After 20 seasons on the air, Law & Order may be dead. Who's responsible for killing the program? Let's do an investigation, like on the show!

Katie Holmes, actress and Bride of Scientology, turns 31 today. Hard-charging hedge fund manager Dan Loeb is turning 48. Brad Pitt turns 46. Steven Spielberg is turning 63. Christina Aguilera is celebrating her 29th birthday today. Dan Klores, the publicist turned documentary filmmaker, is marking his 60th. The head of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, is 52. Memorial Sloan-Kettering president (and Nobel Prize winner) Harold Varmus is turning 70. Troubled rapper DMX is 39. Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones is 66. Ray Liotta is turning 55. Model agency owner Faith Kates is 52. And former Miss USA Tara Conner is turning 24 today. A bunch of weekend birthdays is below.

Considering he's spent the last couple of days fending off accusations he's a slumlord, this probably won't be the most cheerful day for hotel/restaurant owner Eric Goode: He celebrates his 51st birthday today. Others born on the 19th of December: Jake Gyllenhaal is 28 today. Alyssa Milano is 36. Tyson Beckford turns 38. Lady Sovereign is turning 23. Criss Angel turns 41. And real estate developer Doug Durst is turning 64. Weekend birthdays after the jump.

Dick Wolf, what have you done? Crime shows, we're now being told, are to blame for people's overeating and overspending. The likes of Law and Order, CSI, and Cold Case, with their unrelenting stream of random homicides, remind viewers of their mortality. This, says a study from the Journal of Consumer Research, triggers a desire to shop and eat, in order to somehow guard against your lifeless body being discovered by a dog walker in Central Park, and all your family and co-workers being placed under suspicion, until the real perp is fingered around 38 minutes later. So what this really means, in fact, is the marriage of two treasured American traditions: primetime entertainment about vicious crime and brutality, and obesity and debt being totally not our fault!

· The Ivy Chronicles, a Sarah Jessica Parker project about an "upper-middle-class New York mother" who loses it all, has signed The Devil Wears Prada writer Aline Brosh McKenna take on the screenplay. And we just grew a set of ovaries typing that. [THR] · The Prince of Persia, Disney's Bruckheimerian take on the popular video game series starring Jake Gyllenhaal as the shirtless, saber-wielding warrior, has been delayed by a full year. Excuse us for one moment, will you? THERE IS. NOOO. GODDDD!!!! OK! Back! [Variety] · Nicolas Cage and director John Carpenter are close to signing on for Scared Straight, about a wayward teen held hostage during a jail riot who turns to prisoner Cage for a way out. Cage agrees, but not before making the teen his bitch. [THR] · Thomas Jane will play the lead in HBO's pilot Hung, an hour-long "dark comedy" about a man with an enormous manhood, and all that that implies. And we think you know what we mean. Yes, we thought so. [THR] · Speaking of ubiquitous Dicks, Dick Wolf's pilot Lost and Found has been picked up by NBC. It involves law enforcement and crime-solving of some kind. [Variety]

• NBC has greenlit Dick Wolf and Chris Levinson's Lost and Found, a drama about—what else?—a female detective. [Variety]

We don't know about you, but it sure feels like we hear the Law & Order thump-thump scene-setting music at least forty times a day as it is. Seriously, the last thing we need is the ominous tone emanating from our cell phones. But the capitalistic video game creators at Limelife have made Law & Order: Celebrity Betrayal for us anyway. According to LimeLife head Kristen McDonell, the game "will cast users as part of the detective squad solving the 'crime' and will appeal to women's 'puzzle solving' propensity." Yes, because nothing nails that hard-to-reach women's demo more than the combination of the phrases "celebrities" and "betrayal." We can't wait for the small-screen version to debut on Lifetime; we hear Dick Wolf is in the market for his 18th vacation home. [Collider]

The creator and executive producer of the NBC cops-and-robbers juggernaut Law & Order, Dick Wolf presides over one of the most successful franchises in TV history.

· La Vie en Rose Oscar nominee Marion Cotillard tries to parlay some of her awards-season heat into a role alongside Christian Bale and Johnny Depp in Michael Mann's Public Enemies, playing gangster John Dillinger's "torch singer girlfriend." [Variety]
· Meanwhile, (rightly) Academy-ignored Charlie Wilson's War star Julia Roberts hunts for her next chance at awards glory, attaching herself to star in and produce an adaptation of soon-to-be published novel Hothouse Flowers, about a recently divorced NY ad exec who throws it all away to embark on a fabulous post-break-up adventure. [THR]
[After the jump: NBC sues Dick Wolf!; Oscar nominations translate to bigger weekend grosses; the fate of Mary-Kate and Ben Kingsley's Sundance film.]

A mixed bag of actors from the Law & Order franchise give you a little taste of just what you'll be spending your early afternoons watching if they don't get their striking writers back soon. Though really, it's not that they've got no writers, it's just that Dick Wolf has used up every single plotline known to man. The clip, after the jump.

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· Director Steve Miner is given the opportunity to exploit Jessica Simpson's prodigious acting talent in Major Movie Star, the story of an amazingly Jessica Simpson-like Hollywood bimbo who joins the Marines to prove that she can play the part of someone in the military. [Variety]
· Yesterday's overall-deal-granting insanity bleeds into today, as even the No.2 guy on Bones is getting seven figures for his writing and development services over the next two years. Gushed 20th Century Fox TV president Dana Walden as she stuffed handfuls of high-denomination currency into burlap bags emblazoned with cartoonish dollar signs, "He can write comedy, drama, character pieces, procedurals ... he can do it all!" [THR]
· Broadway casting shocker! Nathan Lane to star in a musical comedy. [Variety]
· Puzzlingly, the cast of Law & Order: Criminal Intent is grumbling about not being offered raises for next season. Don't these delusional ingrates know how easily they can be replaced by the cheaper talent that foams Dick Wolf's cappuccinos each morning? [THR]
· Little-publicized ensemble drama Ocean's 13 hopes to prove that labors of love can be profitable at the box office. [Variety]

With a background in advertising and roughly sixty-eight versions of his Law & Order franchise currently on the air, cops-and-lawyers-procedural brandmaster Dick Wolf is uniquely qualified to declare that anyone who thinks they know how commerce, emerging platforms, and traditional programming will intersect in the future is quite obviously hitting the pipe. Reports the WSJ: