Trade Round-Up: Comedy Central Takes Another Hit From 'Blue Collar' Crackpipe
Julia Roberts will produce and possibly star in an adaptation of the Lolly Winston novel Happiness Sold Separately, about a suburban wife whose husband, forgetting that he's married to Julia Roberts (perhaps things will be complicated by the character's mousy hairstyle, clunky glasses, and dowdy wardrobe), starts banging the nutritionist at his gym. [Variety]
· Comedy Central signs away another part of its soul to the blue-collared comedy devil, ordering a half-hour animated pilot about Larry the Cable Guy's wacky misadventures as the co-owner of a cable TV station. [THR]
· Meanwhile, Nickelodeon tries to counteract corporate sibling Comedy Central's development evil by greenlighting a new animated series starring SNL's Amy Poehler, Mighty B, about an adorably psychotic 10-year-old Honeybee scout. [THR]
Producers Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Jason Blum buy the film rights to an upcoming Vanity Fair article about the CIA, The Shop; no word on if VF editor Graydon Carter will earn a producing fee for once musing to himself while staring out his office window that the story would make a great movie. [Variety]
Dan Mazer, longtime Sacha Baron Cohen partner-in-crime, is officially inducted into Hollywood's Comedy Mafia by making a deal to write and direct a Judd Apatow-produced, "broad, out-there" comedy for Universal. Bonus soundbite: Mazer marvels that Cohen's dangling of "his testicles in another man's face" has not disqualified him from Oscar consideration. [Variety]