Superstar-in-turnaround Jim Carrey, whom you undoubtedly remember recently had two high-profile projects shelved because of studios' reasonable fears of the budget overruns associated with the daily filming of two-hour improvisations centered on shiny props with which the actor might become fascinated, has left his latest project (along with co-star Cameron Diaz and director Gabriele Muccino, to be fair), A Little Game Without Consequence, just about two weeks before the planned start of filming. Variety writes the film's likely obituary, citing the usual "creative differences" as the cause of death:

Stories of how crushed jilted UTA agent Nick Stevens was to discover that soulmate-client Jim Carrey defected to hated, baby-devouring rival CAA will probably continue to trickle in over the next few weeks, with new anecdotes of Carrey callously returning a once-cherished locket containing a tiny image of his beloved, longtime rep by mail, or of Stevens awaking in tears each morning after realizing that the days of Carrey rousing him with an ass-ventriloquism version of a reveille are over, freshly punctuating the sadness of a messy break-up. But business in Hollywood must carry on regardless of how many "Take me back! Love, Nick" Post-It love notes the star finds clinging to the windshield of his Range Rover, so today's NY Times does its part to illustrate the complicated realignment of comedy power following both the Carrey/Stevens divorce and that of Carrey's power-brokering managers, Jimmy Miller and Eric Gold in easy-to-understand, Venn diagram form. Mercifully, the Times refrained from including a circle depicting UTA clients poached by CAA, which would have done nothing but rub salt in the agency's still-suppurating wounds as it tries to come to terms with the end of the highly lucrative Carrey Era.

THR reports that as expected, freshly unattached star Jim Carrey didn't need much alone time to recover from the end of his longtime relationship with UTA, already leaping into the outstretched, Armani-clad arms of hated rival CAA, who've made a fun little game out of poaching both their agents and clients over the last year or so. The LA Weekly's Nikki Finke devotes this week's entire column to the big defection, noting that now-former rep Nick Stevens tried to give Endeavor superagent Ari Emanuel tips on where Carrey likes to be tickled, hoping to keep him from winding up between slutty CAA's spread legs, and describing the final, painful moments of Stevens and Carrey's relationship:

Jim Carrey has been noticing a troubling, recurring motif emerging throughout his career lately, wherein studio executives have realized that paying the actor tens of millions of dollars to terrorize a movie set and ultimately deliver a box office stinker was perhaps not the most cost efficient strategy. They then decide to "put a pin" in the projects, as the Hollywood parlance goes, much as you would do to a balloon. Carrey is still getting work, just not the kind of $150 million-in-chewable-CGI-scenery roles to which the actor is accustomed. He has now taken the only logical recourse: firing the agency that built him from an unknown Canadian comic into the megastar he is.

· Apple and Amazon prepare for their cyberspace deathmatch in the movie downloading space. Pretend to care about where you will eventually download your copy of Talladega Nights. [Variety]
Katie Couric's maiden CBS Evening News broadcast delivers news timeslot ratings the likes of which haven't been seen since 1998. Plans are currently underway to have Couric inserted into all of the network's programming until the Nielsen surge dissipates. [THR]
Variety gives a little background on new Viacommies Philippe Dauman and Thomas Dooley so that we can start thinking of them as individuals, not just the faceless Redstone-puppets who replaced Tom Freston. [Variety]
Rebecca DeMornay gets a chance at HBO-assisted career rehabilitation (let's let Kudrow's failed pay-cable comeback fade from memory for a moment) by signing up for David Milch's new show, John from Cincinnati. [THR]
The Mask co-stars Jim Carrey and Cameron Diaz will join up in the romantic comedy A Little Game, at least until Focus Features shuts down the project as the costs of filming Carrey's signature 100-takes-of-improv scenes get out of hand, claiming some kind of symbolic stand against escalating star salaries. [Variety]

Fresh off the flop of My Super Ex Girlfriend, director Ivan Reitman convinces a financial backer to contribute $200 million to co-finance ten films over the next five years through his Montecito Picture Co. Producing partner Tom Pollock explains the economics of their hit-and-miss, mid-budgeted comedies: "The kinds of movies we make are in an exceptionally sweet spot in the studio system; we tend to make comedies at a price. When they work, like with Old School and Road Trip, they make a lot of money. When they don't, like Eurotrip, they don't lose much. From a Wall Street standpoint, that's a good risk." Here's to throwing shitty comedies against the wall and seeing what sticks! [Variety]
· Morgan Creek determines that a few more dollars might fall out of his pockets if they hold Ace Ventura's corpse by the ankles and give it a vigorous shake, then hires some writers to whip up a third installment centering around the pet detective's son. Given Jim Carrey's recent struggles getting a project off the ground, don't rule out the actor making a cameo as Ace and then finishing out the rest of the movie playing his own kid. [THR]
As the media wonders why Viacom didn't buy MySpace when it had the chance, rumors are circulating that Sumner Redstone ordered Tom Freston to go to San Francisco to make a deal, but Freston never went. Viacom calls the story "patently untrue," while also denying reports that CBS Corp. bully/rival Les Moonves sat on Freston's chest until Rupert Murdoch could complete his purchase of the social networking site. [Variety]
Fox wins Monday's 18-49 demographic with its two-hour finale of Hell's Kitchen. Your takeaway from this: The networks' summer reality series filler has mostly been used up, and it's nearly safe to start watching TV again. [THR]
The following is the title of an actual bass-fishing project now in development at Fox Atomic and not a joke about the next Will Ferrell movie: Fishing on the Edge: The Mike Iaconelli Story [Variety]

