Bad news for all you yupster, yindie, altera-yuppie "grups" — spread along the F train from 14th street to 7th Avenue — who can't understand why a great show like Arrested Development can't find a way to stay on the air. Here's news from Variety last night:

· Most unintentionally homoerotic opening line ever for a trade story on the weekend's movie releases: "Can Spike Lee manhandle Larry the Cable Guy?" [Variety]
· Thank You For Smoking director Jason Reitman (whom we just heard humbly tell Adam Carolla that his film's limited-release opening weekend was in the top 50 in per-theater average all-time, but neglect to mention his batting average with a man on second and less than two outs) and his partner sign a two-year first-look deal with Fox Searchlight. [THR]
Samuel L. Jackson gets right to work squandering some of his Snakes on a Plane buzz by agreeing to narrate a Bob Saget-produced documentary parody of March of the Penguins, Farce of the Penguins. Were those guys who remake movies with their thumbs too busy to get to this target first? [Variety]
Has it really come to this for Patricia Heaton? The Everybody Loves Raymond wife is in talks to host a The View-style daytime talk show. Still, it's better than discussing the quality of Albertson's steaks in those commercials. [THR]
Woody Harrelson as the gay, 50-year-old incarnation of American Gigolo's iconic man-whore? That's kind of genius. [Variety]

What's the best way for fans of beloved, perpetually limbo-occupying series Arrested Development to get news about the show's fate? Bump into star Jason Bateman on the street in Toronto and just ask him what the hell is going on with the rumored Showtime-sponsored resurrection.Television Without Pity eminence Glark relates his encounter with Bateman on the site's AD message board:

TechCrunch scooped the Fox purchase of newroo (yet another customized-news-page service) yesterday, ending guessing over whom Fox bought at the Under the Radar event. So newroo has either cut a deal to use the tech blog as its PR arm, or they figure another Arrington scoop is inevitable, 'cause this is the company's launch announcement plan as stated on its home page:

A group of British celebrities are submitting themselves to a reality series called Alive: Back to the Andes that forces them to recreate the events following the 1972 plane crash that was the basis for the movie Alive:

Hollywood Out of Ideas, Part LXVII: As if news that Ice Cube is going to remake Welcome Back, Kotter wasn't troubling enough, try this on for size: J. Lo, Luke Wilson, John Travolta and Shirley MacLaine are all in various stages of the offer/negotiations process for a movie version of Dallas, with Travolta trying to pour his fifteen-gallon head into JR Ewing's ten-gallon hat. Someone please burn down this place immediately (Hollywood or Dallas, whatever works best). [Variety]
Universal vice chairman Marc Shmuger in in talks to take over the departed (for DreamWorks, not dead) Stacey Snider's job at the studio. Though he's silent on the matter, we assume he's not at all interested in taking Gail Berman's gig at Paramount. [THR]
But what I really want to do is create immersive, movie-inspired experiences for giant casinos: Director James Cameron will "executive produce" the iPort theme park for a Singapore gambling concern. [Variety]
The ratings numbers from Sunday night are in, and it appears that Desperate Housewives took a Nielsen baseball bat to the knees of HBO's The Sopranos. Not that you can really compare premium cable apples to network oranges, especially when our beloved mobsters come out looking not as good as we'd like, but there you have it. [THR]
The conservative watchdog kooks at the protest-happy American Family Association had no troubling following Las Vegas' move to Friday nights, urging its members to carpetbomb the FCC with more than 100,000 complaints about a strip club scene. [Variety]

With close-ups of full penetration still probably years away from their primetime television debut, producers are forced to linger closer to the darker side of the eros-thanatos continuum to keep their audiences properly scandalized. Somewhat embarrassingly, both the NY and LA Times (apparently spurred by the sudden deaths of 24 characters in the last two episodes) chose today to run their "Death is the new black" stories. From the NYT:

Paul Haggis is in final negotiations to direct and produce the adaptation of counterterrorist adviser Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies for Columbia. Before you sigh with relief that Haggis isn't writing the project, take note: he's "supervising" writer James Vanderbilt, leaving plenty of opportunity for him to spin the tale of terrorists who blow things up because that's the only way they can truly connect with their fellow human beings. [Variety]
Even Alicia Silverstone gets another chance during pilot season: Silverstone joins ABC women-in-the-workplace comedy Pink Collar, Jennifer Coolidge signs up for Fox's comedy If You Lived Here, You'd Be Home Now (real title TBD, we'd guess), and Shawn Hatosy also goes for Fox comedy in Southern Comfort. [THR]
Variety Censorship Minute: The Stone in China, The Simpsons in the Middle East, Catholics vs The DaVinci Code, and more! [Variety]
· Everyone without access to The Sopranos premiere (or without friends with HBO) watched Grey's Anatomy last night, which pulled an even better number than fading lead-in Desperate Housewives. [THR]
Diddy, Ben Silverman, and NBC team up for television's latest foray into the hot Celebrities Performing Tasks For Which They're Ill-Suited genre for Celebrity Cooking Showdown, a mix of (do we even need to explain?) Iron Chef and Dancing with the Stars. The lineup of washed-up celebs willing to scald themselves in the name of programming fads has yet to be announced. [Variety]

In a previous life, Fake Writer James Frey was just a "regular" writer, having penned the screenplay for Kissing a Fool and, later, a couple of massive bestselling memoirs built off a fantastical pile of bullshit. During those cloudless days before Oprah's storm, it seems that Frey also sold a one-hour crime drama script to Fox "about Malibu-based private eye Donald "Insane" Tremaine, 'former world champion surfer, PI, Chevelle driver and lover of ladies.'" A sample from the pilot:

The ongoing X-Men saga has basically been one long, overreaching superhero allegory for growing up gay in an unwelcoming world: Imagine Brokeback Mountain, but replace Jack and Ennis' forbidden love with the mutant ability to singe sheep with their eye-lasers. With Hollywood's hottest new web presence Brett Ratner's third installment, X-Men: The Last Stand (you can view the trailer here), the metaphor reaches its natural conclusion: the "curing" of these mutant teens of what makes them different. In a roundtable discussion on SciFi.com featuring the film's leads, things got rather heated between Ian McKellen and co-star Hugh Jackman when Jackman argued that perhaps curing one's self of mutation isn't necessarily such a bad thing:

Fox captured the online market for Adderal-abusing teens with its MySpace purchase, leading NBC Universal to pay $600 million to try and enslave the internet's female population by snapping up iVillage. [Variety]
Pick this one up, NBC, and the sins of Emeril and Good Morning Miami will be forgotten: NBC greenlights a pilot for Andy Barker, P.I., starring Andy Richter and co-written by Conan O'Brien, about an accountant who becomes a detective. [THR]
Jack Black joins Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Jason Leigh in Noah Baumbach's follow-up to The Squid and the Whale (the Best Picture of our hearts, not that it matters) for Paramount Classics. [Variety]
Phillip Seymour Hoffman gets his first post-Oscar gig (hopefully with his fancy new post-Oscar salary), starring with Laura Linney in The Savages for Fox Searchlight. [THR]
In case you weren't one of the chosen 130,000 few who got a screener—or even someone with $15 bucks to drop on the DVD— Crash will be re-released on 150 screens starting this Friday. [Variety]

Perhaps the airport's brain-scrambling metal detectors were the source of Paula's bizarre behavior at the taping last night, which she did manage to get to on time, in body at least. When asked for insights and words of encouragement for departing contestants, Abdul was barely able to get out some indecipherable food-related sentiments before erupting into a cascade of giggles and tumbling into Simon Cowell's lap (partial video above):

New Line signs up John Travolta and Queen Latifah to star in the movie adaptation of the Hairspray musical, with Travolta logically playing the role originated by Divine, John Waters' cross-dressing muse. What? Travolta and Divine both have unusually large heads, OK? [Variety]
THR notes that this year's Oscar season is full of "serious" nominees, relatively devoid of dirty campaigning. Yeah, we kind of miss Harvey Weinstein, too. [THR]
Hollywood proves it can be generous when promised a big party, as Variety and Jeffrey Kazenberg's Night Before event has raised $6 million for the Motion Picture and Television Fund. [Variety]
MTV2 makes a content deal with YouTube, enabling the website to serve up annoying Andy Milonakis clips alongside its already impressive catalogue of Brokeback parodies. [THR]
The Idol ratings juggernaut has a dark side (well, besides the obvious ones): Wednesday night's show drove Lost to a season low number for a first-run episode. Not cool, Fox. Hey, how about counterprogramming Desperate Housewives instead? [Variety]

Today's Page Six chooses to torture mourning Arrested Development fans by tossing off a "We Hear" item reporting Showtime has resurrected the show for 26 (!) episodes. And yesterday, the Better Than Fudge blog updated an earlier item claiming that a cast member indicated that Showtime had picked up the show for 12 episodes. Says Fudge:

In case you've fallen down a well (in which case we thank you for still reading this site via your mobile phone or PDA): Stacey Snider leaves Universal to become CEO and co-chair of DreamWorks. Successor at Universal TBD. [Variety, THR]
Vince Vaughn might pop his $20 million cherry by re-teaming with Wedding Crashers director David Dobkin for Fred Claus, the story of Santa's loser brother. With that kind of paycheck, Vaughn inches ever closer to the day he doesn't need to date Jennifer Aniston anymore to help his career. [Variety]
· Former The WB wonderboy Jordan Levin helps form Generate, a management-production firm that has already partnered up with MTV to ensnare teenagers by developing content for every media platform that currently divides their split-second attention spans. [THR]
It's not quite Aquaman: The Motion Picture, but James Cameron continues his love-affair with the mysteries of the deep by signing up to direct The Dive, the tragic story of freediver Francisco "Pipin" Ferraras. [Variety]
· The Dancing with the Stars finale does nice Sunday night numbers for ABC. Intrigued by the Nielsen success, the network will test its theory that *anything* can succeed in the Desperate Housewives timeslot, scheduling a bold relaunch of Emily's Reason's Why Not for the weekend after the Oscars. [Variety]

Fox has revealed its evil plans for what it will do with affiliates stripped of programming when UPN and The WB merge: the creation of a "21st century," "localized," "station-friendly" network called My Network TV (it didn't take long to come up with a name worse than "The CW," did it?) that will finally give Fox a place to dump programming too awful even to plug holes on the parent network. [Variety]
· Aquaman already shitcanned: A "major recasting" turns over the orange tights to Justin Hartley, sending original super-fishboy Will Toale to the unemployment line. [THR]
China takes a stand against the worrying social ill of human-toon miscegenation, banning all animation that shows cartoons cavorting with live-action actors. Plans to publicly steamroll extant copies of Space Jam and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? with tanks are still being finalized, however. [Variety]
Chris Rock will star in I Think I Love My Wife, a remake of the French film Chloe in the Afternoon. Clearly making a break with the Head of State era, Rock declared, "I can't wait to make a sophisticated comedy with all the good people at Fox Searchlight." [THR]
In an effort to prevent the continuing Emmy-hogging tyranny of TV shows that people actually watch, the TV Academy will let a "blue ribbon panel" decide the ultimate nominees for the best comedy, drama, and major acting categories. [Variety]

· Universal might once again be reviving American Gangster (a project the studio previously killed in late 2004), this time with Ridley Scott directing and Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington as stars. [Variety]
· The Specialty Division Formerly Known As Paramount Classics picks up the documentary An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's charismatic romp through the side-splitting world of global warming. [THR]
· Fox ignores the interstellar disaster of Pluto Nash and will risk sending Eddie Murphy into outer space in Starship Dave, the story of "a crew of miniature human-looking aliens who are seeking a way to save their doomed world." There is no mention of a fat suit, talking animals, or precocious day-care residents, so we're a little nervous about this one. [Variety]
· NBC's coverage of Olympic figure skating trounces Fox's coverage of semi-celebrities flailing about on ice skates. [THR]
· Hilarity is sure to ensue when Fox imports the British Archie Bunker (aka "The Pub Landlord") and strands him in the unfamiliar environs of Santa Monica. Also, David Ogden Stiers, Balthazar Getty, and Chazz Palmintieri all find gainful, if temporary, employment in pilots. [Variety]

Fox will heap a last indignity on Arrested Development tonight, when the network airs a four-episode, two-hour, can-we-just-put-on-what- we've-got-left-so-we-can-start-selling-the-goddamn-DVDs-already "season finale," finally pressing its pillow down long enough for the suffering series to stop its stubborn kicking on a relatively witness-free Friday evening. Diehard fans can hold out hope that potential saviors Showtime or ABC will resurrect the Bluths for a couple of more seasons (long enough to help them cross over into the immortality of syndication), but those made of more pessimistic stuff should say their goobyes tonight, accepting that it's likely the final time they can break out the mustache and Daisy Dukes from their Official Tobias Fünke Never-Nude Fun Set knowing that they're simultaneously sharing the experience with other AD fans.

In a turn of events best filed under the heading "Showbiz's Lil' Ironies: Celebrity Ego Check Edition," last night's airing of American Idol trounced the Grammy Awards in the ratings:

· Not everyone in Hollywood is getting shitcanned this week: Fox renews studio co-chairmen Jim Gianopulos and Tom Rothman's contracts for another five years, names them both CEO, and, just because they were on a roll, gave them each a pony. Yay! [Variety]
· Amanda Peet will join Matthew Perry in the cast of Aaron "Any similiarties to SNL are completely incidental" Sorkin's NBC show, currently titled Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. More good news: Rob Corddry's hilarious little brother has also been cast. [THR]
· Studios announce their entries in the 2006 Christmas-season box office cockfight: On December 22, Universal will bring Evan Almighty and The Good Shepherd, Fox goes with Night at the Museum, and Paramount throws in Charlotte's Web. [Variety]
· Yes, Brandi, there is a God: CMT will run an eight-episode reality series about the Dallas Cowboy cheerleader tryouts. As if that weren't generous enough, they're also doing a series trying to crown the best Coyote Ugly dancer. Fuck you, Bravo, CMT now owns our hearts. [THR]
· Perhaps smelling Jamie Foxx/Joaquin Phoenix awards buzz potential, New Line acquires the Duke Ellington pitch The Jazz Ambassadors for Morgan Freeman. [Variety]