· Paul Thomas Anderson's next film is a period drama in which Philip Seymour Hoffman will play The Master -- a "charismatic intellectual who hatches a faith-based organization that begins to catch on in America in 1952."(But it's NOT the L. Ron Hubbard story.) Universal won't greenlight the film, budgeted at $35 million, until he delivers a finished script, which is basically something they're now required to say in these Tough Economic Times. Now here's the part in the blurb where I put the hacky blogger joke about milkshake-drinking. LOLZ! Priceless! Shazam! [Variety]
Next up, on Ink: Gwynnie's got a song in her heart (and a cleanse in her GOOP).
· Screen Gems's Love Don't Let Me Down -- a Tobey Maguire Production -- has found its cast of country singers: Gwyneth Paltrow, Blind Side crossover/break out Tim McGraw and Leighton Meester. No one knows how to crawl into a song about how your man left you knocked up and battered in the back of a trailer home than Gwyneth and Leighton. Yee-haw! [<a href="
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118012066.html?categoryid=13&cs=1&ref=bd_film">Variety]
· Debbie Liebling, the VP of production at 20th Century Fox, is in negotiations to take over production at Universal Pictures. She got her start at Comedy Central, helping to launch South Park, and went on to specialize in inexpensively made, high-grossing comedies. Universal wants its Hangover. Bring it its Hangover, Debbie. [Variety]
· A dark comic adaptation of The Pied Piper of Hamelin called The Piper has been optioned by Persistent Entertainment, producers of Southland Tales. It's about a bullied teenager who channels the rat-and-child exterminator's spirit ... with terrifying and highly whistleable results. [THR]
· Charles Shyer, whose last film was the ill-fated Alfie remake, will direct BFF, a female buddy comedy about "childhood best friends who reunite years later in Manhattan and discover that one has become successful while the other remains stalled in their small hometown." OMG ROFLMAO already. [THR]