signing Da Vinci Code screenwriter Akiva Goldsman to adapt Dan Brown's Angels and Demons, and hopes to reunite the rest of the Blasphemy Dream Team of star Tom Hanks, director Ron Howard, and producer Brian Grazer for the project. [Variety]
· Teri Hatcher will provide the voice of star Dakota Fanning's mother in the animated feature Coraline. We predict a hair-yanking catfight that would put any Desperate Housewives shenanigans to shame should the two actresses' paths ever cross at the studio. [THR]
· Maybe Sony really did send someone to count up all the 60-cent pirate Da Vinci Code DVDs sold on the black market, as overseas grosses came in $8 million higher than originally reported. [Variety]
· Brokeback Mountain director Ang Lee now has "Fuck you, English" money, will make the Chinese-language espionage thriller Lust, Caution his next project. [THR]
· The season finale of 24, in which superagent Jack Bauer (SPOILER ALERT) rushed from place to place to kick people's asses and save the world, averaged about 13.5 million viewers, while Alias's series finale went out with the proverbial whimper. That Jennifer Garner really needs to get drunk and tackle a Christmas tree. [Variety]

Previous American Idol runner-ups have gone on to careers on Broadway, total obscurity, or alleged gay affairs with former members of elite military units, but this year, producers of television's most popular show are looking to mix up the formula. Following the coronation of this year's winner on tomorrow night's season finale, former Idol champions Kelly Clarkson, Ruben Studdard, Fantasia Barrino, and Carrie Underwood will join the judges in beating the second-place finisher to death with bamboo rods, then devour the bloodied, broken body of the unlucky contestant before a television audience expected to surpass 30 million viewers. Ryan Seacrest, of course, will pretend to be appalled by the display, decrying the callousness with which Simon Cowell critiques the "stringiness" of the raw flesh, but a glimmer in his eye will let us all know he's secretly pleased by the carnage unfolding in front of him.

Fox entered the upfronts somewhat confidently this year, and, as expected, gathered advertisers responded favorably to their chosen theme, "Idol Swallowed The Olympics: What The Hell Else Do You Need To Know? Now Give Us All Your Money." Still, that doesn't mean there wasn't room for misfires, such as when new Fox sitcom star Brad Garrett decided to try out some improvised, Idol-themed insult comedy:

· Fox plays it safe by returning 16 series to its fall line-up, adding just three new dramas, two new comedies, and a late night talk show. And The OC stays put on Thursdays at 9, with the network confident that since its fans still seem to be sticking around just because they remember how great it was the first season, they probably won't be lured away by Grey's Anatomy. [Variety]
· Kirsten Dunst is in negotiations to join Jack Black in Michael Gondry's Be Kind Rewind. You know, the one about the guy who erases all the tapes in a video store, and then he and his pals reshoot all the movies a nice old lady wants to rent so he doesn't get fired? That one. (Still sounds kind of awesome, actually.) [THR]
· The new MGM sets a December 22nd release date for Rocky Balboa. Look for the reborn studio to take full advantage of the date with a holiday-themed promotional blitz, including a Las Vegas boxing match in which Sylvester Stallone barely triumphs (he has to have both eyelids cut open halfway through to continue) over Santa Claus in a three-round exhibition. [Variety]
· Sony bravely chooses to continue on with its Da Vinci release plans despite the laughs and hisses of some critics at Cannes. [THR]
· Four words: Vin Diesel romantic comedy. And no, he's not going to star opposite a duck, though we'd probably find that chemistry more convincing than the one they try to cultivate with some brave actress. [Variety]

When NBC's Kevin Reilly made a bold move in the chess match that is this week's fall schedule announcements at the upfronts by advancing his most beloved pawn, Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, into the 9 p.m. Thursday night slot, ABC's Steve McPherson responded by picking up his queen, Grey's Anatomy, and tossing it into Reilly's face. NBC hasn't officially retreated, but the LAT's Scott Collins blogs that some think that Reilly may ultimately concede the position to the competition:

We're going to go ever-so-slightly off our beat for just a moment, because a great cultural injustice has been brought upon the press release-receiving people of the world. You see, Access Hollywood sends daily press releases plugging whatever will be on that night's show. Tonight, it's an interview with O.C. starlet Mischa Barton (who coincidentally used to date charming Brandon Davis). Well, that's nice. Except that the email completely spoils tomorrow night's season finale. IN THE SUBJECT LINE. No warning, no looking away, no escape — if you so much as glance at your inbox, Access is going to fuck up your Thursday.

