Fox announced today that is snuffing out the brief candle of Dollhouse, Whedon's latest series starring Eliza Dushku as a secret agent whose memory is deleted after each of her missions.

The launch of a new Whedon show is treated in nerddom with the pomp and ceremony of a royal wedding and the build-up to Dollhouse's launch seemed a year long extravaganza of set visits, plot leaks and junketeering. But when Dollhouse finally reached the airwaves, it met very mixed reviews and stumbled to find an audience. Grudgingly, Fox brought it back for a second season, but put it on in a doomed Friday night slot.

The life of a Whedon show is only really a throat-clearing prelude to its afterlife in which the failed show is converted into a modern classic. Whedon's last show, for instance, Firefly was on the air for a mere 14 episodes from 2002 - 2003, but that was enough to fuel a big screen adaptation and eternal worship as the platonic ideal in swashbuckling sci-fi dramas.

But first must come the backlash and out there across the internet can be heard the sound a million geeks posting calls to the barricades to protest Fox's treachery, proving to them once again that commerce is the enemy of art and that something as special as Dollhouse is too good to live in such an imperfect world.

And for Eliza Dushku, now that the burden of actually filming is behind her, she can move on to the far more satisfying journey of spending the rest of her decades on the planet touring hotel convention facilities and taking the podium to answer questions about the exact meaning of that look she shot her co-star in episode seven.

• The dream has ended for Shrek: The Musical. The stage adaptation of the cartoon which attempted to change the Great White Way forever with this revolutionary classy dramatic rendition of a farting contest (we're not kidding, watch the clip), finally accepted the call of gravity just under a year after its debut. [Variety]

• The immediate fate of Roman Polanski is unclear today. After reports earlier this week that he would not fight extradition to the US, today the picture is muddier, with his legal team apparently hotly debating the question. [Hollywood Reporter]

• This Is It, the documentary based on what would have been Michael Jackson's concert series, is headed for a big opening, with 1600 of its showings already sold out. [NY Times]

• David Fincher has signed on to produce a TV series based on the British political thriller House of Cards. The novels which were adopted into a classic trilogy of mini-series by the BBC a decade ago portray the rise and fall of a ruthless British Prime Minister. [Hollywood Reporter]

• Signaling to the world's geek community that it is time to hurry up and say their last goodbyes, Fox has announced it is pulling Joss Whedon's Dollhouse from its November sweeps schedule. [Hitfix]

• Technicolor has finally taken its place on the bandwagon to shove 3D - and its accompanying higher ticket prices - down the world's throat, announcing it has found a solution that will allow non-digital equipped movie houses a conventional means of projecting 3D. [Variety]

Dollhouse, an Eliza Dushku-starrer about people reprogrammed with new personalities to complete tasks and fulfill wishes, earned about 4.7 million viewers and a low 2.0 share of adults 18-49 on Friday. It's not surprising that the show fared badly. Friday night is a veritable elephant graveyard of doomed and scuttled series and Whedon the Show Creator has never really had large numbers behind him. Critically-lauded cult status, yes. Bochco or even Kelley-sized ratings? Nay. We'll have to wait and see how long Fox soldiers on with D-house—it might depend (in very small part) on the rabidity of devoted Whedonphiles.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, another nerd show I sorta liked, has been swan diving for months. Last year it was television's highest-rated new series of the strike-plagued season. On Friday it garnered just 3.7 million viewers. Tough for a show that just got moved from a far more lucrative Monday night frame.

So Fox's years-long attempt to capitalize on the once-glorious sci-fi success of The X-Files (which started off on Fridays before moving to Sunday nights) continues to fail. Their big J.J. Abrams show Fringe has stumbled, and now these two loud misfires. Thank god for the otherworldly alien beep-boops of American Idol's Paula Abdul. Otherwise the network would seem terrestrial.

[THR]

Fox originally released some NSFW-ish promo pics of Dushku this past month, but brand-new pictures that have leaked definitely put the Maxim in "This exiled-to-Friday show may only be able to hit a 1.5 rating, maximum." Perhaps some nude Nathan Fillion photoshoots could have saved Whedon's last Friday sci-fi offering, Firefly; too bad we'll never now know.

• Eliza Dushku - Dollhouse Promos x29LQ [Superior Pics]

— Joss Whedon's "Dollhouse" is going to air on low-rated Fridays. The series was originally scheduled to air with "24" on Mondays. Instead, "House" will open the night, followed by "24."

— "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" is also moving to Friday and will serve as lead-in to "Dollhouse."

Ruh-roh! As if to drive the bad news home, Fox has set Dollhouse's premiere date for Friday the 13th of February. Whedon's Firefly famously tanked when Fox scheduled it on Fridays, so perhaps those "Save Dollhouse" campaigns that sprung up when the series was first announced weren't so premature after all. Nerds, commence your letter writing campaigns; Fox, we hope you're prepared to be besieged with truckloads of desperate, Dollhouse-saving Bratz dolls.

• Fox announces midseason schedule shocker: 'Dollhouse' and 'Terminator' on Fridays [THR]

Kit Kittredge: An American Girl has no sex and not much of a city.

But this G-rated movie adventure is shaping up as Hollywood's next serious bid for female viewers, some of whom showed their power by pushing the R-rated comedy Sex and the City to surprisingly strong first-weekend ticket sales of more than $57 million two weeks ago. ...

[American Girl]'s mail-order catalog, a primary engine for sales, has a blurb promoting the movie on its May cover. Cities with American Girl retail outlets — New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and suburban Atlanta — will get to see the movie early, beginning on June 20. That first round is being helped along on the Web with Kit's movie blog and, at the Grove shopping mall in Los Angeles, with the giveaway of "Kit's Home on Abbott Place," an elaborate playhouse built by Pardee Homes as part of a benefit for the homeless.

The homeless angle! Why didn't Speed Racer think of that? That's hardly it, though; there's the in-store, mother-daughter dining parties and the dynamic approach to the film's G rating, featuring young Kit's (Abigail Breslin) Depression-era spunkiness and "doubts" about her father, played by Chris O'Donnell, upon learning he once voluntarily portrayed Robin in a Joel Schumacher film. WB brass, meanwhile, at least one high-ranking member of which has gone on record suggesting marketing is secondary to the movies it supports, are insisting today that the experimental "poster defacement" phase of its Get Smart campaign is coming along exactly as planned. We can only wonder how Picturehouse would have done it.

• More Girls, Little Ones, Try to Take Back the Multiplex [NYT]