· The endless reshuffling of film executives continues, as dispossessed ex-Paramount pres Donald De Line will drown his demotional sorrows at Warner Bros. with a 3 year production deal. [Variety]
· Natalie Portman is in talks to star in magical toy shop movie Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium. This time, when she once again decides to frustrate the world by refusing to do a nude scene, we'll give her a pass. But the next one better have some topless moments! [THR]
· Call it an Arrested Development "reunion," or call it "looking for new jobs": Imagine Entertainment will produce a comedy starring, directed, and written by AD "alums" Chuck Martin, the Russo Brothers, and Will Arnett for Universal. [Variety]
· We already alerted you to this, but relive the horror: Paris Hilton signs with Endeavor. [THR]
· Jimmy Kimmel, Adam Carolla and their cutely named "Jackhole Industries" will bring comedian Andy Milonakis to MTV with a half hour sketch show. Sounds...jackhole-y? [THR]
· NY's Tribeca Film Fest, started post 9/11, looks to make the delicate transition from "film fest of post-traumatic hope" to "orgy of Hollywood greed." [Variety]

Just yesterday, we thought we were on the verge of an astonishing turnaround in the publicity profession, as we exuberantly hoped that a Risorgimento Pubblicità was dawning. Alas, we spoke too soon, as a pair of publicists are forced to issue unarftul denials to Page Six involving the whereabouts of Johnny Knoxville's penis:

Pity the poor employees of Fox. They're routinely made to suffer the indignities of themed, promotional meals at their cafes, occasionally made to chomp on carb-heavy breakfast foods that are somehow supposed to remind them of burying their syrup-slicked heads between Pamela Anderson's enormous breasts, and once in a while, mysterious body parts supposedly belonging to long-disposed-of assistants are rumored to turn up on their lot. Haven't they suffered enough? They have not, say the smooth-brained imagineers of Fox's vaunted promotional department, for now they're being asked to become complicit in one of the lamest viral-marketing ideas we've ever heard of—attaching Family Guy signatures (OMG the baby does a widdle dance!) to their outgoing e-mail to publicize the relaunch of their dysfunctional relationship with the oft-canceled show.

Between this morning's report of publicist Ken Sunshine's Jerry Maguire-esque indictment of his flacky brethren and fellow celebrity mouthpiece Dan Klores' side-career as Important Documentary Filmmaker, we think we may be witnessing the beginnings of an era that we will one day refer to as the Risorgimento Pubblicità (loosely translated as the "Publicist Renaissance"). Witness Klores using his publicity-attracting superpowers to induce Reuters to discuss the sociopolitcal/psychosexual issues at play in his documentary, Ring of Fire: The Emile Griffith Story:

· Long since having abandoned all hopes of catching Fox's American Idol in the ratings, ABC is instead planning a "potentially explosive exposé" of the juggernaut on Primetime Live. Among the shocking revelations: Sensitive, soft-spoken (and recently de-Idoled) contestant Anwar Robinson is gay, Simon Cowell had undifferentiated genitalia at birth, and talent-free crowd favorite Scott Savol looks like a cross between a giant, scary baby and Vincent D'Onofrio in Full Metal Jacket. [Variety]
· Time Warner and Comcast have agreed to buy cable-provider Adelphia, assuring that we will have no idea whom to call and scream at during our weekly internet service outage. [THR]
· Tobey Maguire signs on to star with George Clooney and Cate Blanchett in The Good German, in which Maguire will conveniently portray a movie star who really lets himself go while frittering away his Hollywood fortunes in poker tournaments. [Variety]
· Sarah Jessica Parker is in talks to star in the the "dark comedy" Slammer, in which she'd play a jailed publicist that organizes an inmate musical. The script marks a new (and potentially much better) direction for backer Revolution Studios, which is now generating movie plots with an old book of Mad-Libs. [THR]
· Nicolas Cage will star in the film Electric God, a development that provides so many potential punchlines that we decline to offer even one. [Variety]

Frustrated with the increasingly invasive techniques that paparazzi use to snap pictures of his clients shopping at high-end boutiques, patronizing pricey restaurants, and idling at stoplights in luxury automobiles, celebrity superflack Ken Sunshine removes the shotgun barrel from his own mouth and turns it on the "no comment" crowd:

We're not going to dwell on the details of how sister site Gawker came to attend the "Time 100 Party" (oral) and breathe the same gold particle-infused oxygen specially imported for the respirating pleasure of their Most Influential Whatevers. We're going to skip to the good part, when our colleague accosted Viacom co-president Les Moonves, the man who will one day enslave us all, and enjoined him in idle chit-chat about the world-famous smile that makes hungry crocodiles weep with inadequacy:

