· It's official: Rupert Murdoch is packing up his multimedia conglomerate in little cardboard boxes and moving its headquarters to Delaware. You know, the Biggest Little Corporation-Friendly State in the Union, where the Hollywood Trial of the Century is taking place? [THR]
· Miramax tag sale! As they come under increased Disney scrutiny, the Weinsteins are looking to drag their titles onto the sidewalk in TriBeca and make some quick dough. We're totally going to pick up a broken toaster and Prozac Nation for pocket change! [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· The O.C. princess Mischa Barton is in final talks to join the cast of indie feature The OH in Ohio. (Nope, that title is not a joke!) The film stars Parker Posey as a woman who has never had an orgasm. You'd think that with all of her yoga training she'd be a little more in touch with her body. [THR]
· Stephen J. Cannell, legendary producer of The A-Team and The Rockford Files, waits for the go ahead on his TNT series, The Dark. We only mention this because we love the part at the end of all of his shows where, in the thrall of his overwhelming creative energies, he tears a script page from his typewriter and tosses the fresh batch of dramatic gold into the air. [THR]

The Hollywood Trial of the Century marched on in Delaware yesterday, as lawyers continued to parade in pointy-headed academic types to testify about Disney's misguided hiring of erstwhile mega-agent Michael Ovitz. On Monday, an executive pay consultant said that Ovitz's $8.5 million base salary and bonus were "out of line" with that of other corporate "Number Two" guys. The defense argued that the consultant's assessment didn't take into account that Ovitz was earning $20-$25 million a year as head of CAA, where he made sure that his clients were similarly wildly overpaid. The plaintiff, however, failed to land a crushing blow by mentioning Ovitz's weekly "five minutes in the closet with Minnie Mouse" perk, a corporate benfit that was usually reserved for CEO Michael Eisner. Hopefully, this information will be brought to light when Ovitz testifies today.

· Greg Kinnear signs on for Paramount's remake of The Bad News Bears. Maybe we're guilty of drinking the Billy Bob Thornton Kool Aid, but we're allowing ourselves to get excited about this one and pretending that Paramount's not going to find a way to fuck it up. We know, we know...they'll pull it out at the last second and release it the Friday before the Super Bowl. [THR]
· Fox gets the best Game 2 World Series ratings in a decade, slowly phases out plans to kidnap the Cardinals and have the Red Sox play a team of teenage leukemia patients to pump up the drama. [THR]
· Indie film producers rejoice as Bush signs a bill giving tax breaks to movies made in the US, momentarily forgetting that they hate the President and his administration.OK, now they're back to hating him again. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· Buffy creator/fanboy Messiah Joss Whedon pulls out of his deal with 20th Century Fox TV because he has "run out of series ideas" and saying "I'm not interested in taking money that I don't earn." Did no one explain to him that the whole purpose of an overall deal is to collect paychecks from the studio while pretending to be thinking up new series ideas? The whole system is coming apart at the seams! What's next, agents acknowledging they're parasites and drowning themselves en masse in the Pacific? [Variety, sub. req'd.]

· Sex and the City creator Darren Star will make his feature directing debut (I think that's what they're saying) with the romantic comedy 100 Weddings, in which a war reporter has to cover wedding before...sorry, we already can't bring ourselves to care. [THR]
· The MPAA estimates that piracy could cost the business $15 billion over the next four years. Assuming, naturally, that people would actually want to pay for the shit Hollywood product they're stealing if it weren't free. [THR]

The second day of the Hollywood Trial of the Century raged on in bucolic/sleepy/corporation-friendly Georgetown, DE, trading in some of the procedural dreariness of the initial day for some good, old-fashioned mud-slinging. Court documents revealed that CEO Michael Eisner canned ill-chosen No. 2 guy Michael Ovitz because he was a big, fat liar—which should have been enough to get out of paying him the $109 million golden parachute that brought the suing shareholder's blood to a boil.

· Agent Dance update: WMA's Hylda Queally still on her way to CAA. in a "major defection" Also, Jason Barrett bolts The Big Willy to start a production/management company. What's going on over there? Did they take away expense accounts and assistant-whipping benefits? [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· Sally Field looks to return to sitcoms with a project for ABC. The show would revolve around a middle aged woman who makes huge changes in her life, getting divorced and getting a job. She likes menopause, she really, really likes menopause! Sorry, had to get that out of the way. [THR]
· Glenn Close joins the cast of The Shield for season four. There was a time when it would've been considered career suicide for a big movie actress to take a part on a television show, especially one on basic cable. But these are different, confusing times, so it might actually be a good thing. [THR]
· Desperate Housewives, Lost, and Medical Investigation get full season pick-ups, withCSI:NY soon to follow. Tragically, Commando Nanny is aborted to the underpopulated limbo of stupid ideas that will never see the primetime airwaves. [THR]
· Friar's Club roastmaster Jeffrey Ross, who nobly accused Jay Mohr of blowing Tom Cruise to get a part, gets a
development/talent holding deal at Fox. Who says there's no justice in the world? [Variety, sub. req'd.]

The Disney shareholder lawsuit (heretofore referred to as the Hollywood Trial of the Century) over Michael Ovitz's tumultuous, wildly lucrative, and abbreviated stay at the company kicked off yesterday in the sleepy town of Georgetown, Delaware. The opening day of the trial that is "captivating Hollywood" (according to the LAT) featured scintillating action such as Disney lawyers questioning the qualifications of a law professor critical of the company's board of directors and "grilling" her on her "methodology." Captivating stuff indeed.

· Revolution Studios, pleased with White Chicks, will dump a truckload of money on Keenan, Shawn, and Marlon Wayans for Little Man. The movie is about a "a man anxious to be a father who mistakes an extremely short-statured, baby-faced criminal on the run as his newly adopted son." Is it just us, or does this sound a lot like the Bugs Bunny cartoon "Baby Faced Finster"? There's no Looney Tunes connection mentioned in the article. [THR]
· Judd Apatow gets his first directing gig, shooting co-writer Steve Carrell in 40 Year-Old Virgin. We're atwitter (really) for how Carrell will play the premature ejaculation jokes. [THR]
· New Line gets a remake of 1939's The Women back on track. Producers are looking to cast Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Sandra Bullock, Ashley Judd and Uma Thurman, but the Botox budget might push this one back into development hell. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· CBS and the WB shuffle struggling dramas Clubhouse, The Mountain and Jack & Bobby around their schedules to try and salvage viewers. Does this tactic ever work? Our guess is that two of the three don't survive the winter. [THR]
· Appropriately suggestive lede of the day: "Bryan Singer appears to have found his Man of Steel." Singer casts the pretty much unknown Brandon Routh, a fact that "the internets" have known for days, but the studio have held off announcing out of respect for Christopher Reeve.[Variety, sub. req'd.]

Vice magazine temporarily channels the glossies for its latest issue, cramming its pages full of ironic (post-ironic? meta?) celebrity salad-tossings. The issue's fashion "DOs" page lovingly turns its very sincere attention to the deconstruction of Hollywood style. Of course, Colin Farrell (and his allegedly massive dong) is a "DO":

Today's LAT previews the Disney shareholder lawsuit over Michael Ovitz's disastrous term at Mouse Headquarters, noting that CEO Michael Eisner and Ovitz are going to have to play nice during the litigation—but not too nice—to avoid getting fleeced by the plaintiff. We're really trying to disassociate the term "Gay Mafia" from Ovitz, but there are about a dozen ways to read quotes like these, all of them filthy:

· Sony Pictures and Original Films buy the rights to as-yet unreleased spy novel The Executioner's Game for a Jamie Foxx vehicle. Looks like Foxx is done taking a shot at an Oscar for a while. [THR]
· Last night's endless Yankees-Red Sox game does huge ratings numbers for Fox, crushing Monday Night Football. Fox programming executives are feverishly working to schedule 6 hour baseball games three times a week throughout the year. [THR]
· Aisha Tyler signs a talent deal with CBS, who now must figure out what to do with her. Otherwise, she'll just wind up in a cryogenic tomb in Les Moonves' office with the rest of his "collected talent." [THR]
· Disney hires publicists and lobbyists to protect embattled CEO Michael Eisner from further eroding his image by "saying things," "doing things," or "making decisions," and to combat the Weinsteins as they fight over Miramax's future. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· Revolutions Studios makes a pre-emptive bid for the screenplay All You Need Is Love, a love story set to Beatles songs. The filmmakers are already entering (probably futile, definitely expensive) negotiations to get re-recording rights to the songs. [THR]

The NYT takes a look at the Disney shareholder lawsuit that blames the board of directors for (excuse us if our French is rusty) royally fucking up by hiring erstwhile superagent Michael Ovitz—and then paying him the GNP of Ecuador to leave the company. But before Ovitz got his golden parachute, he had some fun on the company dime:

· HBO is in talks with Everybody Loves Raymond's Brad Garrett on a comedy project, continuing its plan to drain network TV of all of the stars of hit sitcoms. Within two years, the networks may be forced into a blighted primetime comedy landscape of According to Jim and King of Queens spinoffs. [THR]
· Paramount is gunning for its own, "classy," 8 Mile-style hip-hop movie, signing Jim Sheridan to direct the 50 Cent vehicle Locked and Loaded from a script by Terence Winter of The Sopranos. Next up: The ghost of Stanley Kubrick directs Fat Joe in a hip-hopera treatment of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. [THR]
· The WGA East is unhappy with the WGA's buggering over DVD residuals in its tentative deal with the networks and studios. This, of course, leaves the door open for a fresh buggering should the two sides be forced to renegotiate. No worries, it always hurts less the second time. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· NBC Flop Report: LAX gets quarantined on Wednesday night for sweeps, Hawaii is disappeared into a hiatus that will likely never end. [THR]

· Lisa Kudrow's Is or Isn't Entertainment gets two more years at Warner Bros TV. One day, all the Friends will be moguls! OK, maybe not David Schwimmer. [THR]
· 8-to-12-year-old girls abandon former idol Hilary Duff and her Fame knockoff Raise Your Voice, perplexing marketers. Maybe it's time to target a new demo, hire a Lindsay Lohan lookalike to jello-wrestle with Duff in a commercial, then watch their box office soar. [THR]
· Just Shoot Me creator Steve Levitan and tarnished NBC golden-boy Jeff Zucker kiss and make up, as NBC picks up Levitan's pilot about an "egocentric African-American football star." It's just so sweet when a blood-feud ends in a shower of hugs and contracts![Variety, sub req'd.]
· Kristin Davis is in negotiations to star opposite Tim Allen in the remake of The Shaggy Dog. We know we go through this every time a SATC gal makes good, but is she the slutty one or the gay one? [THR]
· New Line, the studio built on the backs of hard-working Hobbits, tries to stay atop the fantasy game by acquiring the rights to bestseller Jonathan Strange and Mr.Norrell. [Variety, sub. req'd.]

· Director Brett Ratner signs a two-year development deal with 20th Century Fox TV, bringing his hacky, music video-quality visual skillset to the small screen. It didn't seem possible, but Fox just got a whole lot louder! [THR]
· ABC adds Nash Bridges creator Carlton Cuse as an executive producer on their hit Lost. Say what? Don't they usually saddle a show with extraneous EPs when its tanking? ABC must have forgotten what to do when a show succeeds. They'll probably cancel it after they win their timeslot next week. [THR]
· From the circular show development file: X-files writer Frank Spotnitz is developing a Night Stalker remake for ABC, a show that was one of the main inspirations for the X-files. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· HBO gives a script commitment to Sopranos executive producers Mitchell Burgess and Robin Green for their half-hour comedy Powerball, which will follow the life of a lotto-winning family. At least Green is tempering her expectations, admitting, "The Sopranos is the funniest television show I've ever seen in my entire life. That would be an impossible act to follow."[Variety, sub. req'd.]
· Joel Schumacher will direct The Crowded Room, a movie about a man with 24 different personalities. God, we hope two of them are Batman and Robin! [Variety, sub. req'd.]

The Writers Guild has just issued a press release announcing that they've finally reached an agreement for a new, three-year, $58 million contract with the networks and studios. (By contrast, Kobe Bryant got seven years and a reported $136 million to stay with the Lakers. Sure, it's comparing apples and oranges, but WGA West president Dan Petrie Jr. might have squeezed out extra cash if he made it clear in negotiations that he's not staring embarrassing jail time in the face.)

· The FCC wants to fine Fox $1.2 million for their reality show Married by America, which featured "strippers and partyers in sexual situations, including scenes where a pair of strippers 'playfully spank' a man in his underwear and partygoers lick whipped cream off the strippers' bodies." Maybe if Fox head Gail Berman sends a case of Redi-Whip and a couple of escorts over to Michael Powell at the FCC, this might all blow over. And they might get another show out of it, to boot. [THR]
· Danny DeVito and Kathy Bates sign on to star as Ron Livingston's DNA donors in the uptight-guy-hunts-for-wacky-biological-parents comedy Relative Strangers. Yup, still sounds like Flirting With Disaster. [THR]
· The Disney and Miramax divorce now seems all but official. Disney's supposedly sent Harvey and Bob Weinstein a Dear John letter, but the brothers are still pretending that they never got it. Watch for Harvey to downsize the mailroom in retaliation. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· Disney acquires Stick It, a comedy about a rebel in the uptight world of gymnastics. We can't wait for the scene where the plucky little gymnast demands the right to menstruate like other girls. [THR]
· John Singleton will direct the revenge drama Four Brothers, in which, um, four brothers dramatically try to get revenge for their mother's death. Mark Wahlberg is in talks to star. Let's hope Paramount goes all the way and signs up Donnie and the rest of the clan for the added verisimilitude that only stunt-casting can afford. [THR]

· DreamWorks Animation's IPO could raise as much as $725 million, assuring that Jeffery Katzenberg can finally realize his lifelong dream of building a mansion made entirely of diamonds. On Jupiter. But at least we'll have Shrek sequels well into the next millennium! [THR]
· Aaron Kaplan, co-head of William Morris' TV "lit" department, "steps down." (Ironic punctuation ours.) Don't worry, an agent gets the whole unemployment check, not just ten percent. [THR]
· Nicole Kidman is in talks to join Russell Crowe in Hollywood-Aussie vanity project Eucalyptus. If Kidman's schedule can't fit in the project, maybe they can go a different direction and get Eric Bana. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· NBC is set to make a sequel to last season's quake-porn extravaganza10.5. The new mini-series' money shot: It picks up with California drifting out to sea, with aftershocks knocking down every American landmark CGI artists can draw. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· John Ashcroft is getting the Justice Dept. involved in criminal piracy and is "taking several pages from the country's wars on drugs and terrorism" for the fight. Great! We can't wait until they release Manuel Noriega, deport him to Iraq, and use it as an excuse to reinvade. [Variety, sub. req'd.]

· Without a Paddle multi-hyphenate super-talent Dax Shephard gets a script deal with Revolution Studios and Adam Sandler's Happy Madison for his comedy Guerilla Photographer. [THR]
· NBC resurrects seven-year-old Fox comedy pilot Five Houses, about a gay couple moving into a suburban neighborhood. [Ed. note—Unthinkable!]. This didn't work so well this summer on Fox when the "gay couple" was "Method & Red." [THR]
· Paramount pushes the Alfie release back two weeks, meekly sidestepping a "a crush of upcoming films targeted at female moviegoers." How macho! Couldn't they have gone with the "to better position it for the Oscars" excuse? Maybe they wanted to space out the glut of roughly thirty films featuring Jude Law in release between October and the end of the year. [THR]
· Because they want ALL the Emmys: HBO signs Emmy-winning Arrested Development directors Anthony and Joe Russo to develop the "absurdust noir/dark drama" Motel Novella. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· 20th Century Fox TV is in business with Get a Life star Chris Elliott, giving him a pilot deal for an untitled family comedy in which he'll play the father of a young girl with pop-star aspirations. Creepy! We love it solely based on that brief description. [THR]

· Warner Bros. throws in some money to get DreamWorks' Ewan McGregor/Scarlett Johansson movie The Island off the ground. Hope they're kicking in a lot—director Michael Bay's nausea-inducing battalion of cameras and constant explosions can really fuck up a budget. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· NBC looks outside of LA for comedy development deals, vacuuming up NYC-based Upright Citizens Brigade, Demetri Martin, and "New Zealand folk parody duo" Flight of the Conchords. New Zealand what? Was the Naked Cowboy out washing his Speedo when NBC was tossing deals off the top of 30 Rockefeller? [THR]
· Arsenio Hall is apparently still alive, and signs a deal to direct/produce a documentary on the black stand-up scene tentatively titled The Other 23 Hours. [THR]
· Jonathan Prince, creator of American Dreams, will write and executive produce a Tara Reid comedy for Fox Broadcasting. The show will feature Reid as a bad girl trying to change her ways to please her parents and friends. And failing miserably, over and over again. (We suspect the show will be heavy on documentary footage from Reid's life to save costs.) Fox has their fingers crossed that she performs better than she did on Quintuplets this week! [THR]
· Tom Hanks' Playtone Productions tries to milk My Big Fat Greek Wedding one-hit-wonder Nia Vardalos again, as she'll write and star in the adaptation of the novel The Wilderness of Monkeys. [THR]