• Meet your new action hero overlord: Chris Pine. Already fronting the rebooted Star Trek franchise, Pine has signed on to play the Jack Ryan role previously portrayed by Harrison Ford and Alec Baldwin in a new go-around adapting Tom Clancy's series of espionage novels. [Variety]

• For those CBS and Viacom employees who feel each day the burden of the Redstone yoke, you can take heart today; Sumner is now less your owner than he was last week. The octillionaire mogul has been selling off the debt of his holding company, National Amusements. For now, however, NA still retains the controlling interest. [Variety]

• As the world waits for the final outcome of Vivendi/GE/Comcast talks over the fate of NBC Universal, Nikki Finke reports that Comcast wants the deal "done and announced in November." So there. [DHD]

• Curse be damned! ABC has won the competition to be the next network to fail with a sitcom by a former Friends star, locking up rights to the Matthew Perry project. [THR]

• The Wrap reports that Alex Young, Co-President of Production at 20th Century Fox is being moved out of the job and into a producing deal. Young was a Tom Rothman protege who has been in the job since 2007. [The Wrap]

• Always on the lookout for a feel good project, director Gus Van Sant and novelist Bret Easton Ellis have picked up the rights to "The Golden Suicides," Nancy Jo Sales' Vanity Fair article about the deaths of downtown artists Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake. [Variety]

• The creator of the Gilmore Girls is coming to HBO. Exec-Producer Amy Sherman-Palladino has signed a deal to develop a dramedy for the cable network. She described the project as the "story of love, hate, family — and finding the perfect opening line," [THR]

• This is what it's come to in the strange, contorted career of Bill Murray; taking Joe Pesci's leftovers. For those who thought Murray's Zombieland cameo was just a little strange— that he was too big, or had been too big a star for the joke about Woody Harrelson being obsessed with him to completely click — you are right. In an interview with Hitfix, Murray revealed the walk on had been intended for Joe Pesci — with whom the joke would have made a lot more sense — but that Murray took the part after Pesci passed. [Hitfix]

Anderson recruited George Clooney, Meryl Streep, and Bill Murray to voice the characters from Roald Dahl's cherished kids' story. Though it looks a little jerky, there are some lush visuals. Take a look!

Ok, time for some real talk! With Aquatic Life and Darjeeling Anderson's once precious characters became irritating because they lost their spontaneity — whimsy is not a substitute for insight, you guys. But maybe Fantastic Mr. Fox will force Anderson away from the smug hipster trope and we'll be able to fall in love with him again. Unless of course, there is a romantic subplot involving a pan-ethnic possum who shows Mr. Fox the true beauty in an mundane life. Booo!

McG, director of such films as Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle and Terminator Salvation, doing press junkets to promote the release of Terminator Salvation, was talking about Christian Bale's much-publicized freakout during filming and how movie sets can be stressful environments filled with monster egos, when he casually mentioned this little story to a reporter from The Guardian:

McG declines to comment any further than he already has, but points out that movie sound stages can be stressful places where creative battles sometimes become heated. Particularly, it seems, on his sound-stages. "I'm reintroducing the fist-fight to movie sets," he smiles. "I don't think there's been a film I've made where there hasn't been some kind of physical fight. I mean, I've been headbutted by an A-list star. Square in the head. An inch later and my nose would have been obliterated." Will he be revealing any names? "Nah, I probably shouldn't," he smiles. "But it was Bill Murray. Y'know, it's a passionate industry."

Bill Murray?!?! Bill Murray is a lot of things, but he might be the absolute last guy we'd ever expect to throw a headbutt on a director during filming. Do we see him sipping cognac and playfully flirting with younger women in hotel bars, accosting people in the middle of the night in parks, and maybe wandering into a hipster party in Brooklyn and getting stoned with the kids every now and again? Yes, totally! But do we see him as someone who headbutts people at work? No, absolutely not, which all points to one thing—-McG is probably as massive a tool as his name suggests.

