Where the Wild Things Are director Spike Jonze recently gave his most expansive interview yet about his troubled, tortured, presumed-dead and reanimated fantasy epic, which Warner Bros. is now committed to opening Oct. 19, 2009. And while light-treading Jonze makes his biggest statement about the delay by offering virtually no statement at all, a teasing philosophical aside about his young star Max Records summarises pretty much all you need to know about Jonze v. Warners:

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As exit strategies go, Daniel Craig's long view on stepping away from James Bond is the most progressive we've encountered in some time: At a Quantum of Solace press conference last week in Rome, Craig suggested that Barack Obama's election win had perhaps laid the groundwork for a black 007. Admittedly, we hadn't yet considered the "action-movie franchise" component of Obama's social influence, but at least one critic opened the discussion online — and this only days after Beyoncé Knowles made a public appeal for the role of Wonder Woman in the long-delayed (and presumed dead) comic-book adaptation. And so begins America's next essential civil rights debate: Have our blockbuster heroes moved beyond race?

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A reader sent Towleroad this snapshot of the sky above Warner Bros. in Burbank, probably the largest and most nausea-inducing "Yes on 8" sign yet erected in the ongoing, Mormon-underwritten campaign to strip gay Californians of their Constitutional right to marry. Luckily, God got one look at the message and blew it away:

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The Daily Show's Rob Corddry created a new web series for TheWB.com (it lives! Online! So there, The CW) called Children's Hospital. We find it hard to believe they're actually producing this thing, but we've been assured by reps from Warners' online arm Studio 2.0 that about a dozen episodes are on the way. Based on the trailer above—packed with an impressively pedigreed cast including The State's Ken Marino and David Wain, Jason Sudeikis, Ed Helms and Megan Mullally—this thing might actually be worth sneaking in before lunch while your boss isn't looking.

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Tracking on Body of Lies isn't dazzling anyone today at Warner Bros., which has spent the last two months trying to push Ridley Scott's $US100 million Leonardo DiCaprio/Russell Crowe war-on-terror thriller onto the top of this weekend's congested slate of new releases. Most forecasts place its opening gross around $US17 million — likely enough to dispatch mildly aromatic new competition like Quarantine, City of Ember and The Express, but not nearly enough to guarantee a first-place finish ahead of Beverly Hills Chihuahua Not. Acceptable. Is it too early to ask what the hell happened here?

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When the Wild Things Are: For those waiting for a shred of good news to emerge from the long industrial nightmare that is the Where the Wild Things Are release date saga, today might be your day. Warner Bros has reportedly announced Spike Jonze's troubled fantasy will finally land in theatres on Oct. 19, 2009 — almost a year after its original date, which Warners scuttled for re-shoots that didn't seem help matters much as they dragged on. It's too long a wait for us to hold our breath, but we'll keep quiet from here lest some WTWTA curse abides. You can never be too careful. [Coming Soon via Vulture]

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The Watchmen copyright squabbles plaguing Fox and Warner Bros. will go in front of a judge next year on Jan. 6, exactly two months before the graphic novel adaptation is scheduled to open in the US. The good news for Warners and the fanboy community mouthbreathing in anticipation: Fox's quest to block the film's release is unlikely to come through that close to opening day — which in turn relegates that Wolverine boycott/piracy revenge threat to the Dustbin of Unnecessary Ideas once and for all. Alas, a trial date means someone's probably getting busted — which is where the bad news comes in.

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If it's the last thing it ever does — and it probably will be — Warner Independent Pictures is bound and determined to wring every last bit of notoriety out of the $1.5 million it spent last year on Alan Ball's merde du jour directing debut Towelhead. And almost a full 12 months after the film met its Toronto Film Festival premiere audience with a splat heard 'round the world, the doomed mini-major's quest to culturally salvage what's left of the rape-and-racism coming-of-age drama has tapped into yet another free-publicity boon: The Council on American-Islam Relations finally came around the other day to condemn the title Towelhead and urge a name change. We know nobody saw that coming.

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The Watchmen Studio Blood Feud pitting Fox against Warner Bros. in a copyright scuffle to the death is turning more shrill by the minute, with outraged fanboys filling the public space from which studio lawyers retreated on Tuesday. One war-zone observer filed a particularly harrowing dispatch this morning, describing the spillover onto the Web and the violent counterattack calling for a boycott of Fox should its claim to Watchmen's rights delay the film's release. A more militant protest suggested pirating Fox's own troubled summer offering Wolverine instead, leaving an exasperated Fox spokesman to swat defensively as mouthbreathers descended from all sides:

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New Line's Survivor Party: We regret overlooking this story Tuesday afternoon, but the news that New Line plans its annual summer party despite pink-slipping its founders (and more than 500 other staffers) in April can't really get old, can it? Especially not with the party coming up tomorrow night at SkyBar of all places — a $35,000 fete for 45 people, according to Nikki Finke, with whom "studio insiders" debate the figure and argue that "[e]ven in the worst years New Line always had that party. ... Toby [Emmerich] felt like the summer party is part of New Line's DNA and to change that is a mistake." OK, but this is the last time: Expect Warner Bros. to absorb the party planning and invitation distribution duties in 2009, only to push the event back to 2010 when its other parties that year threaten to underperform. [DHD]

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