Var's article on Mel Gibson fallout in the business: "The oys of summer." Yes, really. [Variety]
Warner Bros. shifts the opening date for Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain to November 22nd, setting up a time-traveling-related deathmatch with Buena Vista's Tony Scott-directed Deja Vu. Early prediction: America chooses The Fountain's Hugh Jackman as its favorite unstuck-in-time hunk! [THR]
A graph that looks like a red and blue pair of salad tongs (or pliers?) says scary things about the impact of foreign runaway production on the domestic film industry. [Variety]
· Because the networks stubbornly insist on measuring how few people are actually watching TV this summer, we note that Hell's Kitchen beat out CSI: Miami last night, but CBS still beat Fox for the night. [THR]
Hollywood Out Of Ideas, Supernatural CGI Dwellings Edition: Sony greenlights the animated comedy Hotel Transylvania, not to be confused with the studio's Monster House, currently in theaters. [Variety]

Remember when Endeavor superagent Ari Emanuel called for a industry boycott of Mel Gibson by saying, "There are times in history when standing up against bigotry and racism is more important than money." Good times, as they say. Over at Slate, Kim Masters has found at least one person in this town willing to opt for forgiveness over a symbolic stand against the drunk-drivingest, Jew-blamingest star in Hollywood:

The first round of media analysis of How Mel Gibson's Anti-Semitic Tirade Will Affect His Career has arrived, with nearly everyone agreeing that Gibson's capping of his DUI arrest by accusing the "fucking Jews" of being "responsible for all the wars in the world" could possibly have some sort of undetermined negative impact on his future ability to make movies, or on the box office prospects of Apocalypto, his upcoming, Mayan-language adventure flick whose dialogue must now be scoured for hate speech cleverly masked by the Yucatec dialect. (Zero Wolf: "The tribal elders have selected you for human sacrifice. Please report to the altar atop the sacred pyramid in one hour to accept your fate." Jaguar Paw: "You go tell those fucking Jews to kiss my ass. I own this fucking jungle, sugar tits.") A round-up of early analyses and reactions:

Disney's Cast Member Massacre started in earnest with a round of layoffs yesterday. But in a happier note, studio chairman Dick Cook seems to be getting a hang of the termination business, as Buena Vista exec VP Karen Glass was let go nowhere near a delivery room. [Variety]
Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence has signed on to adapt and direct the prequel to Fletch, Fletch Won. His friends have instructed him to not "fuck it up," a directive made all the more challenging by the planned miscasting of Zach Braff in the title role. [Variety]
In Hollywood, everything old is senselessly new again: 50 years after its Broadway debut, ABC plans a musical version of Peter Pan for television. [Variety]
Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat movie will premiere at the Toronto Film Festival and maybe we've already gulped the Kazakh Kool-Aid, but even the title has us excited: Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. [Variety]

Let us once again sing the praises of YouTube, continuous font of unexpectedly riveting video goodies. We just stumbled across this video blog interview with just-fired Buena Vista head Nina Jacobson that was posted yesterday, but obviously conducted before the tragic events of last Wednesday—and which, improbably, includes a discussion of firings from earlier in her career. Take a disorienting two minutes to watch the video, during which you'll feel as if you've hopped in a time machine that travels only about a week into the past, to a more innocent, happier time in which studio executives don't get whacked in the delivery room.

To read the various media accounts of the contents of The Man Who Heard Voices, the biography of M. Night Shyamalan's Christ-like struggle to realize his vision for Lady in the Water in face of opposition from vision-stifling, low carb soup-serving Philistines like erstwhile Buena Vista studio head Nina Jacobson, the tome is an utterly inexhaustible supply of anecdotes illustrating the tragically misunderstood director's insecurity. In a column about "the outbreak of Shyamaladenfreude" following Lady's disappointing™ opening at the box office this weekend, the LAT's Patrick Goldstein spotlights some more illustrations of the insecureteur's congenital neediness:

Disney employees whose heads are on the chopping block anxiously await their bloody fates, as mass executions are
reportedly scheduled to be conducted next week. [Variety]
The Senate may soon vote on legislation that would require Hollywood to keep track of the ages of actors who pretend to have sex scenes in movies and TV shows. It is unknown if Dakota Fanning can be grandfathered into future rape-related roles should the bill become law. [THR]
George Clooney parts ways with producing partner Steven Soderbergh at Section 8, but is forming new production company Smoke House with Good Night, And Good Luck collaborator/BFF Grant Heslov and sticking around at Warner Bros. The new venture is named for the famous Burbank restaurant, a choice made after an arduous branding process determined that calling the shingle Dimples would be far too cute. [Variety]
NBC's America's Got Talent and Fox's So You Think You Can Dance both trounce ABC's The One in the ratings on Wednesday, a programming block that will soon come to be known as Utterly Unwatchable American Idol Rip-off Night. [THR]
· Canadians do an adorable impression of an American-style studio executive ouster, as Motion Picture Distribution unexpectedly shitcans two of its bigshots. [Variety]