More Proof That Bill Murray is Really Cool [Film Drunk]
I Was Headbutted By Bill Murray [The Guardian]

JFP is apparently now an extra-wrangler. For the movies! He was trolling for extras on Craigslist in Atlanta—the posting is now deleted, but luckily it's reproduced right there on his priceless personal website!

DO YOU WANT TO BE IN A MOVIE WITH BILL MURRAY, SISSY SPACEK AND ROBERT DUVALL - THEN COME OUT ON WEDNESDAY & THURSDAY (note dates have been moved back AGAIN due to inclement weather)!
NOTE: to be in this movie, you must use my name - JOHN FITZGERALD PAGE - when you check-in. NO EXCEPTIONS. Leave me your name and the days you can show up at johnfpage@yahoo.com if you plan to come out either or both days.
What: Feature Film - "Get Low" - starring Bill Murray, Sissy Spacek, Robert Duvall http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1194263/
Setting: 1930's
Date: Wednesday 3/4 and Thursday 3/5 (EARLY IN THE MORNING)
When: Call time 3:30 a.m. WOMEN (pre-fit) & MEN (pre-fit) 4 a.m. Pre-fit means you have already been seen by wardrobe.
When: Call time 5 a.m. WOMEN & MEN (not pre-fit). Early birds get closer to the cast!
Scene: outside - a recluse stages his own funeral before he dies and it becomes a huge event with thousands attending.
Temp: (at call time) 35-43 degrees (high) 55-61 degrees- dress appropriately - some heated areas provided. Wear thermals or plain jackets you can take on and off easily.
Food: Complimentary coffee and soup, lunch
Extras: OPEN TO THE PUBLIC! Bring yourself and as many other people as possible (pre-fit or not). We can use you Wednesday (more important day) or Thursday or both days. Email johnfpage@yahoo.com with first & last names and days you plan to attend, then just show up with period clothes, hair & makeup and use JOHN FITZGERALD PAGE at check-in! Find me on set!...

Compensation - No pay, but you get lunch/snacks, a chance for prizes (flat-screen TVs, signed scripts, meet the stars, etc.), to be in a movie and see Bill Murray, Sissy Spacek and Robert Duvall up close!
Perfomance by: STEEL DRIVERS (GRAMMY NOMINATED BAND) WILL BE PERFORMING THROUGHOUT THE DAY

Any Gawker readers in Atlanta had better be there, taking notes. And just FYI, ladies, JFP includes these photos as guidance as to how you might want your hair to look:

Send us full reports! [Read all about JFP here and also here]

She asked aloud “whether there’s unchartered territory for a creature who’s become somewhat debased by this computer generated thing. I haven’t seen ["Alien Vs. Predator"] but I just think if you overexpose the creature, that’s a mistake.”

Weaver confirmed that she and Scott have discussed re-teaming for a fifth film, “Both of us feel a kind of commitment to that woman. He’s as much responsible for who she is as I am.” Then as she opined on the way the alien creature had been ruined in the recent films, Weaver’s comments got especially interesting.

“We’d have to go back to the drawing board on [the alien],” she said. “Ridley said that right away when we first talked about [a fifth film].”

And finally, the quote that’s gotten me mighty curious, “What we’re interested in is taking the character of Ripley and seeing what other science fiction story we can tell about someone who has lived several lives.”

Though purists may blanch at the idea of an alien-less Alien sequel, we agree that there are plenty of stories left for Weaver's indomitable central character. In particular, we're looking forward to RIPL-e, in which Ellen Ripley, tasked with garbage management on a far-off planet, must overcome her longtime distrust of androids when she falls in love with an adorable (and tasty!) iPod.

