· Just in time for the Re-Branding of the U.S.A.™: Effects legend and The Wolf Man director Joe Johnston has been hired to direct First Avenger: Captain America. [THR] · The guys behind The Tudors are developing another Showtime series based on Camelot, the Arthurian, not Kennedian, legend. [Variety] · Still in a perpetual state of contract limbo, SAG is "vigorously" enforcing the ban on any non-union work for its members—particularly in new-media productions. So you can forget that arc on David Faustino's Star-ving, OK? [Variety] After the jump: What polarizing cable pundit will be with us for four more years?· Keith Olbermann has renewed his MSNBC contract for four more years, despite losing the title of handsomest host at the cable network to its newest sensation, Rachel Maddow. [Variety] · Lifetime has picked up a full season of its mom-in-a-garage-band sitcom, Rita Rocks. [THR]

When it was announced that Don Cheadle would be taking on Terrence Howard's role in Iron Man 2, a simple explanation of "financial differences" (as well as an inability to get the War Machine costume sufficiently baby-wiped) was all that was forthcoming from the filmmakers' side. Then, Howard spoke to NPR and compared the Marvel braintrust to a non-singing network of pimps, forcing the filmmaking team to take the gloves off. Now, in a discussion with EW, sources close to Marvel and director Jon Favreau leaked the real details behind Howard's firing, and they involve bad acting and one very surprising salary:

In an appearance Saturday on NPR's Weekend Edition, Terrence Howard interrupted his discussion of his new album with a Zen meditation on his recent departure from the Iron Man franchise. And if it seemed unusual last week that Howard might bow out of the blockbuster's sequel, leaving his role as Tony Stark confidante Jim Rhodes (and his own heroic alter-ego War Machine) to the capable, cheaper hands of Don Cheadle, the scenario didn't get any clearer as the actor wavered between the high road and calling Marvel Studios a scandalous gang of thieves and pimps:

· In what's being labeled as an effort to snag iTunes marketshare, Dell will give PC buyers the option to preload Iron Man on its new computers. Before you laugh: That incursion is being led by a man with whom Apple settled a wrongful-termination lawsuit in 2005. Never underestimate a software-wonk scorned. [THR] · And if you act now, Paramount and Marvel may throw in five more co-releases — including Thor, Captain America and The Avengers — at no extra charge through 2011! Operators are standing by! [Variety] After the jump: David Gordon Green gets animated, Robert Duvall ponies up and Ellen Burstyn does serious drugs with Tim Robbins.· Finally, at age 77, Robert Duvall is bravely venturing into the uncharted career territory of Westerns, attaching himself to star in an untitled drama about the Pony Express. From AMC, of course, which makes him a likely Emmy front-runner in 2010. [Variety] · Talk about dodging a bullet: By going straight to TV with his animated Fox surfer comedy Good Vibes, a relieved David Gordon Green won't be forced to follow Matthew McConaughey's recent beachgoing high-water mark Surfer, Dude. [Variety] · Jesse Ventura's predictable career arc will continue ever-skyward when he hosts an untitled "conspiracy theory" reality show for truTV, in which the ex-wrestler/actor/politico will "hunt down answers, plunging viewers into a world of secret meetings, midnight surveillance, shifty characters and dark forces." Or, as they call it in Minnesota, running for reelection. [AP] · Ellen Burstyn will join fellow Oscar-winner Tim Robbins for his Showtime pilot Possible Side Effects, a drama set in the pharmaceutical industry — kind of like Mad Men, but with scores of exquisitely photographed pills in the place of cigarettes. [Variety]

Spider Man star Tobey Maguire showed the paparazzi that they wouldn't like him when he's angry while attempting to leave Madeo in West Hollywood. The persistent flash from the cavalcade of paps enraged Maguire, but it was their relentless begging for Maguire's leftovers that really set him off.

