Fox remains confident in its charge that producer Larry Gordon did not fully pay to reclaim the studio's Watchmen rights before shopping them to Universal, Paramount and, finally, Warner Bros., which greenlit the project with Zack Snyder after the success of the director's 300. And while we are no lawyers, having been disbarred months ago for our special brand of vigilante justice, shouldn't this be an open-and-shut case? If the terms are in writing and Warners' only apparent defense is that Fox sat by and waited until the film was finished shooting before raising objections, we sense the judge will have even more specific ideas of how restitution might be achieved. And it will feature numbers with many zeroes left of the decimal point. That Harry Potter bump looks more purposeful every day.

• 'Watchmen' to get its day in court [EW]

What worked for Paul Thomas Anderson the year before seemed to backfire this time. ... Fincher couldn't show one long sequence—the usual practice— because he needed to show the passage of time and the different faces of Button (Brad Pitt), so the concept of the movie would be clear. (Telluride wanted fewer, longer clips, but didn't get them until the eve of the showing.)

The other difference between Button and There Will Be Blood is the difference between a Paramount Vantage indie directed by PTA and a big studio director who has commandeered a major movie star and $150-million in big-Paramount resources. Insiders can't help but speculate on the eventual outcome of the movie. Will it get good reviews and be an Oscar contender? Will it lose a fortune? (Is it Memoirs of a Geisha all over again?) The real folks in Telluride will spread good word in their communities, which was Paramount's intention here. But the fanboys are interested in this movie too, and it may not be for them.

To wit, one Fincher obsessive took a stick to Button's tender skin ("I’m still excited to see the finished product, I’m just a little disappointed. Could it be that the film wasn’t what I expected, or maybe not what I wanted?"), while Fincher himself insisted the preview wasn't about marketing or "positioning" — i.e. situating Brad Pitt's name alongside Viggo Mortensen's in the early Oscar brackets. Which, of course, is where it landed almost instantly upon screening. Hats off.

Meanwhile, in Paul Schrader's Adam Resurrected, Jeff Goldblum drew accolades for portraying, and we quote, "a Berlin cabaret performer who survived a concentration camp by playing a dog for a commandant." And if there is a Juno-esque revelation to emerge literally out of thin air, handicappers had an eye on Slumdog Millionaire, Danny Boyle's chronicle of an Indian slum kid who wins on his country's version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. And why not: Fox Searchlight has a horse in the race every year, and even without a stripper-screenwriter subplot or some ensemble, yellow-bus witchcraft, critics love Boyle, and the studio has spun gold from less-likely sources like Once.

Look for more after the Toronto Film Festival, which begins Thursday and will define the film's trajectory — if Hollywood ever makes it to Canada, that is. Good luck with that!

One of them was that he’d been caught having an affair with his tennis instructor (a woman) and that he was undergoing rehab to save his marriage.

Alas, it isn’t so, says a close friend [editor's note: "alas"?]. Duchovny did not check in because of an extramarital fling. That much the friend is certain of. Even more so: Duchovny’s problem has been longstanding. His wife, Tea Leoni, was aware of it for some time. It had just reached a point where it had to be treated.

I have inferred from my conversation with Duchovny’s friend that this has something to do with an addiction to pornography, probably on the Internet. It’s the sex equivalent of a gambling addiction, where the person is just hopelessly trapped in chat rooms.

...When Duchovny is done with the rehab, I’m also told that he and Tea and their kids will complete their move to Manhattan’s Upper East Side from Hollywood. They will be very welcome here, as Tea is much in demand work-wise. Duchovny will have more "Californication" and plenty of offers. New York doesn’t solve all your problems, but it’s a much more realistic place to live than Los Angeles.

The truth is here, not out there.

If you say so, Rodge! Sounds to us like Duchovny's problem could be better served by a DSL downgrade than by a sudden uptick in falafel and population density, but then again, that might just be our non-"realistic," Left Coast point-of-view talking. Duchovny might find it hard to shake his online persona ("HouseOfDP") no matter which city he chooses to land in, but call us optimists: we want to believe.

• David Duchovny Sex Scandal: No Affair [Fox News]

• Hole In The Wall [Fox]

Things quickly deteriorated from there, alas, but Kassovitz's loss is our gain today as he disowns Babylon A.D. in the most spectacular, career-immolating fashion imaginable:

"It's pure violence and stupidity," he admits. "The movie is supposed to teach us that the education of our children will mean the future of our planet. All the action scenes had a goal: They were supposed to be driven by either a metaphysical point of view or experience for the characters... instead parts of the movie are like a bad episode of 24."

The last stroke, Kassovitz says, was when Fox interfered with the editing of the film, paring it down to a confusing 93 minutes (original reports were that 70 minutes were cut from the film; Kassovitz says the number is closer to 15). ...

""I don't see how people who went through all these amazing blockbusters like The Dark Knight and Iron Man this summer will take it. ... I should have chosen a studio that has guts," he says. "Fox was just trying to get a PG-13 movie. I'm ready to go to war against them, but I can't because they don't give a s—t."

Fox was not available for comment, according to the author, but we don't mind defending the studio on the basis of its clear interest in rich "points of view" belonging to everyone from Manoj Night Shyamalan to Eddie Murphy to Space Chimps — this year alone, in fact, as evidenced by its glamorous run of greeting cards memorializing those perspectives and experiences. Furthermore, if you can't get a metaphysical hard-on watching Jack Bauer clamp jumper cables to terrorist nipples, then maybe it's your point of view that requires more worldly considerations, Matty. We're almost loath to say it, but seriously: Team Fox.

• 'Babylon A.D.' Director Mathieu Kassovitz Describes a Disastrous Production[SciFi Scanner]

“We are turning the heat up on ‘Idol’ this year and are thrilled to welcome [Grammy-nominated songwriter Kara DioGuardi] to the judges’ table,” said creator and executive producer Simon Fuller.

“She is a smart, sassy lady, and one of America's most successful songwriters. We know she will bring a new level of energy and excitement to the show.”

“We had originally intended for AMERICAN IDOL to have four judges,” said executive producer Cecile Frot-Coutaz. “We’ve seen from our international series that having a fourth judge creates a dynamic that benefits both the contestants and the viewers.”

The move comes after a season of diminished performance for the once unstoppable, Taylor Hicks-anointing talent competition. (Soul Patrol! Soul Patrol! That's still a thing, right?) Whether the addition of a telegenic songwriting talent and Randy-Paula catfight deflector provides a relevancy boost to this increasingly corny-seeming franchise remains to be seen. Obviously, she'll need a catchphrase—but sorry, Younger, Prettier Paula: "You are an individual and a shining starrrr annnnnd...*sound of skull hitting glass table*" is already taken.

• Fox Flash

To be fair, the film goes wider later this week, and Focus always has the UK release this fall and whatever slight cult audience accrues for video. So it could be worse — now imagine you're Rainn Wilson.

As we anticipated last Friday, TV viewers' Wilson goodwill isn't exactly multiplex-ready. The Rocker's marketing misfires, non-existent word-of-mouth and release-date follies yielded a $2.8 million, 12th-place opening. We're not in the short-sighted camp that thinks Fox is having the Summer From Hell — not with The Happening and What Happens in Vegas finding very respectable profits overseas — but there really is no positive way to spin this one, at least not for his toplining future. Until further notice, Wilson is Dwight Schrute and the clever bit-parter who has a way with pregnancy-test pitches and other Oscar-winning patois — maybe not in that order, but at least in that zone. Maybe a few scenes in Inglorious Bastards? Our Mondays are too fragile as it is to go through this again.

• Weeken Box Office Results [Box Office Mojo]

• Whore Is A Real Movie Starring Megan Fox And Rumer Willis [Videogum]

First, the runners-up:

No. 10 – Rob & Amber, Survivor
No. 9 – Sara & Grissom, CSI
No. 8 – Ryan & Marissa, The O.C.
No. 7 – Trista & Ryan, The Bachelorette
No. 6 – Kate & Jack, Lost
No. 5 – Billy & Alison, Melrose Place
No. 4 – Clark & Lana, Smallville
No. 3 – Boris & Natasha, The Bullwinkle Show (ed. note: ???)

And the top two, excerpted from TV Guide:

No. 2 – Tom & Lynette, Desperate Housewives: She has him canned from her ad firm, hates mothering and almost cheats on him with a pizza guy. He, in turn, takes it like a tool as penance for lying about his secret kid. Forget Wisteria Lane’s occasional homicides, the real mystery here is why these two aren’t in therapy.

No. 1 – “Gizzie” (George & Izzie), Grey’s Anatomy: First off, could the combo name be any uglier? And secondly, ewww. It was like watching a faded prom queen and her slightly dim-witted brother get it on…at the expense of George’s marriage to Callie.

While we're a little shocked that Boris & Natasha made the list over, say, Hills villains Heidi & Spencer, we can't help but wish TV Guide had extended its expose to include characters from decades long since past. After all, everyone knows that Shirley and the Big Ragu were, like, sooo passé (all the cool kids 'shipped Laverne and Squiggy), and Donna's marriage on The Donna Reed Show? OMG, could she have been more of a Mary Sue?!

• TV Guide

Boomp3.com

In addition to catching an eyeful of Megan Fox upon his return to the Transformers set, Shia LaBeouf also received a very thorough and meticulous ass buffing with an industrial strength feather duster. In the midst of his ass buffing, LaBeouf said, "Michael Bay really knows how to make an actor feel welcomed. At first, it's a weird sensation, but after awhile, it feels like a tiny kitten delightfully romping in a dewy meadow." Although, the first shot of the day was delayed for a couple of moments when the crew realized that LaBeouf enjoyed his buffing a bit too much.

[Photo Credit: X17]

*A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

“Of course we are concerned about the fans; however, any disappointment from the core fans should not be directed toward Fox. What we are doing is seeking to enforce our distribution rights to Watchmen. Legal copyright ownership should not just be swept under the rug and ignored.”

We can appreciate this to a point, of course, but really: What can one's chances be against an opponent who'll sacrifice anything — starting with grammar ("I wont make any difference to [Rupert Murdoch's] bank balance because there are plenty of uninformed sheep out there for his rabidly, right wing, keeping the populous afraid of their neighbours so they'll vote that way, brainwashing agenda, for him to fleece of their hard earned, tax paying cash") — to make his moral stand? Watchmen seems the least of your problems, guys; watch out for those lethal, legendary dangling participles on the way to your cars tonight.

• The 'Watchmen' war: Fanboys furious with Fox [EW]

There was/is a huge Wolverine set being recently used. I'm not even sure which lot it was built on, but the look or mood of the set is, according to a source who was told Hood's view of things, supposed to be on the dark, dinghy and somber side. I only know what I was told, but the basics are that Hood was away from the set for whatever reason (shooting something else, taking a day or two off), and when he returned to the big somber set he was shocked to find that it had been repainted top to bottom on Rothman's orders. The murky-scuzzy vibe was gone, and a brighter and less downish look had taken its place.

Perhaps Rothman has taken his fan letter from Steven Spielberg too much to heart, but a child-friendly Wolverine feels less "X" and more "Y?" Does this mean his bristly greeting of "Bub" will be redubbed "Buddy," or his iconic cigar will be replaced with a pixie stick? C'mon, Tom: Wolvie isn't meant for buoyant musical numbers — or don't you remember what happened last time?

• He Da Boss [Hollywood Elsewhere]

Boomp3.com

Megan "Foxy" Fox gave her ailing Transformers co-star Shia LeBeouf more than eyeful when he returned to work this week. In addition to helping her injured co-star feel better, Fox used the opportunity to settle a bet amongst the crew about whether her pair were both real and spectacular (hint: they are). Fox also added, "If Heigl thinks her girls are fierce, wait until she gets a load of these bad boys."

[Photo Credit: X17]

*A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

Which won't happen (at least we don't think so) but that doesn't make matters that much better. But whatever — we love a good Hollywood blood feud as much as anybody. Follow the jump for a morning-after summary, a few pressing questions and a bit of quick-and-dirty handicapping.

We can start by thanking Larry Gordon for both the vision and the legal gaps that first got Fox (the original studio to sign on for Watchmen), Paramount (the international distributor) and Warner Bros. (the studio that nabbed the film for Snyder as his 300 came together in late 2006) into this imbroglio. Deadline Hollywood Daily yesterday offered a helpful timeline of events that started with Gordon placing Watchmen at Fox in the late '80s and finally reclaiming it in 1994 when the studio nudged it into turnaround: "The 'turnaround notice' gave Lawrence Gordon Productions 'the perpetual right . . . to acquire all of the right, title and interest of Fox [Watchmen] pursuant to the terms and conditions herein provided.' "

And that should have been that; if and/or when Gordon took it elsewhere, he and his new partners cut a check. Alas, it never happened, says Fox, and while Judge Gary Feess didn't rule one way or another Monday, he denied Warners' request to dismiss its rival's claim to the rights that Gordon allegedly never bought back.

But how bad is it? Bad enough for Fox to publicly toe the hard line in stopping Watchmen's opening on March 6, 2009:

"Warner Bros.' production and anticipated release of The Watchmen [sic] motion picture violates 20th Century Fox's long-standing motion picture rights in The Watchmen property," Fox said in a statement. ... "We will be asking the court to enforce Fox's copyright interests in The Watchmen and enjoin the release of the Warner Bros. film and any related Watchmen media that violate our copyright interests in that property."

Yeah, right. Cooler heads will prevail here, especially with Warners and Legendary Pictures about $120 million in (plus at least $150 million in marketing to come, starting with its recent success at Comic-Con) and Fox not wanting to start World War III with an avoidable throat-slashing.

That doesn't mean someone won't bleed, of course — but who? Will Paramount, which itself had Watchmen ready to go before Brad Grey cleaned house in 2005, be edged out of some or all its foreign entitlement? Will Warners cut Fox in on gross, and how much will be enough — especially with a surefire franchise on its hands? David Poland crunched some messy, guessy numbers over at The Hot Blog, but we can't argue with his conclusion: "Don’t expect them to go away for anything less than $25 million. And they will take an amount like that now… because they don’t want to gamble either. 100% of WB’s profit could be $0."

But that's just where our questions begin. Would someone at Warners let us know what's going on in legal? This same thing happened with Dukes of Hazzard four years ago when the studio shelled out more than $17 million to an original producer. We know how boring it can be to do due diligence, but last we checked, it's still a job requirement, especially on 20-year-old projects in turnaround — twice.

Also, how much of Warner Bros.' sudden Harry Potter move to '09 anticipated Feess' decision? If Warners could conceivably lose money on Watchmen after factoring in Paramount and Fox's cuts, and its only summer tentpole, Terminator 4, is just something it's distributing for someone else, then Harry's switch may not be a matter of money it doesn't need in '08 but rather a cushion for money it planned to lose in '09.

That may be the most telling sign of its strategy to come — that and the spike in empty liquor bottles recycled on the lot this morning. And at least Fox finally got the really big summer hit it needed. Kudos, gang, you earned it.

• Warner's 'Watchmen' In Legal Peril... [DHD]

Boomp3.com

Taking a break from his campaign to play the Riddler in the next Batman film, Brian Austin Green went to lunch with his gal pal, Megan Fox. During the meal, Green wondered why the Transformers star was lugging around a giant backpack with her instead of her purse. Fox then confessed that the recent earthquakes made her afraid of losing her most valuable possessions, so now she's started carrying them around with her. She then proceeded to list out the contents of the backpack to a shocked Brian Austin Green. It includes: a makeup bag, two designer sweat suits, flip flops, books on Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield, a laptop, Michael Bay's ego, a ton of scripts, running shoes, an assistant, four different sets of sunglasses, two Blackberry batteries, a lead paper weight, Mad Men season one on DVD and some tadpoles she caught down by the river. Green was rather impressed by Fox's ability to carry on all that weight, but was still a wee bit weirded out by the backpack.

[Photo Credit: INF Daily]

*A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

• WATCH VIDEO

The guy saw we were anxious but said "WAIT!!! Megan Fox is topless!!!" Well that sold my buddies. Nonetheless not only *SPOILER ALERT* did we not see her topless but the movie was indeed quite awful.

...Megan wasn't horrifyingly bad but neither was she good. There was a scene where it's a real big close up of her kissing another chick (YES!!!!). The men in the audience hooted and cheered even though it was completely random and the director put it in as a a kind of apology for not giving up the real goods (no Megan Fox boobage).

Though we're saddened that we may never see a topless Megan Fox spout Cody-isms like, "You're totally jello! You're lime green jello and you can't even admit it," perhaps it's all for the best. The Jennifer's Body set is only big enough for one stripper, and it's the one with the Oscar.

• 1st Jen's Body review! [JoBlo]

• WATCH VIDEO

• Must Watch: Megan Fox’s NC-17 Mother Teresa Biopic Trailer [Slashfilm]

boomp3.com

Before embarking on a sailing expedition to U2 front man Bono's house, silver fox George Clooney went over all the safety procedures for the yacht with his passengers. After his presentation — which included a PowerPoint slideshow explaining which side is port and which is starboard — Clooney wore a life preserver until the seafaring vessel docked at Bono's. While some of his passengers laughed at him, The Cloonester stood firm, largely because his aunt Rosemary always told him that he should be a leader, not a follower.

[Photo Credit: X17]

*A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

Two dancers in the Top 4 of Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance collapsed at rehearsals Saturday and had to be rushed by ambulance to nearby Cedars Sinai Hospital–just days before the reality series season finale.

“Two went in [Saturday] and so there was no more rehearsals, and today [Sunday] all the rehearsals were called off,” ballroom expert and SYTYCD judge Mary Murphy confirmed to PEOPLE at Fox’s 2008 Teen Choice Awards in L.A. on Sunday. “The kids are completely dehydrated – two of them. I’m sure they’re doing a lot of blood work to see if there’s anything else.”

Our hearts and prayers go out to these hard-working young hoofers, for whom winning would mean just about everything—in Twitch's case, perhaps even allowing the talented hip-hop dancer inside a Broadway theater, instead of just spinning around on a piece of cardboard outside one, as Lythgoe once so aptly put it. We'd hate to see their desperate need to board the Hot Tamale Train result in a one-way ticket on the Danced-To-Death Express.

• Two of the Top 4 SYTYCD Contestants Hospitalized [People]

WHAT'S NEW: The primary competition for The Dark Knight's second weekend will be... itself. You have to feel for Sony and Fox for dropping Step Brothers and X-Files: I Want to Believe opposite History's Greatest Film, but that's just the kind of extraordinary season it's been. Those films will perform decently enough, though — roughly $30 million for the Judd Apatow-produced Ferrell/Reilly comedy, $21 million for the sci-fi franchise adaptation — which is another bummer for Fox, which has only its overachieving The Happening to show for a long, lean summer at the box office.

Also opening this weekend are the concert/protest film CSNY: Deja Vu; the oversexed '60s groupie chronicle Eight Miles High; Nanette Burstein's controversial pseudo-doc American Teen; the small-town gardener doc (seriously) A Man Called Pearl; and Minnie Driver's middling psychological drama Take.

THE BIG LOSER: Not so much a "loser" as a handicapping interest of ours, Christian Bale's reported mum-thumping exploits — however blown out of proportion the actually are — could drop The Dark Knight a few percentage points more than it otherwise would have. But even if plunges by 50% (which it won't), it'll still nab $80 million, so again, save your pity for Fox.

THE UNDERDOG: When news hit in 2006 that director Julian Jarrold (Kinky Boots, Becoming Jane) was taking on an adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited, skeptics seemed less anxious about a perversion of the author's elegant, class-crash tragedy than how the film would stand up to the epochal 1981 miniseries adaptation. We don't have time or space to even touch that, but it hardly seems to matter: Jarrold's Brideshead bites deep into the love triangle between middle-class Charles Ryder and the Catholic-burdened Flyte siblings Julia and Sebastian, aided by a cast of young British talent led by Hayley Atwell, Ben Whishaw and the extraordinary Matthew Goode (The Lookout, Match Point). Emma Thompson drops in as well for a stirring matron act, but it's Jarrold's scope and Goode's tone harmonizing so dynamically here that you almost can't imagine this story ever required nine hours to tell.

FOR SHUT-INS: Among this week's new DVD's are the Gen-Y card-counting drama 21; the nifty Famke Janssen pool-shark indie Turn the River; the taut enviro-horror sleeper The Last Winter; and, at last, complete series collection of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's Spaced.

So is this your week to catch up on The Dark Knight? Or do you, as Fox so desperately hopes, want to believe? Can Step Brothers actually have more gags than those in its trailer? Go ahead — call your shots now before the August doldrums come to claim us all.

No shit — with the exception of CHUD editor Devin Faraci's tasteful incest-joke interlude, Fox and Co. are making out brilliantly with MTV, the LA Times and others among the "23 key journalists and bloggers" handpicked to fellate Ember to an early, rousing throb. And nobody is more grateful than the filmmakers, who think unquestionably highly of Ember and its audience:

"The goal with something like this (event) is to create special awareness for the film. It needs to be nurtured," said Kenan, who admitted he was nervous about how his film clips would play amid the jostling of the train. "In an enormous hall with people dressed up like Klingons, (a film like this) can sort of fall on the floor."

Producer Gary Goetzman (Mamma Mia!) also made the coastal rail trek, marking his first Comic-Con outing.

"My films don't usually appeal to this audience," said Goetzman, who produced such nonfanboy fare as Charlie Wilson's War and My Big Fat Greek Wedding. "But this a great opportunity to spread the word on City of Ember, which should appeal to this demographic."

So, to recap: It won't make you forget about Star Trek, but if you like to mouthbreathe, then you'll LOVE City of Ember. All aboard!

• 'City of Ember' train heads to con [Variety]

According to Fox News, Fox blames her recent dramatic weight loss on a role in Jennifer's Body, a comedic horror film penned by bloggy-inclined Oscar winner Diablo Cody in which Fox plays a "possessed cheerleader." But master fauxter Bay, demanding as ever, has forced Fox to stuff herself silly with late night binges in order to bulk up for Transformers 2: More Shit Blows Up! And as for poor Anne Hathaway? Not only has she allegedly dropped almost 30 pounds in the few weeks since thieving ex-boyfriend Rafaello Follieri finally got nailed, but she's also said to be "throwing herself" into work on Bride Wars, that glee-filled set where disguising her hatred for co-star Kate Hudson has become close to impossible. But hey, at least now Anne can come out the winner in those infamous skirt size comparisons she and Hudson indulge in every time the cameras stop rolling!

[Photo credits: X17, Wireimage, Getty]

• SCARY SKINNY MEGAN FOX STOPPED EATING, FORCED TO GAIN WEIGHT [Fox News]
• HEARTBROKEN ANNE HATHAWAY DROPS 'TWO STONE' AFTER SPLIT FROM JAILED BUSINESSMAN [Daily Mail]

First came Rove, who, with new Fox News colleague Chris Wallace, sought to defend the appropriateness of his hiring as an election-season commentator after he recently refused to testify to the House Judiciary Committee. "It is not between me and Congress; I have not asserted any personal privilege," Rove said. "It's between the White house and Congress." A few hours later came MacFarlane, who fell back on the quintessentially good taste we've come to expect:

"Is this where Karl Rove sat? Because I don't want to get AIDS."

That's Seth MacFarlane, startin' things off classy. Of the hundreds of people that will have taken a turn on the Beverly Hilton ballroom stage by the end of the Television Critics Association's semi-annual press tour, the Family Guy creator is probably the only one who could come within 30 nautical miles of pulling that off that joke. It's interesting the things one can get away with saying once people have a certain expectation of your personality.

Funny — we'd say the same thing about Rove. Tell you what, TCA: Bring these guys back every six months and we'll order a stay of press-tour execution.That is television worth watching.

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

• Article Name [Source]
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We've already elaborated on why we think this is, but Fox chieftain/upwardly mobile TV host Tom Rothman unwittingly proffered his own opinion on the matter last year in a chat with Goldstein:

Fox's reluctance to promote the film's sci-fi nature is actually in keeping with studio Co-Chairman Tom Rothman's long-held belief that sci-fi films and films set in the future are box-office poison. In 2006, the studio had Ben Stiller, Jim Carrey and filmmaker Jay Roach all signed up to do a big comedy called Used Guys, but got cold feet, killing the project.

Why? Rothman thought it was too expensive. But more important, the studio chief was worried about the subject matter—it was a sci-fi comedy about men living in a women-ruled world. Not long after the project was axed, when I was having lunch with Rothman, I asked him why he was so adamant about dumping the film. He threw a question right back at me. "Can you name one sci-fi comedy that's ever made any money?" When I couldn't come up with an answer, he said, triumphantly: "See!" (I was halfway home before I thought of the perfect comeback: Men in Black.)

First of all: Tom. Seriously. When are you going to invite us to lunch? We know you probably didn't see the whole "Goldstein blogs" thing coming either, but still. What's your Friday look like? Second: Actually, we have no second. Have we mentioned that nobody cares about Eddie Murphy? Sucks for Paramount, as Goldstein mentions, which has two Murphy vehicles (A Thousand Words and NowhereLand) on the way this fall. Alas, we don't make the rules. But we can make the reservations — call us, Tom!

• No one wanted to 'Meet Dave' [The Big Picture]

In another twist to the development model — as a way to boost the creativity of comedy writers — Fox is scrapping the decades-old ritual of creators going to the network executives' offices to pitch their ideas.

"We're not going to take most of our comedy pitches in our office," Reilly said. "We're going to go out and meet the writers on their own turf, and that could be at a restaurant (or) their house, anything that gets it out of a sterile environment."

The network also will be offering comedy writers a little money to go and film their ideas, making the footage a part of the pitch.

"I feel like right now there is an opportunity for young voices to come up," Reilly said.

This, of course, is an unbelievable opportunity for green writers to sprout up from the scorched earth of the WGA strike. But while Reilly's idea of "pitching outside the box" might be limited to listening intently to the outline of a family-in-space sitcom at the Century City food court, we'd encourage you to maximize the site-specific nature of your meeting—say, by having Reilly and the gang join you for a midnight tour of Hollywood Forever, where the spooky mood will be perfectly set to pitch Zombie Accountants and its hilarious tagline, "Braaaains....And refunds!"

• Fox divides development cycle [THR]

But the knives are out anyway, with at least one impassioned plea calling for Murphy's retirement and another damning rundown of 50 not-impressive films that had higher-grossing opening weekends than Meet Dave (which even our lowball estimate last Friday waaaay overshot). But the scope of the crash-and-burn — not to mention the relative quietude of the backlash — suggests a less-controversial denouement: Nobody cares about Eddie Murphy.

Which isn't to say Murphy is irrelevant. They're different phenomena. He's less than two years removed from his Oscar-nominated performance in Dreamgirls — a performance for which he was a 50-50 shot right up to the point when Rachel Weisz opened the envelope. And you don't need us to revive the rap that some argue kept him off the stage: A surly, studio-hating, tranny-whore-patronizing, Norbit-starring, paycheck-cashing boor. But one who, as junkie bandleader James "Thunder" Early, restored older viewers' faith in Murphy as a dynamic screen actor.

The fat suits and multiple personalities he'd adopted since Coming to America (bludgeoning the form to death in the Nutty Professor films and eventually Norbit) called greater attention to the range of his early comic work. As a throwback to Murphy's predatory live act — on TV, in concert and in movies — it was that much easier to see what culture had lost. It was even easier to see what replaced it: A crowd-pleaser for hire in an era when crowd-pleasers no longer transcend media. There can only be so many, and they can only last so long.

Considering Murphy's big-screen longevity — 26 years this December — his downturn signals anything but irrelevance. More than any recent bust by Myers or Jim Carrey, Meet Dave's disastrous showing owes less to Murphy's presence than to Fox's miscalculation of what that presence means. This is important. The half of the so-called marketing quadrants that made Norbit a hit — men and women under 25 — weren't there to see Eddie Murphy. They were there for the Trick — the concept, the execution, the ease of it all, however crude, stupid and condescending. Basically, they were there for the movie part of it. They weren't yet born when Murphy was Murphy; they didn't know any mighty had fallen, nor from how far up.

Fox counted on that perspective, however, in foisting "Eddie Murphy in Eddie Murphy in Meet Dave" — even if Murphy was too far gone for our liking, he had proven reliable enough for a few of the studio's recent family romps. Right? Doctor Doolittle? Right? Maybe our kids would dig it, while we barely tolerated it for their sake, and, by summer dog-days extension, for our own.

Except "our" kids don't care. They've got better things to do. And we don't care that they don't care. And we don't care that the millions of others who don't care (their numbers reflect indirectly in Meet Dave's box-office trough) don't care either. All we feel is sort of a relief at no longer having to pretend to care — no more calling for Murphy's head or lamenting his choices. That it should happen to such a household name reinforces only its novelty, not its unlikelihood; actors are forgotten and disused all the time. Eddie Murphy's indelibility is his only entitlement; he's achieved that much, Oscar losses and all.

His value, though? His very place? Gone. And this is us, shrugging.

5. Back To The Future: What to do when you're on a DeLorean-powered trip back in the 50s and you need a master plan to make sure your teenage parents fall magically in love so you can, you know, exist and stuff? Why, plan an Enchantment Under The Sea dance of course! Technically not a prom per se, but Marty McFly's artfully designed gymnasium paired with Lea Thompson's updo sure made it look like one. Our favorite moment is above, after the Biff-as-recurring-obstacle-laden plan finally works, and Michael J. Fox rocks out like a regular Danny Zuko to "Johnny B. Goode" because the crowd calls for something that "really cooks."

4. Carrie: Oh dear. Nightmares much? After only one viewing of the DePalma classic at what was probably a far too early age, we still feel the instinctive need to run far, far away from whatever photo or television suddenly shows Sissy Spacek.

3. Pretty In Pink: Confession time. However ridiculously unrealistic it is when the uppity Andrew McCarthy boldly tells poufy-shouldered Molly Ringwald that he loves her, and as much pity we feel for the Right One that is adorable Duckie, we still sorta kinda need a tissue (just one!) whenever we watch this scene. Sappiness aside, any movie featuring James Spader in his trademark 80s sad snob role is a classic in our book.

2. Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Both Kristy Swanson and Luke Perry haven't exactly seen their career trajectories blow up since this 1992 gem, but at their height looks-wise, watching them battle vampires using things like wooden stakes, stiletto heels and motorcycles is always a fun ride. And who can resist Paul Reubens in what might be the best proof of Pee Wee's comedic abilities?

1. Jawbreaker: Simply. The. Best. The tiara that could double as a weapon. The slow-motion ascent to the stage. Rebecca Gayheart mouthing "Eat Shit." Rose McGowan's gradual death via flower massacre. An epic journey from queen bee to exiled Heathers-like outcast, all set to the Donnas' "Rock & Roll Machine" and Frank Sinatra. Genius

• NY TIMES TAKES MIRAMAX TO 'PROM' [Var]

boomp3.com

In preparations for a potential SAG strike, popular actress Megan Fox has begun to explore other avenues of interest. For instance, she thought she might be able to start her own business. Fox said, "So many people have told me that I remind them of that girl from high school that they either couldn't get a date with or that I'm, like, that girl who was really mean to them in English class. You know, the one with all of jokes that left scars that didn't heal until well after college. Maybe even graduate school. So, I thought why not help people get on with their life?" Fox's initial plan for the business would involve recreating those traumatic moments, but with positive outcomes the second time around including carefully constructed comebacks and dinner dates at a local Applebees.

[Photo Credit: INF Daily]

*A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

But these days, it seems, you can't even throw an empty highball glass (or a full one, for that matter, which is way more fun) without hitting some dork fucking around on a computer:

The networks no longer cover anyone's travel and lodging, and the sessions too often devolve into a two-pronged affair: those who are too consumed with their live-blogging to participate in an intelligent discourse and those repping lightweight blogs whose queries are of the trivial, "Have you always been so hot?" variety.

With several major newspapers refusing to send anyone to TCA because of the expense, the registered attendees now feature the likes of BuddyTV.com, Bullz-Eye.com, AfterElton.com, GirlPower.com and Visimag.com. Given the precarious state of print journalism, we're seeing a rapid shift to the online world, and its impact on the quality of TCA attendance — and indeed, its newsworthiness — has grown exponentially.

Thus, Richmond concludes, the end of TCA press tours as we know them and, perhaps, the end of the events altogether: "TCA has made it tough to differentiate a media event from a straight-out promotional tool. ... Given the gathering's longtime value as a setting for the vigorous exchange of ideas and a means for keeping the networks honest, it's a sad day indeed." But honest about what? The quality of steroids on American Gladiators? The temperature of the soul-deadening vacuum where they shoot The Moment of Truth? What ideas are left to exchange, and who wants to spend two-and-a-half swimming in that briny pit? Anyway, the dream is dead — we'll probably never even watch TV again. Thanks for nothing, Ray.

• TCA press tour begins as labor dispute looms [THR]

[A]fter 16 episodes of Fox Legacy, the Fox Movie Channel show that Mr. Rothman hosts, [Fox scion Richard] Zanuck and other naysayers are backtracking. The jocular Mr. Rothman has developed a cult following for his historical monologues and self-deprecating style. He gets fan mail — no less a viewer than Steven Spielberg recently dropped him a note — and more episodes are on order.

Fox Movie Channel, which is not part of Mr. Rothman's oversight, has lately been campaigning for an Emmy nomination for its new star. "The astounding thing for me, and I did find it truly astounding, is that he actually pulls this off," Mr. Zanuck said.

Indeed, we hope Rothman's triumph influences a new generation of front-office stars — say, Ben Silverman doing sideline reporting from women's swimming events at the upcoming Olympics or Jeff Robinov surveying the cutthroat reality environs of Survivor: Warner Bros. from afar. Or, in a perfect world, The Harvey Weinstein Garbage Hour, featuring an all-star line-up of contestants competing for one returned call from voicemails left for the mogul as far back as 2006. We'd watch it.

• Rare Hollywood Type: Camera-Ready Executive [NYT]