Today, rumor has it that the first gag order has been issued; Mashable says Dreamworks inserted an anti-Twitter clause into Mike Myers and Cameron's Diaz's contract for their work on the fourth installment of the Shrek series, committing them, we presume, to keep all details of the upcoming cartoon off the social networking platform.

At first glance, the notion that anyone on Twitter would give a damn about details of Lord Farquaad or the talking donkey backstage hi-jinx seemed delightfully self-absorbed and misguided of Dreamworks. But on closer examination, with football games scores and weather news regularly trending on the site, perhaps viral media has reached such a saturation point that even fourth installments of over the hill children's cartoons are in danger from the new world. Can TMZ Girl be far behind?

On the other hand, Hollywood, is such a Draconian zero-tolerance approach really the best way to stir up excitement for a franchise that should have been put out of its misery several films ago? Maybe unfettered Twittering about Princess Fiona's wardrobe malfunctions are the one hope you have of stirring up a little enthusiasm.

Myers joins an ensemble that already includes Brad Pitt, Eli Roth and B.J. Novak, nudging the project ever closer to the unmarketable territory where Tarantino and Harvey Weinstein seem to flourish together. Moreover, we didn't expect Myers to do another non-comedy so soon after The Love Guru; that Halloween remake we pegged him for was something we presumed was at least a few years off, or at least well after Austin Powers 4. But when even Deepak Chopra is hating on you, some gambles are just more necessary than others. Good luck, Mike!

• Mike Myers enlists in 'Bastards' [Variety]

• Relax, Everybody! Quentin Tarantino Will Probably Not Save Mike Myers’s Career [Vulture]

Nevertheless, his overall support reminds us what a fertile period it is for the villain in American cinema — and how '80s/'90s-era schlock could stand to benefit from an A-list talent injection. We consulted our own casting department for five ideal remakes, and the stars who might push them over the top:

Leprechaun, featuring Tom Cruise as Leprechaun. Both a post-Tropic Thunder capitalization for the resurgent star and a perfect UA palate cleanser after the ordeal of Valkyrie.

Child's Play, featuring Clay Aiken as Chucky. A natural crossover for the Man Who Wouldn't Be Idol. A savvy agent could package this with Aiken's new son as the male lead and Kelly Clarkson as the mother who squares off Aiken's homicidal doll in a fight to the death. The producers couldn't likely tell him about the "homicidal doll" part until after the shoot, but whatever; it's not like he needs a script or anything.

Friday the 13th, featuring Corey Feldman as Jason Voorhees. Feldman broke through in 1984 as young Jason-slayer Tommy Jarvis, but with the franchise having exhausted Tommy's psychosis and The Two Coreys essentially confirming Feldman's own, this match makes itself. Scrap the remake in the works, Paramount — or at least order some reshoots.

Candyman, featuring Eddie Murphy as Candyman. In a PG-rated romp directed by Brian Robbins, Murphy's fat-suited Candyman really does do a number on the sweets shops in town, trailed by swarms of plump CGI bumblebees and playing kiddie snicker-snack with his candy-cane hook.

Halloween, featuring Mike Myers as Michael Myers. Tagline: "Still stroppy."

• Billy Bob On Elm Street [JoBlo]

Oh, but for the old times, as Guru's singular tank job, critical enmity and shocking Myers implosion provoked a reconsideration of sorts for the spirituality kingpin, who seems to have overcome his immunity to wisdom in the bitter months since Guru's release:

“The Love Guru didn’t work well because Mike Myers addresses a teenage audience, and he was trying to mix it up with metaphysics,” Chopra told MTV News. “Humor mixed with spirituality can work, if it’s done well. But frankly speaking, this was not a good attempt.” ...

“I think what he could have done was have been a little less gross about some of the jokes [which were added later],” Chopra said. “And some of the spiritual themes, they could have shown more the lighter side. He was almost too serious in his deprecation. He needed more humor.”

Read: He needed humor — anything to mitigate the lesbian elephants. No worries, though! Everyone involved will have a few thousand years to figure out how to improve the concept for next time.

• Why Did ‘The Love Guru’ Bomb? [MTV Movies Blog]

We're pretty sure the inclusion of Powers in their list of 14 franchises to kill was a serendipitous fluke (it's actually pegged to The Mummy 3 and includes Indiana Jones and Friday the 13th as well), but Wednesday's revival news nevertheless reinforced the urgency of euthanizing bad ideas before they can strike again. And why stop at 14? As long as we have the ax out, we might as well finish the job with another half-dozen after the jump.

·Beverly Hills Cop: Sure, we summoned a bit of cautious optimism when we first heard about BHC 4. But word that franchise heir Brett Ratner wants a PG-13 and Eddie Murphy's continued commitment to mediocrity has us second-guessing. Kill it.

·Star Wars: Nothing short of George Lucas encased in carbonite will likely stop his molesty corruption of a galaxy far, far away. But a blog can dream. Kill it.

· Transformers: Wait — never mind! Thanks, Shia.

· Spider-Man: Heresy? Maybe. But if Sam Raimi is more preoccupied with spinoffs and Jack Ryan than Sony's multi-billion empire, just accept the sign. Kill it first, before Joel Schumacher hijacks it.

· Hostel: How much would it cost us to have the pleasure of snuffing this ourselves in a dank Eastern European abattoir? We'll get the money, like, yesterday. Kill it — slowly.

· The Lost Boys: Not a franchise so much as a misbegotten, Haim-wounding attempt at brand-milking, bound to get worse before it gets better. Kill it.

• Running on Empty: 14 Movie Franchises We Think Should Stop [EW]

We're troubled, however, to read for what feels like the the thousandth time that the ladies aren't quite measuring up:

In an era where risk-averse studio executives have declared men the more reliable movie stars—and the more desirable moviegoers—perhaps it's no surprise that they are also the medium's top earners. The reality: Hollywood's 10 best-paid actors out-earned Hollywood's 10 best-paid actresses 2-to-1 over the course of the year.

Collectively, the big screen's leading men took home an estimated $487 million between June 1, 2007, and June 1, 2008, compared with the leading ladies' haul of $244.5 million.

However, in an even more revealing Forbes slideshow for the prose-impaired, we discovered that actresses fared much better in the "Ultimate Payback" category, which calculates the best gross-to-salary ratios in the biz. While a pre-Fred Claus Vince Vaughn ranked #1, Julia Roberts, Naomi Watts, Jennifer Aniston, Renee Zellweger and Jodie Foster cracked the top 15 as well. (That'll happen when you're relatively underpaid; top-earning actress Cameron Diaz is way down at #32.) Prepare yourself for Christian Bale's controversial post-Dark Knight ascent, followed by the touching, accompanying profile of how the strapping star went from clown's son to box-office powerhouse.

• Hollywood's Best-Paid Actors [Forbes]
• The Ultimate Star Payback [Forbes]

And what of claims made by Shrider, like that she nearly drowned the Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me star in a romantic bubble bath?

"There's no incident like that. She's coming up with things and telling media anything to make it interesting. I haven't seen everything she's done...The things she says just aren't true," he adds.

Must be awkward, then, considering the former couple still live together.

"She's still in the house," Troyer says, noting that he's taking legal action to force her out, but their situation "makes it even harder, to, you know, not strangle her."

But... how would that even work? Anyway, Troyer's pulling through with the help of friends, family and his lawyer, as well as by continued (if "dehydrated") work on films including Heath Ledger's unfinished final project, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. Recalling the late actor's troubled time on set ("He couldn't sleep because he was so wrapped up in the character of Joker in Batman. ... Throughout our shoot it was the same way"), a misty-eyed Troyer nevertheless insisted Ledger was not suicidal — anything but, really, with a Ledger heart sketch eventually making the rounds as the default Parnassus crew tattoo. Troyer pointed out his own on his right hand, conveniently obscuring the small Guru Pitka likeness he drunkenly had inked during production on The Love Guru. Thank God those days are behind him.

• Verne Troyer Talks Sex Tape, Heath Ledger's Death [Yahoo!]

We instantly dispatched a small army of white-coated interns to retrieve a representative cross-section of the Mike Myers-moviegoing population from a number of outdoor shopping plazas, and, once they had signed their releases, hooked them up to some highly advanced vital-sign-measuring equipment. (We'd like to take a moment to once again reassure the test subject who observed, "But this is just a beer helmet attached to a first generation iPod," that the similarities are purely cosmetic.) The preliminary results of our study, compiled and edited by Gawker Intern Anna Peele, are above, with our final findings set to be published in the September issue of Scientific American, in a report entitled, "From Sha-wing to Elephant Dung: The Law of Diminishing Mike Myers Comedy Returns."

• Watch Video

1. Get Smart - $39.2 million
The middling-at-best TV adaptation claimed the weekend essentially by default, but it also fell almost $1 million short of the $40 million opening it needed to trigger its principals' rumored sequel clauses. Will Warner Bros. call it even and commission a script by lunch? Is Anne Hathaway renegotiating with her bad-boy paramour for further "publicity consulting" in 2010? Will Steve Carell meet Don Adams at the Get Smart 2 premiere? Only time will tell!

2. Kung Fu Panda - $21.7 million
The ursine pugilist enjoyed one last top-five weekend before Pixar's Wall-E comes along on Friday to show him what true box-office violence looks like.

3. The Incredible Hulk - $21.5 million
It might look underachieving, but don't worry! A 61% drop is exactly the kind of declining potency Bruce Banner has been searching for all these years. In a couple of weeks it'll be like none of this ever happened to him.

4. The Love Guru - $14 million
What more can we say? His karma was huge.

5. The Happening - $10 million
Manoj's Mint experienced an even steeper plunge than Hulk, driving the stroppy writer/director/profit-participant to challenge Mike Myers to a winner-take-all Bad Idea Marketplace showdown in which next weekend's lower performer flees theaters by noon Monday. We hear Paramount is said to be considering it.

Honorable Mention — 16. Kit Kittredge: An American Girl - $223,000
A few weeks after its previous release — the foreign-language epic Mongol — opened at $27K per screen, the penultimate Picturehouse film Kit Kittredge swung a staggering $44,600 per-screen average in the five cities where American Girl has retail outlets. That should hopefully make the box-packing around the office feel like it's going a little quicker.

The word "unfunny" surely applies to Mr. Myers's obnoxious attempts to find mirth in physical and cultural differences but does not quite capture the strenuous unpleasantness of his performance. No, The Love Guru is downright antifunny, an experience that makes you wonder if you will ever laugh again. ...

[I]t's not that I object to the idea of, say, witnessing elephants copulate on the ice in the middle of a Stanley Cup hockey match, or seeing a dwarf sent flying over the same ice by the shock of defibrillator paddles. But it will never be enough simply to do such things. They must be done well.

Yikes! And that's not even all — after the jump, a Times reader purporting to have been a Guru extra chimed in with his own commentary about the hot elephant action and hockey-rink schadenfreude that made the film an even more refined brand of awful:

The article said "The rule seems to be that no one may upstage him and all must adore him." That is 100% true. We were not allowed to stand too close to him during a break in case we heard what he said. He could never remember his lines and some scenes were shot 50 times. When he was on the elephant on the ice we felt so sorry for the poor animal (both were female) that many people hoped he would be dumped and stepped on. Being in an ice rink from 7AM until 2AM is COLD.

Point taken, "iansinger" (and we apologize in advance that for your candor you'll never work as an extra again). We could likely have moved on from and maybe even embraced Guru's staggering anti-humor, but surely the cosmos — or at least the American Humane Society — will not stand for elephant sex abuse. This calls for revised credits — something disclaiming, "No animals were harmed in the making of this film, except those exploited in girl-on-girl pachyderm trysts and the ice-rink extras forced to watch." Cold, cold indeed.

• Just Say 'Mariska Hargitay' and Snicker [NYT]

WHAT'S NEW: For the second consecutive week, a pair of critical underachievers square off at the multiplex. But while the noisy, mostly terrible Get Smart is something of a masterpiece compared to The Love Guru, we expect both to lock in for decent opening frames; estimates below $40 million seem conservative for Smart, and Guru, almost-unilaterally loathed as it is, will still pull around $22 million from teenagers not knowing any better. Watch out, though, for Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, the first film based on the popular doll brand; opening in limited release in markets featuring American Girl stores, this will eventually pull every 10-and-under girl (and her mother) into a theater near you.

Also opening: The Santa Monica parking ticket romance Expired and the arranged-marriage-in-London drama Brick Lane.

THE BIG LOSER: We may not actually have one this week, though were taking early wagers on The Love Guru's second-week plunge. We'll even sweeten the deal: Winning bets on anything less than 70% pay double!

THE UNDERDOG: The first weekend of the L.A. Film Festival offers a pretty diverse assortment of programming — and, alas, quality — but we'd be derelict in our underdog-reporting duties if we didn't single out the tiny, riveting Thai entry Wonderful Town (Saturday at 7 p.m., AMC Avco 4). Aditya Assarat's story follows a big-city architect dispatched to oversee a luxury hotel project in the ruins of the 2004 tsunami; culture clash and doomed romance ensue to ultimately shocking degrees, but Assarat's handle on melancholy (as well as the rich, hazy inland landscapes) thwarts the potential for melodrama. This will likely return in limited release from its distributors at Kino, but why wait? Plus it will make you that much cooler when eventually recommending it to latecoming friends.

FOR SHUT-INS: New DVD's include Michel Gondry's sweding buddy picture Be Kind Rewind, the must-not-have Mashew McConauhdgrl/Kate Hudson collaboration Fool's Gold, Alison Eastwood's mildly underrated directing debut Rails and Ties, the Martin Lawrence offering Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins, and Grant Gee's extraordinary, anecdote- and interview-heavy rock documentary Joy Division.

So are you getting Smart this weekend, or are you sucking it up for 100 minutes with Guru Pitka? Any LAFF recommendations we should take in? Will Be Kind Rewind be more ironic than ever on DVD? Be honest! Share your plans, and look us up if you're planning a Westwood festival sojourn.

The Love Guru is so relentlessly juvenile as to merit a new twist on the PG-13 rating — one that strongly cautions not only those under 13 but anyone much above it, too. ... Opening opposite Get Smart isn't ideal, but coupled with lingering affection for the Austin Powers series, this might just be dumb enough to at least hold its own.

After the jump, a reflective Mike Myers redoubts to Inside the Actors Studio to answer every question on Earth except the one about what went wrong.

That's not entirely true; he also spent more than two minutes eluding the simple query, "How do you productively wear so many hats?" The rambling, New Age-y reply could function as its own performance art if it wasn't so mortifying, which actually got us thinking: If we find out later that this whole Love Guru episode thing was just some post-ironic celebrity reinvention, we're going to be pissed.

• 'The Love Guru' [Variety]
• 'Inside the Actors Studio' [Bravo]

But who else should make the cut? A few more possible draftees — plus your own recommendations — after the jump.

Jake Gyllenhaal: Infamously clashed with David Fincher on the set of Zodiac and cried in the press afterward, to which co-star Mark Ruffalo responded with little sympathy. More recently was reported to be dreamily whimpering around the set of David O. Russell's stop-start satire Nailed.

Katherine Heigl: Last week withdrew herself from consideration for an Emmy repeat for Grey's Anatomy, arguing that her role didn't benefit from "the material this season to warrant [a] nomination." As you can imagine, the show's staff supported her zero percent.

Jim Carrey: After early run of hits, managed to alienate studios and directors alike with excessive salary demands and minor on-set idiosyncrasies like pissing in the middle of scenes. For the dual suicides of overbudgeted projects Used Guys and Ripley's Believe it Or Not, we're starting him in front of Paltrow (and he'll probably bitch about that, too).

Debra Winger: Never met a co-star in the early '80s about whom she couldn't find something to hate, from Richard Gere in An Officer and a Gentleman to her fart-target screen mom Shirley Maclaine in Terms of Endearment. But she can laugh about it now! Sort of!

Mike Myers: Made Penelope Spheeris cry. That's stroppy.

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

• The Incredible Sulk [Guardian]

''He was emotionally needy and got more difficult as the shoot went along,'' [Wayne's World director Penelope] Spheeris says. ''You should have heard him bitching when I was trying to do that 'Bohemian Rhapsody' scene: 'I can't move my neck like that! Why do we have to do this so many times? No one is going to laugh at that!''' To manage Myers' moods, Spheeris put her daughter in charge of making sure he had whatever snack he needed at any given moment: ''To this day, I have this image of her sitting on this little cooler, looking at me, like, 'Mom, I f—-ing hate you.'''