• Will Signourney Weaver Appear In The ‘Ghostbusters’ Sequel? She’s Got Ideas [MTV]

• Sigourney Weaver And Ridley Scott To Team Up For Alien-Less ‘Alien’ Sequel? [MTV]

Answer: Awkwardly! Without Tina Fey on board or even the much-rumored Sarah Palin-as-Fey meta explosion, SNL's attempt at a presidential debate skit underwhelmed almost as much as the actual debate. Even guest appearances by Bill Murray and Chris Parnell couldn't quite mask the fact that after weeks of mining rich, varied material, SNL returned to its "beat one single joke into the ground over nine minutes" roots. In this case, it was the premise that Tom Brokaw didn't allow the debaters enough time to make interesting points. Laughing yet? Then the entire sketch awaits you below!

• Saturday Night Live [NBC]

Boomp3.com

Comedic legend Bill Murray came up for a quick breath of fresh air and a dash of natural light at the premiere of City of Ember in Manhattan on Tuesday. Murray had taken a cartography course in between films and decided to apply the newly acquired knowledge to the sprawling urban jungle to craft a map of his favorite pizza places and easiest passageways to near subways and cab stands. Murray said, “I’ve been living in the city for quite some time, but never hurts to have the upper hand when running away from somebody you said you’d call back and never did.”

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

*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

Bill Murray is a drug-addicted spousal abuser and serial adulterer who has abandoned his family, according to a scathing divorce filing by his estranged wife.

Jennifer Murray alleges that the Academy Award-nominated actor's "adultery, addiction to marijuana and alcohol, abusive behavior, physical abuse, sexual addictions and frequent abandonment" led her in 2006 to move into a separate South Carolina home with the couple's four children. [...]

Murray contends that the comedian physically abused her on several occasions during their marriage (they were wed in 1997) and that the star hit her in the face during a November 2007 confrontation in her home. During that incident, the May 12 complaint alleges, the 57-year-old performer "told her she was 'lucky he didn't kill her.'"

Certainly, Murray is preceded by a reputation for not always being entirely a joy to be around: Even Scarlett Johansson, who includes him among the "five dads" who taught her everything she knows about how to best employ the Electra complex to one's career advantage, admits that he was perhaps the scariest of all her set-daddies. By the same token, the idiosyncratic actor's behavior has grown even more erratic of late, as manifested by a regrettable international incident in which he mowed down several herring stands on the streets of Stockholm, drunkenly piloting a golf cart he briefly mistook for a mighty Viking vessel. We can only hope the ensuing legal proceedings won't grow even uglier, with yet further accusations of inappropriate conduct involving mentor-hungry co-stars and turf-friendly mobility devices.

• Bill Murray Accused Of Drug, Spouse Abuse [thesmokinggun.com]

”He was wearing his stupid farmer's boots, a lumberjack shirt and looking like the country bumpkin from the Midwest that he really always was. And he left, shaking his head, and I never had to see him again.”

How the two came together in the first place, and what might have scared the poor guy away, after the jump:

According to Scacchi, who you may remember only for her many nude roles in The Red Violin and Heat And Dust (and, obvs, her role as the Ice Queen that tantalized Griffin Mill in The Player), she met Murray at a casting meeting for an undisclosed film in which the two are apparently slated to play each other's love interest. And Scacchi claims Murray openly requested her phone number to prove to the rest of the crew that their on-screen heat would be realistic should they play it out off-screen as well. See Hollywood Ethics 101 for why this is perfectly reasonable. In any case, Murray agreed to meet Greta at her apartment where Greta had invited "an eclectic collection of friends...cooking, playing music, dancing, all completely stoned. He just sat on a sofa, out of his depth." Frankly, we don't care how sexy Scacchi used to look, but we're on Team Murray: that scene is far too 70s for our taste, and we'd leave those faux bohos in the pot-scented dust just like he did.

[Photo Credits: Getty Images]

• BILL MURRAY IN TOO DEEP AT GRETA SCACCHI'S [London Telegraph]

"It wasn't like [Dad 1] and I had so much in common that we could have this great personal relationship. We were at totally different stages in our lives, and I don't think he was necessarily so fascinated by what I was going through. But we were fortunate that we had a lot of chemistry between us. ... At that time, my mom was still coming with me to work. She legally had to be there—thank God she was there!"

"I've been fortunate enough to never be the biggest media sensation. ... If you have somebody waiting outside your house for 32 hours, it doesn't matter how many days you've clocked in on the movie-star meter. You're still a person living your life. I can understand how that must have been for [Dad 2], who's such an icon. I've been fortunate enough to mostly come out unscathed."

"It's been so exciting to get out there and talk to kids—and I say 'kids' meaning my peers—about why I appreciate [Dad 3]. He's confronting health-care issues that affect young people. You know, most of my friends don't have insurance. They're working as photo assistants and stuff like that. These kids on the campaign trail asking questions, they are so well-informed."

"At first it was like, 'What this weird music that your dad listens to?' ... [Dad 4's] songs are very cinematic. I think as a kid I was attracted to that in the same way I loved 'Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite!'—one of my favorite Beatles songs. It really lets a kid's imagination take flight. ... I was this little blonde girl with a baritone singing voice, which at nine was freakish, I'm sure."

"I don't know why relationships between men and women are always pigeon-holed into being some kind of push-and-pull for sexual power. I'm always kind of weirded out when I'm interviewed by people who say, 'Gosh! [Dad 5] must be in love with you.' It's like, 'fucking expand your mind.' We have a great friendship between us and I have such a fondness for him as a person. I can appreciate his quirks."

Seriously! Expand your fucking minds! It's not like anyone here has fetishized or even married women younger than Scarlett. Oh, wait. And come to think of it, she doesn't look anything like Obama. Anyway, happy guessing.

• My Five Dads [Paste]

FUNNY OR DIE INVITES YOU TO PARTICIPATE IN A SPECIAL INTERNET PRESS PREVIEW OF "FCU: FACT CHECKERS UNIT" AN UPCOMING FUNNYORDIE.COM EXCLUSIVE WEB SHORT STARRING BILL MURRAY, THURSDAY, SEPT. 6

We'll spare you the rest of the press release, but there's also a phone interview scheduled with the video's creators for the following day, during which they'll "discuss the web short and their experience working with Bill Murray." Welcome to the age of the inter-junket! Unfortunately, the virtual nature of the two-day event doesn't afford bloggers the opportunity to gorge themselves at a free buffet, bitch about the unfriendliness of the talent, and speculate about whether those clever Funny or Die folks staged Murray's recent drunken golf-cart arrest in Sweden as a masterful publicity stunt, though we suppose these traditional meatspace press tour activities can be simulated through instant messenger and a trip to the fridge. We're sure that by the clip's official debut on Monday, all this pre-release buzz will deliver opening day numbers not seen since the adorably crapulent Pearl first called deadbeat tenant Ferrell a bitch.

• Previously: Bill Murray's Drunken Swedish Golf Cart Joyride Explained! [Defamer]

The police "asked me to come over and they assumed that I was drunk and I explained to them that I was a golfer," Murray told reporters Monday at the Venice Film Festival, where he appeared before the premiere of his new film "The Darjeeling Limited." [...]

"I ended up stopping and dropping people off on the way like a bus. I had about six people in the thing and I dropped them off one at a time and as the last couple were getting out, who wished to be dropped off at a 7-Eleven. ... I didn't know they had 7-Elevens in Stockholm," said Murray, who turns 57 on September 21.

Even though we realize that the outstanding drunk-driving charges probably necessitated this cautious explanation of how Murray came to be cruising downtown Stockholm, we were hoping for a more stirring, defiant statement, perhaps one where the actor detailed how the police showed up just in time to ruin his plan to douse the purloined golf cart in Absolut and set it ablaze in that 7-11 parking lot, thumbing his nose at a country that would deprive visiting Hollywood royalty of the alcohol-drenched good times that are its birthright.

• Bill Murray: I was just giving folks rides home [AP]
• Previously: Bill Murray Busted For Drunken Swedish Golf Cart Joyride [Defamer]

"He refused to blow in the (breath test) instrument, citing American legislation," Holmlund told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "So we applied the old method — a blood test. It will take 14 days before the results are in." [...]

