· Samantha Morton is in negotiations to play photographer Diane Arbus in the biopic Fur. The film will be directed by Secretary's Steven Shainberg, with a screenplay by Secretary's Erin Cressida Wilson. Naturally, all the S&M and photography angles are feverishly working themselves out in our heads. [THR]
· Fossilized producer Saul Zaentz wants his "precious," a $20 million stack of LOTR royalties, and so takes New Line Cinema to court. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· An LA judge decided not to issue an emergency order halting Fox's plans to air their reality boxing show The Next Great Champ. The judge cited the compelling justification that helping out Mark Burnett is not technically a fucking emergency. [THR]
· CBS promotes Chris Sloan to be its new head of reality programming. Qualifications: He can count on his fingers and toes and then scribble a number into the title of the latest Big Brother installment, but is expected get help with whatever goes after the colon for each subsequent Survivor. [THR]

Disney CEO Michael Eisner was in Florida yesterday, surveying the impact of Hurrican Charley on his company's theme parks, his "cast members," and Disneyworld's guests. But he was doing more than that. He was preparing to seize his moment as a strong and compassionate leader in a troubling, difficult time. Eisner, ready for anything in a "yellow polo shirt, white pants, black sneakers," would have dragged a waterlogged Donald Duck out of the overflowing waters of Splash Mountain, sandbagged the entrance to It's a Small World, or manned the funnel cake cart himself. Alas, Charley blustered harmlessly through his Magic Kingdom, and a leader's potential was left untapped beneath a Mickey Mouse baseball cap:

· Fox's bad karma might keep their stolen boxing reality series The Next Great Champ from broadcast. In rushing the show to beat NBC's The Contender to air, producers may have violated California boxing regulations. And who was so kind as to deliver this legal rabbit punch (shit, we promised no boxing metaphors!)? None other than The Contender's Mark Burnett and miniature pugilism booster Jeffrey Katzenberg. [THR]
· Jack Black and School of Rock writer Mike White demonstrate that they aren't going to waste their creative powers thinking up a name for their new production company at Universal. Yes, it's called Black and White Productions. Can't wait to see that script for Orange County 2! [Variety, sub. req'd.]

When we saw that both the LAT and Variety (note their nifty graphic at left) had stories today about legendary entertainment lawyer Barry Hirsch's bucking of a forced retirement to start his own firm (and taking along a number of high-profile clients, like Julia Roberts and Sofia Coppola), our heads immediately began to throb. Entertainment lawyers? They're like agents with the blackened hearts removed. So we contacted Defamer's legal correspondent to sort everything out for us, which he/she did, at length, no doubt tagging some studio for the billable hours spent on the e-mail:

· New Line Cinema is planning yet another "Vs." movie, pitting Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash from the Evil Dead movies. If they can't reach a deal with ED director Sam Raimi, the studio will just continue to chase the horror fanboy dollar by pitting Freddy and Jason against Seven of Nine, the bald chick from the first Star Trek movie, or a gigantic jar of Vaseline. [THR]
· Warner Brothers is set to "revisit" their "classic" 1956 horror flick The Bad Seed, finding it far "easier" to "raid their film library" than to "have a new thought." [Variety, sub, req'd]
· Paul Sorvino will interrupt the WB's parade of young, brooding stars with a helping of mature, flabby gravitas as a future president on the upcoming Jack and Bobby. [THR]
· NBC Universal ponders axing Trio in favor of new horror or crime-centric cable network. But first munchkin NBC head Jeff Zucker will have to beat wily Viacom mastermind Les Moonves in a best-of-three-falls tofu-wrestling match for the broadcast rights to the word "crime." [THR]

· Knowing that we're all cooling on the anorexia talk surrounding Mary-Kate Olsen and need a fresh painfully-skinny-minnie to blow around, Calista Flockhart returns to the biz in the indie film Fragile. [THR]
· And for the aspirationally anorexic, Caroline Rhea will host NBC's weight-loss show The Biggest Loser, in which contestants vie to drop the most pounds using "medically sound" techniques. This safe approach precludes both the "Hollywood Eight Ball Diet" and any chance we'll watch this missed opportunity at extreme exploitation. [THR]

The writer of this internal Miramax e-mail, directed to the entire NY office, pledges to beat Harvey and Bob Weinstein to the punch and quit in solidarity with his or her fallen co-workers. Someone please hook up this selfless team player with a job (or at least some good drugs) immediately! The message is after the jump.