· CBS will pick up only three new dramas and one comedy for the fall season, and is moving Without a Trace and The Amazing Race to Sundays, creating their first-ever (we think) All Jerry Bruckheimer Night. Color us terrified by The Bruck's creeping programming hegemony. [Variety]
· New network abomination The CW will be stitched together almost entirely from old parts of The WB and UPN, adding just two new shows to its inaugural fall season schedule. And one of those is a Girlfriends spinoff, so they're not even pretending to try. [THR]
· The Da Vinci Code will premiere tonight in Cannes to "an unprecedented mix of Hollywood hoopla, fest glamour and worldwide hysteria," and, probably, some pretty fun protests involving flaming effigies of Ron Howard. [Variety]
· Bastard Fox semi-network MyNetworkTV presented its ambitious plans to replace test patterns, infomercials, and public access shows about local bakesales with telenovelas in selected markets. [THR]
· American Idol pulls down great ratings, again. Doesn't that ever get boring for them? How about just one week where it gets a 9 share so everyone has something to talk about? Is that asking for too much? [Variety]

· CBS is expected to announce a schedule tomorrow that "emphasizes stability and consistency" to contrast with the "pants-wetting desperation moves" made earlier this week by "the pussies" at NBC and ABC. [Variety]
· Following in the footsteps of directing giants George Lucas and Peter Jackson, the curiously hacky Michael Bay acquires the effects studio Digital Domain, which he will charge with the task of creating cinema's most realistic somersaulting, exploding exotic sports cars. [THR]
· The two-hour season finale Grey's Anatomy scored big without a Desperate Housewives lead-in, perhaps foreshadowing what the show might do when unleashed on Thursday nights this fall. [Variety]
· News Corp. will sell episodes of 24 on MySpace, part of a larger strategy to use the site to take on Yahoo and iTunes. So beware: When "Beheaded Terrorist Who Refused To Tell Jack The Location Of The Dirty Bomb" asks to be one of your friends, he's just trying to make you buy something. [THR/Reuters]
· Though the WGA's contract doesn't expire for over a year, studios are already starting to talk strike preparation in the trades, prompting the Guild to decry the rhetoric retaliating for their own "saber-rattling" in the media. Can't everyone just walk out now and get this over with? [Variety]

No matter what George Clooney can do or say to get people to focus on the genocide in Darfur, the only crime against humanity Americans are currently interested in involves the elimination of Chris Daughtry from American Idol. Somehow, having a platform of 40 million people hanging on your every Creed cover note for months wasn't nearly reward enough, as the guy has been telling anyone who'll listen how he's been robbed of the Idol tiara. (And, according to this amusing Photoshop montage, that was just the start of many shafts to follow.) It turns out, however, we may be looking at a Florida recount-type situation, as some voters are complaining their calls were directed to the wrong contestant:

As demonstrated by these warring wire headlines on the upcoming series finale of Frankie Muniz's golden egg, Malcolm in the Middle, coming to a popular consensus on just how missed your departing sitcom will be is not that easy a task. Regardless of whether or not the show leaves us past its prime, however, one thing is for certain: that thanks to the magic of syndication, its grating They Might Be Giants theme song will be around to annoy us for years to come.

· The ratings for David Blaine: Drowned Alive spike in the special's second hour, clearly indicating the desire of viewers in the 18-49 demographic to watch the magician suffer a tragic, soggy death. [Variety]
· Apple will now sell shows from the Fox family of networks on iTunes, allowing fans to watch on their iPods an even tinier Kiefer Sutherland yell about why he doesn't have time to explain why he's acting like a terrorist in order to stop terrorists. [THR]
· Warner Bros.based Legendary Pictures has bought the rights to adapt online game World of Warcraft for the big screen, and will spend the coming weeks trying to figure out a way to charge the game's installed, 6 million person subscriber base a monthly $14.99 fee for the duration of the movie's development. [Variety]
· Polly Cohen is named president of Warner Independent Pictures, replacing the recently, messily ousted Mark Gill. [THR]
· Clear Channel gives Whoopi Goldberg the opportunity to prove that she can be annoying in the exciting medium of terrestrial radio, handing her a morning drive-time show. [Variety]

We think we finally have some clue as to why Ryan Seacrest closes every Tuesday night episode of American Idol with a hearty endorsement for the Fox reality series immediately following it, Unan1mous. reality blurred notes that one of the show's "contestants" (we use scare quotes because of rampant rumors that everyone is planted except for sad sack bear pin-up boy Steve), "self-described womanizer" Jonathan, is featured [pictures VERY NSFW] getting frisky with an SUV on a gay porn site. We imagine life must become that much harder for an old fashioned, God-fearin' womanizer to go about his womanizing duties once the world has seen you doing the proctologist's spread over a driver's seat. For that reason alone, we think Jonathan should get the million dollars, or whatever the hell it is they're arguing about in that bunker.

