[UPDATE; A rep from ABC says the network had nothing to do with the shoot. Details here.] Since last month's contentious TCA panel in which some TV critics accused Cavemen, the upcoming ABC sitcom/race parable that will change the face of integrated primetime auto-insurance advertising, of being a little too preoccupied with hilariously deconstructing the tired stereotypes of just one group, we haven't really had an occasion to think about the much-anticipated series. This afternoon, however, a Defamer operative's lunchtime brush with the network's hard-working Cro-Magnons has once again drawn our attention to the ambitious project. Reports our Special Correspondent on Promotional Neanderthal Encounters:

· Hollywood Out of Ideas, Tiny People Injected Into the Sickly Body Of Originality Edition: Roland Emmerich will direct a remake of Fantastic Voyage for 20th Century Fox. [Variety]
· Production has temporarily stopped on 24 so that the hit show's writers have enough time to adequately dramatize every apocalyptic scenario that would probably come to pass if a Hillary Clintonesque president ever assumed our highest office. [THR]
· Former Daily Show/Colbert Report EP Ben Karlin explains the just-announced, combined film/television deal he signed with a certain premium cable outlet: "When my reps asked me what I wanted to do next, I said firmly, 'not TV.' They said, 'HBO.' I had to admit, they had me there." [Variety]
· ABC's new NASCAR in Prime tanks its premiere, probably because the show clearly belongs on Fox. [THR]
· Jerry Bruckheimer informs CBS that it must buy his drama pilot about a "globetrotting team of freelance treasure hunters" or he will withdraw every one of the 45 weekly hours of programming he generates for them; the network, of course, happily complies, remarking about how much they always wanted a more expensive, scripted version of The Amazing Race. [Variety]

· GLAAD's first-ever "Network Responsibility Index" rates each network for how well they "handle the still-sensitive issue of depicting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals on TV." ABC got the highest rating for shows like Ugly Betty, Brothers and Sisters, and the upcoming Cavemen, sure to stir up much constructive discussion about gay-caveman stereotypes. [Variety]
· International audiences flock to The Simpsons Movie, where the hilarious image of a grown man choking his son transcends all geocultural boundaries. [Variety]
· Kevin Reilly greenlights his first project for Fox—The Oaks, about "three different couples who inhabit the same house at three different times," all of whom are visited by ghosts. Ben Silverman reads this, secretly thinks to himself: "But where's the sexy?" [Variety]
· Scott Rudin buys the rights to best-seller The Dangerous Book for Boys, sure to inspire countless "Dangerous Book for Assistants" parodies, featuring merit badges for hurled-object ducking. [THR]
· Evil babies and flashback jokes appear never to get old, as The Family Guy wins Sunday night for Fox.

· Ricky Gervais will star in Early Retirement, a pitch Warner Bros. bought about a a workoholic who—get ready for it—quits his job to spend more time with his family, a decision we're sure has uproariously hilarious, unforeseen consequences. [Variety]
· Hollywood StrikeWatch: The AMPTP reaches a deal with the Teamsters and several craft unions, freeing them up to dedicate all of their attention to convincing the Writers Guild that the internet is just a silly fad that will never generate reliable revenues. [THR]
· Paramount becomes the fifth member of this year's "billion dollar club," and is already busy designing the trades ad touting itself as the Highest Grossing Non-Sony/Warner Bros./Disney/Fox Studio of 2007. [Variety]
· Amazingly, Fox's On the Lot has still not been canceled, though its viewership is now limited almost exclusively to the friends and family members of the remaining contestants. It's a real shame, because Penny Marshall's largely incomprehensible stint as guest judge last night was really something to see. [THR]
· Where Are They Now? Former Children's-Birthday-Wrecking, Alcoholic Party of Five Clowns Edition: Scott "Bailey" Wolf signs a talent holding deal with ABC. [Variety]

Well, America, our long, sleepless nights of stress and nail-gobbling suspense are finally over: Baba Wawa has finally announced that "Oscar-winning actress and Broadway superstar" Whoopi Goldberg is permanently replacing Rosie on The View as its moderator, mysteriously leaving off her resume that grand televisual nugget Whoopi! . The news was greeted by a standing ovation from the audience, which is clearly relieved that Baba would apparently rather die before allowing Behar or Hasselbeck to run the show. Still, we give it three days before the Whoopster has Elisabeth in tears. It's just the natural way of things.

· Johnny Depp may get to fulfill his childhood fantasy of becoming the "vampire patriarch" of the 60s bloodsucker soap opera Dark Shadows, as he's developing a feature based on the series for Warner Bros. [Variety]
· Hollywood tries to make the filthy little whores of YouTube jealous by openly flirting with DailyMotion, the French video sharing site that's now setting up shop here and starting to cut deals with content producers. [THR]
· Fred Claus star Vince Vaughn continues to work the holiday-themed direction of his recent career, signing on alongside Reese Witherspoon for New Line's comedy Four Christmases, the story of a couple who tries to visit all four of their divorced parents on Christmas day. Yuletide hilarity to ensue. [Variety]
· Rob Estes joins the cast of the upcoming ABC drama Women's Murder Club, giving the show the shot of Melrose Place credibility it so desperately needed. [THR]
· And in this round-up's last bit of casting news, Susan Sarandon has joined Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones adaptation, which promises to be the most visually arresting story of a raped and murdered teenager ever made. [Variety]

"With more than 100 celebrity guests attending ABC's party at the Beverly Hilton, the hotel's security detail was given strict orders not to let anybody into the ballroom without an identification badge. So when a blond man in a burgundy polo shirt and slacks tried to enter the event unescorted, guards were quick to block him. 'Sorry sir, but I can't let you in without a badge,' the guard says.

As Isaiah Washington continues to unleash a tsunami of silence-breakings upon a public that has long since ceased to care about the vast, gay-winged conspiracy responsible for his dismissal from Grey's Anatomy, one key player who has succeeded in not speaking about the controversy was series creator Shonda Rhimes—that is, until yesterday's press-tour panel for Grey's spinoff Private Practice, when the EP was cornered by a pack of quote-hungry reporters who wouldn't take "no comment" for an answer. According to an interview with TVGuide.com, the weary showrunner was on the same page as her ABC overlords when she made the fatal call:

· Just in case you missed yesterday afternoon's reports of the Steve McPherson/Ben Silverman "be a man" feud at the TCAs, here's Var's take on the "clueless or stupid" row. [Variety]
· A planned Heroes video game could hit store shelves by late 2008, satisfying fans' desire to take control of indestructible cheerleaders or strippers who have homicidal reflections. [THR]
· Guy Ritchie, whose film career once seemed entirely swallowed by the demands of being Mr. Madonna (constantly monitoring his wife's eBay orphan auctions is a pretty time-consuming responsibility), signs on to direct an adaptation of his Virgin comic The Gamekeeper for Warner Bros. [Variety]
· Eddie Izzard replaces Jeremy Piven in Weinstein Co. animated movie Igor, though no reason for the switch has been given. But good news: as CAA reps both, the agency will retain its commission. Everyone wins! [THR]
· Iron Man's billionaire industrialist alter-ego will be an Audi enthusiast. Suck it, BMW. And you too, VW.[Variety]

Feeling jilted by ABC's apparent higher regard for conventioneering nerds, TV critics at the TCAs coerce network president Steve McPherson into revealing news about the return of a cherished Lost character to the series, a super-top-secret development he'd hoped to break to fans at Comic-Con. Following the link provided will likely spoil the entire upcoming season for you, so click at your own peril. [Reuters]

We never thought we'd find someone who made chesty "internet personality" Amanda Congdon seem competent, but this "ABC News Now" interview with Holly Hunter is an amazing example of a celebrity fluff piece gone bad. You will not be able to look away, but, trust us, you'll want to.

As if ABC president Steve McPherson's apparent willingness to scrap with NBC's Ben Silverman [Ed.note—Have an intern lay down $200 on Silverman going down in the second round. Dude's got a glass jaw, I know it.] wasn't enough fun for a single day of TCA panels, the network's Cavemen event managed to generate still more excitement, as some of the assembled critics confronted the show's producers about how the pre-troubled, primetime-paradigm-shifting sitcomfomercial race-parable might be construed as insensitive in the way it appears focused on hilariously deconstructing the stereotypes of just a single group. Reports TV Week.com's TCA blog:

Since there's nothing like a burgeoning feud between two of the most powerful men in television to enliven a seemingly endless string of TCA-generated reports about the coming Fall season, we're delighted to note that ABC president Steve McPherson has come out swinging about newly appointed NBC co-chairman/chime-bearer/rock-star Ben Silverman, whom McPherson apparently felt was a little less than honest in discussing his high-profile adoption of Grey's Anatomy orphan Isaiah Washington and in the way he pleaded ignorance of the bloody execucide of predecessor Kevin Reilly that cleared the path for Silverman to take control of the Peacock. TVGuide.com relates McPherson's comments about the Isaiah situation:

· Critic-proof director/producer Brian Robbins takes on Jailhouse Rock, a film based on the real-life story of an American Idol-like signing competition (the "Inmate Idle Singing Con-Test") that took place in an Arizona jail, for Disney. While it's probably too soon to think about casting, it's hard not to imagine Robbins throwing some orange jumpsuits on his Wild Hogs dream team and letting them loose on renditions of "Summer Lovin'" and "Paradise by the Dashboard Lights." Projected opening weekend gross: $42 million. [Variety]
· Ben Stiller, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Hudson, Paulie Walnuts, Bobby Baccala, Alicia Keys,and Sheryl Crow are among those who've signed up for Elmo's Christmas Countdown, a one-hour Muppets holiday special in which the famous will help the ticklish star count down the days to Jesus's birth. [THR]
· HBO renews Big Love for a third, 12-episode season, which should be completed well in advance of a possible strike. In other HBO news, John from Cincinnati still makes no fucking sense. [Variety]
· Fox wins another uneventful, creatively barren, rerun-heavy summer Monday night behind Hell's Kitchen and Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? [THR]
· ABC greenlights Here Come the Newlyweds, a reality competition series in which six newly married couples fight to the death (or at least to the divorce) over a steadily increasing cash prize. [Variety]

With the announcement that gay-slur-spouting primetime orphan Isaiah Washington was placed into Bionic Woman foster care by NBC rock-star/case-worker Ben Silverman, the actor's mood went from a volatile Mad As Hell And Not Going To Take It Anymore to Quietly Vindicated, But Still Wanting to Break My Silence a Few More Times. After a recent Larry King Live appearance in which Washington reassured America of his enduring admiration of Gays, the actor went on to explain to Access Hollywood how the real villain—aside, of course, from mastermind T.R. Knight, pulling his pink puppet strings from on-high—was Patrick "McEvil" Dempsey:

· While underappreciated Aaron Sorkin masterwork Studio 60 was not, as we falsely represented earlier, a nominee for the Best Drama Emmy, the show did pull in a respectable five nods, including one for Eli Wallach in the role of Blacklisted, Alzheimer's Afflicted Writer Who Tries to Steal a Photograph That Has Meaning to Him. [Variety]
· Hollywood NepotismWatch: Shari Redstone, daughter of semi-mummified Viacom overlord Sumner Redstone, may leave the board of the company over a "falling out," though her spokesperson denies she's going anywhere, "even if she has to wait another 300 years for the old man to collapse into a pile of dust in his desk chair" to finally get control of his empire. [THR]
· Ray Liotta now old enough to play Jessica Biel's father. Oh, how the years fly by! [Variety]
· A two-hours So You Think You Can Dance handily defeats ABC's talent-show block of Do People Really Do Celebrity Impressions Anymore? and Insane Asylum Show and Tell: The Search For America's Next Top Inventor. [THR]
· Emmy voters virtually ignore network abomination The CW, which earned a single nom for sound editing in Smallville. [Variety]

"Women who participate in that kind of superficial and 'mean girl' behavior are totally missing out on the true sorority experience." The Delta Delta Deltas are, of course, lying, hoping to draw a crowd of hopeless undesirables to their rush events who'll walk blindly into their punishing gauntlet of eye rolls, bitchy comments about their clothes, or hints about their weight like, "And every day, we have a super-healthy salad bar that totally helped me drop five pounds. So! You'd probably want to check that out if we become sisters!"

· ABC's Steve McPherson on Monday's announcement that pal Kevin Reilly is headed to Fox: "I hear when they fire me, he's going to come run this place," McPherson said. He then continued, his face rapidly draining of blood, "Haha, I'm just kidding guys, my job is completely safe. Guys? Guys? We're fixing Cavemen, I told you that yesterday!" [Variety]
· Every basic cable Christmas special should find a place for former 90210 star Shannen Doherty, whose very presence announces the arrival of a magical Yuletide spirit. [THR]
· Finally: Desperately Seeking Susan: The Musical! Featuring, bizarrely, music from Deborah Harry and Blondie's back catalog. Will the story still play with "Heart of Glass" instead of "Into the Groove"? Developing... [Variety]
· Fox's beleaguered On The Lot, airing a night earlier than usual because of tonight's All Star game, comes in fourth place in its timeslot against only rerun competition. Even we didn't watch it last night, and it's our job to monitor its death-throes. [THR]
· Speaking of Fox, the renegade network plans to use its Emmy awards telecast to launch its fall season, a week before Nielsen's officially decreed start date for the ratings race they will largely concede until the next season of Idol premieres. [Variety]
· Universal buys the rights to Vanity Fair article about Barbaro, Gone Like the Wind, for triple-threat-hack Peter Berg to direct. Somewhere, our buddy Will at Deadspin faints dead away with delight. [Variety]

With the heady buzz generated by creating the hybrid sitcomfomercial art form out of the best parts of half-hour TV comedy and thirty-second auto-insurance advertising finally dissipating, pioneering network ABC is starting to second-guess the programming instincts that led them to make the Geico-inspired Cavemen one of the linchpins of their Fall schedule. According to THR, they've initiated the dreaded "retooling" process, using the primitive series-salvaging implements of "recasting" and "pilot reshoots" to rescue their Neanderthal-powered racism allegory from looming Nielsen disaster:

On last night's edition of Larry King Live, CNN's in-house confessor to the disgraced Hollywood stars played host to the latest stop of embattled former TV surgeon Isaiah Washington's Breaking the Silence: I'm Mad As Hell And Not Going to Take It Anymore Tour, on which the controversially non-renewed Grey's Anatomy actor, freed of an apparent ABC/Disney gag order by his dismissal from the show, is taking to the media again and again to inform the public about the myriad conspiratorial forces (racism, gay puppetmasters, etc etc) that led to his being cast out of horny-doctor Eden.