Versatile Mary-Louise Parker To Play Woman Attracted To Michael Douglas In ‘Solitary’

· Mary-Louise Parker will star opposite Michael Douglas in Solitary—a May/Whatever-Comes-Three-Facelifts-After-December romance. Jenna Fischer, Susan Sarandon, and Danny DeVito round out the cast. [THR]
· Defamer favourite Natalie Portman, meanwhile, will star in Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, based on a book about “a young woman who finds the key to recovering her marriage in her relationship with her precocious stepson.” Don Roos will direct. [Variety]
· David “Bud Bundy” Faustino will produce a loosely autobiographic web series for Sony’s Crackle.com called Star-ving, which instantly raises the question: Can the web cancel a series? [Variety]

After the jump: Why is Gus Van Sant about to drop gobs of acid?!

· Jennifer Lopez has signed a two-year deal with Universal Media Studios, which will develop “a wide variety of Jennifer Lopez-related TV projects” for the studio. [Variety]
· Milk writer/director team of Gus Van Sant and Dustin Lance Black will re-pair for an adaptation of the The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, hopefully to feature Emile Hirsch as an LSD-induced, gayfro’d gnome in Ken Kesey’s imagination. [THR]