When a movie studio serves notice that it's received a cost-cutting mandate from its corporate parent by publicly executing a prominent executive and placing her severed head atop a pike outside the Grill on the Alley, everyone in Hollywood, already the job insecurity capital of the world, reflexively reaches for their necks and wonders if they should get a waddle-tuck before their appointment with the guillotine. Today's LAT attempts to capture the wave of heightened paranoia touched off by Disney's announced 650-person Cast Member Massacre by soliciting quotes from producers entering the brave, new world of seemingly routine cost-cutting and layoffs:

As we all recently learned in the immediate aftermath of Star Jones' self-immolation on/dismissal from The View, any entertainment corporation's abrupt firing of a high-profile employee must include a plan to remove all traces of the prejudicially shitcanned from their website, lest the stench of incompletion linger around an otherwise well-executed termination. Either Disney's soon-to-be very busy personnel reduction department hasn't yet gotten around to taking down Nina Jacobson's corporate bio, or they've already let go the guy who was supposed to take care of finishing the the dirty job started with that now-infamous delivery room phonecall.
· A live-action version of Donkey Kong would also not be a bad idea.
· With all due credit to our pal Will at Deadspin and the other friend who supplied this line: You're not with me, Leatherman.
· Yesterday, we learned the rule about not asking a showrunner about his Klum-stalking past; today THR's Ray Richmond teaches us the other rules of working the TCA tour.

A Tennessee couple is convinced that Shadow, one of the furry stars of Disney dogsledding movie Eight Below, is actually Kolby, an Alaskan Malamute who went missing from their yard in 2004. It sounds like a crackpot accusation, until you consider that Shadow was found at a nearby Knoxville animal shelter by Sled Dog Rescue of Tennessee, who groomed him for the audition that led to his big break. (The entire story is recounted at the Rescue's website.) Kolby's owners are suing everyone they feel is responsible, including Disney, for conspiring to spirit away their beloved pooch and throw him onto a starmaking conveyor belt that turns good doggies into Hollywood assholes:

· Lost in the sexier story of Nina Jacobson's firing from Disney yesterday is the fact that 650 other employees will be laid off worldwide. Sadly, Disney lacks the resources to let each employee go with a personal phone call during a happy family occasion, so the soon-to-be axed shouldn't get their hopes up about seeing studio executioner Dick Cook's name pop up on their Caller ID [Variety]
Hollywood studios make their annual trip to Comic-Con in San Diego, where they collect nerd souls in exchange for access to sneak previews of various comic-related movie properties. This year, a glimpse of ten seconds of previously unseen Spider-Man 3 footage is expected to net pledges of eternal fealty from over two dozen dungeon masters. [THR, Variety]
Wall Street happily drenches itself in the blood of slaughtered Disney staffers, helping the company's stock price
jumps 4% after news of their layoffs. Mouse House executives today hope to push the stock price as much as 20 % percent higher by announcing their plans to fire every employee on the payroll. [Variety]
NBC teams with Netflix to give users advance DVD previews of new shows Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and Kidnapped, in hopes that viewers will become hooked weeks before the series actually premiere. [THR/AP]
ABC president "Purple" Steve McPherson is happy about all the Emmy attention for Gray's Anatomy, but blue that Lost and Desperate Housewives were slighted by the Academy. [Variety]

• Fox News viewers more likely to believe Iraq war was worth it, Bush doing good job, Ann Coulter "moderate voice of reason," Jesus loves tax cuts. [SJSU]
• Disney ousts studio head as she sits in hospital with her newborn child; fires Elizabeth Vargas again for good measure. [LAT]
• Sarah Dickerson spends way too much time looking at the cover of Gourmet. [Slate]

Based on the suggestion of one of our fine commenters, we think that the entire casting process for the lead in CBS's inevitable movie of the week about yesterday's upheaval at Disney, Hard Labor: The Delivery Room Firing Of Nina Jacobson, will consist of a single phone call to SNL star Rachel Dratch's agent. Or should a feature film version go into development, someone might want to check on Jodie Foster's availability and potential willingness to glam herself down for a meaty, heart-wrenching role.

Easily trumping Paramount house-cleaner Brad Grey's Christmastime hit of 33-year studio veteran Wayne Llewellen as he vacationed in South Africa, Disney chairman Dick Cook takes his place in recent cold-blooded layoff lore with yesterday's badly timed dispatching of Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group President Nina Jacobson, who found out she was losing her job in between her partner's contractions. Reports the LAT:

It seems that Disney wasn't fucking around when it announced its intentions to keel-haul a chunk of its workforce while they were still lightheaded from the champagne they'd been chugging to celebrate Pirates of Caribbean 2's record-breaking opening weekend, as the Mouse Slaughterhouse broke the ice on its coming employee bloodbath by offing one of its highest profile cast members this afternoon, now-former Buena Vista head Nina Jacobson. (You no doubt remember Jacobson as the callous creative exec who crushed M. Night Shyamalan's fairytale dreams and tried to starve his script-delivering assistant to death on a diet of low-carb soup.)

· Pirates 2 is ready to pass Spider-Man 2's one-week record of $192.1 million, and will likely pass the $250 million barrier by Sunday. Fans of corporate profits will now watch with baited breath as Disney eventually reaps a $400 million or $500 million gross for this wise movie-related investment. [Variety]
· Judd Apatow will produce the "buying booze for a party so girls will hook up with nerds" high school comedy Super Bad from a screenplay by pal/muse/actor/writer Seth Rogen, and the project will star everyone's favorite cousin-desiring Bluth, Michael Cera. [THR]
· William Morris president Dave Wirstschafter makes the Alicia Keys space meaningful (there's nothing like an ancient reference on a Friday morning!), as Disney signs up Keys' new vanity production company for a first-look production deal. [Variety]
· Gunshot-phobic Miami Vice cast member Jamie Foxx will produce and possibly star in The Power of Duff (count the minutes until that title changes starting...now), the story of a news anchor whose on-air prayers start coming true. [THR]
· Dirty-talking Insider host Pat O'Brien is obviously being punished for an unknown sin by his bosses, who are forcing the host to appear on three-minute interstitial spinoffs of his show on Showtime. [Variety]

· Lionsgate will produce a remake of evil-cornea-transplant thriller The Eye, with Jessica Alba in talks to star based solely on the studio's appreciation of her acting ability. [Variety]
· The now startlingly chubby Raven-Symone (what happened?) will star in Disney's remake of Adventures in Babysitting, which in a departure from the original will center on a psychotic babysitter's attempt to devour the children in her temporary care. We never thought we'd see that day where we'd do two cheap "Raven-Symone is fat" jokes in the same post, but there you have it. [THR]
· Comedy Central plans to finally re-air South Park's Emmy-nominated, Tom-Cruise-baiting "Trapped in the Closet" episode on July 19th, which still gives the network plenty of time to pull the show again and reap an extra round of publicity by caving to pressure from Cruise and/or Scientology. [Variety]
· Fox crushes all competition with the baseball's All-Star Game. [THR]
· MTV and Cingular get together to ensure that your cellphone can receive a constant stream of Viacom product. OMG! It's like having the entire cast of Laguna Beach in your pocket! LOL! [Variety]

Disney has opted for a novel way to celebrate the happy occasion of Pirates of the Caribbean 2's unprecedented opening weekend gross: by cutting down production and shitcanning a large chunk of its personnel. Variety heralds the carnage to come:

An amused operative from within the Disney corporate family shared with us this company-wide e-mail in which Head Mouse in Charge Bob Iger pats his underlings on their collective back for Pirates of the Caribbean 2's record-shattering™ performance. But in his exuberance to reach out and personally touch the inboxes of his cast members, Iger may have neglected proofreading his missive, tragically misspelling the name of one of his stars and redundantly referring to the Pirates franchise as "something that will be enjoyed by generations of people for generations." Ever the perfectionist, Iger eventually corrected his mistake. Says our operative: "Two hours later he sent out the exact same memo with the spelling corrected. No mention that he had gotten it wrong the first time. At Disney, we don't acknowledge mistakes." An excerpt from the memo [boldface ours]:

The Disney-obsessed MiceAge site is probably not where you'd expect to find the latest account of Lindsay Lohan's underage, drunken antics, but as it turns out, someone at Disneyland thought it would be a great idea to allow Lohan and her entourage to rampage through the Magic Kingdom and long-abandoned, possibly haunted California Adventure park to celebrate her 20th birthday. Lohan, of course, repaid Disney's hospitality by giving its Cast Members a firsthand demonstration of the craft for which she is best known: