Will someone please, please go ahead and finally buy MGM and put us all out of our misery? It wasn't even a week ago that the trades reported that Time Warner was really, really, so totally close to locking up the sale. We were quite ready to stop fretting about MGM's fate, confident that TW could begin obsessively scribbling TWMGM, MGMTW. and Metro-Time-Goldwyn-Warner-Mayer on the back cover of its back-to-school marble notebook. But now Variety reports that early MGM paramour Sony is throwing pebbles at The Lion's window and begging for another chance, and our people on the inside passing us mash notes have no idea what's going on. Everyone's a little vulnerable right now, and MGM better quit fucking around before someone gets hurt.

· Maybe this whole boxing reality show thing is just not going to work. The Next Great Champ and The Contender face another obstacle, as the LAT chooses a strange time to discover the entertainment business—they're attempting to reveal the show's winners by filing a petition under the California public records act. We're all for spoilers, but who cares? Let's see if the shows last a few weeks before we put on our "Scoop" hats, OK? [THR]
· Alias creator J.J. Abrams is teaming up with former SNL'r Cheri Oteri to develop a comedy project for ABC. Please, J.J., no latex outfits this time. You don't have the raw materials to pull that off again. [THR]
· Temporary Tom Cruise soulmate Penelope Cruz joins psychological thriller Chromophobia, where her impenetrable accent will hopefully be obscured by lots of screaming and her British castmates. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· "Greg the Bunny" (the puppet and not the criminally short-lived Fox sitcom) will star in a special for IFC with the possibility of becoming a series. We'd start a letter-writing campaign on the bunny's behalf, but that sounds like a lot of work and we're incredibly lazy. [THR]
· Ron Livingston is in talks to star in Relative Strangers, a guy-searching-for-his-strange-biological-parents flick. Nice to see him getting back into the indie film fray. Everyone needs a nice paycheck once in a while, but Little Black Book? We just hope he didn't get any Brittany Murphy on him. [THR]

In a interview with Dark Horizons, the always quotable, delightfully partisan Alec Baldwin describes a horrifying new publicity strategy being phased in at the movie studios, in which actors are actually placed inside the anal columns of the public. Obviously, this has to violate both the SAG collective bargaining agreement and the dictates of good hygiene.

· Delays and disorganization at the Venice Film Festival result in the unpardonable sin of keeping Hollywood's A-list attendees waiting. Don't these motherfucking Venetians know who everyone is? Johnny Depp, Al Pacino, and Harvey Weinstein are not kept waiting. In fact, Weinstein cheerily took the podium and issued a totally hilarious, only half-kidding death threat to the festival's artisic director.[THR]
· John Leguizamo is developing a sitcom based on his life as a performer and family man for 20th Century Fox TV. We can't wait to see the wacky-yet-touching ways in which Leguizamo juggles the burdens of fame and his household responsibilities. [THR]
· Head Viacom glamour hammer Les Moonves is poised to shake up Paramount Television. This probably won't involve actual bloodshed, as Moonves isn't fond of the dry cleaning bills, but Paramount TV head Garry Hart might be stepping down. [THR]
· Michael Moore spins decision to enter Fahrenehit 9/11 as Best Picture instead of Best Documentary as an act of charity (i.e. "let's let someone else win for a change") rather than an opportunity to make another "interesting" speech at the end of the Oscar broadcast. He's so giving. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· Germans are still a bit touchy about that Hitler guy, as a movie that attempts to portray his "human side" is stirring up trouble. [THR]
· Comic book legend Stan Lee and nudie mag visionary Hugh Hefner team up for an MTV animated pilot Superbunnies, about large-breasted, crime-fighting Playmates, which will quite obviously be the best television show in history. [THR]

· Corpulent Last Comic Standing unfunnyman Ralphie May will host a reality pilot centered around "baggin'," i.e., standing around on a street corner and snapping off "Yo Mama" jokes. We want to play! "Yo Mama so fat she wouldn't ever let this ludicrous pilot idea ever make it to series!" Eh, we're so white. [THR]
· Constantly promoted, ridiculous NBC cop drama Hawaii pulls somewhat decent ratings numbers against virtually no competition. We give it four episodes before it's yanked, and that's only because NBC will be trying to save face. Loud shirt/random gunfire enthusiasts will have it figured out by next week. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· Angie Harmon—rarest of birds, an attractive, Hollywood Republican—signs on to look pretty next to the comic talents of Tea Leoni and Jim Carrey in the the remake of Fun with Dick and Jane. Judd Apatow is writing, so there's hope. [THR]
· Elizabeth Shue, whom we'd long assumed was dead or had gone native in Griffith Park, will star in the DreamWorks nursing-a-sick-horse-back-to-victory drama Dreamer. [THR]
· A routine traffic stop in Los Angeles yesterday led to the arrests of three illegal DVD burning menaces. The men were operating a replicating lab and were planning to distribute releases as recent as The Exorcist, The Bourne Supremacy, and Collateral. It's really refreshing when these traffic stops wind up nabbing pirates instead of ending in videotaped baton-play, although Jack Valenti probably would have wished for a little of both. [THR]

· Jonathan Schaech has dragged wife Christina Applegate into the M.O.W. mire; the couple will star in a TV movie for CBS, James Patterson's Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas. We hope that Applegate can live up to the fine small-screen acting standards established by Tori Spelling in such compelling fare as Mother, May I Sleep With Danger? [THR]
· ER staggers into its tenth season by whipping out tricks from the bottom of the gimmick bag. They've stunt-cast Ray Liotta for an episode that will unfold in "real time." If you've insisted on watching once Eriq LaSalle left, you really do deserve what you get. [THR]
· Unsurprising tidbit of the week. RNC viewers prefer Fox News Channel's 24-7 conservative reacharounds to the comparatively bed-wetting liberal coverage offered by every other network. [ Variety, sub req'd.]
· Fox, master of ill-advised reality television programming, scoops up Ivana Trump for the puntastically titled Ivana Man. Ivana will pimp twentysomething guys to "mature" women. She probably won't come up with a catchphrase as good as "You're fired!" but could always end each show with the snappy cackle "I got half!" [Variety, sub. req'd.]

Can someone please just buy MGM already? We're getting a little tired of having to read a new, incremental report every day about how this conglomerate or that conglomerate is taking up a collection to acquire The Lion and its film catalogue. Yeah, we know that billions of dollars and complicated stock transactions are involved, blah blah blah. At least today's THR says that Time Warner is this close (picture your thumb and index finger really, really close together) to closing the deal, and our spies at MGM have told us that TW auditors are swarming around in white gloves and checking for dust. Let's get this thing done so that we can happily report on the TW/MGM shitergy brainstorms that will soon follow. James Bond casually reading Time magazine before he chases a super-villain in a flying Aston Martin? The possibilites are staggering.

· The Father of the Pride premiere's ratings are just OK, but they're spending a lot of money to do a little better than Last Comic Standing, which has a budget of $35 dollars per episode. It would be far cheaper to rent a couple of lions and have them maul each week's Last Comic loser. [THR]
· Jane Pauley is not crazy enough for a big premiere. Let's get her off the happy pills and see what happens. [THR]
· It appears that Time Warner is no more than a week away from becoming the proud owner of MGM. The purchase will net them the Bond franchise and an opportunity to be the company that finally runs MGM into the ground. [THR]
· Eddie Murphy will produce and star in a "Western comedy." Note to DreamWorks: Putting a black comedian on a horse does not makes this Blazing Saddles. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· As expected, The Passion of the Christ DVD sales are off to a huge, lucrative start. The movie's theatrical run proved that you really can't underestimate Christians' appetite for watching Jesus getting his ass kicked for two hours. [Variety, sub. req'd.]

· Director Mark Waters has signed on to direct Henry's List of Wrongs for New Line. Waters, you'll remember, was the director entrusted with shepherding Lindsay Lohan's breasts from Freaky Friday to Mean Girls. Let's see how he fares without those particular pillows to fall back on. [THR]
· Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn team up for Columbia comedy Outsourced, continuing an on-screen love affair that began with Zoolander, was revived with Starsky & Hutch, and will continue with next year's The Wedding Crashers. We can't wait for Ben Stiller to claw out Vaughn's eyes in a jealous rage. [THR]

