Today the news broke that Hollywood 19th highest grossing franchise in all history may be in jeopardy. According to a report on The Playlist blog, director Paul Greengrass, who has shepherded the series through its last two installments, has walked off the film, possibly taking with him star Matt Damon.

The story is a tale of runaway egos and runaway budgets colliding in a studio under assault from incoming and outgoing corporate overlords. As reported, Greengrass, one of the contemporary cinema's most celebrated directors, has the expensive habit of "finding a movie" while shooting it; a practice which has clearly served him well, so long as you're not the one writing the checks for his retakes and extra footage. Apparently, there has been simmering frustration at Universal with Greengrass' slow-moving ways.

But then, someone at the studio decided to let him make an Iraq war film on Universal's dime. The film, entitled The Green Zone and starring Bourne lead Matt Damon, was according to The Playlist, Universal's little Christmas gift to Greengrass; that was supposed to be his small film to tide him over between Bourne blockbusters.

Well somehow, you know how it goes on movie sets, one thing led to another, someone got drunk, someone stayed out too late, someone ordered an extra bomb detonation and then you wake up and you've spent $100 - $150 million on a film about the one subject which the public has definitively stated they will not pay to see films, the past 20 films on the topic having grossed a combined total of a bubblegum wrapper, a few paperclips and a Starbucks half-price-before 5 pm coupon.

What followed is a bit unclear; it seems what with the GE and the incoming Comcast bosses paying more and more attention to costs in the dire Universal film business, tempers were strained, people were nagged and as a result Paul Greengrass has walked out on Hollywood 19th highest grossing franchise. And worse still, Damon has made a cryptic statement about being "loyal" to Greengrass, potentially pulling the plug on the whole darn thing.

The report quotes people familiar with the situation saying that the break-up could still be patched up, but at this hour, there are many more questions than answers. Among the things we must know while the fate of Bourne hangs in the balance:

• Why would a director as talented as Greengrass even want to make a third Bourne? Yes, by the low standards of today's thriller genre he's done a classy version, but its still basically a running around and jumping behind dumpsters and shooting at stuff movie? We're all for a good thriller, but is Bourne really the only place to get one?
• Is Matt Damon really irreplaceable? And if so, why? There's no one else who could do furrowed brow/quietly intense guy?
• No matter what Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon do, would the laws of nature ever allow a franchise that is still turning out cash to go away?
• Is there anyone in America who can recite the plot of the last two Bourne films (without looking)?
• Will this, the senseless slaughter of a profitable franchise, be enough to sink Jeff Zucker? Are there enough straws in show business to break him?
• Would this stunning development and the end of big screen Bourne put an end once and for all to the preposterous debate on whether the Bourne series is better than the Bond series?

Tonight, as Hollywood locked behind its drawn curtains and waits by candlelight for the all clear, much more lies on the line than the fate of one better than average, 19th highest grossing film franchise.

• Oh, this is convenient: Kanye West blames booze for his infamous VMA outburst, and now people are saying he's going to go to rehab, but his friends say that's not so. Too bad, because we really wanted to help fuel his martyr complex. [MSNBC]
  
  
• Remember Mel Gibson's anti-Semitic rant following his DUI? Well, he wants you and the justice system to forget: his lawyer will argue next week that since Gibson's completed his probation, the arrest should be expunged from his record. [TMZ]
  
  
• Janet Jackson, who has by far been more dignified than most of her family in mourning Michael, will wear black to show the world just how sad she really is, which is funny, since some people argue Michael hated that color. [The Sun]
  
  
• Kelly Osbourne, once the picture of teenage rebellion, doesn't like that kids these days wear short skirts. [Page Six]
  
  
• Briefly ubiquitous actress Emmy Rossum's husband has filed for divorce. Meh. [People]
  
  
• A "faith healer" claims he has cured Amy Winehouse's insane alcoholism. Even if we thought such a thing possibly, we'd advertise with caution. [Daily Mail]
  
  
• Ellen Barkin ran into Matt Damon on her street, where he was filming, and told him to come over when he was done. He laughed. [Page Six]
  
  
• 90210 star AnnaLynne McCord really wants Cosmo to put her on the cover so that she can be on the same celebrity plane as Blake Lively. It's good to have goals, we suppose. [Page Six]
  
  
• Roman Polanski will fight his extradition. Shocking. [MSNBC]
  
  
• Rest easy, America, for police have the second suspect in Lindsay Lohan's burglary in custody. Phew! [NYDN]
  
  
• OK! has spent a total of $300,000 on pictures of Khloe Kardashian's wedding to Laker player Lamar Odom. Who says the days of publishing's excessive spending are over? [Page Six]
  
  
• For reasons that escape us, fashion designer Marc Jacobs will reportedly join the cast of gay network Logo's Kept, which is basically Real Housewives with gay men. Watch A-List become C-list! [NYDN]
  
  
• Dita Von Teese's new Wonderbra ad campaign has been released. It's vampy. [Daily Mail]
  
  
• Jude Law won't be winning father of the year: he's demanding a DNA test to prove that Samantha Burke's tot really came from his loins. [MSNBC]

This YouTube video came via a tipster who writes, "Hi; I'm not sure how this works, but I got this footage from the set of Entourage the other day. Matt Damon was directing a PSA starring Adrian Grenier and he flips out on Adrian in front of everyone! [It] even shows Jeremy Piven as he tries to keep the peace - but Matt totally loses his cool and goes off."

We, on the other hand, are pretty sure how this works: Have a Hollywood star do a cameo playing himself on your Hollywood-focused TV show so he can promote his charity, incorporate an ego-driven blow-up on the set of a PSA into the plot, make a fun, shaky little video of said blow-up, put it on YouTube, and send it to gullible blogs claiming that it depicts a real on-set blow-up, which blogs will write about it and drive traffic to it in advance of the show's season finale featuring the Hollywood star.

What the hell, we'll bite. It's Friday. Also, go give money to OneXOne.org, because it looks like a fine little shop. But whatever you do, please stop watching Entourage.

• The Yankees' Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez hate each other, and now their mutual dislike is apparently spreading to their starlet girlfriends, Kate Hudson and Minka Kelly, who are reportedly not exactly that into each other either. [Page Six]
  
  
• Seth MacFarland has outed Stewie on Family Guy as being a big, fat gay! He says that he and his writing staff had a script ready to go in which they outed him but then canned it in the end. [Gatecrasher]
  
  
• Larry King's wife Shawn has pulled out of a Michael Jackson tribute concert being put together by Larry King's wife Shawn. [Page Six]
  
  
• Matt Damon got fat in preparation for his latest movie role. He says he gorged on McDonald's and Doritos and dark beer, but now the movie's done and he's already lost all the weight. Asshole. [Daily News]
  
  
• Awww...Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen went on a double date the other night y'all! They went to Strip House (Steaks?!) and ended the night "chain-smoking cigarettes until after 4am." [Page Six]
  
  
• Kourtney Kardashian has gotten herself knocked up. No word yet on who the father is, but the hot rumor is that it's some ex-boyfriend of hers named Scott. [Sun]
  
  
• Sienna Miller has already taken the Slinky Wizard back home to meet her family, so you know that things must be pretty damn serious. She threw a pool party for her family and friends, where James Blunt tried to pick up on her, but like a true knight, Slinky Wizard swooped in and swept her away from him. [Mirror]
  
  
• Liam Neeson attended a film premiere for the first time since the death of his wife, Natasha Richardson, who was usually on his arm for such events. Reports say that he seemed understandably solemn and distracted. [Daily Mail]
  
  
• Jaime Pressly was photographed popping a squat on an LA street outside of a club, but she says it was all a big joke and that the liquid coming out from under her dress came from a bottle of water she poured out. [Sun]
  
  
• Diane Kruger says that she did everything but sleep with Quentin Tarantino in order to land a role in Inglorious Bastards. [Page Six]

How's your spirit today? Is it acting "uncooperative"? Well, watch out cause you could get fired the way Twilight actress Rachelle Lefevre did! Starlets be warned, Summit studios is not down for your shitty moods or for your 10-day movie-shoot with the guy from Sideways. [Variety]

Great news for those of you eager to witness the country's proletariat fulfill their historic destiny by seizing control of the cultural means of production: leftist stalwart Howard Zinn and Hollywood hottie Matt Damon have signed on for an HBO series based on Zinn's book "A People's History of the United States." Eat a dick, capitalist-hegemon! [ THR ]

Billy Crudup's blue swinging wang has knocked Nic Cage's Knowing out of the top slot for DVD sales. Watchmen from Warner Home Video, has shot to the top of the national home video sales and rental charts its first week. [THR]

Who among you has the emotional veracity to stop giving Paul Haggis work? The Crash director is making a new movie with Russel Crowe called Three Days. It's a remake of the french flick Pour Elle about a wife who is imprisoned for a murder she claims she didn't commit and the husband devises a way to get her out. It's assumed Crowe will play the husband. [ THR ]

Jennifer Aniston will be in a new romantic comedy curiously named Pumas. Right. [ Variety ]

Spiderman director/longtime Orc Sam Rami has signed on to direct a live-action film based on the videogame World of Warcraft. For too long the Orc community has been slandered and stereotyped in the movies. Hopefully, Rami will foster greater diplomatic ties to the isolated Orc nation. [AP]

• Andrew Young is testifying in front of a grand jury as to whether or not John Edwards used campaign funds to keep Rielle Hunter quiet, or as the legal categorization would have it, "Baby Mama Hush Slush." [Rush & Malloy]
  
  
• Chelsea Clinton's wedding on Martha's Vineyard is going to be at Vernon Jordan's estate in late August, as previously reported. We're saving the date and waiting for our invite. We should probably not hold our breathing. [NYDN]
  
  
• Mugatu-esque German designer Karl Lagerfeld got some talk-to-the-hand from Heidi Klum's publicist, who says that the German Vogue issue with Klum on the cover (with an apparent 140-page spread inside) sold more issues than any other. None of this matters, because Lagerfeld is still kind of a scary Mugatu-esque asshole. [Page Six]
  
  
• Oh noez! Ron Weasley (Muggle name: Rupert Grint) has the Swine Flu. Gawker exclusive: Weasley was taken to Madam Pomfrey in the hospital wing of Hogwarts were they tried to use some healing potions to no avail. Then then had to ship him off on the Hogwarts Express back to Central London, where he became just another awesome celebrity case of Swine Flu. He is now better, and has flown back to the set of re-enactment documentary Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows. Meanwhile, Hermione Granger (Muggle name: Emma Watson) is keeping her relationship with Weasley under wraps as she publicly announces her plans to attend Columbia University in New York, where I will attempt to charm her with my Muggle blogging skills Brown University in Rhode Island, where she will come into contact with a bunch of Jewish Hipsters who she will hate because she didn't go to Columbia, in New York, a far more magical place than Rhode Island. It will probably fail miserably. Also, Harry Potter (Muggle Name: Daniel Radcliffe) won't date Emma Watson because it'd be too weird for them. Good to know the competition is thinning out. [Daily News, Showbiz Spy, Just Jared]
  
  
• Otis! My man! Tobey Maguire's kid has a name, and thy Spider Man spawn's name is Otis. People has the inside dirt on the middle name, too. [People]
  
  
• Rumer WIllis is going to be a lesbian on 90210. I hate that show and thus you will get no elaboration on what's probably a tragically bad, sub-par attempt at Gossip Girl's ingenious stunt casting. I'm sorry Rumer Willis, but you're no Wallace Shawn. You just aren't. [Daily News]
  
  
• Courtney Love trashed her hotel room at The Inn on Irving Place. Have you ever seen The Inn on Irving Place? It's the closest thing downtown has to a Bed and Breakfast. Like, jesus, Courtney Love: trash The Bowery Hotel. Located conveniently near the old CBGB space, you can relive memories of when that kind of thing was cool in bougie style while throwing things off your balcony at legitimately hot celebrities drinking in Bowery's backyard. Trash the Maritime and throw things out of those weird porthole windows. Trash the douche-magnet Hotel Gansevoorte - seriously, people would love that. Trash DeNiro's Greenwich Hotel or SoHo's Mercer Hotel, which were practically constructed for celebrity destruction. But The Inn at Irving? Are you raging a war on cuteness? Also, you know trashing hotel rooms is, like, so 1999 when Scott Weiland, Marilyn Manson, and the rest o your Home for Formerly Addicted Friends from The Crow soundtrack or whatever aren't doing it anymore. Seriously, old lady, put it on ice and chill the fuck out. You're already inches from this as is. [Page Six]
  
  
• There are 210 diamonds on the ring Kevin Jonas gave to his bride-to-be. Even I'm sitting at home with a gallon of ice cream, crying. We can haz inadequacies? There was also a small engagement party none of us were invited to. They went out for Pizza. [People and Pink Is The New Blog]
  
  
• Levi Johnston, shopping a book. I laugh loudly every time I see mention of Tank, his multi-faceted bodyguard/publicist whose name is Tank. He also does birthday parties. [Page Six]
  
  
• Matt Damon doesn't want Clooney or Pitt to take home the People's Sexiest Man Alive three-peat. Instead he's lobbying for Hugh Jackman. I'm still lobbying for Robert Gibbs. [People]
  
  
• Kelsey Grammer is already making jokes about the short-lived, massively underrated sitcom Back To You. [Page Six]
  
  
• Taylor Swift used to pick up Sparklers on the wrong end and burn herself as a child. SWOON. She can do no wrong. [People]
  
  
• Lewis Black believes in the power of the word "fuck." He notes that it's essentially a punctuation mark to many New Yorkers. This is one of those things that isn't "funny because it's true" so much as simply being true. The kind of true thing you hear, and you're like, yeah, what of it? [Page Six]

Movie folk continue to mine the oeuvre of sci-fi meditator Philip K. Dick. The latest movie project "loosely based" on one of his stories will be The Adjustment Bureau, which Matt Damon will star in for Universal. He's got a sweetass 20% first-dollar-gross backend. Not sure what kind of coin Dick's estate is getting at this point, but I'm sure some studio will soon pay handsomely for that box of old grocery lists that's just sitting there up in the attic. [Variety]

Bruce Willis got sued for dropping out of directing and starring in Three Stories About Joan, so now he's doing what any sensible person would do, countersuing. He wants $8.7 million because the producers were apparently sneaky about not exactly having full financing for the picture. [Variety]

Pennywhistle-voiced actor Mark Wahlberg will star in Prisoners, a story about a Boston man who turns crazed vigilante when his daughter and her friend are kidnapped. It's a good thing this movie wasn't just made. [Variety]

As his garage-built time machine just doesn't seem to work, a desperate Andrew McCarthy has found another way to return to the 80's. He'll be playing Brittany Snow's father on the spin-off of Gossip Girl that's set in Los Angeles' glitz rock n' roll days. No word yet on how he plans to sneak Judd Nelson onto the set every day. [THR]

Sex and the City dystopian visionary Darren Star is returning to HBO, with a first-look deal for a new series and an agreement to help shows from other writers along. His new skein will likely be called Doin' It in an Urban Area, about four friends who drink and cry all the time. [THR]

Oh good. A Marmaduke movie. But what does this mean for Steven Soderbergh's Howard Huge? [THR]

