Willard Christopher Smith Jr. was out and about looking more Fresh Prince than Independence Day filming a crowd scene for his newest, Seven Pounds.

Here’s what we know about the flick:

Ben (Will Smith) is an IRS agent who is deeply depressed after the death of his wife, and guilt-ridden for mistakes from his past. He decides to kill himself, but to also help seven struggling individuals before doing so. When he meets Emily (Rosario Dawson), a beautiful woman with an heart condition, he falls in love with her, complicating his plans of suicide. Woody Harrelson also appears as a blind pianist who befriends Ben.

Seven strangers? Seven sins? Pound of flesh?…Se7en?

Jennifer Lopez has been developing something over at TLC for a little bit, and most assumed that we would be seeing a reality show about how “Jenny From The Block” kept it “real” while raising “children” with her husband Marc Anthony.

Even though this seems like a bad idea to us as people who watch television, we let it slide because we don’t find our dial turned to TLC all that often (that acronym stands for The Learning Channel, by the ironic way). Some people seemed really into the idea because celebrities raising twins…well, it seems like the plot to a really stupid chick flick.

But some chick flicks make money.

That was until Lopez’s manager, with one single statement, killed a tremendous amount of buzz about the JLo show in development:

“The recent show Jennifer Lopez plans to produce for TLC is not a reality show. It’s a show that will track the creation, production and eventual launch of a new fragrance. Jennifer will appear in a creative, entrepreneurial capacity and will absolutely not feature her children and family life.”

Sounds riveting, right?

If the first Newlyweds with Jessica Simpson and that guy no one cares about anymore taught us anything it was that the Simpson family is controlled by a fame-hungry patriarch that uses his daughters as puppets regardless of the reality TV fact that couples cannot withstand the scrutiny of having to manufacture a sitcom structure in their everyday lives (this week Jessica visits a zoo!).

Did you guys see that was one long sentence? Boo-yah!

Cashing in once again on the formula that his daughters saying stupid things equals money is Papa Joe Simpson, who is rumored to be “in talks” with MTV to revive Newlyweds, this time with Ashlee and Pete Wentz.

We an see the pitch now: “It’s like Newlyweds, but these two are actually still making relevant music!” The joke not being that even her own father recognized Jessica’s fall from musical grace followed her rise to reality TV stardom, but rather that MTV probably sees Ashlee Simpson’s new album and the continuing tour of Fallout Boy to be especially relevant.

Point being, even if OK! Magazine is making this rumor up, the chances of someone reading it and thinking it’s a good idea will probably lead to talks between MTV and the Simpson camp.

It’s the same school of thought that something isn’t real until you recognize it.

And, yes, we’re shying away from the fact that the Simp/Wentz union has been doomed to end by the bride’s father. If he doesn’t have to treat them like real people, why should we?

Ha! We knew it!

When we mentioned that Tom Cruise had lunch with Sumner Redstone AND had met JJ Abrams on set, we called this bitch!

Tom Cruise is in the market to make Mission: Impossible 4, and will do so as soon as possible in hopes of overshadowing the hellish buzz around United Artists and Valkyrie.

A source says: “Tom will make M:I 4 once Paramount greenlights the script.”

Yeah, suddenly Viacom isn’t the huge media giant squandering your talent, right Tom?

In honor of the 25th Anniversary of the release of Return of the Jedi, comedy group Runaway Box and Lando remind us about the native teddy bears of Endor.

Nothing like a sure thing, eh boys?

For the past few months, maybe even years, Ian McKellen has been the only Lord of the Rings actor who was pushing for The Hobbit to be made and for Ian McKellen to be a part of it.

When Peter Jackson was supposed to be directing it: Ian wanted in as Gandalf.

When Peter Jackson got kicked off The Hobbit: McKellen wanted to come back as Gandalf, but only if Peter gave his blessing.

When it was rumored that Guillermo Del Toro was going to take the reigns: Ian blogged about how he wanted to be Gandalf and was waiting to speak to Del Toro when things were confirmed.

Well, things were confirmed and McKellen’s non-stop poking worked out in his favor.

“Yes, it’s true,” McKellen told Empire magazine.

“I spoke to Guillermo in the very room that Peter Jackson offered me the part and he confirmed that I would be reprising the role. Obviously, it’s not a part that you turn down, I loved playing Gandalf.”

Was it the bathroom? It was the bathroom wasn’t it? Were you on the phone in the bathroom? Can we talk to you about being on the phone in the bathroom? Can you at least tell us what room you were in? Was Del Toro actually there with you? Was he in the bathroom?

See how annoying that is Ian? Did you really think that you needed to keep making a stink to get the role that your name is basically synonymous with?

Whatever, all that drama is over.

David Blane did it, just now.

Fresh from the AP wire:

David Blaine set a new world record Wednesday for breath-holding, 17 minutes and 4 seconds.
The feat was broadcast live during “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and the studio audience cheered as divers pulled the 35-year-old magician from a water-filled sphere.
Blaine looked relaxed afterward and said the record was “a lifelong dream.”
The previous record was 16 minutes and 32 seconds, set Feb. 10 by Switzerland’s Peter Colat, according to Guinness World Records.

The guy finally did it, even after he failed so horribly with that fish tank in the Lincoln Center Plaza. Maybe he’ll go back to actually doing magic now.

Or is that too much to hope for?

That’s right, the third fetus Spears is a girl and is due on June 29th, according to Life and Style.

This story has grown beyond our ability to mock it, so we’ll just sum it all up for you: Britney Spears’ 17-year-old sister got knocked up at 16 by her boyfriend Casey right as Britney was going through her roughest rough-patch. It’s ripples have included: Jamie-Lynn’s TV show seeing awesome ratings for it’s final season and Lynne Spears (the best mother in the world, obviously) pulling her planned book on how to be a good mother amidst one child being committed and the other getting knocked up at 16.

Seriously, there are so many jokes, but they’ve all been made. Just look at the whole thing, it’s absurd.

We’re only 10 days out of upfronts, when the network heads will unveil their new lineups for the fall in an attempt to get advertising bucks.

But, there’s little to be known about this year’s successful pilots, as some of them aren’t even finished yet.

The WGA strike pushed production on everything back, so the big question marks that are currently on our fall TV schedules are not even really filled.

Cleveland, the Family Guy spin-off we reported on earlier, is expected to get a 13 episode season off the strength of a 2 minute preview that will be shown at Fox’s upfronts.

We told you earlier to expect Sit Down, Shut Up to be the other Fox animated show to get a debut season, though no one has seen it yet.

Other shows looking good under Fox: Joss Whedon’s “Doll House,” J.J. Abrams’ “Fringe” and the Bruce Helford/Bernie Mac comedy “Starting Under.”

We’re just guessing about those (as is everyone else by the way) because of the pedigree shown by the showrunners.

As of now, the pilot closest to a lock is Cleveland, simply because they gave Seth MacFarlane two shows already, and America – for some reason – seems to love both of them.

We have already been warned by Michael Bay that everything we know is a lie. Call us crazy, but we think that maybe some of the world’s film geeks might have better information that Michael Bay is unaware of.

That and it’s Wednesday, the slow news day.

So, let’s look at what we think we know about Transformers 2:

- Teresa Palmer was supposed to play Talia al Ghul, the villainess in the “tabled” Justice League film. Now that it doesn’t look like she’s going to have any scheduling problems in the near future, buzz is that she has now snatched a role in Transformers 2.

- Our sources claim that principal photography will begin on June 2nd (we heard in Philly, but that’s about to be contradicted) eyeing a June 26th, 2009 release.

- A tipster called “Space Duck” sent this into Superhero Hype! : You may already know this but Transformers 2 will be filming at the Air Force boneyard in Arizona.

- Jonah Hill of Superbad and – recently – Forgetting Sarah Marshall is apparently up for the role of Shia’s roommate in Transformers 2. The casting sheet that we were told was a joke (by Bay, so whatever), describes the role thusly: [CHUCK] 19-25 yrs., Sam’s roommate at Princeton. He runs a conspiracy theory website. Funny in an irreverent, edgy way, he is shocked to see his conspiracy theories come to life. (2nd Lead)

Some of this might be bull or it all might be true. But, it’s better to know, says us.

Check out the new trailer for Swing Vote, the newest attempt by Kevin Costner to grab the national zeitgeist and turn it in a new direction regardless of its interest in any given subject matter.

You might remember: this man is the reason we care about baseball, global warming and the importance of post after the apocalypse.

If our Presidential choices were Dennis Hopper and Kelsey Grammer, we might take our time being courted too.

The thing about this preview is it set out thematically what the film needs to do: we need to care about this loser, then watch him rise to speak for the people as the politicians around him start to realize: “fuck, we’re just politicians now, not reformers, not legislators, just politicians.”

This sounds familiar to any Democrat, I would think.

The bad and ugly: no one in this cast is necessarily batting 1.000 with successful films recently, so though this is the time to bring up these issues in a tastefully done film, this film might miss the mark.

And then we’ll just forget about it, interesting plot or not.

A new trailer for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is going to be included with Iron Man’s 8PM release tomorrow, but it happened to leak online in a pretty good way - as in, you could hear, see and understand things.

But, of course, Paramount would rather you not see the trailer online, and would rather we not sneakily link to it like we did with the Dark Knight trailer download yesterday.

But wouldn’t it be great if it hadn’t been pulled from somewhere yet?

Check out this fan-made trailer and click around the related videos. That’s all we’re saying.

Ok, our good friend David Jr has compiled his footage form the crazy Dark Knight Viral that took place on Monday in New York.

Some observations from Dave’s neck of the woods during the scavenger hunt:

1) It was unsupervised until we got to the theater, so it was literally hundreds of people, some in Joker make-up dashing through mid-town to honking cabs and dumbfounded city officials.

2) I saw a kid puking because he ran so much. I caught up with him later in line for the trailer and he told me that he had eaten pate (goose liver or something, right?) on a school trip before playing. What kind of school serves pate?

3) At one point, I was weaving through parked traffic, heading north on 8th avenue and ahead of me was a father pulling his 11 year-old son in between a truck and a taxi. Son: “I don’t think this is safe.”

4) The viral campaign was made for idiots. False info was spread pretty fast in the scramble. The worst one I heard about was a goon who, when asked what was going on by a passerby said: “I’m a bomb specialist. Run,” then took off towards the next clue. For shame.

At the end of the trailer, after abandoning our phones, there was a raffle for a roll of 35mm film. It was described as “maybe what you just saw, maybe not” and was given to a player who obviously didn’t have a 35mm projector back in Queens.

Luckily, someone has threaded the film, and given us our first look at the “Jokerized” trailer: The Dork Knight.

Pretty cool.

Jim Carrey is getting all gay-ed up to act in I Love You Phillip Morris, and this is what we know about it: Based on a book by Houston Chronicle crime reporter Steve McVicker, the fact-based film casts Carrey as Steven Russell, a married father whose exploits landed him in the Texas criminal justice system. He fell madly in love with his cellmate, who eventually was set free, which led Russell to escape from Texas prisons four times.

Jim seems to be jumping right into the role in Florida right now, if these set pics are any indication.