· The success of NBC's Deal or No Deal has erased every network's institutional memory of the primetime gameshow flops following the Who Wants to be a Millionaire? craze, as the nets scramble to once again get their copycat offerings on the air. Especially promising is Fox's obligatory knockoff, Yelling At Sequentially Numbered Duffel Bags Full Of Cash. To be hosted, of course, by a soul-patched Chuck Woolery. [Variety]
· Jack Black joins director Michael Gondry for the suitably surreal comedy Be Kind Rewind, about a man who must remake all the movies in his friend's video store after his magnetized brain destroys them all. [THR]
· Richard Gere and Terrence Howard are in talks to star in Spring Break in Bosnia, the (apparently seriocomic) tale of some journalists who are mistaken for a CIA hit squad in Bosnia. [Variety]
· ABC picks up a third full season of Boston Legal, a development that may temporarily slow William Shatner's enthusiasm for bizarre side business as he worries a little less about not having a steady paycheck. [THR]
· Fox plans to sell downloads of individual American Idol performances in both video and audio formats, allowing the modern entertainment consumer to never be far from his favorite Chris Daughtry cover of a Creed song. [Variety]

· Various people whom former mananger and current Paramount chief Brad Grey has helped make incredibly rich (Brad Pitt, Adam Sandler, HBO), claim that Vanity Fair's big story on the Anthony Pellicano investigation is full of inaccuracies and fabrications. And Grey's Paramount flack isn't happy (shocker!) either: "Specific allegations and statements made by unnamed sources about Brad Grey in Vanity Fair's piece on Anthony Pellicano are total fabrications." [Variety]
· THR finds the most unflattering picture possible to illustrate their story on Jon Favreau's hiring by Marvel Studio to develop and direct an adaptation of Iron Man. Seriously, that pic is just plain mean. [THR]
· Lindsay Lohan signs up for her next opportunity to be accused of sleeping with a smarmy older guy, joining Adrien Brody in the cast of the romantic comedy Speechless. Go ahead and try and say "Brohan" to yourself without inducing a seizure, we dare you. [Variety]
· Fox makes pre-upfronts pick-ups of comedy 'Til Death and drama Vanished, while NBC renews its committment to being Dick Wolf's bitch by bringing back all three Law & Order series. [THR]
· The buzz-killing plagiarism scandal over the novel How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life has DreamWorks slowly backing away from the suddenly radioactive material it had planned to adapt. [Variety]

· The Tribeca Film Festival sells what's left of its soul to Hollywood, landing the premiere of Mission: Impossible III, complete with a promotional stunt in which Tom Cruise will race across the city by "'motorcycle, speedboat, taxi, helicopter, sports car and subway' over six hours as he makes his way to other Mission screenings around Manhattan before the fest's official fest preem at the Ziegfeld Theater." After the movie ends, he will throw pregnant fiancee Katie Holmes over his shoulder and scale the Empire State Building, where she will spectacularly expel the couple's child from her womb as he harmlessly bats away disapproving biplanes. [Variety]
· Apple proves that you don't have to pay for product placement if Hollywood already thinks your product is cool. [THR]
· China's commies establish rules forbidding its TV networks from featuring "indecent content" and "forbidden subjects," regulations that seem aimed directly at halting the dangerous ideas that Desperate Housewives injects into their culture. [Variety]
· Columbia bumps up All the King's Men (which was previously pushed off its original Dec. 2005 release date) from a December to late September premiere. The studio further reserves its right to bury the movie in a time capsule below the Sony lot should the film's Oscar prospects erode even further. [THR]
· American Idol draws a season-low 21.8 million viewers, prompting Fox to order a weeklong shutoff of the show's production office Cristal fountain. [Variety]

· Variety quotes an internal McDonald's memo about the company's preparations for a publicity war against Fox Searchlight's forthcoming Fast Food Nation: "'A lot of work is going on behind the scenes... from a crisis management standpoint,' the memo said. Though no specifics were spelled out, McDonald's is planning a 'campaign to tell the real story,' including mobilizing a 'truth squad' and possibly attempting to 'discredit the message and the messenger.'" Should early attempts at counterspin fail, the "truth squad" will be dispatched to execute Super Size Me's Morgan Spurlock as a warning to future Big Mac suppressives. [Variety]
· Woody Allen hires longtime Allen impersonator David Krumholtz to star opposite Michelle Williams in his new Paris-set movie. [THR]
· Will Smith is attached to star in Greenbacks, a "Morocco-set action thriller revolves around an American ex-pat who stumbles across a plot to destabilize the world's economy by mass-producing perfect counterfeit greenbacks." We're going to assume that the omission of "charming" from the character description was merely an oversight. [Variety]
· Veteran TV directors watched helplessly as a record number of feature directors snapped up their pilot gigs. [THR]
· Queen Latifah signs up for Welfare Queen, a "fact-based story of a woman who scammed the welfare system out of a fortune." We're going to assume that the omission of "large and sassy" from the character description was merely an oversight. [Variety]

· 20th Century Fox TV takes all of the suspense out of the next few seasons of 24, virtually guaranteeing that Jack Bauer will survive a host of close shaves by signing up Kiefer Sutherland to a three-year, eight-figure deal. Sutherland will also get a shingle on the Fox lot with the deal, tentatively named I Am Only Beheading This Guy For The Good Of The Country Productions. [Variety]
· ABC further probes the possibilities of internet delivery by posting episodes of Lost, Desperate Housewives, and others on their website the day after they originally air. Advertising fans annoyed by a DVR's fast-forwarding features will be thrilled to discover that online viewers will have to sit through unskippable commercials. [THR/Reuters]
· In perhaps the most inevitable syndication deal of all time, Lifetime has bought the basic-cable rights to rerun episodes of Desperate Housewives. [Variety]
· Will Arnett quickly moves on from Arrested Development's death, selling a pitch to DreamWorks and Paramount about a "former U.S. vice president's privileged son, who is assigned an ambassadorship in Europe, where he quickly becomes the quintessential ugly American." For now The Ambassador seems to have one the title coin-flip over The Ugly American. [THR]
· Has it really taken Hollywood an entire year after her death to buy the rights that would allow someone to make a TV movie about the Terri Schiavo story? This place is really slipping. [Variety]

· Fox picks up the reality competition show On the Lot from Steven Spielberg and Mark Burnett, in which undiscovered filmmakers will compete in an Apprentice/American Idol-style competition for a development deal with DreamWorks. Unfortunately, Spielberg won't be a Trump- or Cowell-like presence on the show, robbing us the joy of watching him fumble through badly written narration or berating the contestant's work. Perhaps a better idea for a Spielberg reality vehicle would've been a Survivor-inspired series in which the director votes hacks like Michael Bay out of Hollywood. [Variety]
· George Lopez joins the cast of ping pong comedy Balls of Fury, drastically lowering any excitement we might have felt about the project. [THR]
· The British courts rule in favor of Dan Brown in the Da Vinci Code copyright infringement case, allowing millions to throw money at Ron Howard's big-screen interpretation this summer without fretting that the source material was misappropriated from another work. [Variety]
· Potential box office disasters The Benchwarmers and Take the Lead shouldn't even bother opening against CGI talking-animal juggernaut Ice Age: The Meltdown this weekend. [THR]
· Good news, bad news department: Danny DeVito and Matthew Broderick will star in New Regency's
"neighbors in a fight over Christmas decorations" comedy All Lit Up, but the Big Momma's House 2 team is still writing and directing it.. [Variety]

· Because merely propping up a Kate Couric RealDoll in a chair next to Matt Lauer would be too creepy for the morning show demo, NBC steals The View's Meredith Vieira to replace Couric on Today. And nope, still can't make ourselves care. [Variety]
· Great news for Lost fans: Touchstone TV throws piles of money down the hatch to keep showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse with the show for at least another season. [THR]
· Var beat us to the Extreme Makeover joke, but ABC's comedy development team is on the way out. We suppose that someone had to pay the price for the Jake in Progess/Emily's Reasons Why Not no-see TV block. [Variety]
· Seemingly Bizarre Studio Choice That May Only Make Sense Two Years From Now Of The Day: Bend It Like Beckham and Bride & Prejudice director Gurinder Chadha will take over the big screen remake of Dallas for Fox. [THR]
· CAA will branch out to eat babies on behalf of sports stars, poaching IMG agents Tom Condon and Ken Kremer (who between them have clients like Peyton and Eli Manning) from IMG. [Variety]

· The Apple (Beatles) vs. Apple (computers) tradmark trial began yesterday, with the record label scoring a shocked and appalled gasp from all in attendance by pointing out the incredibly damning fact that the iTunes store sells Coldplay's music. This one's over before it really begins. [Variety]
· Studios are either abandoning or cutting back on production of movies in the UMD (think: wee DVDs) format that only plays on Sony's PSP portable gaming device. The MPAA is already thinking about adopting the piracy-resistant media that no one can be bothered to use for next year's Oscar screeners. [THR]
· Might Variety be condescending just a tiny little bit to Sumner Redstone offspring Shari? "With daddy in the front row, Shari Redstone was front and center Wednesday, describing her growing role at Viacom and CBS to a Gotham media confabc." [Variety]
· ESPN is the HBO of the Sports Emmys, scoring 45 (!) nominations. [THR]
· Amazed that he could create a hit for Fox that doesn't involve an overblown talent show, C-listers on ice-skates, or the destabilization of families through wife-swapping, NBC Universal Television Studio ties up House creator David Shore with a two-year overall deal. [Variety]