Wall Street Meanies Harsh On Paramount's Summer of Love

'Camp Rock' The New, Annoying Thing Your Kid Is Obsessed With

· Disney may have another "bankable tyke-and-tween franchise" (why does that phrase sound vaguely offensive and child-pornish?) in Camp Rock, says Variety, with 8.9 million viewers tuning in to watch the Jonas Brothers sing their newest hit, "(Yuck!) There's A Mosquito in My S'mores." [Variety]
· DreamWorks bought a comedy pitch called Home Schooled, about a 30-year-old man who was home schooled and is now heading off to college. The clash of cultures is sure to yield hilarious results! [THR]
· Tom Hanks sides with AFTRA in the escalating SAG-AFTRA feud. [Variety]
· Plastic pony fetishist Sloane Crosley's book of short, personal essays, I Was Told There'd Be Cake, was purchased by HBO for development into a possible series. [Variety]
· Supernatural EP Eric Kripke has signed a two-year deal with Warner Bros.TV, which—get ready to be spooked out—secures his showrunner duties on the shows upcoming fourth season on The CW. [Variety]

It's Always the Kids Who Suffer Most in a Vengeful Studio Divorce

Cash-Machine Manoj Saves His Best Twist Ending For Last

The day after DreamWorks was deported to the Asian Subcontinent was a bittersweet one around town — unless you're Steven Spielberg, we guess, who is a few signatures away from finally sticking it to Viacom, or maybe if you're CAA, which had previously wooed the Works' deep-pocketed Indian investors at Reliance ADA to throw money at projects for George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Tom Hanks, Nicolas Cage, Jim Carrey and a few of the agency's other heavy hitters.

Or especially if you're Manoj Night Shyamalan, who caught nothing but holy hell for a month leading up to the release of The Happening only to nab almost $70 million worldwide in less than a week of release. As we noted yesterday, he and Fox had their own funding deal with backers at India's UTV, but the lucrative terms buried today in Variety's DreamWorks coverage make Manoj's Folly suddenly look like Manoj's Mint:

Steven Spielberg, DreamWorks Ready to Join Other Hollywood Players Outsourced to India

Months of speculation over whom DreamWorks might be courting to help underwrite its ugly exit from Viacom ended late Tuesday when The Wall Street Journal reported that Reliance ADA Group, a massive Indian conglomerate, is close to sinking $500 million to $600 million into Steven Spielberg's breathless bid for autonomy. As presumed, the deal would expedite David Geffen's eventual departure from the DreamWorks fold and allow Spielberg to keep the DreamWorks name, if not the projects currently in development with Paramount/Viacom — alas, Transformers 2 stays behind. CEO and Spielberg right hand Stacey Snider would follow as well.

The rest of the picture is still taking shape, but after the jump we have a few educated guesses as to where things might land — and it looks curiously like Bollywood.

Steven Spielberg And The Search For DreamWorks' One Billion Emancipating Dollars

Like a temple of dormant extraterrestrial beings that accidentally took up residence in a South American jungle, the Steven Spielberg-led DreamWorks braintrust has restlessly been awaiting the arrival of a mystical object that will restore their autonomous movie-making powers and release them from the confines of a production-temple deep buried beneath the Paramount lot. In this case, that mystical object is a cool billion:

Steven Spielberg aims to raise more than $1 billion in third-party financing to reinvent DreamWorks as a separate company that once again owns the movies it makes.

Play the 'DreamWorks Free to Good Home' Sweepstakes

After A Failed First Marriage, DreamWorks Ready To Start Dating Again

It's been nearly six months since CompletelyImmaterialGate rocked the industry, and no amount of conciliatory gestures has yet managed to heal the wounds inflicted by Viacom CEO Phillippe Dauman's callous verbal flip-off of national directing treasure Steven Spielberg. With the expiration date on the frequently uncomfortable arranged marriage between Viacom-owned Paramount and DreamWorks nearing, the NY Times takes a hard look at the pretzled logistics of what becomes two powerhouse studios going their separate ways:

A key issue, these people said, turns on the extent to which Mr. Spielberg's personal contract, which expires in January 2010, grants him power over projects to which he has some creative attachment.

Personal Trainers Nervous About Beowulf's Breakthrough Belly-Eliminating Technology

There will be no shortage of glistening, lifelike CGI flesh on display in Robert Zemeckis's latest masterwork, opening today. The character of Grendel's Mother, for example—naked, dipped in gold, and outfitted with a prehensile braid and fuck-me pumps—will give audiences a reasonable approximation of things only Brad Pitt was meant to see. Others, however, such as the protagonist himself (voiced and performed by Sexy Beast star Ray Winstone), use their human inspiration as mere jumping-off points, after which a cutting-edge series of gut-reducing, ab-defining filters are applied, resulting in a ripped, battle-ready hero worthy of the name Beowulf.

• BeowulfMovie.com

In Denial About The Coming Labor Apocalypse, Hollywood Keeps Announcing New Projects Like Nothing's Wrong

· In a badly timed announcement of blockbuster-derived profits, Viacom crows about the "phenomenal success" of "new global brand Transformers" that helped lift their net income by 80 percent, forgetting to transfer the revenues to a balance-sheet loss column and publicly lament that "there's no money to be made in this dying business of ours." [Variety]
· Knowing that TV is, like film, a financial dead end (see bullet point above), Oprah is launching her own channel on the YouTubes. If that venture proves as successful as the media mogul hopes, the purchase of the entire internet could quickly follow. [THR]

'Indiana Jones 4' Thief Gets Two Years In Jail For Crimes Against The Most-Anticipated Sequel Of Our Time

It's not for nothing that Transformers should boast grosses on the high-end of 12-figures, as trumpeted by a seemingly endless succession of brushed-titanium zeroes on the pages of today's Variety: The studio has master blowingshitupologist's Michael Bay's passion and perfectionism to thank for that.

Possible Strike Quietly Rushing Ron Howard's Middlebrow Genius

· Ron Howard and Akiva Goldsman are frantically finalizing the shooting script of Da Vinci Code sequel Angels & Demons before the Oct. 31st deadline, hoping that the mad rush towards production won't jeopardize the duo's ability to produce the kind of easily digestible, crowd-pleasing entertainment that always results from their lucrative collaborations. Meanwhile, star Tom Hanks has been presented with a hair-growing schedule that will barely provide the actor with enough time to reproduce his character's signature demi-mullet. Truly, no one is immune from the pressures of the looming™ strike. [Variety]
· In what is always a good sign for a floundering series, The Bionic Woman gets another new showrunner, not even two months after "creative differences" ended NBC's short-lived love affair with Glen Morgan. [THR]

'Lovely Bones' Shocker! Ryan Gosling Accused Of Eccentricity

Sensing that there might be more to yesterday's announcement that Ryan Gosling's sudden departure from Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones adaptation than a friendly disagreement over competing visions for the film, the sleuths of Page Six dig deeper into this new Hollywood mystery, unearthing disturbing allegations of personality clashes and actorly eccentricity. Egads, we say!

THOSE old "creative differences" are to blame for director Peter Jackson's firing of Ryan Gosling from "Lovely Bones." "Peter couldn't stand Ryan," said one source.

Mark Wahlberg Jumps Peter Jackson's Bones

· Peter Jackson's feature adaptation of The Lovely Bones suffers a severe cast downgrade as Mark Wahlberg steps in to replace Ryan Gosling, who's departing the project following the always-popular "creative differences." [Variety]
· Talks are underway to bring a reality series starring Scottish psychic Derek "The Baby Mind Reader" Ogilive to America, centering around his possibly telepathic ability to translate the secret language of an infant's mysterious cries, gurgles, and gassy smiles into something understandable by parents. [THR]
· Superman Returns writers Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris bail on the franchise, opting not to come back to write a sequel. Warner Bros. denies rumors that the studio is planning on hiring new writers to start the Superman saga over yet again, avoiding the potential Superboy Problem presented by the introduction of Kal-El's bastard, half-Kryptonian offspring introduced in Returns. [Variety]

'Indy 4' Golf-Cart-Driving Secrets Revealed!

Jake Gyllenhaal: Handsome, Soulful Astronaut

· Jake Gyllenhaal joins director Doug Liman on DreamWorks' Untitled Moon Project, in which Gyllenhaal is dispatched to populate a lunar colony with a super-race of dreamy-eyed pioneers. [Variety]
· NBC Universal is acquiring Oxygen Media, including the Oprahcentric Oxygen network, for $925 million, a piddling sum Winfrey will merely toss on the cash pile occupying much of her 25-acre Santa Barbara backyard. [THR]
· Pablo Escobar is the new Harvey Milk: Oliver Stone is producing his own biopic on the life of Colombia's most lovable drug-cartel kingpin, a project that will try to race into production ahead of the recently announced, competing Killing Pablo feature. [Variety]
· Lisa Kudrow joins the cast of "let's just squeeze in one more job before the strike" flick Hotel for Dogs, joining fellow speedy-paycheck-chasers Don Cheadle and Emma Roberts. [THR]
· Apatow Comedy College alumni Michael Cera and Kat Dennings sign on to star in a film adaptation of the novel Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. [Variety]

Getting To Know Philippe Dauman, Sumner Redstone's Right-Hand Hatchetman

Sunday's LAT provides the world with the fascinating backstory of Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman, the proudly uncool corporate kamikaze responsible for carrying out the public relations suicide missions Sumner Redstone dreams up while partially hypnotized by staring too intently at his collection of exotic fish, such as suing Google for copyright infringement, replacing a wildly popular executive, or blaspheming a Hollywood deity. But more impressive than the French-speaker's childhood language-acquisition skills (he learned English from Saturday morning cartoons!) and stunning promotion from kindergarten to Columbia Law School (there may have been a stop in college we're forgetting, but we don't have time to go back and double-check that part of the bio) is Dauman's uncanny ability to stay in the good graces of his notoriously prickly boss:

Dauman also is suspect because he holds the world record for getting along with Sumner M. Redstone, the crusty autocrat who built Viacom and looms Zeus-like from his hilltop mansion in Beverly Hills as executive chairman and lead shareholder of Viacom and its sister company, CBS Corp.