Meanwhile, another prominent, if less lauded, Hollywood star and ardent wrestling fan has become a very different kind of WWE casualty. Finding himself with some free time on his hands ever since Delgo failed to make him the toast of the CGI V.O. artist community, Freddie Prinze Jr. took Vince McMahon up on an offer to join the SmackDown creative team.

Prinze left the post last week, and the rumor was that he was let go for leaking plot spoilers online. Not so, according to this weirdly written report from wrestling trade site 24wrestling.com:

There has been speculation among WWE staffers that Freddie Prinze Jr. was one of the creative writers leaking WWE information. However, the official reason Prinze left WWE because of the demanding schedule, which is one of the main reasons other writers have departed from the company.

We may never truly know whether Prinze's midlife career change was cut short because he released the name of Jeff Hardy's mystery attacker (GIANT SPOILER ALERT: It was Christian!), or because the Scooby Doo 2 - Monsters Unleashed star could never quite hack the rigors of devising intricate storylines for McMahon's chemically enhanced army of face-sitting leotard-warriors. Either way, there's no denying the professional sport has lost one of its great ringwriters. Keep plugging away, Freddie. We need voices like yours on the mats.

• Backstage News On Prinze Leaving: Was He The Leak? [24wrestling.com]

Delgo's $916,000 gross is the lowest ever by a film that opened on more than 2,000 screens — 2,160 to be exact. Its $424 per-theater average means that some showings of the animated sci-fi fantasy in more competitive markets likely played to audiences of fewer than five people at a time. Last Friday's Defamer Attractions column foresaw $3.2 million for the movie, based on general tracking data and the probability that distributor Freestyle Releasing could at least break seven figures with a voice cast including Freddie Prinze Jr., Jennifer Love Hewitt, Val Kilmer, Burt Reynolds, Malcolm McDowell, Chris Kattan, Kelly Ripa, Michael Clarke Duncan, and even posthumous work by Anne Bancroft.

But one cannot attribute a bomb of this magnitude to marketing and promotional failures alone. What really happened? Your theories are more than welcome below, but we think we may have traced the source to this uniquely unappetizing publicity still that will nevertheless look great on the Flopz™ Web site. Anyone got a better idea?

• Delgo [Box Office Mojo]

Let's get one thing straight: Just because George Lopez and Freddie Prinze Jr. are Latino men with their own sitcoms on ABC, and their shows just happen to be scheduled consecutively on Wednesday nights, doesn't mean there's a new "Latin hour" on prime-time television. [...]

"Shows should just be able to be shows without hyphenating their lead characters," Lopez said. "[With] us, they feel like they need to somehow label it to say, 'All right, this is what you're going to be watching, so are you sure you want to watch?' But they don't do it to people who are Jewish or African American. Because we have the muscle but we need the voice to say you can't do that to us. Just watch because you think the shows are funny. Don't watch because we're a couple of Latino guys." [...]

McPherson has joked that instead of the "Latin hour," the pairing of the two sitcoms should be called "The Bruce Helford Hour" since the producer runs both shows.

And in three weeks, after Freddie's Nielsen mercy-killing, they can just call the Wednesday night period "The George Lopez Show and According To Jim Rerun Hour." It's kind of catchy, in a slyly knowing way.

• They're linked in spirit and schedule [LAT]
• Previously: Why “According To Jim” Is Lily White [Defamer]
• Freddie Prinze, Jr: Sitcom Wunderkind [Defamer]

Freddie is inspired by Freddie Prinze Jr.'s real life, growing up in a house filled with women (his mother and Puerto Rican grandmother). His life-long friend, Conrad Jackson, co-created this series with Prinze, along with executive producers Bruce Helford and Bruce Rasmussen. The friendship between Freddie and Chris in the show is loosely based on their lives. Prinze stars in the new sitcom, which he has co-created and will write, and for which he will also assume a role as the youngest executive producer in ABC's history.

This struck us as something of a head-scratcher, since once sitcom writers enter their mid-thirties, network execs start leaving brochures for retirement homes around their offices and start dropping hints about how much more fulfilling a career writing feature screenplays would be. Surely, at 29 years young (and keep in mind that info on actors' ages is generally as reliable as that for Cuban pitchers), the FPJ couldn't be ABC's Youngest EP Ever. It took us about ten seconds of research (and a vague recollection of a short-lived midseason show) to discover that he wasn't even their Youngest Executive Producer This Year:

Austin Winsberg is the 28-year-old creator/executive producer of "Jake in Progress."

We suppose that "youngest EP ever" line was ABC's way of making us forget how Prinze has squandered all of the promise on display in Summer Catch.

• Freddie [ABC.com]
• Jake in Progress [ABC MediaNet]
• Defamer Casting: Freddie Prinze Project Trolling For Hilarious Stereotypes [Defamer]
• Freddie Prinze, Jr. Vs. Dave Wirtschafter [Defamer]

WILLIAM Morris Chairman Jim Wiatt is so desperate to protect his firm's reputation that he's threatening to sue people who dare to even talk about the agency in an unflattering light. Wiatt was incandescent with rage on Wednesday when he learned that PAGE SIX was working on a story about how Freddie Prinze Jr. threatened WMA President Dave Wirtschafter during a phone conversation several months ago. In March, Prinze was furious after Wirtschafter told The New Yorker that Prinze's wife, Sarah Michelle Gellar, was "nothing" before she starred in the hit horror flick "The Grudge," and he called the WMA president.
"Freddie was very angry," a friend told us. "Dave wasn't even her agent — George Freeman was — so Freddie said, 'I don't want to hear you talking about my wife. You don't even know her. Make sure you don't run into me on the street.' "
Wirtschafter shot back, "Are you threatening me?" — to which Prinze said, "It's not a threat; it's just the truth."

Awwwww, snap! It gets a little more complicated from there, but here's a quick summary: Jim totally called Freddie to ask if he threatened Dave, and Freddie was all, you bet your ass I did! Then Page Six called flack Leslie "Sloane" Zelnick, and she goes, I'm not denyin' nothin'! THEN Jim called Freddie's manager, and he's like, hey, do YOU want a nasty Bert Fields letter, lady? Do ya? We got enough for everybody! Then William Morris' "mouthpiece" is all about Hello? No one's suing anybody, OK? And then Page Six ran the item. The end.

We think. At least until recess, when all hell might break loose.

• AGENTS ON PRINZE AND NEEDLES [NY Post]
• William Morris Fights Back: The Strongly-Worded Letter [Defamer]
• Page Six Finally Playing Nice With WMA? [Defamer]