· NBC Universal renews their deal with DreamWorks TV, which gives them first-look rights to all the studio's projects (Las Vegas, Father of the Pride, The Contender). True bonus of the deal: NBC's Jeff Zucker can continue riding on DW's Jeffrey Katzenberg's shoulders to form one full-sized executive. [THR]
· As Seen on Defamer: Fox picks up North Shore for a full season. [THR]
· We've always felt that the West Wing's descent had nothing to do with Aaron Sorkin's departure and everything to do with its total lack of "The Jimmy Smits Factor." Rejoice, the Wing has been saved. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· NBC is bringing you more Olympic coverage this year than all 5 past summer Olympics combined. Luckily, with the current 500-channel galaxy of cable programming, the strange, tiny people doing backflips are easier to avoid than ever.[THR]
· Projectionists turn in pirates and earn a cash reward; MPAA execs go home to laugh about how jailed pirates are going to explain how they wound up in the joint to their homicidal, rapist cellmates. [THR]

We hear that the long-awaited Miramax layoffs finally began this morning, with the beheadings starting in the NY publicity office. NY readers: Keep your eyes peeled for people lugging cardboard boxes around Tribeca, drinking a little earlier in the day than normal, and comparing odd scars through tears of joy. Developing...

· Sofia Coppola, America's Favorite Daddy's Girl, is set to write and direct Marie-Antoinette for Columbia Pictures, and she's keeping the project in the family. Cousin Jason Schwartzman will star as Louis XVI, and Kirsten Dunst, a curiously unrelated breaker of dreamy-eyed hearts, will play the title role. THR calls it a "stylized account of the enigmatic royal," which we translate as a "comedy without pie fucking," but that (happily) doesn't preclude a cake from losing its maidenhead on-screen. [THR]
· One Cruise film out, another in. MI:3, scheduled for Summer 2005, will be further delayed. Instead, the actor will head straight into Spielberg's War of the Worlds adaptation, and continue with the busy work of restoring slavery through his estimable heterosexual carnal powers. [THR]
· Interscope Records has made a deal with Sarah Silverman to turn her off-broadway show Jesus is Magic (which Defamer loved) into a feature film. Liam Lynch, of Sifl and Olly will direct. If you're tired of that joke she does about blowing a Mexican, maybe you should sit this one out. [THR]
· Fox to develop teen-music series You Are Here from Sex and the City writer Jenny Bicks. Leave it to Fox to try and cash in on all of that lucrative The Heights nostalgia. [Variety,sub. req'd.]

· Maniacally suave Viacom co-president Les Moonves merges Paramount and CBS Broadcast International units. The new, streamlined entity will immediately begin work on a satellite-mounted laser beam that will melt every breast implant in California if the industry doesn't succumb to Moonves' demands. [THR]
· Disney earnings jump 21% last quarter. We fear that Michael Eisner died three months ago and his body is decomposing somewhere in Burbank, among his army of life-size Mickey dolls. [Variety, sub. req'd.]

· Ted Griffin is bounced from Untitled Ted Griffin Project/The Graduate sort-of sequel and replaced by Rob Reiner, just one week (!) into shooting. Sources say Griffin spent too much time with the cinematographer and not enough time sucking up to the cast. Don't worry, Ted, it will be virtually impossible to get fired faster on your next project, if you're ever given another chance to direct. [THR]
· Acting union intrigue! Did special effects makeup artist John Vulich attempt to sabotage the SAG/AFTRA merger vote last year with false emails that claimed it would hurt jobs? Next scandal: Two actor/waiters at CPK try to influence union votes by restricting each other's access to the key lime pie. [THR]
· Disney and Harvey Weinstein are in discussions over his departure. The impending deal would send Harvey off with his own production company while brother Bob stays behind at Disney to call Michael Eisner twice a day and flush the toilet. [THR]
· Fox makes a final, bold push to melt what's left of America's minds, saturating their September schedule with reality television. The "highlight" is boxing show The Next Great Champ, which NBC-Uni pixie Jeff Zucker famously bitched was stolen from his network. [Variety, sub. req'd.]

With the looming Miramax layoffs stubbornly delaying sweet relief for a huge chunk of Harvey Weinstein's staff, the mood at the 'Max is somewhere between "West Bank dynamite vest model" and "Tel Aviv car bomb delivery guy." But a mole says Those About to be Downsized won't ever feel free from Harvey:

· HBO locks up Sex and the City refugee Kristin Davis to a seven-figure development deal. Was she the old, dowdy one, the old, nympho one, or the one who refused to show her tits? We can never keep those sassy gals straight. [THR]
· Ewan McGregor is in negotiations to star in The Island for DreamWorks . The sci-fi film, directed by Michael Bay, depicts McGregor as a "'harvested being' who makes a bid to escape the utopian facility where he is being kept," who is "tormented by a hack director who likes to blow shit up." [THR]
· Fox Broadcasting is in talks to cannibalize exec Chris Carlisle from FX to head its marketing department. His most important duty will be the brainstorming new and exciting Fox News Cafe tie-ins for their television shows. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· Disney's Annapolis receives sweetheart deal to shoot in Philadelphia. We just hope that the deal didn't include "special considerations" for Michael Eisner performed by the Phillie Phanatic—we know what a sucker he is for the mascots. [Variety, sub. req'd.]

