Rubbing The Crystal Ball: Movieline Predicts the Hollywood Year Ahead

· Eat Pray Love Complicate Julia

Following stronger than expected business for Eat Pray Love, the Julia Roberts-starring adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert's bestselling memoir about her continent-spanning journey of self-discovery, eminently bankable lady-of-a-certain-age-flick auteurs Nancy Meyers and Nora Ephron -- buoyed by over $200 million in domestic receipts between them in 2009 -- will be offered huge paydays to rush competing projects before the cameras. Sometime in early 2011, we'll discover which story about a 50-something woman who seemingly has it all, but then unexpectedly abandons her high-end bakery/catering business/interior decorating firm and unfulfilling marriage to crisscross the globe in search of a toe-curling erotic reawakening, wins the race to the big screen and earns as its prize the disposable income of their oft-neglected target audience.

· Tyler Perry Storms The Mainstream

Fed up with Hollywood executives who are more than happy to cash the massive checks generated by his low-budget, high-grossing urban fare, but who are still reluctant to give him a crack at a tentpole property, actor/writer/director/mogul Tyler Perry will finally wield his considerable clout to take on a blockbuster project commensurate with his box office reliability. Though the industry will gasp with shock following the announcement of Tyler Perry's Why Did I Accept This Impossible Mission?, the long-gestating sequel to M:I3 will continue its recent momentum and hit the fast-track with Perry's weight behind it, and he and Tom Cruise will quickly get to work on tailoring the script for this latest installment of the franchise. Despite starting off this bold collaboration with the best of intentions, a falling out between visionary director and opinionated star proves inevitable, and Perry and Cruise part ways following Cruise's refusal to play master-of-disguise superspy Ethan Hunt in full grandma drag for the first act of the film. In the weeks following the project's implosion, Perry's name will briefly be attached to a proposed reimagining of 1993's Demolition Man, but nothing ever comes of yet another ill-fated association.

· The Hitman Whacked

In a secret Monday morning meeting necessitated by the disastrous $8 million opening of Ashton Kutcher's Killers in early June, the heads of all the major studios unanimously agree to discontinue any hitman-related action-comedies they have in their developmental pipelines, agreeing that the once-vibrant genre -- one that even somehow survived The Whole Ten Yards -- has been delivered a fatal double-tap to the back of the skull by its lightweight, Twitter-happy star. After laying the genre to rest (don't worry--eventually someone will break the pact and give Matt Damon a shot at resurrecting it), they'll all retreat to a private screening room for a double feature of Grosse Pointe Blank and Mr. and Mrs. Smith, lamenting the fateful phone call with Kutcher's agent in which the crafty rep "unintentionally" misrepresented his client's obsession with Hitman: Blood Money on his Xbox 360 as a secret year shadowing the Mossad's deadliest fixer.

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