• “Some believe that with the country reeling from the economic breakdown on Wall Street, moviegoers will go for comedy,” says Variety, which predicts My Best Friend’s Girl to top the weekend over Lakeview Terrace. Of course, there’s also Ricky Gervais yukking it up in Ghost Town, but The Hollywood Reporter notes that film has tracked so poorly that Paramount cut back its screen count. I guess moviegoers won’t go for just any comedy in depressing times.
• Forget all the rumors about Russell Crowe or Colin Farrell playing Watson to Robert Downey Jr.’s Holmes in Guy Ritchie’s adaptation. Jude Law is now reportedly in talks to play the detective’s associate. And so I must elementarily deduce that Sherlock Holmes will surprisingly not be a hit.
• The kid from A Christmas Story will make his directorial debut with Couples Retreat, which will star his usual collaborators Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn, as well as Jason Bateman.
• Luke Wilson and Giovanni Ribisi have been cast in a film about the beginnings of the Internet porn industry. But will any of its target audience leave the computer long enough to go see it?
• Finally, though this isn’t big news, the 3-D animated adaptation of my favorite kid’s book of all time, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, has rounded out its voice cast with James Caan, Anna Faris, Bill Hader, Andy Samberg, Bruce Campbell, Tracy Morgan and Mr.T!. I can not wait.

• Bob Iger says Disney’s Hong Kong thene park had a rough second year because his researchers drastically under-estimated how long it takes to eat lunch. “There were longer lines to eat than to ride Space Mountain.” Oh, and iTunes makes money.
• Warner Brothers is trying to coax New Line’s Toby Emmerich to take a newly-created position as head of the pared-down, independent studio. WB wants to refashion New Line into a boutique producing half a dozen films a year at no more than than $50 million each. Variety says this could throw a wrench into a few proposed New Line projects, including (obviously) The Hobitt, and (not so obviously) a sequel to Wedding Crashers. Adjust that 2005 film’s budget for inflation and you’re up to just over $43 million; are we to assume that the remaining seven million is to spent on keeping both Fred Claus and Drillbit Taylor on retainer?
• The Hollywood Film Festival is adding the Hollywood Trailer Awards to their October slate of festivities.  Yeah, I know–I spend a week in Texas, and this is all I can come up with on my return? Blame the cold I picked up somewhere on the journey home. Or, hell––just blame Variety.

Alison at the IFC Blog points to the 50th and apparently final episode of Dinner For Five, which premieres on IFC Friday night, but which you can watch online via Brightcove now. According to this press release, it’s basically a promo for a soon-to-be-released film documenting Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show, but in practice, it doesn’t feel that shilly.

The show has always had a boy’s club romanticism to it that can either be fantastic or unbearable, depending on the assortment of guests, but this last episode is interesting if only because it draws attention to the entire series as a work of Jon Favreau/Vince Vaughn autobiography.

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• Was it star power? Strong reviews? The kind of holiday shopping climate that makes hiding out in a movie theater all weekend seem ideal? Whatever it was, I Am Legend bested all expectations this weekend, to take home $76 million at the domestic box office. That’s the best December opening of all time, stronger than any of the Lord of the Rings films. Meanwhile, from the Adding Insult to Injury File: The Golden Compass continued to disappoint, while Alvin and the Chipmunks scored $45 million in its first weekend.
• On the “specialty” side: Atonement and No Country For Old Men rode their Golden Globe nominations into the overall top ten, landing at spots nine and five, respectively. Expanding to 140-something screens, Juno earned $36,018 per screen–more than any other film, and good for eleventh place overall.
• Awards sludge: the Academy has declared 15 films, including the animated films Beowulf and Ratatouille, eligible for Visual Effects prizes; the American Film Institute put out their annual, totally unremarkable list of the ten best films of the year.
• Is it even news, when Jon Favreau joins the cast of a film already starring Vince Vaughn? Apparently.

• Is Reese Witherspoon the great untapped comedic talent that David Denby thinks Vince Vaughn has been waiting for? The two stars will face off in a comedy called Four Christmases, which New Line is trying to hustle into production so as to be able to release it in tie for the 2008 holiday season.
• Anchor Bay has acquired some kind of distribution rights (home video? theatrical? The Variety story is vague) to Sex and Death 101. The film marks the long-awaited re-teaming of Heathers director Daniel Waters with the star of that 1989 film, Winona Ryder.
• With footage from Beowulf blowing Comic-con crowds away, the effects firm behind that film’s motion-capture technology has landed deals to develop effects for three additional projects, including an animated film about cavemen to be developed by Jon Favreau.