· In an effort to vacuum up the small amount of entertainment industry capital that she doesn't already control, power-mad gabber Oprah Winfrey resigns to do her talk show for another three years. [THR]
· HBO will air a Rosie O'Donnell documentary about a gay cruise she sponsored in July—perhaps the only place with worse haircuts than you'd find on the average hetero cruise line. You see, Rosie O'Donnell has a quite hilarious hair-style, and so must all the gay people on her cruise! [THR]
· Law & Order: SVU showrunner Neal Baer is close to a deal with NBC-Universal to keep showrunning his L&O fiefdom; he'll continue to oversee the firing of any cast members that ask for so much as a cup of coffee not mandated by their original contracts. [Variety. sub. req'd.]
· Columbia Tri-Star is nearly ready to unleash the Seinfeld DVDs on a public ill-equipped to resist their power. Jerry Seinfeld's cut will finally allow him to build that garage on the moon to house half his Porsche collection. [THR]

Erstwhile uber-agent/Disney president-for-a-day Michael Ovitz will probably have to face bloodthirsty shareholders, who filed court papers seeking the return of his $109 million golden parachute. They say he didn't deserve the money because he took the job knowing he wouldn't stay long and would cash out big (read: really fucking big). Ovitz was at Disney for just 18 months, so that severance package works out to about...by our calculations...$10 billion dollars a month? We may be carrying a zero incorrectly, but whatever. We just hope he hasn't spent all the money on the diamond waterfall in the grotto of the Barbie Dreamhouse he's building in Benedict Canyon or on the moglet's allowance. No one wants to see their child turned upside and shaken by a judge, but Ovitz would probably demand ten percent of whatever milk money falls out.

· Miramax and Tommy Mottola conspire to make Broadway musical based on Pink Floyd's The Wall. When we take our drugs to Floyd, we prefer to either stare at the stereo, visit the planetarium, or hang out with our parents. Fighting the theater crowd while tripping face seems like a less than optimal way to spend your hard-earned entertainment dollar. [THR]
· Ralph Fiennes will play Lord Voldemort in the upcoming Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. At least he's not overtly playing another Nazi. [THR]
· The Rock set to star in The Gridiron Gang. It's a tale of urban teen delinquents who are redeemed through the power of sports when they learn to hire other poor kids to take their urine tests. [THR]
· The Mummy/Van Helsing's Stephen Sommers acquires the rights to Flash Gordon for an updated movie, sure to be full of eye-catching special effects and fast food cross-promotions. [Variety, sub. req'd]
· Lifetime's Strong Medicine is picked up for a sixth season. We've never seen Medicine, but love it anytime Meredith Baxter(-Birney) throws up on television. No, we don't care that she's probably not on the show. [THR]

It's been a few weeks since we first heard about the impending layoffs at Miramax (which the LAT also reported), but now we hear they're slightly less "impending," and that the first heads may roll tomorrow. Friday, of course, is the day when people traditionally get the axe so they have the weekend cooling-down period to determine if they really want to show up with that semiautomatic rifle on Monday. So if you're among the downsized, take a deep breath as you fill your cardboard box and realize you'll probably land on your feet at a far friendlier place. After surviving Harvey Weinstein, even ten years in a tiger cage will seem like a life upgrade.

· Fun fact from Writers & Artists sale: Paradigm head Sam Gores is the failure of his family. His brothers are billionaires, he is a mere millionaire—and an agent. His family probably can't even look him in the eye. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· The WB's Jeff Foxworthy-led sketch comedy show Blue Collar TV gives the network a ratings boost. Is it really worth the few extra households in the key demograhic to allow Foxworthy to milk that "redneck" schtick for a minute longer? [THR]
· Tara Reid gets overall deal with Fox Broadcasting, proving that a new set of tits and spending some time getting spotted falling over drunk are both good career investments. [THR]
· Erika Christensen joins Jodie Foster and Peter Sarsgaard in Flight Plan, a "Hitchcockian" thriller for Touchstone Pictures and Imagine Entertainment. Why not just pony up the extra hundred bucks for Julia Stiles? [THR]

This morning, both THR and Variety report that Paradigm is indeed in talks to gobble up the Writers & Artists agency. Paradigm needs the rep infusion to fill their new offices in the MCA building in Beverly Hills; there's something chilling about an agent blood-curdling scream echoing through a half-full workspace, and the fresh W&A bodies will undoubtedly help to deaden the sound.