· The inevitable live-action/CGI adaptation of Yogi Bear took a major step forward Thursday as Dan Aykroyd and Justin Timberlake closed in on deals to voice the title character and his sidekick Boo-Boo. Anna Faris is also on the hook to play a documentary filmmaker who chronicles their natural habitat in Jellystone Park, thus offering a much-needed, more authentic ursine counterpoint to the grocery-shopping grizzlies recently promised by Shawn Levy's own Berenstain Bears. [Variety]
Bradley Cooper goes a drug too far, J.J. Abrams considers returning to pilot school, and more Hollywood Ink after the jump.
· Bradley Cooper will follow The A-Team with the lead role in the thriller Dark Fields, in which he'll star as a down-and-out writer in New York City whose life and creativity turn around with the aid of a new, brain-powering designer drug. But its use draws mysterious forces to hunt him down -- a fairly common pharmaceutical side-effect that held up more FDA approvals than you might think over the years. [Variety]
· J.J. Abrams has reportedly expressed an interest in directing the pilot of Undercovers, his new series currently in development at NBC. Knowing what a phenomenal ratings boost that might be for the flailing network, execs are likely to veto the move as soon as possible. [THR]
· Director Stephen Frears may reunite with his High Fidelity screenwriter D.V. DeVincentis for Lay the Favorite, based on a comic memoir about middle-aged math geeks who team up to game the system in Las Vegas. [THR]
· Isla Fisher has piled another option on to the projects she's developing at Universal: Desperados, about a group of women who seek to intercept an angry e-mail Fisher's character sends to her lover, who happens to be comatose in Mexico. Like everything else including a small cluster of friends on a quest, it is described as being in the vein of The Hangover. Of course. [THR]