From the Dept. of Mildly Pressing Questions Worth Asking on A Slow Wednesday Afternoon comes this new query: "Why Is This DreamWorks-Reliance Deal Taking So Long?" It features an accompanying clock and everything — 63 Days, 18 Hours, 34 Minutes and counting! — to emphasise the hold-up since Indian conglom Reliance Big Entertainment was reported to be within weeks of saving Steven Spielberg and co. from Paramount. Indeed, what is taking so long, and why do so many sources supposedly in the know keep jumping the gun?

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Months of speculation over whom DreamWorks might be courting to help underwrite its ugly exit from Viacom ended late Tuesday when The Wall Street Journal reported that Reliance ADA Group, a massive Indian conglomerate, is close to sinking $500 million to $600 million into Steven Spielberg's breathless bid for autonomy. As presumed, the deal would expedite David Geffen's eventual departure from the DreamWorks fold and allow Spielberg to keep the DreamWorks name, if not the projects currently in development with Paramount/Viacom — alas, Transformers 2 stays behind. CEO and Spielberg right hand Stacey Snider would follow as well.

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They say nobody in Hollywood knows anything, which is true in just about every situation but the one facing DreamWorks and its partners at Paramount — a pair about as likely to split in acrimony within the year as Nikki Finke is to wheeze "TOLDJA!" when it happens. Patrick Goldstein today offers a rough primer for the 'Works/'Mount divorce, with enough oversights and elisions to make it dispensable (for starters, whither UA in the potential coupling of DreamWorks and MGM?) but thought-provoking enough to ask: Where will the 'Works wind up?

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Having long ago elected Barack Obama the President of Hollywood, how will the industry react to Hillary Clinton's win in California's Democratic primary? Disappointed kingmaker David Geffen, despite having prematurely predicted victory for Obama, is not yet abandoning ship, even if DreamWorks partner Steven Spielberg is stubbornly sticking out a passionless political marriage with Clinton. Indeed, maybe it's time Geffen starts thinking about his next move, like sitting down with Maureen Dowd for another one of those fun interviews before all of his friends start getting crazy ideas about jumping on the Hillary bandwagon. [Slate]

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As we can think of no better way to kick off the weekend than by contemplating the staggering wealth of the Hollywood multibillionaires who can buy and sell all of us like so much cattle, we spent some time with The Forbes 400, the magazine's ranking of the absolute richest of the American rich, to check in on how some of the industry's best-monied overlords are growing their intimidating cash hoards.

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You may at some point in your travels have stumbled upon the art of prvtdncr: Working primarily in spraypaint on somebody-else's-building, the sloganeering graffiti artist throws up provocative phrases that are meant to hold a magnifying makeup mirror up to certain, unseemly facts about the true nature of Hollywood. As our friends at The WOW Report point out, BUTT magazine's current L.A.-themed issue devotes eight pages to some of his creations, including a less-than-generous sentiment regarding the Most Powerful Gay in the Universe.

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Following Thursday's controversy-kickstarting BusinessWeek story "Paramount and DreamWorks: Splitsville?," in which it was suggested that a strained relationship between Steven Spielberg and Paramount might cause the director and his partners to jilt Brad Grey's DreamWorks-dependent studio empire when Spielberg's contract expires late next year, has seemingly induced much pants-soiling from within the walls of the Melrose lot. Hoping to halt the spread of further bowel failures over the rumoured state of the DW/Paramount union, votes of confidence have been issued by Spielberg and David Geffen, who took breaks from their filmmaking and shuffleboard-playing duties, respectively, to (at least temporarily) envelop Grey in a warm, reassuring hug. In a story about the alleged looming split, Var's Peter Bart passes along Geffen's regards for the Paramount team:

Geffen himself, calling from his yacht, insisted Friday that "Steven and I are very happy with the performance of Paramount's marketing and distribution teams in handling our films." He cited Rob Moore and Jim Tharp, among others, as contributing to the success of such DreamWorks-Paramount releases as "Transformers" and "Disturbia."

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