• Will Wisteria Lane never know peace? ABC has signed a new deal with Desperate Housewives creator Mark Cherry that could keep the show on the air until 2013. [Variety]

• Hollywood has a new profitability King! The Wrap calculates that Paranormal Activity made for under $15,000 and so far grossing $65.1 million has now seen a 433,900 percent return on its budget, which soars past Blair Witch's 414,233 percent return on its $60,000 production. [The Wrap]

• After its first full day of theatrical release, the Michael Jackson documentary This Is It has earned a very nice but not world-destroying This Is It $6.6 million. [Variety]

• Meanwhile at NBC, one shall live while another shall die. The Peacock ordered six more episodes of Chuck, while the dream ended for Trauma as the network announced it would not order more episodes beyond the show's initial 13 episodes run. [Hollywood Reporter]

• While dozens of productions have signed on to keep shooting in California as a result of the state's new tax incentive program, the money set aside for the tax break's first year has run out and production continues to flee its home state, citing bigger tax breaks available elsewhere. [The Wrap]

• Risking stepping into serious bummer territory Vh1 will run a new reality/book camp show, aimed teaching a group of men how to be good fathers. [Hollywood Reporter]

• Tony Scott has singed on to direct the story he was born to tell; a biopic based on the life of Steve Banerjee, the creator of Chippendales male revues. [Variety]

Jump-cut proficient director Tony Scott has signed on to helm Unstoppable, a thriller about a runaway train that's full of dangerous radioactive goop. The engineer (Denzel? Will?) and the conductor (Dakota Fanning?) find themselves in a "race against time" to stop the goop from gooping out all over everybody. Everyone else is villains. [Variety] On-set freakout proficient director David O. Russell has signed up for The Silver Linings Playbook, based on the novel about a sadsack high school teacher who goes to live with his mom after being released from the nut house. [Variety]

Kathy Bates has joined Sandra Bullock in a drama called The Blind Side, about a hobo who learns to play football. And, to love. [Variety] Emma Stone, a future tabloid queen who we want to have a beer with will star in Easy A for Screen Gems. The comedy is about a high school student who, while reading Nathaniel Hawthorne's book-of-the-movie based on Demi Moore's The Scarlet Letter, decides to pretend she's the school slut so she'll be popular. How one only pretends to be a loose woman is unclear to us. [Variety]

Matthew McConaughey (introduced hilariously by Variety as "Fool's Gold thesp") has signed on to be maybe a little serious for once in his goddamned, sun-poisoned life. He'll play the lead in the legal thriller The Lincoln Lawyer, about an attorney made of logs. Or something. [Variety] In other encouraging movie news, presumed blockbusters like Transformers 3 and The Avengers are securing release dates even though nothing has been signed off on them, nor do they even have scripts. So. Good. [Variety]

Bet there's a money-fight going on right now at Dunder Mifflin. NBC has secured lucrative syndication deals for The Office in all 50 top markets across the US. The comedy will air on Fox affiliates this fall. [THR] ABC has cut its 13-episode order of freshman sitcom In the Motherhood to just 6 for this season. The show premiered last Thursday to low-ish (6.7 million) ratings. [Variety]

You won't have to drive over to the Ruby Tuesday's to watch fat people dating each other anymore. No, Fox is developing a reality dating show called More to Love. Fox alternative programming prez Mike Darnell says of the show, in a statement sure to haunt him in the afterlife: "For six years it's been skinny-minis and good-looking bachelors, and that's not what the dating world looks like. Why don't real women — the women who watch these shows, for the most part — have a chance to find love too?" It's true, America. Our real, fat, Bachelor-watching citizenry needs fake, sad reality show love too. Me, I'm just hoping this opens the door for Fat Real World and Fat Housewives of Fat City USA Population: You. [THR]

Meanwhile Survivor guru Mark Burnett is joining ABC in an unholy alliance to produce Shark Tank, an adaptation of a British reality show that is itself an adaptation of a Japanese reality show about rich tycoons giving struggling entrepreneurs money. In this economy! [THR]

With the tighter confines of a New York City subway car to contain him, Travolta has downgraded his Parisian bazooka for a more conveniently terrorizing handgun. And as the heavily tattooed hijacker to Denzel Washington's transit worker-turned-crisis negotiator, he's surrendered the adorable leather-daddy exterior we had hoped he'd maintain for at least a few more roles. Alas, the savagery is complete. As for the rest, we're still not convinced the 1974 original required a visit from the End of Ideas fairy, but who can say really say no to Tony Scott? Oh. Well, give it a look anyway.

• 'The Taking Of Pelham 123' [YouTube]

Ridley and Tony Scott have reportedly assumed control of the reboot, co-producing for writer-director Joe Carnahan in anticipation of a summer 2010 opening. That's a full year behind the schedule Fox initially drew up for John Singleton, who inherited and soon putzed the project away within a few months last spring. And while you can't keep a good rehash down in Hollywood, the usual loss of quality with every creative generation hinted at more of a Joel Schumacher plan D than this kind of action pedigree. Fox is serious!

And, per Variety, so is Ridley Scott: "Tony and I feel that marrying this Scott Free project with Joe's sensibility will result in a fast-paced, exciting franchise, one we hope will be around for years to come," the director told the trade. Yes — "years to come," likely building on the postmodern Dark Knight template making the world safe for brooding, mercenary war vets and the retrofitted vans carting them from assignment to assignment. With a lot of work and a little luck, Oscar will be snubbing this American institution, too, by 2013.

• Fox assembles 'A-Team' [Variety]

[A] sign in the restaurant noted that the jet jockey movie's "sleazy bar scene" was filmed there. ... [Fire department spokesman Maurice] Luque estimated damage at $250,000 to the structure and $150,000 to the contents, not including the cost of decades of memorabilia, including photographs and props from the film. Dozens of Navy caps and license plates hung on walls and ceilings.

Firefighters found Navy flight helmets inside the dining area - melted.

"It must've been a very intense fire," Luque said. "You can see where the fire swirled around, then just took everything out."

Of course it was intense; it had Top Gun props as fuel! (This would never happen on the set of Valkyrie.) But no inferno can ever melt our memories, made all the more vivid today by a clip of the BBQ joint's finest hour — in Italian. "Goose! Vai a letto o mi perdere!" Show us the way home, honey.

• Fire guts landmark Kansas City Barbeque [SD Union-Tribune]

· Tony Scott's remake of 1970s subway-hijacking classic The Taking of Pelham One Two Three gets more then just a digitized-title upgrade: it also gets James Gandolfini as the NYC mayor. Unfortunately, it also gets John Travolta. [Variety]
· Jon Heder and Dax Shepard Career Death-Rattle Watch: They both get one last wheeze playing Kristin Bell love interest in When In Rome. [Variety]

The Reeler provides us a with a perfect opportunity to revive our long-dormant Fauxteur Fashion Minute feature, in which we rather uncharitably spotlight the sartorial shortcomings of Hollywood's hackiest, most style-impaired directors, by confronting Denzel Washington with this photo (at right, depicting Scott with comparative fashion visionaries Jerry Bruckheimer, Don Simpson, and Cole Trickle) of Deja Vu helmer Tony Scott:

"What was that?" Washington asked. "1980-some odd?"

1989, I think.

"Well, he's still got the pink hat," he said, then joked, "Which one is Tony?"

So it hasn't improved since then?

"He still wears that jacket!" Washington said, pointing at Scott's fisherman's vest. "You know what it is? I don't know about the shorts, but you know. Creatures of habit. What's the word? Not 'luck,' or whatever. But he does have his sort of uniform. Shorts. Talk about D j Vu."

We're relieved that Scott has somewhat superstitiously determined that it's the combination of faded pink hat (see inset), fisherman's vest, and era-appropriate shorts that grant him his hacky superpowers; we'd hate for him to completely lose his almost magical ability to quick-cut a movie into utter incomprehensibility just because he decided to shake up his wardrobe.

[Photo: Paramount Pictures via The Reeler]

• "Talk About D j Vu": Washington and Scott Reunite at NYC Premiere [The Reeler]