· The Agent Dance Mini: CAA agent Michael Wimer is getting ready to bolt to form a production company with Roland Emmerich at Columbia, where the two will attempt to make movies where lots of shit blows up; to maintain a proper agent-equilibrium, Endeavor's Spencer Baumgarten fills a spot a CAA. [Variety, Variety ]
· Ed Burns will write, direct, and star in The Groomsmen, and somehow wrangles a cast of Brittany Murphy, John Leguizamo, Matthew Lillard, Jay Mohr, Jessica Capshaw, and Donal Logue, an ensemble who clearly haven't seen Sidewalks of New York (and that includes Murphy, who was in the movie). [THR]
· NBC signs Fear Factor executive producer Matt Kunitz to a two-year development deal; Kunitz will spend the pact's duration trying to figure out even more ways for desperate actors and actresses to devour the genitalia of animals. [Variety]
· Sun rises, sun sets, American Idol crushes its competition in the ratings. How far can we be from an all-Idol, all-the-time Fox schedule? More importantly, when is America going to vote off the off-key singing fat guy who looks like a giant, scary baby? [THR]
· Superhero villains Ian "Magneto" McKellan and Alfred "Doctor Octopus" Molina score roles in The Da
Vinci Code adaptation, which is apparently undergoing a slow transformation into a comic-book movie. [Variety]

The This is 14th Street blog has a fascinating account of lame duck Disney CEO Michael Eisner's recent hotel stay in NY. He paid cash, had no visitors, and never left the room (unless he was smuggled in and out in someone else's Louis Vuitton luggage). The stage seemed to be set for a final boat ride down the "It's A Small World" Styx with a mouse-eared Charon, but Eisner cheerily reappeared the next day, leaving only a mystery behind:

· The Cannes line-up features established directors such as David Cronenberg, Wim Wenders, Atom Egoyan, Jim Jarmusch, Gus Van Sant, and Lars Von Trier. Von Trier will be shunned at the opening night gala, when he kills a donkey just to show off for his peers. [Variety]
· Breaking! Actors still love easy voiceover paychecks! Nick Nolte, William Shatner, Steve Carell, Avril Lavigne,
Catherine O'Hara, Eugene Levy, Wanda Sykes and Allison Janney sign on to voice the DreamWorks animated feature Over the Hedge. [THR]
· The NFL goes feces-flinging insane, moving Monday Night Football to ESPN, while giving the Sunday night game to sports-starved NBC. [Variety]
· The Parents Television Council finds more to complain about, bitching that broadcasters do a bad job of properly labeling the violence and smut content (i.e., the good parts) of their shows. [THR]
· Disney makes up the absolutely darling title of "Chief Creative Officer" for marketing exec Oren Aviv. We love it when marketing people start thinking they're creative! It's so darn cute! [Variety]
· Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo, and Jake Gyllenhaal sign up for David Fincher's Zodiac, a serial killer flick for Paramount and Warner Brothers. Beware: the entire film could collapse from its critical mass of hunky dreaminess. [Variety]

OK, maybe we're a little bit caught up in the excitement of today's Popeapalooza, but berproducer Scott Rudin admitted to the LAT that he'll be exiting the New Paramount™ to help revitalize the Weinstein-Free Miramax™ (and make movies for Disney's other studios, Touchstone and Walt Disney Pictures, as well). Perhaps it's fitting that this story broke today; Disney really needed to find someone who puts the fear of God in his sheep the way that Harvey Weinstein did for years at The 'Max.

· As previously discussed, Viacom's Redstone, Freston, and Moonves pull in a "shitload" of money in their executive overcompensation packages. [Variety]
· Holly Robinson Peete joins UPN's Shannen Doherty project, French Stewart is cast in the WB's Best Laid Plans, and Hollywood inches ever closer to 100 percent employment during pilot season. [THR]
· Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes Productions takes up the fool's errand of remaking the C. Thomas Howell/Rutger Hauer horror classic The Hitcher. Scuttle this one now, before more money is wasted—you just can't improve on a bloody finger in a plate of French fries (even a fingertip in chili doesn't cut it). [Variety]
· Tyrese signs on to play the prettiest ex-con ever in Waist Deep for Focus Features. We can think of nothing semi-clever or interesting to say about this; enjoy the link anyway. [THR]
· NBC Universal brings in profits for corporate parent GE with a strong showing in theme parks, movies, and DVDs—but not so much with the television part. [Variety]

Running a big movie studio is not necessarily good enough to gain entrance to the exclusive Jonathan Club. Rush & Molloy report that The Club recently gave The High-Society Heisman to Sony's Amy Pascal and former NY Times Hollywood reporter/husband unit Bernie Weinraub:

The Big Three at multimedia corporate behemoth Viacom—shuffling, mummified executive presence Sumner Redstone, co-president/eternal teenager Tom "someone stole the 'gr' page in my thesaurus" Freston, and inevitable worldwide despot Les Moonves—had the overcompensation clauses in the contracts honored for 2004, in which each executive was paid in hundred dollar bills dumped directly into their empty, Olympic-size swimming pools. Once the money was tallied up, each executive received $52 million (Freston and Mooves) to $56 million.* (Redstone's contract, it seems, also stipulated that his ten-person Jacuzzi be filled with cash.)

· More on Brad Grey's near-constant studio moves at the New Paramount™: Dimension's Brad Weston is expected to come on board, and Grey might be trying to sign up Plan B, his former production company with two obscure celebrities you've probably never heard of. [Variety]
· If you visit THR's website, an incredibly awesome picture of Knight Rider-era David Hasselhoff beckons you to a boring article we didn't bother to even skim. [THR]
· Demoted/shamed WMA agent Aaron Kaplan gets his revenge by waiting out his recently-departed tormentor and gaining a promotion. Heartwarming! [Variety]
· Gavin Polone's Pariah production company signs a 2-year first-look deal with Columbia, possibly starting the producer-parade to Sony that's been rumored for some time now. [THR]
· Sony buys the rights to the novel Tokyo Suckerpunch as a starring vehicle for Tobey Maguire; the book's title refers to a decadent Japanese pastry that helps once-buff movie stars rapidly gain weight in between roles. [Variety]
· George Bush sends mixed messages about the FCC possibly regulating pay TV; he seems to be in favor of it, sort of, but maybe he was just gassy. [Variety]

A mere twenty-two years after David Geffen promised to allow access to the public beach blocked by his enormous Gay Mafia Xanadu, the entertainment mogul finally turned over keys to the gate that will allow the Malibu common folk to frolic in the sand. To Geffen's credit, once he finally exhausted all possible legal delays and was forced to hand over the keys, he did his best to ensure that his Passage to the Pacific is as warm and welcoming as possible for the coastal interlopers:

NY Daily News JV gossip Lloyd Grove obtains a copy of the book proposal for the memoir of canned 60 Minutes producer Mary Mapes (of Rather/Memogate fame), in which Mapes recklessly endangers her life by disparaging the journalistic bonafides of Viacom co-president/future global despot Les Moonves:

That Brad Grey character at the New Paramount seems to get shaky if he goes a couple of days without mixing things up at the New Paramount™, doesn't he? Moments ago, the studio announced that it's got a shiny, new co-president of production (current EVP Alli Shearmur—yeah, we didn't know who she was, either) to replace Karen Rosenfelt, the co-president from the old regime. In a heartfelt e-mail to his Paramount underlings, Grey offers a tearful goodbye to Rosenfelt:

· Joshua Martson, director of the critically acclaimed Maria Full of Grace, will direct the temporarily titled Iraqi Convoy Project, about US contractors who smuggle supplies through the Iraqi war zone in their anal columns. [THR]
· SAG/AFTRA enters into "critical, final" negotiations with video-game companies who insist on using union acting
talent in their games. If things aren't resolved, a strike is possible—and you might find yourself fragging your favorite Chili's waiter instead of someone like Casper Van Dien. [Variety]
· Revolution Studios is in negotiations to extend their contract with Sony, trying to assure that they'll have an adequate distribution channel for crap like XXX:State of the Union, Christmas with the Kranks, and—dare we raise the spectre of Bennifer? Yes, we dare—Gigli. [THR]
· Morgan's Creek will finally get Paul Schrader's unreleased Exorcist prequel into theaters...against the new Star Wars movie, a fate perhaps even crueler than remaking the entire thing with Renny Harlin last year. [Variety]
· NBC finds that trying to scare people with tales of the Apocalypse is a good for ratings. [THR]

Our semiregular morning feature (in which we attempt to trick your palette into thinking there's broken glass in the cream cheese on your lightly-toasted bagel through the presentation of disquieting blog content) continues, as we present this tossed-off quote from Page Six: