If there’s one thing that every single human being on the planet is talking about right now, it’s the Home Shopping Network. They just can’t get enough of the damned thing. All the cubic zirconium and credit card fraud and shiny inhuman smiles. It’s even more popular than Facebook. This message, of course, is brought to you by the 1980s and Uncle Jasper’s Removable Shoulder Pads For Women. Universal continues to stay on the cutting edge with a new project about said televised storefront that’s being written/directed/produced by Sex and the City and Sex and the City 2: Hot Flashes writer/director/producer Michael Patrick King. The parts (that haven’t been written yet) were developed specifically for Oprah, Meryl Streep, and Sandra Bullock. Fortunately, they have taken the roles. Unfortunately, Sandra Bullock took Meryl Streep’s role. Fortunately, Streep is playing Oprah. In other news, the Home Shopping Network still exists. [Cinema Blend]

Finally, after months and months of waiting for the next fad in Hollywood, it’s finally emerged: casting women who look hot in their underwear professionally as stars of action films. Apparently flipping through a Victoria’s Secret catalog is easier than combing through head shots. Or whatever they’re doing gives a new meaning to the term “head shots.” Or some other tasteless joke. The point is that Brooklyn Decker has been cast in Universal’s big budget toy movie Battleship – in which a US Naval fleet has to defend the world from aliens…just like in the classic game! Decker is a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model and has done shoots for Victoria’s Secret. Clearly, she’s good at what she does, but whether that will translate to the big screen when she has to move around and talk has yet to be seen. Keep your fingers crossed for the next announcement of a model turning actress so we can all rejoice in Michael Bay creating yet another trend in film. And for those who feel we’re blatantly chauvinistic for using that particular photograph of Decker – it was the most discrete we could find. [Latino Review]

If there’s anything positive that’s come out of a decade of studio executives scrambling for anything in the comic book bin to shove onto the big screen, it’s that sometimes the studios find the diamonds in the rough. Sometimes they find them, slap a cheap rubber scar on their cheeks, and make them blow up John Malkovich’s submarine. Sometimes they have to mistake trash for treasure first. When they do get their hands on something special it’s cause to celebrate. “Cal McDonald” is something special. The twenty year-running Steve Niles comic book is one of the classics of the Darkhorse stable, and it features the sort of Hunter Thompson by way of John Constantine figure that will spit on your mother while shooting up and demanding attention. Apparently, comic is doing just that (minus the motherly insults and the needle use) at Universal where the project is currently in the writing phase. No director. No stars. Just a draft script by Steve Niles that’s being considered and poured over. That’s enough to illicit some reasons to smile, though. With any luck, the project announced during the Raw Entertainment panel here at Comic-Con today will move through the studio with the right pieces falling into place. “Cal McDonald” is one of the great ones, and it’s a character that deserves the big screen.

A giant banner stretches across one of the waterfront hotels here in San Diego that advertises a film that no one’s ever heard of before. This isn’t the intentional mystery of J.J. Abrams or a struggling project trying to get some recognition. It’s somewhere in between.  From the towering advertisement, you wouldn’t be able to tell much about it except that it looks digitally animated, has two figures looking dangerously upward, and it’s called Skyline.  So what is it? 

No more straight to DVD let-downs promising unrated bacchanalia but delivering nothing but boobs and bodily fluids. No more casts featuring nothing but unknowns and a lonely Eugene Levy. Nope… the American Pie gang is heading back to theaters.

Universal really wants this vampire fad to go out with a bang and a fizzle.

A ton of information has just come out about Battleship, and since I know you give a rat’s ass about a movie based off a board game, I’ve distilled it all for you.

Universal hopes you’re ready for some hot naval action because they’ve set a release date and officially announced Peter Berg while be at the helm of Battleship.

So you make a completely original space story about two brothers who fly spaceships and blow things up and call it Asteroids? Does that really count as an adaptation? Can you adapt a game with zero story to it? What exactly are you adapting? Why does my head hurt?

After some disagreements on the script, and no other takers, Sony has officially killed the project, and Brad Pitt is looking for something else to do.

In other news: Fox is working on a Hitman sequel. No word yet on who will have to go bald for it.

Oscar-winner and potential stooge Sean Penn has decided to take some time off, meaning that the Farrelly Brothers will have to find a new Larry and Universal will need to find a new lead for its thriller Cartel.

Paramount especially might be moving toward consolidation in the coming year according to at least one financial analyst.

In what is apparently not a sequel to Captain Ron, Justin Theroux will hop into the director’s chair and make fun of Native Americans or the government or someone.

Instead of getting irate about all the new, crappy toy adaptations coming down the pipe, let’s celebrate a few toys that could be made into equally crappy adaptations!

Martin Scorsese has his next project in development, complete with a screenwriter and a famous crooner as his subject. Now who should play Old Blue Eyes?

So Universal wants to focus on Milli Vanilli instead of, say, actual musicians. Now let’s see if I can avoid making fun of Brett Ratner for an entire article. Spoiler Alert: I can’t.

There’s one major reason why none of that matters, and I promise I eventually get to it at some point during my rambling, nonsensical rant.

By “the grown up,” I of course mean that they are engaged in a purely platonic, business relationship to distribute movies together. And probably sleeping together.

What happens when you catch your distribution partner in bed with another company? You make sure the divorce is finalized once and for all.