• Patrick Swayze, "losing weight and very weal," has stopped medical treatment, says the National Enquirer. [Mail]
• Richard Parsons is a genius for taking Amtrak from New York to Washington, DC instead of a corporate jet. The Post is so very proud of the Citigroup CEO's incredible PR savvy, it wrote him his own little adulatory gossip item. Who's a good plutocrat? WHO? You are! You are! (Clue: His poxy company already got $45 billion in taxpayer funds, now it wants another bailout. But let's talk about his trip on the choo choo.) [P6]
• Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s daughter Kick will intern at Rolling Stone, on the strength of her name. Her first name. [P6]
• Matt Damon claims Barack Obama's people demanded $50,000 to let him and a guest attend the inauguration. [Fametastic]
• To kill a vampire, drive a wooden stake through its heart. To kill a Stephenie Meyer vampire novel, leak the unfinished manuscript online. (Practically, you only need to memorize the last piece of advice. It could really come in handy.) [Gatecrasher]
• John Cleese's latest ex-girlfriend claimed to be 27 but is really 45. Comedy or tragedy? [Mail]
• Michael Jackson is even being sued, for money, by the guy who directed his "Thriller" video, John Landis. [Sun]

The actor gave an interview to the Miami Herald ostensibly to promote a long-running PBS series about the environment that he narrates (who knew?), but which actually served as a platform for Damon to launch a new host of feuds. After calling deposed New York Times columnist William Kristol an "idiot," Big Hollywood mastermind Andrew Breitbart scrambled in to offer $100,000 to Damon should he debate Kristol in a public forum, which is certainly the best possible use for a spare hundred grand in today's economic climate. Then, Damon went after 007 himself:

''They could never make a James Bond movie like any of the Bourne films,'' Damon says scornfully. "Because Bond is an imperialist, misogynist sociopath who goes around bedding women and swilling martinis and killing people. He's repulsive.

"Steve [Soderbergh, who produced yet another of Damon's spy movies, Syriana] told me that years ago he was offered a Bond movie. He told them he'd do it if they gave him creative control. Absolutely not, they said. They have a formula, they stick to it, and it makes them a lot of money. They know what they're doing, and they're going to keep doing it.''

To be fair, the Bond producers did experiment with adding children and extra fingers to the series, though neither note panned out. Perhaps if they introduced a Palin-pushing columnist as Bond's archnemesis—"K," shall we say?—Damon would finally be willing to overlook Bond's caddish ways.

• The opinionated Mr. Damon [Miami Herald]

Because, yes, a dumb liberal actor said a dumb qualitatively true thing about a professional political commentator—"He's an idiot," Damon told some newspaper, "he wrote that we should be grateful to George Bush because he won the Iraq war. We! Won! The! War!"—and so Breitbart, in his continuing effort to prove that he and his poor beleaguered persecuted Hollywood conservative friends are so much smarter than those goddamned limousine liberals is going to pay Matt Damon a tenth of what he'd make for an hour of commercial work to debate a singing frog about the war.

Why we'd expect our famous people to not have dumb political opinions like all the rest of us, or why we'd blame them for said opinions being considered "newsworthy," and also why we'd assume anyone but persecution-imagining conservatives would care what Matt Damon thinks of a nonentity like Bill Kristol? Unexplained, by anyone.

But, you know, he's a millionaire movie star, this Damon, and so repeating something Kristol said and calling him an idiot means it is time for the final showdown between rich conservative commentators and evil liberal celebrities, and so Matt Damon and Bill Kristol will enter the Thunderdome.

GOD BLESS AMERICA.

I mean, he's still living pretty modestly. The first season of Mad Men, given that it's an AMC show, probably didn't pay much and his second season contract most likely didn't give him a huge raise. Last we checked, he was living in Los Feliz and driving a leased Audi. So he's not quite tooling around his own Clooney Manor on Lake Como yet. Nor is Mad Men an enormous success or the Hamm name a household one. Yet. Actually he sort of reminds us of those young lads from Good Will Hunting who stood, some 11 years ago, poised to conquer the world. One went one way, the other another. And that has made all the difference.

Mr. Hamm is, yes, about ten years older now than Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were when they broke out, but he's arguably at the same career crossroads. So now does he go the Affleck route and try to make his movie star name in cheesy blockbusters and just become a Big Famous Person? Or does he tread more stealthily, choosing diverse and difficult actor parts with fancy directors, like Damon did with The Talented Mr. Ripley and All The Pretty Horses. We know how all that turned out, so hopefully Hamm will take Damon route and do the art house pictures and become big ticket popcorn star.

Just like Mr. Clooney, really, who zipped his way through good schlock (the Ocean's movies) and bad schlock (Batman & Robin) before he could really exercise some muscle and get his own creative pet projects made. Clooney has, really, the perfect acting career—a mixture of dark, substantive work and fun lighter fare—and Damon looks to be following ably in his footsteps. We hope that Hamm can do the same. Right now he's got both an indie and a big blockbustery thing in the can, so... two roads diverge.

The filmmaker said he has drafted his "Traffic" star Michael Douglas to play the flamboyant pianist. Richard LaGravanese is writing the script, and Jerry Weintraub will produce.

Soderbergh is in discussions with Matt Damon to play Scott Thorson, who sued Liberace in 1982 for $113 million in palimony, claiming he was the entertainer's companion for five years. Even though Liberace never wavered from career-long denials that he was gay, Thorson reportedly settled for $95,000 in 1986.

While we're eager to see how master biopicicist Soderbergh recreates Liberace's pink-fur-lined limo trysts and candelabra shopping sprees, it seems we'll have to wait awhile: He has two projects in the queue before this one, including the real-call-girl-starring, real-sex-featuring The Girlfriend Experience. That should give Douglas plenty of time to practice his best, "When the reviews are bad, I cry my way to the bank!" In the meantime, all this talk of Liberace movies has made us wistful for 1988—the Golden Age of Dueling Liberace MOWs—when Andrew Robinson and Victor Garber both gave their own memorable spins on the life of Mr. Showmanship.

Remember?

• Soderbergh tunes up Liberace film [Variety]

Most pressing to Damon, though, is whether Palin believes that dinosaurs actually walked the earth before man, or if their bones were simply littered as surprise gifts for Adam and Eve by a mischievous Supreme Being. Take notes, Charles Gibson! When will someone finally confront Sarah Palin and ask her why she fired all the dinosaurs in Alaska?

UPDATE: Gawker overlord Nick Denton ran the numbers, and it turns out that Matt Damon's statement that "there is a 1 out of 3 chance, if not more, that McCain doesn't survive his first term" wasn't quite accurate. The chances are more like 15%. How you like them apples?

• HuffPo[HuffPo]

• REVEL WITH A CAUSE [People]
• Previously: Where's Affleck [Defamer]

Rossdale told Us that he and Stefani didn't know the baby's gender.

"It's just gonna be insane when it comes because then we will find what it is," he said. "And then we get to name the baby! It's gonna be such chaos ... amazing chaos!

"I'm just trying to be there for the wife," he told Us. "Look after her and be cool."

SPOILER ALERT: It was a boy they named — we shit you not — Zuma Nesta Rock Rossdale, a moniker reportedly drawn on the fly from the varieties of organic teas once cited in No Doubt's concert rider. Meanwhile, Jason Sehorn knocked up Angie Harmon again, it's their third, etc. Here's hoping September is a more subdued month, or, more accurately, that our heroic celebrities make more actual news than infants. Humor us. Please.

[Photo source: Getty Images]

• Jennifer Garner confirms pregnancy [NYDN]
• Matt Damon's wife Luciana gives birth to girl [AP]
• It's Another Boy for Gwen & Gavin! [US Weekly]

Rather, Damon was transformed through the magic of A/V editing into the comely mouthpiece for a wide variety of American voices, "among them Michelle Obama, Cindy McCain and Mayor Bloomberg." It's an effective gimmick, if a little unfair to John McCain, who now can't help but hide his disappointment every time he rolls over in bed to the sound of his wife's voice, only to find a smiling Cindy instead of that dreamycakes actor from the Bourne movies.

• Ta Da! Debuting Our New TV Ad. [ONE.org]