· Never underestimate the psychic wounds inflicted by Jersey Girl: Director Kevin Smith completely gives up and will deliver a Clerks sequel (from his screenplay, The Passion of the Clerks), to good buddy Harvey Weinstein at Miramax. Wouldn't it have been easier to just cut off all contact with Ben Affleck to deal with the flop-induced grief? [THR]
· Garfield: The Movie finishes first at the international box office, giving the world community still more fodder for hating America. [THR]
· Get me more Smits! We need more Smits, do you hear me?! You do? Oh, good. ABC signs up Jimmy Smits for an overall television deal and moves his production company over to Touchstone Television. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· Movie studios foot the bill for the Governator's trip to the RNC. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· Tom Cruise visits with the French Finance Minister to discuss Franco-American relations. Watch for the entire country to officially convert to Scientology by the end of the week, powerless against Cruise's billion-dollar smile. [THR]

· The One Where David Schwimmer Finds That Post-Friends Acting Gigs Are All For Ross-like Characters And So Takes Time Off To Direct An Indie Movie: Schwimmer will direct Run, Fat Boy, Run from the script written by I Love the 80s icon Michael Ian Black. [THR]
· Superhack fauxteur director Brett Ratner brought on to ruin the film adaptation of the very cool story of the infamous "MIT Blackjack Team" that took Vegas casinos for millions. At least Ratner will get in some quality gambling time as the movie quickly gets away from him. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· Bravo in talks with Bobby Brown for a new reality show about the singer's completely insane, wife-smacking, jail-time-doin' life with possibly cracked-out wife Whitney Houston. Please, Bravo, buy the fucking show! [THR]
· It sent his daughter to rehab, but that doesn't stop Tommy Hilfiger from trying to get into the reality TV act. CBS is thinking of ordering 13 episodes of the Apprentice knockoff for the fashion world. [THR]
· Scarlett Johansson will join Ewan MacGregor for DreamWork's The Island. Michael Bay is directing (we've already said superhack once in this round-up, so he gets a reprieve) so the actors will have little time for a dirty, Benicio-quality fling as they spend every waking moment dodging Bay's army of shaky, swooping cameras. [THR]

GQ-baiting L.A. Weekly columnist Nikki Finke takes an extremely thorough look behind the scenes of legendary entertainment lawyer Barry Hirsch's midnight defection from his old law firm to set up a practice of his own (which the Defamer legal correspondent analyzed for us a week ago). Our favorite quote from the piece follows; we find something patently hilarious about an agent getting self-righteous about lawyers suing each other. Do these lawyers go around whining in the press about you throwing a phone log at your assistant because he doesn't roll calls fast enough or for hanging around bars in a suit?

· Temporarily adorable muppett Dakota Fanning is in talks to star in a potential DreamWorks "Wonderland" franchise. The deal would include film adaptations of Lewis Carroll books Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. They'd better hurry, before Fanning falls into that unsettling "Haley Joel Osment" space. [THR]
· Unexpected truth in THR headlines: "Bullock might be past 'Prime.'" Sandra Bullock drops out of Prime two weeks before filming due to "script disagreements." Cue the inevitable, obnoxious rhetorical question: She's still acting? [THR]

Dualstar Entertainment Group LLC (i.e. the Century City HQ of The Olsen Twins' Evil Empire) is looking for an "experienced, creative and multi-tasking editor" who "must be able to write, edit and copy edit lively original content in the fashion, health and entertainment arenas to serve a teen and ’tween audience." The ideal candidate's duties can range from coming up with yummy diet ideas to coordinating kid-friendly, strategically vague press releases with publicists should one of the girls develop any more vexing health problems. The full listing is at Mediabistro (and partially reproduced after the jump). Good luck, job hunters!

· The Toronto International Film Festival officially takes its place as "Canada's Sundance, Minus The Megalomaniac Actor Pulling The Strings" with a line-up of 328 films. Also, Kevin Spacey poses suggestively with a microphone on THR's home page in a pic from his TIFF entry, Under The Sea. [THR]
· Financially troubled Miramax pushes the release dates of The Great Raid and The Brothers Grimm closer to Christmas...in 2005. This presumably will allow what's left of their workforce time to hunt through Harvey Weinstein's sofa cushions for the movies' publicity and advertising campaign budgets. [Variety, sub.req'd.]
· FX renews Denis Leary drama Rescue Me, proving that pretty much anyone can get a second chance with a basic cable show. [THR]
· Everyone wants to be in a movie about Truman Capote, except Mark Wahlberg. Samantha Morton and Chris Cooper are in talks to join Phillip Seymour Hoffman in UA's biopic. Meanwhile, the rival Capote film from Warner Independent, Every Word is True, loses both star Marky Mark's wooden acting as well as the crew morale-boosting prosthetic cock jokes. [THR]
· Cartoonist Garry Trudeau gets script deal for story about a teen who becomes mayor of a small town. Is he the talking cat guy or the talking dog guy? We haven't read the funny pages since Bloom County went away. [Variety, sub. req'd]

· Let the strike talk begin anew! The DGA sits down to negotiate with the studios and networks on a new contract, while SAG and the WGA sit by and pray they're not put out of work. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· David Mamet's teaming with the creator of The Shield for a fucking CBS pilot about anti-terrorists, OK? You know pilots, right? You make the fucking pilot, you get me, then maybe they make it into a fucking show? Pilot. Then the fucking show. That's how it fucking goes. [THR]
· Universal is giving The Munsters a "21st century makeover" for a big-screen version of the TV series. The good news: It will stay true to the original characters. But you knew there was bad news—the Wayans brothers are going to write and produce. [THR]
·Two comedy writers have sold a pitch called Infantile, described as a "an uptight management consultant who never had or desired a real childhood until he takes his 5-year-old nephew to kindergarten one day, turning his adult life upside down.." Watch in the coming weeks as it's offered to and then refused by Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, Jack Black, and Will Ferrell before it finally winds up starring Rob Schneider. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· Finally done with vaccuuming up LAT talent, the NYT hires away Variety critic Charles Isherwood. [Variety, sub. req'd.]

It may seem that we're extrapolating a couple of less than favorable opinions into a blanket indictment of Hollywood's sainted penny-pinching class, but that's only because we've yet to receive an incensed rebuttal from the Benevolent Order of Entertainment Industry Business Managers. (Even the worst biz manager is probably better than setting an agent loose with your PIN for ten minutes.). But here's another reader, a former employee of a Big Celebrity, taking a poke:

· Ellen DeGeneres will step into George Burns' pants to play God in a "hip and modern" remake of Oh, God. We've disappointed only because we've always pictured God as more of a lipstick lesbian. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· Jerry Bruckheimer steps outside Les Moonves' snuggly cocoon (Bruck has six series on CBS in the fall) to do a series for NBC, set in the Pentagon. [THR]
· NBC's ratings for the Athens Olympics are up 9 percent from the Sydney games, which was widely considered a disaster. Way to slightly improve, Jeff Zucker! [THR]
· Malibu's Most Wanted director John Whitesell will try to prevent the random, "dehydrated" gunplay of Martin Lawrence as he steps behind the camera for Big Momma's House 2.
· The Sopranos' Terence Winter will write an update of The Warriors, absolutely the best movie ever made featuring gangs that wear rollerskates or dress like baseball players. [THR]

Once again, the NYT uses Entourage as an entry point to Go Behind the Scenes in Hollywood (who knew HBO was so educational?). In yesterday's NYT, Warren St, John's hagiography anoints celebrity business managers as the industry's unsung do-gooders, trailing after their newly-monied clients, burning up Bentley leases and slapping $35,000 watches out of their profligate charge's greedy little fingers. But a money manager who's dealt extensively with Hollywood's bottom-line minding saints writes in to tell us that the business managers have no reason to curb an actor's money-burning tendencies:

· Dakota Fanning earns another precocious child role as Kurt Russell's daughter in the DreamWorks project Dreamer. Time is of the essence: She's got to cram in as many of these parts as possible before she deteriorates into that weird space between "child actor" and "jailbait." [THR]
· Oh, now we understand why Brandy is taking Scientology classes. She's signing up for a Fox sitcom, and when it's canceled after five episode, she's going to need the inner strength that only a thorough brainwashing can provide.[THR]
· Sign on for as many indie projects as you like, Piper Perabo, you will always be that awkward Coyote Ugly girl to us, timidly stepping onto the bar for the first time, waiting to unleash your disappointingly PG-rated, drink-slinging tart. [THR]
· Chris "Malcolm's in the Middle's Brother" Masterson is trying to pile up a life's worth of indie film cred this summer. Who does he think he is, Zach Braff? [THR]
· Fox to re-adapt F. Scott Fitzgerald novel Tender is the Night, will pay seven figures if script makes it to production. Though the studio already produced a film version in 1962, the rights had reverted back to the Fitzgerald estate. We can't wait until Fox does the inevitable cafeteria tie in, "F. Scott's Liquid Lunch."[Variety, sub. req'd.]