Sensing that audiences are bored by reality TV competitions in which the contestants vie to rise to the top of glamorous professions involving mundane, easily identifiable skillsets like cooking, sewing, or picking out furniture, the TV Guide channel is ready to push the genre's envelope by devoting 10 episodes to a televised deathmatch involving aspiring Hollywood assholes trying to establish who's best at the arcane producing arts of screaming into cellphones, haunting the craft services table, and consistently getting in the way of crew members trying to do their lower-paid, but more essential, jobs:

· Var chief Peter Bart pens yet another memo to Tom Cruise, this time encouraging his successor at United Artists to ignore the skepticism of the press, take a big swig of some Oprah-endorsed positivity Kool-Aid, and realize that he's not the only one in this town trying to figure out how to run a studio. [Variety]
· Spunky test-pattern alternative MyNetworkTV will kick of a new schedule on Monday, shifting its focus from cheaply produced telenovelas that no one wants to watch to low-cost reality programming audiences will be eager to ignore. [THR]
· Clint Eastwood may direct and Angelina Jolie is in talks to star in The Changeling for Universal, the story of a woman who suspects that the abducted son that's eventually returned to her is not actually her child—material that the actress instantly connected with because of a paranoid fear she's been harboring that careless partner Brad Pitt lost Maddox at a Ralphs a year ago and has been trying to pass off another Cambodian orphan as their beloved tyke ever since. Imagine's Brian Grazer is also on board to superproduce the shit out of this one. [Variety]
· ABC elevates Ellen Pompeo to $200,000 per episode, while Grey's Anatomy co-stars James T. Pickens Jr, Chandra Wilson, Justin Chambers, and TR Knight are expected to get raises to $125k. No word on whether Isaiah Washington's successful completion of gayhab will earn him a similar reward, but should he be passed over on this round of renegotiations, he plans to recoup some of the withheld salary bump by stealing Knight's lunch money each day. [THR]
· USA pays $11 million for the rights to air Borat for five years starting in 2009, a relatively low sum due to the fact that the network will be forced to pixelate Ken Davitian's hairy, suffocating anus during the movie's iconic wrestling scene. [Variety]

· Lovable My Name is Earl wrong-righter Jason Lee will tackle the demanding role of perpetually put-upon, tantrum-throwing musical novelty act manager Dave Seville in a hybrid live-action/CGI Alvin and the Chipmunks feature, a project that will certainly be safe for viewing by oddly named offspring Pilot Inspektor. There is no word as to where contractually mandated co-star Giovanni Ribisi will slot into the movie, but he seems a natural for the part of Theodore. [Variety]
· Pilot casting madness! Jeffrey Tambor joins CBS comedy The Captain, Michelle Trachtenberg is in an untitled ABC comedy set in D.C., and Kal Penn will play a hypochondriac paramedic in the ABC comedy The Call. [THR]
· As mentioned yesterday, Battle of Shaker Heights immortal Shia LaBeouf is all but locked up to play Harrison Ford's son in Steven Spielberg and George Lucas' Indiana Jones 4: Please Don't Fuck This One Up By Having The Cute Kid Constantly Saving His Old Man's Ass. [Variety]
· Disney announces that Pixar's gone into production on Toy Story 3, and that their Disney Animation division will go with old-timey, hand-drawn animation for The Frog Princess. [THR]
· Today's American Idol Nielsen domination fun fact: Wednesday night's installment averaged "more than five times the rating" of competition on ABC, CBS, NBC, and The CW. [Variety]

As fans hungrily anticipate the long-awaited fourth installment of Steven Spielberg's big screen adventure series that began with 1981's Raiders of the Lost Ark (possible title: Indiana Jones and the Slowly Veering Lincoln Continental of Doom), the Internets have been teeming with casting rumors. Most notable among them: that Shia LaBeouf—who'll be fighting Soundwave and his evil boombox cassette-recorder ways this summer in Michael Bay's Transformers—would be playing Indy's son. Slate is now reporting that the rumors are true:

· 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 suspect that the alleged rumor about a possible Fourth Installment of the Indiana Jones Adventures role that Calista Flockhart is attempting to control originated with an Extra reporter who suddenly ran out of questions about Brothers & Sisters after she exhausted, "So when is your new show on?", but we're sure you'll be comforted to discover (as we just did by reading the press release accompanying the above terrifying header and exuberant scare-subject-line: "EXTRA' Item - Calista Flockhart starring in "Indiana Jones 4"????") that the couple's age-inappropriate relationship will not taint prodigal movie star Harrison Ford's long-awaited return from the career wasteland he's been wandering in since the early 90s. Unfortunately, Flockhart's unequivocal denial of the rumor ("It's not true. He's way too old for me." So self-deprecating!) now threatens our favorite imagined Indy 4 plotline, in which the iconic, globe-trotting archaeologist embarks on a quest to retrieve the bread Jesus served at the Last Supper, a blessed carbohydrate that would allow his painfully skinny love interest to finally achieve a healthy weight.

While it's no secret that movies—especially the huge disasters—rarely go before the cameras with a director or producer's first choice in talent, it's always fun when the divide between a production's lofty, A-list dreams and disappointing B-list reality is somehow exposed. In presenting the highlights of producer Karen Baldwin's testimony in the ongoing, alternately messy and hilarious trial in which novelist Clive Cussler and Philip Anschutz's Crusader Entertainment are trying to determine who is most responsible for the historic bombing of Sahara, the LAT lays out how Paramount wound up in the thoroughly fucked position of having to spend $130 million on a Matthew McConaughey vehicle:

· 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]

In honor of Zodiac, the long-awaiting release from director David Fincher opening today, the LAT has a little fun by taking some of America's other legendary serial killers and playing one of Defamer's favorite parlor games, "casting the CBS movie of the week." (Only in this case, it's something more akin to "casting the $85 million Paramount/Warner Bros. co-production.") Some of their choices are mind-numbingly obvious (gee, we guess now that you mention it, Vincent Gallo does kinda look like Charles Manson), and some we just don't really see (we're not getting Green River Killer from Kevin Costner, sorry. He always gave us more of a Scott Thompson-vibe.) But one pairing was so inspired, it instantly chilled us to the bone: Forgetting for a moment that Dahmer was about a half-foot taller than his red-carpet-stationed doppelganger, something about the glassy-eyed smile, the boyish good looks, the laid-back, charming demeanor that lulls you into a state of trusting complacency, instantly said to us "human pancreas in an empty Blue Bonnet margarine tub."

· But how did yesterday's 416 point stock market bed-shitting affect the faceless multimedia corporations behind your favorite entertainment products, you ask? Disney was hit the hardest with a 6% fall, followed by Time Warner at 4%, and 2-4% drops by News Corp., CBS, Viacom, and Sony. [Variety]
· Kelsey Grammer's Grammnet Productions throws away a 15-year relationship with Paramount for a one-year fling with 20th Century Fox TV's younger, hotter piece of studio ass. [THR]
· Fox's Fifth Graders Humiliating Morons draws a depressingly huge 26.6 million viewers in its American Idol-boosted premiere. Realizing that the series' initial numbers might be a little inflated by its lead-in, the network hopes to continue to hold that audience's interest by adding an element to Fifth Grader in which the show's precocious ten-year-olds kick its contestants in the genitals after each incorrect answer. [Variety]
· Oscar winner Alan Arkin will join Little Miss Sunshine co-star Steve Carell underneath the Cone of Silence in Warner Bros. Get Smart movie adaptation. [THR]
· Robert Downey Jr. signs on to play "Kirk Lazarus, the greatest actor of his generation and a four-time Oscar winner" in Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder, but there's no mention if that's the role that Tom Cruise was reportedly hoping to land to extend his buddy time with Stiller past Hardy Boys. We'd hate for Downey to get blacklisted at Cruise's United Artists for stealing a role away from the new mogul. [THR]

· The Departed's freshly minted Oscar-winning duo of Martin Scorsese and William Monahan are already reteaming for another project, the "rock n' roll epic" The Long Play for Paramount. Of course, now that Scorsese's got his statue he can totally mail it in on this one. [Variety]
· More Departed reunions: William Monahan and Leo DiCaprio are getting back together for a remake of the Hong Kong thriller Confessions of Pain for Warner Bros. [THR]
· Paul Haggis' The Black Donnellys underwhelms with its premiere performance in Studio 60's former Monday night timeslot, a result the show's producers can easily blame on Aaron Sorkin's permanent tainting of the 10pm hour. [Variety]
· Pilot casting round-up: Carrie-Anne Moss in ABC drama Suspect; Marisa Janet Winokur in CBS comedy Fugly; William Baldwin in ABC drama Dirty Sexy Money; Christopher Titus in an untitled ABC Jon Feldman project; Swoosie Kurtz in ABC drama Pushing Daisies. [THR]
· Save the date! The Screen Actors Guild stakes out January 27th for next year's installment of its Saggie Awards. [Variety]

· Universal signs up Robert De Niro's Tribeca Prods. for two more years, allowing them to go forward with Little Fockers, the third Meet the Parents movie. They're planning to bring back all the main cast members from the previous installments—even Teri Polo, admirably choosing loyalty over the cynical temptation to replace her with a cheaper, middle-tier CBS sitcom wife. So far. [Variety]
· George Clooney and Cate Blanchett are in "negotiations" and "talks," respectively (don't mix them up or someone loses his job!), to voice characters in Wes Anderson's stop-motion animation adaptation of Roald Dahl story The Fantastic Mr. Fox. [THR]
· According to someone in attendance at Hillary Clinton's trip to the CAA Death Star yesterday, the senator was "incredibly well-received," especially after promising that if they use their evil influence to deliver her the Hollywood endorsement, she'd publicly support the Creative Artists Infant-Consuming Decriminalization Act the agency's partners have had trouble pushing through Congress. [Variety]
· Desperate producers hope that having Idol winner Fantasia Barrino announce she's taking over the lead in the the struggling Broadway version of The Color Purple while making an AI appearance last night might help sell some more tickets. [Variety]
· The unthinkable has happened: American Idol was not the most-watched show on television last night. Though they didn't directly compete, Grey's Anatomy actually pulled in the more viewers. Please immediately head for your place of worship and pray for salvation, as the end of days is surely nigh. [THR]

· Jesse Jackson lets the industry know that it can't fool him with Oscar nominations (and likely wins) for Jennifer Hudson, Forest Whitaker, and Eddie Murphy, as he sees right through this obvious stalling tactic putting off an oft-promised dehonkification of Hollywood. [Variety]
· ABC might not be revealing exactly what their Grey's Anatomy spinoff will be about, but they're conceding this: Taye Diggs is going to be in it. We're sure they'll find something for him to do involving cradling the adorable, sickly babies Dr. Addison just saved from tragic demises. [THR]
· Fox plans on giving Steven Spielberg's On the Lot reality competition a leg up by premiering it after one of the last American Idol installments of the season, hoping that viewers will stick around even when they figure out that Ryan Seacrest won't be showing up to console the losers. [Variety]
· Today's evocative verb referring to what Idol did to its competition last night: "tramples." [THR]
· The stunt-casting of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter as president and VP in a bit dramatizing every liberal's most disturbing nightmare helps the premiere of Fox News Channel's Daily Show knockoff The 1/2 Hour News Hour to big debut ratings. [Variety]

Perhaps realizing that talent's access to chances to grudgingly perform fellatio on a casting director or producer in exchange for a walk-on role on Grey's Anatomy is bottlenecked by selfish gatekeepers like agents and power-mad nightclub doormen, the creators of Cast-a-Date offer an innovative way for show business hopefuls to use the internet to free themselves from the inefficiencies of the Hollywood system, giving them a safe online place in which to mingle, pretend to listen to one another blather on and on about the crazy dreams that brought them to L.A., and then arrange for the aforementioned trade of sexual favors for acting gigs—all without having to leave the comfort of their studio apartment! So far, there's only a single casting notice for a host/bikini model job posted, but as the site grows in popularity throughout an industry tired of the needless hassle of having to sit in traffic before getting their shot to be taken advantage of in person, its virtual casting office will be overflowing with higher-profile opportunities for the web-embracing stars of tomorrow.

· Paramount will enable the on-screen reunion of The Departed's Mark Wahlberg and Matt Damon, who will star as pugilism-loving, Massachusetts-native half-brothers Micky and Dicky Ward in the boxing drama The Fighter (if they like the script), though it's unclear from the story which actor will be the "Rocky-like" boxing champion and which the "boxer-turned-trainer who rebounded in life after nearly being KO'd by drugs and crime." [Variety]
· VH1 and BET are jointly developing the hip-hop drama series Wifey; if picked up, the show would air at the same time on both networks through its first season in an attempt at "broadening the audience," an unusual arrangement transparently aimed at sparing white viewers the inconvenience of having to find BET on their cable channel guides. [THR]
· Jennifer Hudson's not the only discarded Idol contestant to shake off the public humiliation of rejection and do something with her life. [Variety]
· American Idol and House win Tuesday for Fox. Sure, we could just copy and paste that blurb in every Tuesday trade round-up item for the remainder of the television season, but we prefer to marvel anew each week at Idol's ritualistic Nielsen humiliation of its doomed competition. [THR]
· Michael Bay screens footage of Transformers in NY for attendees of a toy conference, noting to an impressed crowd that the movie's plot was derived entirely from the copy on the back of the original toys' packaging, and even going so far as to explain that Bumblee's dramatic arc was constructed to demonstrate a character of 8 Intelligence and 10 Courage. [Variety]

· Leonardo DiCaprio is looking to produce and star in a feature about the story of Enron's collapse for Warner Bros., based on the book Conspiracy of Fools. Think The Insider, but with a prettier lead and shady accounting practices instead of cigarettes. [Variety]
· China is getting a local version of Access Hollywood, which will reportedly contain a 70/30 ratio of Chinese to American entertainment news, a split that should be more than be sufficient to completely erode the indigenous culture within mere months. [THR]
· Chick flicks with the word "devil" in the title are totally hott! Jennifer Garner will produce and possibly star in the comedy Devil in the Junior League for Universal. [Variety]
· Sony Pictures TV Int'l. blows minds by acquiring the rights to sci-fi drama Afterworld on all platforms current and future, real and as-yet-imagined. [THR]
· As noted yesterday, Comedy Central picks up a second season of The Sarah Silverman Program, rewarding the show's high-rated celebration of vaginal flatulence. [Variety]

· Want to read more about the Dixie Chicks' big night at the Grammys? Of course you do. [Variety, THR]
·Reese Witherspoon unexpectedly ditches Endeavor (her home for just a year) for CAA after being promised that if she signed with the evil agenting monolith, the committed mother's young children would never be featured as lunch specials at their new headquarters. Rumors that the agency's pitch also included an ominous pledge to "take care" of ex-husband Ryan Phillippe should he ever "become a problem" are unconfirmed. [Variety]
· The Grammys recover nicely from last year's humiliating buggering at the hands of American Idol, as seeking refuge on an Idol-free Sunday night leads to an 18 percent boost over 2006's all-time low ratings. [THR]
· MTV Networks announces a "sweeping round" of layoffs in a variety of divisions, with the death toll expected to reach 250 staff positions. Happy Monday! [Variety]
· In today's WTF? casting news (but really, doesn't each new Cage gig announcement elicit that kind of reaction?), Nicholas Cage is attached to star in Disney's live-action adaptation of The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Luckily, he'll play the sorcerer, not an off-puttingly intense dancing broom. [THR]

· More on Rupert Murdoch's "Borat boo-boo," a slip-up weird beyond its inherent inaccuracy because News Corp. neglected to mention a Borat sequel while it was bragging about how much the original film had boosted its quarterly earnings, and for Fox's previous bitching that Bruno was too expensive for the studio to purchase. [Variety]
· Julia Roberts will star in the ensemble drama Fireflies in the Garden, which "explores the complexities of love and commitment in a family torn apart when faced with an unexpected tragedy," shorthand for, "My Oscar is feeling a little lonely all by itself up on that mantel." [THR]
· "I've finally admitted to myself that I am afraid of my own lawyer." Var's Peter Bart looks at how entertainment lawyers have scared the town shitless. [Variety]
· ABC wins Thursday night with another great Nielsen performance by Grey's Anatomy, which is on such a roll that the network is considering making public at least one ugly feud from the Grey's set each month. [THR]
· In a completely unsurprising move, Disney is making a big-screen spinoff from its wildly successful TV movie High School Musical. [Variety]

· Mark off May 22, 2008 on your calendars, for that's the day that Indiana Jones 4: Short Round, I'm Really Getting Too Old For This Shit hits theaters. Warner Bros. blockbuster hopeful Speed Racer is also scheduled to open over that long Memorial Day weekend, but we bet the movie will be mysteriously stricken by "post-production problems" that force a move to a safer release date. [Variety]
· The publicists responsible for making sure that every Borat appearance was accompanied by a trashy throng of Kazakh prostisisters and death threats from the president of the constantly mocked Central Asian nation saw their hard work rewarded at yesterday's Flackies, the awards celebrating achievements in the promotional arts. [THR]
· Dakota Fanning makes a bold move to combat being typecast as a preteen rape victim, joining her sister Elle in portraying disabled twins in the drama Hurricane Mary. Look for the ambitious elder Fanning to muscle out her sister to better showcase her acting chops by playing both parts herself. [Variety]
· American Idol plunges from 33.1 million viewers on Tuesday to just 27.6 million on Wednesday, a slide that's temporarily reduced its level of domination of primetime competition from "utter destruction" to "a pretty rough ass-kicking." [THR]
· Borat boosts News Corp.'s studio division, but MyNetworkTV, barely beating public access bulletins about winter-weather school closures in most markets, has clearly shit the financial bed. [Variety]

· CBS's Les Moonves agrees to a skittish Harvey Weinstein's request for a last minute edit removing the word "terrifying" from a Hannibal Rising commercial, which Weinstein apparently feared would induce mass panic in potential ticket-buyers for his film. [Variety]
· Columbia Pictures is about to pick up the script You Don't Mess with Zohan, about a Mossad agent who fakes his death to become a hairdresser in NY, from Judd Apatow, Robert Smigel and Adam Sandler. Sandler, of course, will play the blow-dryer-wielding spy. [THR]
· Tommy Mottola and Biggest Loser producer David Broome are putting together a "grittier take" on the America's Next Top Model formula for TLC starring Petra Nemcova, in which eliminated models are force-fed cocaine until their weakened hearts explode instead of sent home. [Variety]
· Following American Idol's latest Nielsen-dominating performance, Fox's desperate competitors are seriously considering having Paula Abdul and Simon Cowell killed. [THR]
· Var produces some important service journalism for its Grammy-attending readers, warning that the closure of parking lots at the Staples center will likely result in huge traffic jams and the mass inconveniencing of limo passengers. Save yourself a headache by commissioning a helicopter for the night. [Variety]