· Grey's Anatomy star Isaiah Washington considerately spares the TV Academy the trouble of ignoring him come Emmy nomination time by withdrawing his name from awards consideration. His time in gayhab obviously taught him an important lesson about transparent expressions of publicist-encouraged humility. [Variety]
· More Speed Racer casting news we can't really get excited about: Matthew Fox is close to signing on to join the project as nemesis Racer X. [THR ]
· The lineup for the Cannes Film Festival is jam-packed with U.S. movies both in competition (with entries by Tarantino, David Fincher, and the Coen Brothers) and on the premiere schedule (Ocean's 13), giving the French ample opportunity to alternately boo American cultural imperialism and offer standing ovations inspired by the sight of George Clooney in a tuxedo. [Variety]
· Hitch and I Now Pronounce You Fake Gay Husbands, Now Punch Out That Guy Before Someone Thinks You're Really A Homo star Kevin James embraces his typecasting as a lovable schlub, entering negotiations to play an "average guy" who inherits some land that turns out to be its own country in One Nation Under Bob. [THR]
· Rumors are circulating that NBC might not renew the original Law & Order unless creator Dick Wolf figures out a way to fire his entire cast and produce each episode on a budget of $100 or less. [Variety]

Donald Trump has adopted a new hobby and immersed himself in it just like any man approaching his retirement years would, only instead of model trains or ship building, the combforwarded land baron has committed himself to becoming the greatest, classiest Rosie O'Donnell hater in the world. He hasn't publicly shared his thoughts on The View co-host in over a month (her admission that she suffers from depression led him to sensitively admit that he too would suffer from depression if he was trapped inside her frame), but that doesn't mean Trump hasn't been hard at work in his Mar-a-Lago basement readying his latest anti-Rosie mastepiece:

· ABC acquires the rights to a "special" described as a "real-life version of The Queen" drawn from "hundreds of hours of footage" of the monarch and royal family, or as such a project was once called, a "documentary." [Variety]
· King of Queens' Leah Remini will star in the "groundbreaking" web series In the Motherhood, the story of three mom girlfriends who struggle to find novel ways to incorporate the fine personal grooming and telecommunications products of joint sponsors Suave and Sprint into their hilarious adventures in advertainment. [THR]
· Var rounds up how the various networks reacted to yesterday's Virginia Tech massacre, including the fact that an unexpectedly sensitive Fox has yanked a new Bones episode that dealt with "human remains being uncovered on a college campus." [Variety]
· Hollywood Out of Ideas, Irene Cara Edition: MGM will sink $25 million into a remake of Fame, hoping that a generation being raised to believe that success is achieved through serial vagina-flashing and assiduous nightclub attendance can relate to an old-fashioned story about people trying to achieve recognition through actual talent and hard work. [THR]
· Dancing with the Stars: One-Legged Tango Edition and The Bachelor: Another Boring, Horny Guy Who's Never Going To Marry Any Of These Fame-Hungry Skanks lead ABC to a Monday night Nielsen win. [Variety]

· Producers pass on our suggestions of indie darlings like Chloe Sevigny or Selma Blair, and go instead with multi-hyphenate hoochie Willa Ford to play Anna Nicole Smith in a movie about her life. (Now with happy ending!) [Variety]
· CBS is teaming with Jermaine, Tito and LaToya Jackson for Pop Dynasty, an American Idol-style search for the next superstar singing family no one will care about or watch! Michael would have joined, but he's knee-deep in giant robot blueprints at the moment. [Variety]
· What will surely go down as the Summer America Went Bingo Crazy officially kicks off May 18, when ABC premieres its much-anticipated National Bingo Night. [Variety]
· The premiere of The Sopranos' final season draws 7.66 million viewers, down by nearly 2 million from its last premiere in March, throwing Bobby even deeper into his guilt-spiral over whether it was even worth it to wait this long to pop his whacking cherry. [Variety]
· On the heels of news that that Lee Majors may return to primetime TV now comes a report that Tom Selleck is "in discussions" to take over for the Las Vegas's recently departed James Caan, edgily cast as Josh Duhamel's new daddy love interest. [THR]

The LAT takes a look at the roughly 12,000 network pilots currently in development, trying to make sense of any trends that emerged from last season. What we know: Serialized storytelling is out, except when it's in; viewers love a heavy dose of lighthearted quirk with their hour-long, fashion-centric dramas; and the public's appetite for the plight of fundamentalist Christian sketch comedy actresses was vastly overestimated. There is also the predicament of the half-hour primetime comedy, a languishing format that can only claim Charlie Sheen paycheck-generator Two and a Half Men as its single entry in the Nielsen top 20. It's a problem executives have approached with the kind of no-fail solution that results in a grab-bag pilot crop littered with Geico Cavemen shows and Lee Majors's triumphant return to TV: Greenlight everything and hope someone laughs.

· MGM has teamed up with Salma Hayek for Ventanazul, a production label dedicated to Latin-themed and staffed productions. Hayek will be overseeing operations, with MGM COO Rick Sands explaining, "To the extent that it makes sense for her to act, she'll do that; to the extent that it makes sense for her to produce, she'll do that." He then added, "To the extent that it makes sense for her to do a round of P.R. in an extremely low-cut, tight-fitting top, she'll do that, too." [Variety]
· Next week is Mip TV Mart, which brings with it all the glamour you'd expect from an expo in Cannes peopled by international television sales guys. The question remains, however, of whether or not American shows will continue to net record-breaking license fees from a foreign market hungry for the next cheerleading global savior. [Variety]
· Warner Bros. has greenlit Super Max, in which the Green Arrow is thrown into jail and "stripped of his powers." Will he be able to conquer the bad guys without the use of his trusty boxing-glove arrow? We'll just have to wait and see. [Variety]
· More casting news from Lionsgate's The Christmas Cottage, by far Hollywood's most anticipated holiday-painting-inspired movie! Marcia Gay Harden has signed on to play Painter of Light™ Thomas Kinkade's mother. [THR]
· ABC and CBS tie for first place last night, with audiences tuning in for one of their last looks at nine-season under-the-radar staple King of Queens, and mostly uncomfortable improv comedy Thank God You're Here doing "all right" for a trailing NBC. [THR]

· Apparently, The Departed's Best Picture win triggered a clause in all participants' contracts mandating that all of their subsequent movie projects must involve at least two Departed alumni, as Leonardo DiCaprio and screenwriter William Monahan form yet another "reunion" for the adaptation of the novel Body of Lies for Warner Bros. [Variety]
· Emboldened by the Easter holiday, Jesus finally serves a cold dish of revenge to Desperate Housewives for its second-season "slutty nun fight" episode, sending the series to its lowest ratings in its three-year history. [THR]
· Harrison Ford will sneak in a stint protecting America from illegal immigrants in the Weinstein Co.'s Crossing Over before reporting for duty this summer as cinema's most beloved, swashbuckling sexagenarian archaeologist. [Variety]
· Jared Padalecki will play the Painter of Light™ himself in Lionsgate's groundbreaking adaptation of Thomas Kinkade's blockbuster "Christmas Cottage" painting. [THR]
· 300 topples Mr. Bean at the foreign box office on its way to a $32 million weekend, boosting the tale of a crazed Persian emperor's ill-fated campaign to give every last soldier in Greece an erotic shoulder-massage to a $367 worldwide gross. [Variety]

Perhaps the most notable of the 3,000 sitcom pilots born out of ABC's "Greenlight 'em all and let God sort 'em out" comedy development strategy for the 2007 fall TV season is Cavemen, the prospective series based on a series of commercials featuring insurance carrier Geico's second-most popular characters (the Gecko's agent at CAA is just too big an asshole to even deal with), a gang of put-upon Neanderthals thrust into a modern world that unfairly stereotypes them as uncultured brutes. But what really attracted ABC president Steven McPherson to the project, other than the utter glee that will accompany every caveman eye-roll in reaction to a supporting character's snooty insinuation that he probably doesn't know the difference between a salad fork and the jagged rock he used to kill his dinner? It's all about the cutting social commentary! This is some next-level shit, says McPherson in response to a THR question that politely refers to the sitcomfomercial concept as "nontraditional":

Earlier today, in briefly discussing the brainstorming session that produced the concept for sure-to-be runaway hit The Great American Singing Bee (i.e., "Horowitz 'came to me and said, "Two words: Singing bee," ' Gurin said. 'I said, "Bingo," and we began developing it.'") [Ed.note—Yeah, we're still not sure we get it.], we jokingly mentioned that a gameshow-crazed NBC was also developing a complementary, bingo-themed project. A helpful tipster quickly reminded us that rival ABC's best alternative programming minds were already way ahead of us (and NBC) on this one. Behold the upcoming National Bingo Night, or as it will soon be popularly known as per our previous flight of supposed fancy, People Shouting At A Fucking Huge Cage Full of Numbered Ping-Pong Balls

· Forest Whitaker will put his Oscar-winning talents to the ultimate test by trying to match acting chops with Monosyllabic Method master Keanu Reeves in The Night Watchman. [Variety]
· Professional badass Ray Winstone reportedly signs up to play Harrison Ford's sidekick in the upcoming Indy 4. [THR]
· Paramount promotes Austin Powers second unit guy Marco Schnabel to full-fledged director on Mike Myers' new funny-talking-guru film, perhaps hoping that a trusted, familiar face will keep the actor from freaking out and abandoning the project after a week of shooting. [Variety]
· Jason Alexander takes a role in one of the roughly 6,000 comedy projects ABC has developed this pilot season. (It's about a wacky police station, if you must know.) [THR]
· Oprah anoints Amazing Race creators Bert Van Munster and Elise Doganieri as showrunners for her upcoming reality project, Oprah Winfrey's The Big Give, in which TV's infinitely generous demigod will hand do-gooders a pile of money and challenge them to use it in a way that properly reflects Her beneficence. [Variety]

· Angelina Jolie will star in Universal's action flick Wanted opposite Morgan Freeman and James McAvoy. Shooting is scheduled to start in May in Eastern Europe, allowing the child-hoarding actress to finally tap that region's relatively underexploited orphan supply. [Variety]
· Oh, how cute: Jolie's boyfriend also has some news of his own in the trades! [Variety]
· NUTS signs The Office's Jennifer Celotta to a two-year, seven-figure overall deal, which the writer candidly admits may help her avoid being hobbled by the bookie owed a massive gambling debt following a bad NCAA tourney pick. Here's hoping she gets out of that dilemma without lasting physical injury. [THR]
· 21.7 million viewers tune in to the fourth season of premiere of Dancing with the Stars, but are ultimately disappointed when no tango foxtrot-related mishap occurs involving Heather Mills' prosthetic leg. There's always next week, sickies. [THR]
· WGA President Patric Verrone taunts the studios by informing Guild members that there's no evidence their saber-rattling adversaries have been stockpiling scripts to prepare for a possible strike. [Variety]

· A frustrated, posturing Viacom finally breaks down after months of "unproductive negotiation" about licensing fees for the interweb rebroadcast of its cherished content, suing Google and its infernal YouTubes for "massive intentional copyright infringement" for over a billion dollars in damages, a suit that could be quickly dropped should GooTube come back to the conglomerate with a number representing a fair value for allowing its users to share their favorite clips of crudely animated, foul-mouthed schoolchildren talking to an anthropomorphized piece of human excrement. [Variety]
· Meanwhile, Bravo buys Television Without Pity, proving that media companies and the internet can sometimes figure out a way to coexist. [Variety]
· Questions about the fates of various established shows on the pick-up bubble: Will NBC try to get Law & Order back on the cheap? Will ABC ever get rid of According to George and The Jim Belushi Show? Will ABC swoop in and steal away Scrubs from NBC? We are all atwitter over the intrigue. [THR]
· Studio 60 TimeslotWatch: Paul Haggis' The Black Donnellys continues to flounder in Aaron Sorkin's rightful 10 pm home, getting trounced by a repeat of CSI: Miami. [THR]
· While no one actually wants to buy it, a three-year old script about Michael Eisner and Mike Ovitz's fun-filled time together at Disney is delighting bored studio executives all over town. [Variety]

With help from possible sitcom saviors like Jenna Elfman and the Geico Unfairly Persecuted Cavemen Project not to arrive until the fall season at the earliest, increasingly desperate ABC development executives are looking inward for more radical and immediate solutions to their comedy problems. This Just In has leaked this internal presentation the execs have put together in an attempt to convince boss Steve McPherson to allow them to repurpose the lighter moments from flagging drama Lost as a half-hour summer schedule-filler, which would help both to bridge the gap between Lost seasons and the next generation of surefire sitcom hits that will arrive by the end of the year.

· Naomi Watts will star in a film adaptation of the book Kicked, Bitten and Scratched: Life and Lessons at the World's Premiere School for Exotic Animal Trainers, which is being developed as a romantic comedy that will inevitably feature much discussion about how men are about as trainable as the average red-assed baboon. [Variety]
· Katt "The Pimp Chronicles" Williams will write and star in and Eddie Murphy will produce and co-star in Marshals, a comedy about the first black marshals in the Old West, for DreamWorks. Both are expected to immediately get to work selecting which bits from Blazing Saddles they'll helpfully "reimagine" for current audiences. [THR]
· Feeling an acute lack of Jenna Elfman in its life since Dharma & Greg went off the air, ABC attempts to fill that empty place by trying to reach a deal for the pilot Literary Superstar, in which Elfman will play an adorably quirky book publicist. [Variety]
· In other ABC pilot casting news involving blonde TV actresses whose careers have cooled, Christina Applegate joins the cast of the comedy Sam I Am, centering on an amensiac's hilarious quest to rediscover her life, a project which we assume will be quickly retitled so as not to be confused with an exploitative sitcom version of Sean Penn's I Am Sam. [THR]
· VH1 Classic spins off some Journey and Whitesnake videos into Rock of Ages, an off-Broadway musical about "a Hollywood rock club circa 1986." [Variety]

· 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]

We officially apologize for scoffing at ABC's seemingly desperate plans to score a much-needed comedy hit by adapting Geico's Cavemen commercials into a groundbreaking sitcomfomercial pilot; when we made our ill-considered and premature comments, we had no idea that the potential show already has an installed fanbase so maniacal in its devotion to the hilarious ads that they're moved to undertake unlicensed merchandising activities, like this talking, insurance-flogging Neanderthal doll offered on eBay, to support ABC's bold vision. One hopes that the passion of this fan for original commercial Caveman John Lehr can persuade the network to allow the actor to reprise his role in the pilot, rather than dooming the project to failure by fitting sitcom albatross Mark Feuerstein for a full-body hair-suit and jutting prosthetic brow.

· ABC yanks once-hyped Knights of Properity from its schedule with four episodes yet to air, then compounds the indignity by replacing the series with reruns of According to Jim and George Lopez, which stings even more than a looming cancellation. [Variety]
· The post-Oscar The Departed love-in shows no signs of abating, with Martin Scorcese and Mark Wahlberg teaming up to produce an HBO series about the development of Atlantic City. [THR]
· ABC Television Studio signs Borat/Curb/Seinfeld/Entourage producer Larry Charles to a two-and-a-half-year deal to write and direct various TV projects, which we assume will not include an assignment to oversee their hybrid Geico Cavemen sitcomfomercial. [Variety]
· The MPAA's Dan Glickman says that 2006's 5.5% increase in movie ticket sales was a "reminder" that worldwide audiences "enjoy going to the movies," while a Slump-tainted '05 was "a clear message that we were putting out some pretty terrible shit." [THR]
· Bored former Disney CEO Michael Eisner tries to occupy his idle time by collecting baseball card companies. [Variety]

· Miami Heat center and Kazaam star Shaquille O'Neal will star in a six episode ABC reality series this summer in which he will help fat kids in Florida lose weight, explaining to them that it's only acceptable to carry around extra pounds if you're a multimillionaire basketball player who needs a protective layer of fat to protect oneself from the violent, uncalled fouls of undersized opponents. [Variety]
· Foreigners prove that awkward dubs or subtitles don't interfere with one's appreciation of Nic Cage's fiery-headed High Art, delivering Ghost Rider to a third consecutive weekend atop the international box office. [THR]
· The NAACP recognizes Grey's Anatomy star Isaiah Washington with an Image Award for Best Actor in a Drama Series Whose Well-Publicized Episodes Of Troubling Homophobia We Will Happily Ignore. [Variety]
· Sony thumbs its nose at American moviegoers, announcing that Spider-Man 3 will premiere in Tokyo three days before its U.S. bow. On the bright side, jilted Stateside Spidey fans will probably be able to download pirated, camcorded copies of the movie a couple of days earlier than usual. [Variety]
· Fox's The Winner debuts in third-place in the 18-49 demographic, but scores first with its target audience of 32-year-old men who might eventually wind up molesting their 14-year-old best friends. [THR]

Today's WSJ delves deeper into the decisionmaking process that led ABC to greenlight a sitcom pilot based on Geico's Easily Offended Cavemen characters, a daring move that pays homage to the runaway successes of advertising-to-TV pioneers like the California Raisins and That Talking Demon-Baby Who Gave Us A Solid Year Of Sweat-Drenched Nightmares. Disappointingly, the explanation of the project's genesis is heavy on jargon like "brand extension," "messaging clutter," and "media fragmentation," and light on more honest anecdotes involving comedy-starved network executives, smoldering crackpipes, and desperate three-day development binges that end with an exhausted VP pointing at the insurance commercial playing on a nearby television and saying, "Fuck it, let's just do a show about that":

· Hollywood Out of Ideas: Let's Turn Those Mildly-Amusing-At-Best Geico Cavemen Commercials, Which Themselves Are a Rip-Off of That Old Phil Hartman SNL Sketch, Into an ABC Sitcom Pilot edition! [Variety]
· Warner Bros. is turning the Valerie Plame-C.I.A. leak debacle into a feature. You can start plotting your dream cast now, but Warner is hoping Vice President Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Lewis "Scooter" Libby will all be played by Eddie Murphy, in his next Oscar-courting role. [Variety]
· With Grey's and CSI in reruns, Fox tramples the rest last night with Idol and strongly showing Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?, leading the network to immediately explore possible spinoffs, including Are You Drunker Than Paula Abdul?, and Are You Gonna Eat That? starring Randy Jackson. [Variety]
· In an effort to "minimize children's exposure to violence," the FCC wants broader powers in regulating TV content. In other words the actual CSI decapitation would be subject to censoring, and not just the skullfucking that follows it. [THR]
· TV Land has hired Bill Clinton to address their advertisers at their March 23rd upfronts in New York, who is expected to tell the gathered crowd that in his moments of doubt, he would regularly turn to old episodes of Simon & Simon, where the wisdom of P.I. siblings A. J. and Rick would invariably guide him through his darkest hours. [THR]