"There were no obvious signs, like when someone is really tipsy," he said.

Holmlund said it wasn't clear where Murray picked up the vehicle, or to whom it belonged.

"It was a golf cart. How it ended up in this predicament I don't know," he said, adding that Murray wasn't facing any theft charges.

It isn't illegal to drive a golf cart in city traffic in Sweden, but Holmlund said it is very unusual.

Even if the blood test turns up positive, the officer speculated that Murray will face fines rather than a prison term, and we're sure their investigation will also eventually turn up the identity of the vehicle's highly amused owner. But credit the legend with knowing the right way to execute a DUI incident: nothing in the police report indicated that he took any hostages, was chasing a cart containing the terrified mother of a caddy he'd just fired in anger, or that he he claimed to be wearing somebody else's golf-pants.

• Bill Murray: Drunken driving in a golf cart? [CNN.com]

· Though pretty straightforward, this video's title, Drunk Bill Murray Almost Fights a Guy, still oversells things a bit: The video's so shaky that it's hard to tell if that's actually Murray, what his level of intoxication might be, or how close to fisticuffs the New Orleans encounter came. Still: Blurry video of a famous guy doing stuff! Probably! That's gotta be worth 41 seconds of your time.
·Brett Ratner's reveals his simple, yet effective, strategy for dealing with paparazzi who want to take pictures of the chicks he's nailing: payoffs.
· We don't care what that e-mail says, we still think that's Zach Gailifianakis in the Comcast "Spider-Man-Obsessed Roommate" commercial.
· Hey, unicorns!

While Murray made no attempt at singing this time, he amazed the revellers by offering to cook and then clean the dirty dishes.

"It was really funny because he was pretty old compared with all the other people there, but he was so relaxed and it was really amusing when he started to wash up," said Miss Stavnef. [...]

"He was joking with me about reheating some leftover pasta and how drunk everyone was. The pasta was probably quite hard to get off the dishes because they had been sitting around."

The 56-year-old actor was in St Andrews for a celebrity golf event but, rather than retire for an early night when last orders were called, he went off to explore the more playful side of the historic city. [...]

[Stavnef] was concerned that there were no clean glasses when she arrived with Murray but she said he was quite happy to drink vodka from a coffee cup.

As news spread around the city that Murray was a surprise guest at a student party, the house became crowded with people wanting to meet the star of Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day.

"The alcohol ran out very quickly when word got round that he was with us," said Agnes Huitfeldt, 22, an economics and finance student.

The party then kicked into gear when Murray regaled them with tales of how, just that day, he'd successfully blown sky-high a gopher that was terrorizing the Scottish course's storied fairways. He then rid the house of a pesky ghost, checked in with the three jumpsuit-clad female spies he supervises, and left for the night to rejoin his submarine and its crew — only to wake up the next day and relive the whole experience all over again, right down to the dry, flaky dishpan hands.

• BILL MURRAY TURNS FICTION INTO FACT [TELEGRAPH.CO.UK]

On behalf of 20th Century Fox, I am pleased to announce that Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties is now being released on June 16th (rather than the original June 23rd date). Below please find a synopsis of the film as well as the official website including trailer, and assets zip. Additionally, there is a really fun promotion on Catster.com in conjunction with the film, so if you have pet-friendly visitors , please encourage them to check it out by adding the link below to your coverage.

We apologize on Fox's behalf for any vacation plans that need to be rescheduled to accommodate this horribly inconvenient last minute shift, and we don't think we're speaking out of turn when we say the studio will be more than happy to refund any expenses incurred for altered plane and hotel reservations.

Also, we are are more than happy encourage our "pet-friendly visitors" to drop by Catster (think StuffOnMyCat.com, but instead of random objects, the kitties are covered in nothing but unselfconscious love), where every view of their Garfield promotion page earns Bill Murray $5,000. He obviously needs the money.

• Give Your Cat the Royal Treatment [Catster.com]