But then came Austin Powers, and like a snaggle-toothed, chest-haired phoenix, Myers soared back into the hearts of his worst enemies:

''I hated that bastard for years,'' says Spheeris, who believes Myers dissuaded Paramount from hiring her for Wayne's World 2. ''But when I saw Austin Powers, I went, 'I forgive you, Mike.''' She pauses, voice choked with emotion. '''You can be moody, you can be a jerk, you can be things that others of us can't be — because you are profoundly talented. And I forgive you.'''

Though she also adds, "Maybe he could open, like, a children's hospital to clean up his rep. He's got to do something pretty quick," so there's a bit of a ways to go still. But those whom Myers has helped make rich — the Jeffrey Katzenbergs, Jay Roaches and Lorne Michaelses — are a little more sanguine, all readily admitting that Myers' skill comes with strings attached, and all apparently prepared to forgive the sitar-rocking, Troyer-baking Love Guru ancillaries that have Myers facing a future of hell. And that's just in Hollywood — don't even get us started again on the whole Hindu-curse part of the equation.

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

• Mike Myers: Man of Mystery [EW]

• WATCH VIDEO

Joining in this campaign is the Spiritual Science Research Foundation, whose editor Sean Clarke has outlined the spiritual consequence for being associated in the movie. Based on an afterlife demerit point system, those involved with making the movie can anticipate residence in the second region of hell for 1,000 years. Watching it for entertainment would carry its share of consequences, too.

As baffled others are quick to point out, anti-Love Guru spearhead Rajan Zed has not yet seen the movie, though Paramount reportedly promised him an early preview that he pledged to take advantage of. Still, we are deeply troubled by the 1,000 years of damnation facing beloved figures like Myers, Alba and particularly Verne Troyer, whose one-two punch of Postal and The Love Guru (not to mention his mortifying Surreal Life stint prior to that) seems like a millennium of personal and professional hell no Hindu demerits could possibly outstack.

And anyway, if a real-life love guru can get out of a molestation rap in Texas for $10 million, surely the stars can bargain with someone in this crowd who has some afterlife influence.

• Hating the Love Guru [Eye Weekly]

With Sarah Silverman at the helm last year, MTV saw a 68% gain in the ratings compared to their 2006 outing with hitless pretty face Jessica Alba hosting. Alba's try gifted MTV with a 26% loss in viewers, despite her aesthetic appeal. And despite Lindsay Lohan's myriad costume changes during her 2004 hosting gig, ratings were still down from previous years. Apparently choosing randomly from the glossy pages of Us hasn't done justice to the previously shockworthy show. We can only look forward to September, when a comedic talent like Myers takes the reigns over from tabloid fodder once again to prove that hosting duties require much more than a resume listing bikini-heavy roles in otherwise forgetful films.

• MIKE MYERS TO HOST MTV MOVIE AWARDS [People]

Father Charles T. Durante, a Catholic priest well respected in northern Nevada for his various community outreach efforts, in a statement, said, "...it is important that we respect those parts of every faith tradition which are held especially sacred. I applaud Paramount Pictures for being open to the request of Hindu leaders to preview this film and listen to any concerns that may arise for them..."

Rabbi Jonathan B. Freirich, a well known Jewish leader in parts of California and Nevada, in a statement today, stressed, "While The Love Guru appears to be a funny take on New Age spirituality, it seems like it may portray many Hindu practices in a less than sensitive light...it would be appropriate for the producers of The Love Guru to make efforts to assure the religious communities of the United States that they in no way wish to make any general statements about Hinduism."

It's a little late for that, according to one of Zed's more incensed allies, who yesterday told Toronto's Eye Weekly: "Gurus don't exist to fix your love life. ... From what I could tell this movie will only help to spread ignorance." Meanwhile, America's outraged, pan-spiritual dwarf community is expected to speak out soon against the egregious mishandling of old Myers chum Verne Troyer, subject in the trailer alone to "shrimp" jokes, hockey injuries and stand-ins for an Oscar statuette. Insult, meet injury.

• Hindus get some non-Hindu support... [Yahoo! India]
• No love for Mike Myers? [Eye Weekly]