· After a season of slumping ratings, Idol's finale matched last year's, pulling in an estimated 31.7 million viewers—roughly the same number of people who revisited their own gag reflexes upon hearing Mike Myers's pedophilic suggestion the David Archuleta would soon sprout "hair in weird and wonderful places." [Variety]
· We mourn the death of the once great and mighty television movie with news that the Tiffany network is "dumping" two long-completed examples of the genre—Mary-Louise Parker in Vinegar Hill and a Jessica Lange-starring remake of Sybil—in the Saturday night TV burial ground. RIP CBS MOW. [Variety]

We assumed in last week's Defamer Attractions column that $75 million opening-weekend estimates seemed awfully conservative for Iron Man, but even our $90 million forecast undershot the film's $100.7 million three-day take. (It was $104.2 million if you count Thursday night previews, and more than $200 million globally.) Aside from the obligatory splash for any early-summer tentpole, we're surprised observers didn't see the finely calibrated alchemy that Marvel and Paramount used to spin its Iron into box office gold:

In all the drama surrounding Edward Norton's Hulk trouble and Iron Man star Robert Downey Jr.'s gloriously checkered past, we've overlooked one of the more conspicuous problems afflicting this summer's superhero glut. To wit: Where are all the women? Are there any comics featuring female heroes whom some studio will take a chance shepherding to the screen? At least one commentator shares our concern at Vulture, and the prognosis isn't looking good:

Defamer HQ opens for business this morning with an apology to newly non-difficult Edward Norton, whose squabbles with Marvel and Universal over The Incredible Hulk appear to have been blown out of proportion by a naturally overzealous press. Via Entertainment Weekly, Norton himself went public for the first time this week to shout "Piffle!" at the accounts of acrimony dug up by Nikki Finke and The New York Times (and dutifully passed on by us); lest we risk decontextualization of any of his precious 257 words, we now pass along his full statement and more of our own profuse contrition after the jump:

· HBO shakes things up in their original series development department, moving longtime president Carolyn Strauss into a new, not-quite-fired-but-let's- see-what-some-new-blood- can-do-about- never-letting- John From Cincinnati -happen-again position. [Variety]
· Hollywood StrikeWatch 2: The Bickering. SAG and AFTRA can't seem to decide whether basic cable should be included in the upcoming actors negotiation, leading to a flurry of strongly worded letters and "near-constant sniping" between the two unions, who'll ultimately air out their differences in a choreographed rumble in the Farmers Market parking lot, set to the music of Leonard Bernstein. [Variety]
· Marvel Studios has sold the exclusive broadcast rights to FX for a package of five of their movies, including the upcoming Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk, along with three more, yet-to-be-determined titles. (We're pulling for a She-Hulk Vs. She-Thing, starring Rachel Bilson and Mischa Barton.) [Variety]

The just-released trailer for The Incredible Hulk shows few signs of the shocking truth—splashed across the pages of The Finkeian Tattler—about the power-play going on behind the scenes. (For the uninitiated: Ed Norton has been offering up his creative point of view, which differs slightly from that of the 1200 other cooks required to make a superhero blockbuster. We know! Entirely shocking!) Based on these two-minutes of footage, it seems the touchy-feely beast of Ang Lee's version, weighed down with boring daddy-issues and roaming the streets of San Francisco like an HGH-abusing Gumby, has been replaced with something a little more in line with what Hulk fanatics expect from their gamma-ray-enhanced avocado-beasts. GRAGGGHHHHAAAAAAAAA!!!!!

· As a disappointing™ Sundance limps towards the finish line, buyers are proving immune to the charms of Big Name Stars like Robert DeNiro and Tom Hanks, whose films (What Just Happened and The Great Buck Howard) have "held all of the appeal of three-day-old fish." [Variety]
· Sundance? More like Stunned'dance, quips the Reporter as the sound of a rimshot slowly fades into the eerie quiet of Park City's Main Street. Are we right, ladies? [THR]
· Universal signs Atonement's Joe Wright, red-hot from seven Oscar nominations (though not one for directing; thanks, Jason Reitman!) to a two-picture deal. [Variety]
[After the jump: Marvel and the WGA make nice on an interim basis; Disney tries to squeeze even more money out of the Toy Story franchise.]

