Los Angeles (E! Online) – Belgium’s intrepid cub reporter will be breaking his first big-screen story in time for Christmas 2011. Paramount Pictures and Sony Pictures Entertainment have announced that Steven Spielberg’s big-budget gamble The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn will hit theaters Dec. 23, 2011.

The two studios are coproducing the 3-D motion-capture event film, the first in a pair the E.T. director is doing with Lord of the Rings master Peter Jackson (who will helm the sequel). But in an unusual move, Paramount and Sony plan to roll out Tintin internationally up to two months before the U.S. release.

She dreamed a dream, and it very nearly came true.

But Susan Boyle’s reality show journey finished Saturday with a second-place finish in the finals of “Britain’s Got Talent,” an ending that didn’t fit the fairy tale. Instead of the 48-year-old Internet sensation, an exuberant dance troupe called “Diversity” took the $159,000 prize and will perform for Queen Elizabeth II at the Royal Variety Show.

Boyle paced around the stage as the hosts named the top three of the ten final acts, and looked almost relieved when her name was called as the runner-up. She recovered in time to graciously praise the dancers.

“The best people won,” Boyle said. “They’re very entertaining. Lads, I wish you all the best.”

 VIA: NPR.org

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – Actor Mykelti Williamson is joining Fox’s “24″ as a regular.

On the series’ upcoming eighth season, set in New York, he will play Brian Hastings, the head of CTU New York and a man of razor-sharp intellect.

Williamson recently co-starred in the Sundance hit “Black Dynamite.” His series credits include “Boomtown” and “CSI: NY.”

There’s been a lot of speculation that T.R. Knight wouldn’t be returning to Grey’s Anatomy after this season. And according to a new report, those rumors are true.

If you’re a fan of the show, you know that Knight’s character Dr. George O’Malley was shown flatlining after a bus accident. That led a lot of people to believe his time was up, and they were right.

E! reports that Knight was frustrated by his lack of storyline for his character and camera time. As you may recall, he even asked to be let out of his contract!

She’s scored Number 1 singles and albums.  She’s won Grammys and Country Music Association awards.  She’s played countless shows before millions of fans.  But there’s just one venue where Carrie Underwood’s nerves will get to her — whenever she goes back to sing on the show that made her famous, “American Idol.”  Even four years after she won the “Idol” title, those butterflies got to her when she sang on this year’s season finale. (CLICK ON THE MEDIA BAR BELOW TO HEAR CARRIE UNDERWOOD)

Last year’s “American Idol” runner-up, David Archuleta, achieved success with his debut release, and this summer, he’ll be hitting the road with Disney Channel favorite Demi Lovato.  Archuleta’s become a big fan of hitting the road and its adventures, which found him reuniting with his good friend, “Idol” winner David Cook. (CLICK ON THE MEDIA BAR BELOW TO HEAR DAVID ARCHULETA)

Tom Barrack, a Westside financier who made billions buying and selling distressed properties, flew to Las Vegas in March 2008 to check out a troubled asset. But his target was not a struggling hotel chair or failed bank.

It was Michael Jackson. The world’s bestselling male pop artist was hunkered down with his three children in a dumpy housing compound in an older section of town. At 49, he was awash in nearly $400 million of debt and so frail that he greeted visitors in a wheelchair. The rich international friends who offered Jackson refuge after his 2005 acquittal on molestation charges had fallen away. His Santa Barbara ranch, Neverland, was about to be sold at public auction.

In Jackson, Barrack saw the sort of undervalued asset his private equity firm, Colony Capital, had succeeded with in the past. He wrote a check to save the ranch and placed a call to a friend, the conservative business magnate Philip Anschutz, whose holdings include the concert production firm AEG Live.

Fifteen months later, Jackson is living in a Bel-Air mansion and rehearsing for a series of 50 sold-out shows in London’s O2 Arena. The intervention of two billionaires with more experience in the board room than the recording studio seems on course to accomplish what a parade of others over the last dozen years could not: getting Jackson back on stage.

His backers envision the shows at AEG’s O2 as an audition for a career rebirth that could ultimately encompass a three-year world tour, a new album, movies, a Graceland-like museum, musical revues in Las Vegas and Macau, and even a “Thriller” casino. Such a rebound could wipe out Jackson’s massive debt.

“You are talking about a guy who could make $500 million a year if he puts his mind to it,” Barrack said recently. “There are very few individual artists who are multibillion-dollar businesses. And he is one.

Ed Asner may be best known among today’s 50-somethings for his work on “The Mary Tyler Moore” and the show that reprised his iconic character, “Lou Grant,” but now their grandchildren are getting a chance to love the venerable actor because of his role in the new movie “Up.”  Asner provides the voice for 78-year-old balloon salesman Carl Fredricksen in the Pixar film, and he thinks Carl could become one of Pixar’s most memorable characters. (CLICK ON THE MEDIA BAR BELOW TO HEAR ED ASNER)

On this day in 1947, UNITED ARTISTS released COPACOBANA. Directed by  ALFRED E. GREEN, the film was a spoof of backstage ’show biz’ films and really only notable for the appearances of GROUCHO MARX and CARMAN MIRANDA.(Not that that’s a bad thing)

On this day in 1908, Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and countless other Warner Bros. cartoon characters, was born  in San Francisco. His parents, who ran a women’s clothing business, moved with their son to Portland, Oregon, when Blanc was a child. Blanc began performing as a musician and singer on local radio programs in Portland before he was 20. In the late 1920s, he and his wife, Estelle, created a daily radio show called “Cobwebs and Nuts,” which became a hit. Blanc made many other radio appearances and became a regular on Jack Benny’s hit radio show, providing the sounds of Benny’s ancient car and playing several other characters.

In 1937, Blanc made his debut with Warner Bros., providing the voice for a drunken bull in a short cartoon called “Picador Porky.” Another actor provided the pig’s voice, but Blanc later replaced him. In 1940, Bugs Bunny debuted in a short called “A Wild Hare.” Blanc said he wanted the rabbit to sound tough and streetwise, so he created a comic combination of Bronx and Brooklyn accents. Other characters Blanc created for Warner Bros. included the Road Runner, Sylvester, and Tweety Bird. He performed in some 850 cartoons for Warner Bros. during his 50-year career. For other studios, he provided the voices of Barney Rubble and Dino the dinosaur in The Flintstones, Mr. Spacely for The Jetsons, and Woody Woodpecker’s laugh.

In his 1988 autobiography, That’s Not All Folks, Blanc described a nearly fatal traffic accident that left him in a coma. Unable to rouse him by using his real name, a doctor finally said, “How are you, Bugs Bunny?” and Mel replied, in Bugs’ voice, “Ehh, just fine, doc. How are you?”

Blanc continued to provide voices until the late 1980s, most memorably voicing Daffy Duck dueling with Donald Duck in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988). After Mel Blanc died of complications from heart disease, his son Noel, trained by his father, provided the voices for the characters the elder Blanc had helped bring to life.

(With thanks to History.com)