· THR calls NBC's schedule a "massive overhaul." Also, we forgot to mention the new drama with the most howlingly stupid name, Inconceivable, which takes place in (you guessed it by now) a fertility clinic. Welcome back to fourth place, NBC. [THR]
· The WB and 20th Century Fox TV scratch out each other's eyes over Reba license fees, nearly taking down two of 20th's pilots for the network in the skirmish. Also, Law & Order creator Dick Wolf is pissed that NBC canceled Trial by Jury. [Variety]
· Tired of the actress overshadowing him on the red carpet at Cannes, George Lucas holds down Natalie Portman and shaves her head. The move backfires as the world is now fascinated by the exquisite shape of her skull (see pic on THR homepage). [THR]
· Survivor takes out Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, but the Housewives beat back CBS with a ratings rolling pin. [Variety]
· Michelle Pfeiffer will star in Amy Heckerling's I Could Never Be Your Woman, a romantic comedy "about a successful professional woman in trouble with her love life,"a groundbreaking premise sure to revitalize the genre. [THR]

· Spamalot nabs 14 Tony nominations, and Doubt picks up 8, thus ending our interest in the Tonys until next year's announcements. [Variety]
· CBS and Sony throw bags at money (and a feature deal) at Kevin James to do another season of King of Queens, buying at least one more year before the the network has to figure out how to turn CSI into a sitcom. [THR]
· Ousted/disgruntled former Disney board members Roy Disney and Stanley Gold sue Disney for not conducting a proper search for a new CEO; once again showing that he's no Michael Eisner, new Mouse leader Robert Iger promptly orders his lawyer to key the troublemakers' cars [Variety]
· George Clooney signs on to play the lead in Michael Clayton, a lawyer who's known for "fixing" his clients' personal problems. Also, the lawyer is very, very handsome with an undeniable, rakish charm. Sigh. [THR]
· 20th Century Fox TV signs American Dad showrunners to a two-year, seven-figure development deal to create shows that are completely indistinguishable from The Family Guy . [Variety]

· American Idol was still huge on Wednesday, Primetime Live's Idol did big numbers, and NBC still can't tell its ratings ass from its Nielsen elbow. [Variety]
· An appeals court throws out the FCC's rules for a "broadcast flag" that would dictate how viewers record and watch digital TV shows, allowing the consumer greater flexibility in how they drool in front of the American Idol results show. [THR]
· Filthiest Variety headline of the day: "Jobs strokes Mouse as Pixar soars." Why exactly the Pixar CEO is masturbating a rodent is anyone's guess, but we're not here to judge. [Variety]
· 20th Century Fox TV is doing its best to prove the overall developmental deal isn't dead, throwing money at Family Guy/Yes, Dear writer Bobby Bowman for two years. [THR]
· Because it's not technically a pointless remake if you replace the original white people with black people: New Line plans a "reimagining" of the Steve Martin/Lily Tomlin pic All of Me, with Wanda Sykes playing the Tomlin role. [Variety]

· Studios cross their fingers, hoping that releasing not-really-summer-blockbusters like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and XXX: State of the Union in April will finally shake loose some more of this year's scant box office dollars. [Variety]
· "Maverick" director Steven Soderbergh signs a six-picture deal with Mark Cuban's 2929 Entertainment, which will attempt to destabilize the universe by releasing Soderbergh's independent movies simultaneously in theaters, on TV, and video. Don't worry, though, Ocean's Thirteen through Sixteen will still be released the old-fashioned way. [THR]
· The networks finally gave in to "peer pressure" and sacrificed valuable sweeps primetime slots to carry GWB's press conference, but they weren't happy about it. They cut away early to make sure the public didn't miss Trump and Paris Hilton's far more enlightening remarks on America. [Variety]
· One day, when nothing but radioactive cockroaches roam the earth, America's Funniest Home Videos and According to Jim will still get pick-ups for an additional season. [THR]
· Mos Def takes reckless chances with his acting career by agreeing to star opposite Bruce Willis in the cop drama 16 Blocks. [Variety]

· Long since having abandoned all hopes of catching Fox's American Idol in the ratings, ABC is instead planning a "potentially explosive exposé" of the juggernaut on Primetime Live. Among the shocking revelations: Sensitive, soft-spoken (and recently de-Idoled) contestant Anwar Robinson is gay, Simon Cowell had undifferentiated genitalia at birth, and talent-free crowd favorite Scott Savol looks like a cross between a giant, scary baby and Vincent D'Onofrio in Full Metal Jacket. [Variety]
· Time Warner and Comcast have agreed to buy cable-provider Adelphia, assuring that we will have no idea whom to call and scream at during our weekly internet service outage. [THR]
· Tobey Maguire signs on to star with George Clooney and Cate Blanchett in The Good German, in which Maguire will conveniently portray a movie star who really lets himself go while frittering away his Hollywood fortunes in poker tournaments. [Variety]
· Sarah Jessica Parker is in talks to star in the the "dark comedy" Slammer, in which she'd play a jailed publicist that organizes an inmate musical. The script marks a new (and potentially much better) direction for backer Revolution Studios, which is now generating movie plots with an old book of Mad-Libs. [THR]
· Nicolas Cage will star in the film Electric God, a development that provides so many potential punchlines that we decline to offer even one. [Variety]

· The Cannes line-up features established directors such as David Cronenberg, Wim Wenders, Atom Egoyan, Jim Jarmusch, Gus Van Sant, and Lars Von Trier. Von Trier will be shunned at the opening night gala, when he kills a donkey just to show off for his peers. [Variety]
· Breaking! Actors still love easy voiceover paychecks! Nick Nolte, William Shatner, Steve Carell, Avril Lavigne,
Catherine O'Hara, Eugene Levy, Wanda Sykes and Allison Janney sign on to voice the DreamWorks animated feature Over the Hedge. [THR]
· The NFL goes feces-flinging insane, moving Monday Night Football to ESPN, while giving the Sunday night game to sports-starved NBC. [Variety]
· The Parents Television Council finds more to complain about, bitching that broadcasters do a bad job of properly labeling the violence and smut content (i.e., the good parts) of their shows. [THR]
· Disney makes up the absolutely darling title of "Chief Creative Officer" for marketing exec Oren Aviv. We love it when marketing people start thinking they're creative! It's so darn cute! [Variety]
· Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo, and Jake Gyllenhaal sign up for David Fincher's Zodiac, a serial killer flick for Paramount and Warner Brothers. Beware: the entire film could collapse from its critical mass of hunky dreaminess. [Variety]

OK, maybe we're a little bit caught up in the excitement of today's Popeapalooza, but berproducer Scott Rudin admitted to the LAT that he'll be exiting the New Paramount™ to help revitalize the Weinstein-Free Miramax™ (and make movies for Disney's other studios, Touchstone and Walt Disney Pictures, as well). Perhaps it's fitting that this story broke today; Disney really needed to find someone who puts the fear of God in his sheep the way that Harvey Weinstein did for years at The 'Max.

What you can't see in this amazing gallery of unhappy people at Disney World: bitter, lame-duck CEO Michael Eisner trying to sabotage his Orlando operation by sneaking around and jabbing park visitors in the genitals with a salad fork as their pictures are snapped. He'll hit his Anaheim fun-factory next week.

· We're linking to the THR story about yesterday's Universal shake-up (yeah, we know, it's old news) instead of Var's because they have a hotter pic of Mary Parent on the front page of their website. [THR]
· Mark Wahlberg is in negotiations to play Eagles-fan-turned-Eagles-player Vince Papale for Disney, in the soon to be renamed Invincible. It's just like Rudy, but with lucrative NFL tie-ins! [Variety]
· Melanie Griffith will get to show off her comedy chops and remaining control of her facial muscles as a member of the cast of a Kohan-Mutchnick comedy pilot for the WB, the tentatively- titled Our Will & Grace Lightning Will Strike Twice, We Promise. [THR]
· Fresh off a winning turn as a tone-deaf, angry Moses here in LA, Val Kilmer signs up for a theatrical version of The Postman Always Rings Twice in London's West End. [Variety]
· The Masters and the NCAA Tournament might help CBS threaten Fox's American Idol-powered hegemony in the key 18-49 demographic. Expect Fox to announce plans to run Idol three times a night from now until the end of the ratings period. [Variety]

· Details/rumors about the new-look, Weinstein-free, Disneyfied Miramax are leaking out: It will have an annual budget of $350 million, release only 6-10 films a year, get cut down to about 50 employees, keep its HQ in NY, and whoever gets to lead the studio will be Disney Studios chairman Dick Cook's bitch. Sounds like a party! [Variety]
· Kate Winslet is in talks to star in New Line's adaptation of Tom Perrotta's novel Little Children, and will play a suburban mom who boinks a stay-at-home dad. You know, like Desperate Housewives, but without the stars tearing out each other's hair between takes. [THR]
· The New Paramount™ takes a page from the Sherry Lansing recycling playbook, signing up Mummy/Van Helsing hack Steven Sommers to remake When Worlds Collide, the big-object-crashes-into-Earth classic that's already inspired asteroids-fucking-shit-up flicks like Deep Impact and Armageddon. But unlike the old, cheap Paramount guard, Brad Grey's team will throw a lot of money at the rehash. [Variety]
· UPN gives "ratings-challenged" Veronica Mars an early pick-up; ABC keeps Grey's Anatomy safe behind its Desperate Housewives lead-in, bumping the already-renewed Boston Legal into another timeslot that will inevitably lack the same ratings protection. [THR]
· DreamWorks enables Beyonce's acting ambitions, negotiating with her to star in the adaptation of Dreamgirls. [Variety]

· ABC anchor Peter Jennings announces that he has lung cancer, but will remain on the desk while he undergoes treatment. ABC News president David Westin reacts to the news by making perhaps the most inappropriate analogy in the history of broadcasting: "Peter's been given a tough assignment." [THR]
· Graham King, producer of The Aviator and Gangs of New York, signs first-look deal with Warner Brothers. Unfortunately, our primitive minds are too smooth to comprehend the domino-effect this move will have on King's Initial Entertainment Group and its relationships with various A-list actors' vanity production companies. [Variety]
· Sean Connery gets another crack at donning James Bond's tuxedo, as he'll do voiceover for the video game version of From Russia with Love. Come to think of it, it would be pretty pathetic if he actually wears the tuxedo to a voiceover session. Or if he gratuitously bares his chest hair for the sound engineers. [THR]
· Al Gore finally reveals his cable network, Current, which will feature "original public affairs and entertainment programming produced by and directed at young people" who have a thirst for boredom that not even CSPAN can quench. [Variety]
· After 10 years of our spectacularly successful efforts to avoid viewing even a single episode of the series, this season of JAG will be its last. Goodbye, old friend. [Variety]

We'd always kind of hoped that Bob and Harvey Weinstein would leave their family the old fashioned way, by saying they were going out for cigarettes, poignantly mussing their kids' hair for the last time, and disappearing forever. But the Weinstein brothers have left Miramax and Disney the classy way, by an intimate e-mail to their staff and a press release. Don't worry, Miramaxers, the guys are sticking around through the end of September to make sure that all necessary beatings are doled out before they start their new business venture. The e-mail and press release follow:

A little birdie told us to expect a press conference at around 1 p.m. finally announcing Harvey and Bob Weinstein's eternally-anticpated divorce from Disney. Let's hope this is actually going down so that we can all have some closure. We're so very tired of dreaming up scenarios in which Harvey Weinstein agrees to trade his mother to Michael Eisner in exchange for keeping the Miramax name.

After years of holding Disney president Bob Iger underneath him, CEO Michael Eisner is finally letting the man chosen to be his successor to climb on top:

· Fox "flummoxed" over Gail Berman's exit, and now the network needs to figure out who to plug in as a replacement. FX's Peter Liguori, 20th Century Fox TV president Dana Walden, and a cast of thousands from Fox's many inscrutably named divisions are under consideration. [Variety]
· "No shit?!" news analysis: Berman's jumping ship comes at an inopportune time for Fox. [THR]
· ABC wants to horn in on NBC's monopoly on bad remakes of British TV hits by bastardizing the UK's celebrity ballroom dancing show Strictly Come Dancing. [Variety]
· Looks like P. Diddy's not getting the top Fox job, as his Bad Boy Entertainment signs with MTV for a TV producing deal. [THR]
· 90210 survivor Brian Austin Green will co-star in Freddie Prinze Jr's ABC comedy pilot. Should the series ever go to air, the network may find it necessary to distribute welder's masks to protect the project's star power from blinding viewers. [THR]

While it seemed like Disney CEO-in-waiting Bob Iger was sending a message to the world with this fortuitously placed ad on the NYT website, now it looks like someone's trying to slip him a warning in the same space.* And by "someone," we think it's pretty obvious we mean "Michael Ovitz." If Ovitz is trying to slip a note to Iger, he's being a little melodramatic; working underneath Michael Eisner didn't kill him, just his career.

Now that Bob Iger is set to inherit the golden Mickey head that is the birthright of all Disney CEOs, he's been charged with a crucial task: begging Steve Jobs and his Pixar money-printing factory to continue their partnership with his company. Of course, Iger's going to play coy for a while:

· Hey, did you hear? Bob Iger's taking over Disney! Also, Eisner will step down in September, a year ahead of schedule, but his secret control will linger indefinitely. [Variety]
· Also: Bob Iger takes over Disney; Eisner will step down early. [THR]
· Hilary Swank celebrates her Oscar win by signing up to star in The Reaping for Dark Castle, Joel Silver and Robert Zemeckis' schlockhouse horror flick production company (Gothika, Ghost Ship, 13 Ghosts, The House on Haunted Hill and House of Wax). The whereabouts of Swank's agent and manager are unknown; presumably, her decision-making team has fallen down a well. [Variety]
· The networks have finally run out of actors for pilots, as Peter "Jennie Garth's husband" Facinelli has been cast in ABC's Westside. [THR]
· Universal gives Antoine Fuqua's American Gangster sloppy seconds to Hotel Rwanda's Terry George. [Variety]
· Desperate for some hint of what the fuck is going on in the show, superfans camp out in front of the DGA for Lost night at the Paley Television Festival. [THR]

Disney Chairman George Mitchell was quick to defend the company's board against accusations that the search for Michael Eisner's successor wasn't thorough enough, and merely a rubber stamp of the half-assed variety for president/Anointed One Bob Iger:

Please, Mr, Iger, you don't have to kill anyone else*, at least for a little while; the Disney board's finally chosen you to succeed Michael Eisner as Head Mouse in Charge at the Magic Kingdom/Media Concern. That's right, you'll be replacing the same Michael Eisner who was quoted in DisneyWar offering the following votes of confidence for your candidacy: "Bob can’t run this company,” "[he] lacks the stature" and could "never succeed me." Also, our personal favorite: "If I had to choose, it would not be Bob." We hope that Eisner made it up to you with a gift basket full of pricey cheeses and handcrafted vodkas. Or, you know, by handing you the job now so that you can continue his legacy.