· In what could easily turn out to be the most disappointing '80s redo since Mayim Biyalik's makeover, Girls Just Want to Have Fun -- the 1985 comedy in which Dance TV-addicts Sarah Jessica Parker and Helen Hunt became BFFs before BFFs even had a name. I hope it just picks up where the last one left off, following two gawky, virginal cougars' obsessive quest to make out with Adam Lambert. [Variety]
Next: The Audacity of The Family Guy, Just Car Crashes: The Reality Show, and Paul Verhoeven's psycho surrogate movie.
· Warners has acquired graphic novel Hench for Danny McBride; it's about an ex-jock (surprise!) who starts renting himself as muscle for supervillains like the Red Baroness, the Cosmonaut, and Hellbent. [Variety]
· Seth MacFarlane is submitting The Family Guy in the Emmys general comedy category for the second year in a row, but first year exclusively. (Last year's Star Wars special was allowed to run in both animated and general competitions.) Fox is backing him up on this, and running a grassroots campaign that gives Stewie his own Shepard Fairey "HOPE" poster. Because that hasn't been done before. [Variety]
· ABC has greenlit Crash Course, a sort of Wipeout with driving that pits five teams of couples (siblings, spouses, best friends) on a series of extreme driving challenges (driving on two wheels, in terrible weather, only one gets to control the break), and culminating in the final, titular obstacle track. Contestants just have to sign a short, 478-page legal waiver, and they're good to go! Last one to get The Club plunged laterally through their skull is a rotten egg! [THR]
· Kevin Abbott, a TV vet whose written Roseanne, My Name is Earl, and currently Surviving Suburbia, is suing Fox TV for $1.38 million in withheld fees. He claims his re-upped deal was supposed to contain language allowing for the the possibility of force majeure -- i.e. a God-willed writers' strike. Fox claims that was not part of his contract and shouldn't be paid for dues withheld last year. Hmm... Remember when the WGA was burning effigies of soap writers who dared cross the picket line? I wonder how they'd feel about their members wanting to retroactively get paid for that strike period. Patrick Verrone? Care to weigh in? [THR]
· Paul Verhoeven, the man responsible for some of the Worst Movies We Love More Than Anything, will direct The Surrogate, a thriller for Fox about a couple who discover their hired child-bearer is insane. Sort of The Hand That Rocks That Hand's Own Womb. [THR]