According to a Hollywood Reporter story, “Twentieth Century Fox is taking aggressive steps to keep its movie and TV scripts off of the Internet.”  The complaint in question is a suit against Patricia McIlvaine, a Long Island woman who posted approximately 100 scripts online.  You’d think living in Long Island would be punishment enough, but Fox wants $15 million.  The only new script named in the suit was for Deadpool, the upcoming Ryan Reynolds movie.  Hey, guys?  Just say they’re suing her over Deadpool. Who cares if scripts for old movies are online?  Who reads a script for a movie they can just watch?  What is this, reverse college?

Cliff’s Notes me while I hit this beer bong, Yahoo:

On her personal website, McIlvaine describes herself as a “struggling screenwriter who sells flowers over the phone by day and writes scripts by night.” [I smell Katherine Heigl vehicle! -Ed] She says she collected scripts that were already posted on the web and made a free online library of scripts in order to assist other screenwriters. She’s already soliciting donations for a legal defense fund.

Fox’s lawsuit mentions various scripts including “Aliens,” “Edward Scissorhands,” “Wall Street,” and “Glee.”

Ooh, Glee scripts.  Yes, God forbid the Gleeks have access to spoilers like, “Gwyneth Paltrow ruins popular song.”  (Serious, this clip is worse than cancer).  I guess what the paranoid old farts are worried about is someone reading a script, telling everyone it sucks, and people staying home (even though, in this case, reactions were pretty positive).  But as we’ve learned, the cardinal rule of Hollywood is that No One Ever Reads Anything. Fox is shooting themselves in the foot by not letting the eager do their jobs for them.  After all, what could’ve prevented a line like, “I know it sounds like Star Wars love, but you could do it, you could be Captain America,” better than someone actually reading the script?

It was just yesterday that the official line from Hollywood was that people were so fed up with bad financial news that they were looking for any escape from reality, even it meant seeing a movie about rapping chihuahuas alone.  Yet today, word is that Fox is pushing forward with a sequel to Wall St. called Money Never Sleeps [probably from people always snorting coke through it! Hiyo!].

The logline is being kept under wraps, though it will feature the character of Gordon Gekko, the corporate raider character immortalized by Michael Douglas in the 1987 Oliver Stone film. Douglas, who won an Oscar for the role, is interested in reprising the character but will make his decision of whether to return based on the script. [THR]

Oh boy, a movie about insufferable douchebags.  We don’t get nearly enough of that from Entourage, Paris Hilton’s BFF, The Hills, The Real World, Tila Tequila, Perez Hilton… Look, unless someone’s killing hookers and feeding stray cats to the ATM, no one gives a shit about people in finance.  Also, no one in real life is named “Gekko”.  Is no one else bothered by that?  How do you take a movie seriously when one of the characters is named Mike Giraffe or Bill Zebra?

A good indication of how f-ed we are: Michael Douglas, who once won an Oscar for playing a Wall Street guy, was at the U.N. yesterday to promote a nuclear test ban treaty, but reporters kept asking for his take on the current financial crisis.  Which is kind of like asking Christian Bale how Batman could’ve let 9/11 happen.

After world leaders here condemned the “boundless greed” of world markets, Douglas was asked to compare nuclear Armageddon with the “financial Armageddon on Wall Street.”  But the likening to Gordon Gekko did not end there, with a reporter asking: “Are you saying Gordon that greed is not good?”

Great question.  Please explain my metaphor, Michael, and when you answer, be sure to stay in character.

“I’m not saying that,” Douglas replied. “And my name is not Gordon. He’s a character I played 20 years ago.” [Yahoo]

Whoa, who let Debbie Downer in?  It’s actually refreshing to hear someone state the obvious.  But it raises an important point about actors vis a vis politics:  See, Mike, though we recognize you, we don’t actually know who you are.  Seeing you at political press conferences is like watching our trained monkey deliver an important message about cholesterol.  All of a sudden it wants to be taken seriously and the only thing anyone can think to ask is where its little cymbals went.