Today's Variety reports that New Gay Mafia (remember, the "mirth-making," not David Geffen, kind!) dons Jimmy Miller and Eric Gold, who manage seemingly every comedy star in Hollywood, are splitting up their management/production company. As with any divorce, we are concerned primarily with the fate of the children of their longtime union, custody of whom will be divvied up thusly:

PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers. Send yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line) and let everyone know about the time you saw Tobey Maguire doing the Vincent Chase thing in the lobby of the Century City AMC.

Variety reports that Paramount has unexpectedly decided to postpone production on the big-budgeted Jim Carrey/Tim Burton project Ripley's Believe It Or Not for "at least a year." If this move seems eerily similar to Fox and Sony's unexpected decision to "pull the plug" on the big-budgeted Jim Carrey/Ben Stiller/Jay Roach project Used Guys, that's only because you haven't heard any of Paramount's executives stress the studio's undying love for Carrey and Burton and promise that the movie isn't dead, it's just taking a nap while they work on the script. Reports Var:

In today's The NY Times, Sharon Waxman looks at why Fox and Sony "pulled the plug" on Used Guys, the long-gestating comedy starring Jim Carrey, Ben Stiller, and directed by Meet the Parents/Austin Powers'Jay Roach, a seemingly sure-thing project featuring all the rubber-faced and/or hyperbolically neurotic comedy antics the moviegoing public craves, and which was ready to roll into production about a month from now. The short answer, "How can our poor little studios hope to make any money when the budget is $112 million and the greedy, extortionist talent is sucking up all the back-end profit?" seems deeply unsatisfying to Roach, whose entire worldview was thrown into turmoil and meaninglessness by the abrupt plug-pulling. Reports the Times:

Hollywood is understandably nervous about the coming summer movie season, with several massively budgeted, iffy propositions set to establish their shepherds as either the prophetic sons of God they are, or banish them to the sixth rung of outcast-executive Hell with a bullshit production deal. With profits down, and major players advocating salary caps for stars, Entertainment Weekly thought it seemed like the right time to reexamine the asking prices of some the world's biggest movie stars:

Russell Crowe was not present at Sunday night's Museum of the Moving Image tribute to Ron Howard, presumably occupied with the exciting rebranding of his none-hit-wonder band, The Ordinary Fear of God (formerly Thirty Odd Foot of Grunt, saving, the $25 million per film actor recently explained, the expense of reprinting his TOFOG merchandise.) Seeing a prime opportunity in this Russelless evening to mock the self-serious superstar free of his glowering stares and the possibility of a knuckleballed dessert fork in the eye, many of the presenters had a field day at Crowe's expense:

Sony is hoping that the reported troubles (rewrites, reshoots, money) surrounding the Fun with Dick and Jane production won't show up on the screen, and that Jim Carrey's big holiday movie can help salvage a bomb-riddled year. Today's LAT feature on Dick and Jane answers its own question about how (besides Jim Carrey's usual GNP of Bolivia salary) a movie without CGI dinosaurs or simulated global cataclysms might balloon to a nine-figure budget:

· Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer "quietly" agree to a 5-year film production deal, locking up the producer responsible for half-a-billion dollars' worth of Pirates of the Caribbean sequels long enough to allow Bruck to oversee the eventual installments starring Paul Walker and Bruce Willis in the roles originated by Orlando Bloom and Johnny Depp. To celebrate their continuing partnership, Mouse head Robert Iger and Bruckheimer will detonate Snow White's castle at the conclusion of tonight's Disneyland fireworks, then dance around any broken character bodies injured in the display. [Variety]
· Sundance announces this year's festival slate, with officials promising "a return to our roots" demonstrated by a commitment to movies that might seem less marketable to Hollywood types than years past. Hollywood types express their gratitude to the Sundance staff for further reducing any guilt they might feel about flying to Utah solely to drink themselves snowblind while fighting over gift bags. [THR]
· Paramount signs up Jim Carrey to star in a Tim Burton-directed action-adventure film based on Robert "Believe It or Not" Ripley's life, but the actor will "squeeze in" a thriller, a Ben Stiller comedy, and a brief nervous breakdown hiatus before reporting for Ripley duty next October. [Variety]
· The Squid and the Whale leads the Independent Spirit award nominations with six, including ones for best feature, best male lead, and best female lead. [THR]
· Faded NBC Uni golden boy Jeff Zucker lures Miramax survivor Meryl Poster to his lair with a producing deal for both television shows and feature films. Poster's deal also gives Zucker the contractual right to furtively assassinate her in the press should his own job ever seem in danger. [Variety]