Marvel is hesitantly entering the digital era with a new subscription service that grants access to its back catalog, and eventually will offer new releases on a (much) delayed schedule. Unfortunately Marvel is taking too many cues from its copy-fighting brethren in the music and television industries. Digital comics will be locked to a proprietary reader on its website. [PaidContent]

For a generation of Americans too young to remember the heyday of Underoos, and for whom the once seemingly infinite universe of character-licensed underthings is now limited to the occasional SpongeBob Square Boxers or Bratz 'My First Falsies' Pre-Training Bra, today brings exciting news: Marvel and Fruit of the Loom have reached a deal to plaster the image familiar Marvel Studios characters on children's underwear:

Fox and Marvel have announced they will be spinning off an X-Men character into his own movie. Not Wolverine, however, which is still listed as in development, but telepathic metal manipulator Magneto:

In what is easily the most unexpected superhero casting news since it was announced in September that Robert Downey, Jr. would be donning Iron Man's exoskeleton, Variety reports that fellow card-carrying Serious Actor Edward Norton has signed on for an Incredible Hulk sequel planned for release next summer:

· Superhero icon Captain America, who somehow survived a near-fatal movie adaptation back in 1990, was not so lucky after being struck by a sniper's bullet in the latest issue of his comic book. [Variety]
· With his homeless-guy-to-stockbroker-bigshot turn failing to bring home that elusive Oscar, Will Smith plans to see if he might have better luck with soft-hearted Academy voters by playing a jailed-crack-dealer-turned-gourmet-chef, optioning the memoir Cooked: From the Streets to the Stove, From Cocaine to Foie Gras for what we assume will be an eventual starring, tear-jerking role. [THR]
· Supporting socially moderate Republican presidential hopefuls Rudolph Giuliani and John McCain might—might—not land industry conservatives on Hollywood's right-wing blacklist. [Variety]
· Tim "McWingsy" Daly and Paul "McWho?" Adelstein join the cast of the two-hour, Very Special Grey's
Anatomy episode that may result in a spin-off. [THR]
· Exhausted network rivals take a night off from trying to fight off American Idol, flipping over and offering only token repeat resistance to their inevitable Nielsen buggering last night. [Variety]

Marvel plans to clog the summer of 2008—which may already feature the next Batman movie— with its superhero fare by setting a June 27th date for its Hulk sequel, which will arrive just two months after May 2's Iron Man release. [Variety]
THR releases its annual Next Generation list of "35 executives who represent the future of the industry," providing this year's ambitious also-rans a convenient inventory of the people they'll need to murder in order to advance their rising careers. [THR]
More Borat release hand-wringing: Did Fox leave "money on the table" by going with last weekend's limited release? Will the great buzz drive huge numbers of people to theaters when the movie goes wide on Friday? Will Sacha Baron Cohen's emerging fame rob him of his ability to goad RVs full of drunken, Southern frat boys into musing about the good ol' days of slavery? Developing... [Variety]
Paramount Vantage buys the rights to the supernatural novel A Jealous Ghost for Kirsten Dunst to produce and star in, satisfying the actress's desire to unnerve audiences with something other than her mouthful of creepy baby teeth. [THR]
Microsoft fights back against iTunes' content downloading hegemony by offering films and TV programs as on-demand options over their online service for the Xbox, finally offering viewers a way to watch "movies" and "shows" on a "television set." [Variety]

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:

· Variety proclaims that actors, not directors, are creating all the buzz at the Telluride film festival, with Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Catherine Keener in Capote, Reese Witherspoon and Joaquin Phoenix in Walk the Line, and Heath Ledger and a pair of sexy chaps in gay cowboy flick Brokeback Mountain among the standouts. [Variety]
· THR's Hollywood and Katrina round-up: Jerry Lewis raises a million dollars for hurricane victims, the major networks get ready to unite Friday for another relief concert, and MTV goes it alone. [THR,THR]
· Marvel Entertainment will independently finance and produce big-screen vehicles for the leftover comic book characters in their stable, announcing plans to adapt ten of their titles. That's right, True Believers, you might finally get those Ant Man and Power Pack movies you've been clamoring for! [Variety]
· Deciding that a tentative plan to execute losers on the Emmy telecast wasn't cruel enough, the show will feature an "Emmy Idol" competition in which actors like Kristen Bell and William Shatner sing TV themes and are subjected to a public vote on their off-key warblings. [THR]