Despite being nearly universally-reviled as shrill, self-righteous, and kunty, lots of people, including myself, rely on Nikki Finke’s website for her obnoxious scoops and bitchy insight into industry trends, delivered with her trademark headline, “TOLDJA.” Well now Nikki is hoping she can turn that stockpile of resigned acceptance into a Facebook game in which people clamor to be immersed in a virtual world based on her website. It saddens me to report that it is not called “C*ntville.” Oh hey there, obvious joke, I was hoping you’d show up.

You can see the full press release after the jump, but here’s the condensed version:

True to Deadline.com’s mission to report on the inner workings of the entertainment business, this new Facebook game allows players to experience what it really takes to make it in Hollywood. The ‘Deadline Hollywood Game’ is designed for wannabes and showbiz moguls. It also becomes the first game of its kind to incorporate real-time breaking news that influences gameplay.

“True to our mission of reporting stuff, this is a computer game.”

The ‘Deadline Hollywood Game’ introduces the real Hollywood where power, relationships, and influence are as important as money (and sometimes more so). The game employs the same mixture of street smarts and dumb luck to make it in The Industry by allowing players to choose one of several career paths – actor, screenwriter, producer, director, agent, studio executive – leading to success or ruin.

Yep, they capitalized “The Industry.”  “Donald, don’t say ‘industry…’”

The ‘Deadline Hollywood Game’ will launch this summer with invitation-only play by select showbiz insiders. Facebook users can pre-register at http://www.deadline.com/deadline-hollywood-facebook-game/ to be among the first people to know when the game goes live and to be entered to win a Hollywood Mogul Swag Bag. Additionally, 40 runners-up will win a pair of movie tickets courtesy of Hollywood Movie Money.

Along the way, they’ll find that the ‘Deadline Hollywood Game’ utilizes the same pithy intel and snark about The Industry as the website, with quips like “If you want to make it in Hollywood, move to New York” and “If you want to get a screenplay made, write a novel.” [Deadline]

So… did anyone else just puke? Much like hanging with the characters in Entourage or listening to techno in the car, I can’t even imagine having to hang out with the kind of person who would want to play this game, let alone actually playing it.
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People always wonder why I spend so much time ripping on Pete Hammond‘s ‘movie reviews’.  Who cares what he thinks or how badly he writes?  Isn’t he just some guy? Why the sour grapes? Well, the sad truth of it is that a guy who can’t use the word “literally” and called Old Dogs a “riotously funny slapstick farce that ought to appeal to moviegoers of all ages” [f*cking OLD DOGS!] actually has some influence in this town.  I can’t help but be amazed by that.  Most recently, Hammond has been hired on at Nikki Finke’s Deadline.com, presumably in order to create something like the Axis of Evil, only more obnoxiously self-promoting.  TOLDJA TOLDJA TOLDJA!

LOS ANGELES – September 1, 2010: Mail.com Media Corporation’s Jay Penske and Deadline.com’s Nikki Finke today announced the hiring of Pete Hammond, the well-known Los Angeles Times/The Envelope’s “Notes On A Season” blog columnist and former Variety contributor who is widely considered the preeminent awards season commentator for film and television. Effective immediately, he becomes the Deadline.com Awards Columnist. It is Deadline’s intention to own the awards space, helped by Pete’s unique understanding of the behind-the-scenes of this very specialized process when the entertainment industry is fixated on grabbing the gold [that sounds like a Pete Hammond sentence].

Said Finke, Deadline’s General Manager and Editor-in-Chief: “I realized that if Deadline Hollywood was going to offer expanded awards season coverage, we had to find someone of Mike’s, Nellie’s, and Tim’s caliber. Pete Hammond is a very well-established brand in this arena, and he’s among the most knowledgeable and insightful people on film and television I’ve ever encountered. If awards season is Hollywood’s Super Bowl, then Pete is the quarterback calling many of the plays.”

Oh man, I can’t wait for all the insight he’s going to drop on us, with biting analysis like “look for this 2nd visit to Marvel’s latest cash cow to top the original, not only for ratcheted up action, excitement and pure movie fun but also at the box office and beyond,” “The Expendables literally explodes off the screen and into my butt!” and “I would literally murder a vagrant if Sandra Bullock told me to!”

Hike it to quarterback Pete!  “Hut one! Hut two! Get me a thesaurus, I need another word for ‘excited’!”  As long as this keeps him from writing movie reviews.

I have a confession: I’m not really an insider.  Hollywood people don’t send me emails urging me to vote for their movies at the Oscars.  So yesterday, when I posted this letter that got Hurt Locker producer Nicolas Chartier (second from left) in trouble, and I said it wasn’t a big deal, I was only using my powers of basic logic and reading comprehension.  But if you don’t believe me (and why would you), here’s what Nikki Finke, who does claim to be an insider, said about the same thing:

So what if on Feb 19th Chartier sent out that e-mail message asking for Hurt Locker votes and not that “$500M film”. When it appeared in my email, I laughed. Not only because the Voltage Pictures partner didn’t have the guts to even mention Avatar by name. But for months now I have been sent so many emails from so many studios and filmmakers and flacks and insiders badmouthing every rival nominee this Oscar season and talking up their own. How the hell am I to tell them apart? Or tattle on them all? This is the down and dirty system which AMPAS hath wrought and doth condone. And no one is surprised by it, least of all the Academy. In fact, this morning AMPAS’ Ryan Dekorte, the executive offices awards assistant, forwarded today’s New York Times‘ “Carpetbagger” blog account of the Chartier email to every Hollywood flack and Oscar campaigner. So now the Academy was badmouthing The Hurt Locker for badmouthing Avatar!

So why did it become a big deal?  Probably because everyone’s favorite d-bag Pete Hammond wrote about it.  If everyone’s doing it, why would he single this one out?  Does he have ulterior motives?  Hard to say. All I know is he can’t seem to decide whether he wants to be a film critic or a super-cool Hollywood insider.  Honestly, I just like making fun of the guy.  Haha, have some more chocolate, fatty.  In fact, I heard Pete Hammond only writes such breathless reviews because the act of typing leaves him out of breath.

Undisputedly, Danny Trejo is pretty cool. Now stick a giant fu–ing knife in his hand and watch that coolness grow exponentially by 8%. It’s simple mathematics, dipsh-t. An equation so elementary that it seems even a few Fox executives could figure it out.

After screening 15 to 30 minutes worth of Machete, Robert Rodriguez’s upcoming Grindhouse homage, six major studios began vying for its distribution rights. Eventually, once the sexual tension and pheromones had dissipated from the room, a Fox accountant announced victory as she poured a Foldger’s can full of change across the table.

Fox reminded everyone that it was already very much in the Robert Rodriguez business making Predators, and Tom Rothman really wanted him to have a home there, and Rodriguez and Rothman get along well, so a deal was clinched. [NikkiFinke]

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Nikki Finke recently broke the news (accompanied by one of her always classy and humble ‘TOLDJA!’ headlines, of course), that Adam Shankman and Bill Mechanic would be producing the next Oscars telecast.  Nikki writes:

I consider it a good choice that bodes well for AMPAS new president Tom Sherak. Both Adam Shankman and Bill Mechanic are experienced movie people, and Shankman has the added benefit of current TV experience.

Is this bitch serious?  Let’s do a run through of the movies Adam Shankman directed and their accompanying rank on RottenTomatoes, shall we?

- The Wedding Planner, 16%
- A Walk to Remember, 27%
- Bringing Down the House, 34% (34%? Really?)
- The Pacifier, 21%
- Cheaper By the Dozen 2, 7%
- Hairspray, 91%
- Bedtime Stories, 24%

The one success is Hairspray, which was based on an already-successful play, which was in turn based on a cult-classic John Waters movie. And having seen the horrific nightmare fuel that is John Travolta in drag, I still wouldn’t watch that flick unless I got kidnapped by the Saw guy and it was either that or gouge out a testicle and eat it.  Oh, but he does have non-directorial credits, what were those again?

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