Disney World's "Mission: SPACE" ride, otherwise known by its unofficial nickname, "Mickey's Killer Spinning Vortex of Death," has claimed yet another victim:

From a reader:

Could Apple buy Disney? Probably not, but Barron's (in what's surely not an attempt to drum up controversy and circulation) published a piece speculating so. But just because Apple CEO Steve Jobs owns 7% of Disney doesn't mean he wants the rest. There are the obvious reasons:

With Miramax releasing the Tsotsi, the first movie of the Daniel Battsek regime this weekend, it's a convenient time to discuss How The New Guy Is Not As Crazy As The Weinsteins. Offers the LAT:

· Skeletal Viacom executive presence Sumner Redstone's son Brent commits legal patricide, suing his old man to dissolve National Amusements, the family's holding company. After Redstone has the traitorous offspring quietly disposed of for his treachery, he then confronts a touchy choice between adopting Viacom CEO Tom Freston or CBS Corp's Les Moonves to replace him in the family. [Variety]
Bambi II (note: the straight-to-video Disney sequel, not the adult-oriented exploration of how many cable repairmen can pleasure a horny housewife at one time) moves 2.5 million DVDs and videos in its 1st week. [Variety]
Writer David Benioff will Americanize the Danish film Brothers for Columbia, a deal that NY Magazine's Intelligencer says will earn Benioff $2 million. Not a bad payday for doing a find-and-replace to convert all the Janniks to Jacks. [Variety]
Jeff Goldblum is in final negotiations to star in the NBC pilot Seeing Red as a suitably "eccentric, brilliant" cop who can talk to dead victors—think Ghost Whisperer, but, you know, with Goldblum instead of Jennifer Love Hewitt's psychic rack. [THR]
Variety speculates that a press conference for the new 007 flick could contain an announcement about who's playing the next Bond girl, whether it's rumored frontrunners Eva Green or Olivia Wylde, or a surprise choice like Die Another Day director Lee Tamahori. [Variety]

It seems like retired Disney CEO Michael Eisner has finally discovered a diverting way to spend some of that newfound free time: taunting reporters with potentially controversial comments about his successor's plans, then sullenly yanking away the possibly interesting remark like a child denying his Labrador another sweet bite of a well-chewed Frisbee. From an interview in Australia's The Bulletin:

Nice job, Cisco! Sinking $48.5 mil into a use-controlling video machine that even Disney is neglecting? That's forward thinking. [WaPo via TechDirt]
"Companies like Netscape productized the output." Whoa there! "Productized"? You. Yeah, you. Out of the pool. [Inside Firefox]
What if they held a system outage and nobody came? [Blogger Status]
Leave it to Digg to have the "Steve Jobs has no license plate" story covered. [Digg]
Jobs's little white ingot shrinks to 1 GB. [Chicago Tribune]

· Hollywood seems disappointed with the Anthony Pellicano Wiretapping Trial of the Century, which so far lacks enough sizzle and star power to get even a TBS movie greenlit. [Variety]
· The Super Bowl is the most-watched in 10 years, and the most-watched TV program since 1996, with 90.7 million viewers. Grey's Anatomy, rapidly becoming the most hit-protected show in the history of the medium, hangs on to 38.1 million of those viewers after the big game. Is all the special ratings protection just because ABC's Steve McPherson can't wait to see if the doctor who looks like Renee Zellweger will ever get back together with the pizza delivery guy from Loverboy, or are incriminating telephone recordings of the ABC topper involved? Eh, maybe we have Pellicano on the brain and McPherson just loves his stories. [THR]
· Disney sells their radio stations to Citadel Broadcasting in order to ease the $7.4 billion sticker shock from buying Pixar. [Variety]
· Here's as big of a casting about-face as you'll ever see: Steve Buscemi is in "final negotiations" to take Will Arnett's place in New Line's the-wacky-things-drug-dealers-will-do-for-money comedy We're the Millers. [THR]
· ABC and Endemol are importing the Spanish reality hit Operacion Triunfo, a "mash up" (we hear the kids love their mash-ups!) of American Idol and Big Brother, or, to simplify the concept for you, Making the Band with some judging bolted on. [Variety]

The deadline for Academy members to cast their votes might be weeks away, but we're ready to call one of the races right now. And the Oscar for Most Disingenuous Quote In Response To An Awards Snub goes to...Harvey Weinstein, for Proof, as he tells the NY Observer:

"We would never seek to suggest, to tell Disney what they should do."
—Steve Jobs, Pixar earnings conference call, May 2005

What kind of entrance will Steve Jobs make at the Disney boardroom? Hopefully the kind he made when he returned to Apple in 1997. BusinessWeek's new cover story reveals what the mogul told his executives.

If Hollywood really isn't much more than a constant dick-measuring contest, the strategic mailing address label placement on the cover of the latest BusinessWeek should make anyone think twice before lining up against new Disney Superman Steve Jobs and slapping his manhood down on the table. Subscribers to the magazine might expect that once they peel off the label, they'll merely uncover the rest of Jobs' partially obscured leg; in actuality, the sticker actually hides a cartoon of CEO Robert Iger, wearing nothing but a ball gag, a pair of mouse ears, and an expression of terror as he cowers before the man who'll probably take his job in a couple of years.

With the original team that produced hits like Toy Story coming back into the fold with Disney's acquisition of Pixar this week, the employees in the cutely nicknamed "Pixaren't" division, charged with putting together knockoff sequels of the Pixar movies had the relationship between the two companies not been salvaged, will probably be looking for new gigs. Reports the LAT:

Finally, closure: After some aggressive flirtation, Disney's Robert Iger and Pixar's Steve Jobs were finally permitted by their respective boards to succumb to their mutual lust, shed their inhibitions, and fall into Jobs' rotating, Mickey-shaped waterbed in a tangle of mouse ears and iPod accessories to "complete the transaction." The two companies have announced that Disney will swallow up longtime hitmaking partner Pixar. and the pair shared a sweet, postcoital cigarette to celebrate the love that once seemed all but snuffed out by a sour break-up with former Disney boss Michael Eisner:

· Disney may announce an acquisition of Pixar today, with Steve Jobs possibly appearing before the press to laugh maniacally, urinate on a picture of former CEO Michael Eisner, and light the drenched photo on fire. [Variety]
· Sundance deals: Warner Independent makes second major buy of Sundance, getting Michel Gondry's The Science of Sleep. Meanwhile, negotiations are ongoing for The Illusionist and The Night Listener. [Variety]
· Another deal at the Dance: Weinstein Co, acquires the rights to Factory Girl, starring Sienna Miller, and once starring Katie Holmes. [THR]
· In case you struck your head on the watercooler and have been unconscious for the last couple of hours, The WB and UPN will donate their souls to a new network, The CW. [Variety, THR]
· Dodgeball writer Rawson Marshall Thurber's experience with writing characters with funny mustaches pays off, as he's signed on to script Universal's Magnum P.I. adaptation. Thurber is apparently not opting for a Starsky & Hutch-esque spoof, so perhaps the Ferrell/Wilson/Stiller/Vaughn cadre won't get to wear the iconic Tigers cap. [THR]

Media & Advertising [NYT]

· The Sundance Festival loses some of its excitement due to the fact that many buyers are showing up having already seen screeners of most of the films in the comfort of their own homes, at what is unofficially being referred to as the Underpants Festival. [Variety]
· As the WSJ reported yesterday, talks between the purported Disney acquisition of Pixar are at a very sensitive stage, with Bob Iger and Steve Jobs courtship being observed more closely than two newly-introduced pandas at the San Diego Zoo. [Variety]
· The team behind Dodgeball sells Dreamworks a pitch for a Dr. Evil-envying $1 million. While the plot is being kept a secret, we have it on good authority that it relies heavily on Ben Stiller playing a pompous and/or put-upon guy who is constantly humiliated and/or has trouble keeping his rage bottled up. [Variety]
· Tooth gnashing, wild-eyed crusader for moral betterment Jack Valenti introduces a multimillion-dollar plan to educate Americans about the various ways to protect their children from Satan s tangy gumdrops, i.e. televised smut and violence. [Variety]
· Commander in Chief has been seeing a steady decline in its ratings since its debut, though producers are optimistic that people will show up for their ripped-from-the-headlines episode in which Geena Davis likens the Senate to Uncle Tom s Cabin. [THR]
· Showtime president Bob Greenblatt announces at the TCA winter press tour that there are ongoing negotiations for the premium network to pick up Arrested Development, but that no deal has been reached, further stretching out the series excruciatingly long death sequence, while bringing hope to millions of Arrested fans who, push comes to shove, won t shell out the bucks to subscribe to Showtime in the end, anyway. [THR]

Today's Wall Street Journal reports that the flirtation between Pixar's Steve Jobs and Disney's Bob Iger has turned "serious," advancing from the Sitting Deliciously Close On The Couch, Coyly Swirling Wine In The Glass, With Occasional Smoldering Eye Contact Stage to the "Does It Make You Feel Good When I Touch You There?" Stage, with an eye towards the Mouseketeers buying up The House That Toy Story Built (sub. req'd.):

· Pixar's stock price jumps on whispers of an imminent deal with Disney, but as of last night, Disney's people were mum about any progress. Such stalling can only mean one thing: Paramount is going to buy Pixar. [Variety]
· We hate to make snap judgments about a film project based on a few sentences in a trade paper story (OK, we don't hate it, that's what we do every day), but the pairing of John Travolta and Tim Allen in a sort-of City Slickers Meets The Hell's Angels flick sounds about as appealing as hitting oneself in the genitals with a red-hot monkey wrench. We have no idea why the wrench needs to be hot, other than a room-temperature tool didn't sound like it would do justice to the concept. [THR]
· Sharon Stone will be awarded the first Cinema for Peace Award for Social Responsibility during the Berlin Film Festival in February. We're not at all surprised. There was something in the way she masturbated in that bathtub in Sliver that let us know she'd one day be an important instrument for global change. [Variety]
· My Name is Earl does OK in its first Thursday showing, coming in third overall and second in the key demographic for its timeslot. The premiere of Four Kings wasn't a disaster, but the show should quickly settle into its role as the sacrificial lamb to the Must See sitcom gods so that Earl and The Office can continue to live on Thursdays. [THR]

We've all been waiting since October for Apple/Pixar's Steve Jobs and Disney's Robert Iger to finally escalate the coy eyelash-batting and game of footsie the two moguls publicly engaged in while presenting their iPod content partnership. Now, with rumors of a new deal between the companies, Pixar's stock price has swelled, leaving us all in breathless anticipation for the tongue-wrestling sure to accompany an official announcement about a studio sale (or some other union). Unfortunately, analysts have to spoil the prurient fun of a hypothetical consummation by asking the "big questions" about whether or not the whole thing is even a good idea. From the LAT: