Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes production company signs a three- year deal with Rogue Pictures, enabling the shingle's sacred mission of producing completely unnecessary, ill-advised remakes of beloved horror films on the cheap. [Variety]
Google is reportedly in talks to buy YouTube for $1.6 billion, eager to take on the challenge of defending a newly acquired online property from billions of dollars in copyright infringement lawsuits. [THR]
NBC gives Heroes, its hybrid superhero drama/instructional garbage disposal safety series, a full season pick-up. Meanwhile, the network might stash less-successful newcomer Kidnapped on Saturday nights, where no one will notice when it's quietly cancelled. [THR]
With the costs of television series always increasing, the networks look to bleed international TV buyers of every last Euro to help keep themselves rolling in cash. [Variety]
Universal buys the rights to the NY Times article "In College Football, Big Paydays for Humiliation" for Jack Black to produce, the story of football teams who accept huge sums of money to have their asses kicked by more successful programs. The eventual movie, it should go without saying, "would be a lighthearted take." [THR]

If you've ever wondered about what it might be like to work on a Michael Bay set, but feel that actually signing up to be an extra on one of his films is a risk to your emotional health that you're not willing to take (even if there's a self-esteem-repairing craft services therapist on call), we suggest you watch this video of the downtown Transformers shoot posted on The Jay.com. In just two-and-half minutes, it seems to offer a safe simulation of what a typical day of filming on any Bay production would be like: a lot of tense standing around near carefully demolished, smoldering vehicles while Bay screams through a megaphone, which eventually culminates in a couple of seconds of disappointing action.

A Defamer operative files this report of Holes, The Greatest Game Ever Played, and (perhaps most memorably) The Battle of Shaker Heights star Shia Lebeouf's alleged antics in Hollywood last night:

After last summer's flirty lunch with the NY Daily News' The Lowdown column, in which interchangeable Wedding Crashers naked person Diora Baird revealed her near-instantaneous mastery of the industry's casting customs, we expected her to quickly achieve the effortless superstardom that is her due. More than a year later, however, Baird's publicist seems to sense that her client's subsequent work in projects like Bachelor Party Vegas and Hot Tamale may have been criminally overlooked, and has decided to enlist Page Six in her efforts to restore momentum to a still-promising career:

Like an abusive boyfriend who apologizes for a blackened eye on a too-mouthy girlfriend with an expensive steak dinner (hey, he never meant to hurt you, baby), fashionable fauxteur Michael Bay keeps his cast and crew from leaving him by making sure that when he loses his temper, there is plenty of delicious food nearby to comfort the freshly tyrannized. Some disgruntled, yet well-fed, background actors on Bay's Transformers set are engaged in a "basic human dignity vs. 'Hey, is that an In N Out truck? Sweet!'" debate over Bay on the Background Beat message board:

We haven't been able to get too geeked up about The Transformers, especially after the letdown of the movie's Transformer-less teaser trailer, but our gearhead brothers over at Jalopnik are ready to bust a lugnut after they received some photos of a truck allegedly being used in the movie that were taken over on La Brea and Wilshire. To the untrained eye, it might seem indistinguishable from any other vehicle, save the embossed Autobot logo on the rear tailgate. But startled onlookers were convinced of its authenticity when the truck suddenly lurched to life, and in a beautiful, mechanical ballet of pistons and hidden hinges, converted itself into the form of a Russian hooker, who quickly joined director Michael Bay in his waiting Ferrari and sped off into the city.

· 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]

Defamer is committed to bringing together qualified, discreet professionals from the private aviation industry and the frequent-flying superproducers who wouldn't mind having a little something-something to look at while sipping martinis on the flight to Cannes, OK? Via monster.com, an exciting opportunity for anyone looking to spend some quality, pressurized-cabin time with a Hollywood power player:

We're happy to use Valentine's Day as an opportunity to honor some of the entertainment industry's most passionate love affairs, no matter how far we have to stretch the conceit to suit our purposes. This morning, Variety reminds us that while devilishly stylish fauxteur Michael Bay is a man who's given his heart to flashy, high speed chases on the 405 and worshipful, lingering shots of Ben Affleck's jawline, Bay the producer is head-over-heels for pointlessly remaking movies in which horny teens are eviscerated by tool-wielding maniacs. Bay's Platinum Dunes production company, already responsible for desecrating sacred splatter film Texas Chainsaw Massacre and transforming The Amityville Horror into a big-screen tribute to Ryan Reynold's glistening abs, will now be responsible for throwing together a Friday the 13th remake in time for the clever release date of (here it comes) Friday, October 13th. Given the recent trend of shoddily made horror movies ekeing out box office wins, we're going to boldly predict a first-place finish for the movie, if only because horror fans will be curious to see how they explain why Jason Voorhees has now chosen to mow down his victims in a yellow Lamborghini.

Today's Page Six describes an unfortunate, if understandable, gaffe by Hilton Posse member Kimberly Stewart, who repeatedly misidentified superproducer Jerry Bruckheimer at a recent party:

We'd never encourage anyone to try and tackle two big industry soirees in a single night; the risk of party-muscle cramping, hors d'oeuvres poisoning, and DUI citations is doubled, and the likelihood of having the same exact conversations (last night's icebreaker certainly began with, "Dude, what up with Kong?") with a slightly different group of people is roughly quintupled. But a brave operative pulled off a double-header last night, enduring both a Very Michael Bay Christmas and a historical epic premiere to file this report:

Buried deep within a hard-hitting NY Times Style Magazine profile of current Woody Allen muse Scarlett Johansson's shopping habits is this little nugget, which in its own small, delightful way revives the highly entertaining post-The Island feud between one of America's best-dressed fauxteurs and his onetime star:

Apropos of nothing but a desire to ease into Friday morning without too much thought or effort, Towelroad has a bunch of screen grabs of an "Easter egg" from the Pearl Harbor DVD, where noted prankster and all-around good time guy Ben Affleck and onetime It-boy heartthrob Josh Hartnett reenact Affleck's famous "animal crackers" scene from Armageddon. Another secret DVD goodie features a montage of Affleck precariously dangling his genitals behind director Michael Bay's head, only letting his manhood drop on the fauxteur's shoulder at the precise moments he calls "action!" A furious Bay, victimized by Affleck's junk over and over again, finally threatens to cast the actor in every movie he ever makes as revenge—a threat, obviously, that he didn't have to balls to follow through on.

· Up until a couple of minutes ago, this mildly amusing misidentification was on the front page of latimes.com. Earlier today, there was a similar 50 Cent/Eminem mix-up. Ah, if only we could all be as colorblind as the Web!
· Page Six says that instead of setting her career back by starring in the Fantastic Four sequel, Jessica Alba may have chosen to torpedo herself with an I Dream of Jeannie remake with Jimmy Fallon. In either case, it's clear she earned her opportunity strictly on acting talent, and not with her rockin' bod.
· The Baby Jesus sheds a single tear: Jenny McCarthy's marriage is over.
· The Island is hurting the Michael Bay brand in new and exciting ways.
· Things could always be worse for Courtney Love. She could be Natasha Lyonne.

Usually there's no point in linking to something in The Onion, as we believe the terms of service of the internets require every user to visit the site five times a week, but when matters of Michael Bay are involved, all bets are off. We can't take the chance that you might miss the fauxteur's fake-itorial, "What Has Our Society Come To When March of the Penguins Is The Blockbuster Hit of the Summer?":

Hollywood PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are sent in by our readers (that means that we don't write them ourselves, and usually can't be bothered to proofread them, either). Send yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (putting “privacywatch” or “sighting” in the subject line helps make sure they’re not devoured by the spam filter) and let the world know how fitting you think it is that Elijah Wood drives a Mini.

We have no idea why Michael Bay has been bellyaching about the marketing of The Island (actually, that $12 million opening gives us a pretty good idea why, but whatever). Is there a better way to sell to Bay's target audience than covering the city with images of Scarlett Johansson's breasts so huge that the actress nearly fainted at the sight of her own ample anatomy?

Not to kick a man while he's in the throes of an existential dilemma induced by the first failure of an otherwise brilliant career, but a reader spotted Michael Bay in Westwood the other night, and what begins as a brief critique of the director's cinematic aesthetic ends with an offhanded, yet scathing, indictment of his style. Thus another installment of the long-dormant Fauxteur Fashion Minute is born:

Confronted with a world that suddenly lacks meaning, a world in which A Michael Bay Film meets with anything less than resounding success, the celebrated fauxteur scrambles for reasons why The Island bombed so resoundingly this weekend:

Knowing that film is an inherently collaborative art form might quite logically lead you to believe that Michael Bay employed an army of writers to craft the visual poetry of his signature blowing-shit-up scenes in The Island. In an interview with Newsweek critic David Ansen, the legendary fauxteur sets the record straight: