Universal Keeps Imagine in Stable, Brian Grazer in Hair Gel

Imagine Stays at Universal: Superproducers Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s Imagine Entertainment signs five-year pact, keeping the production company at Universal through 2013. Imagine has a wide slate of films being prepped at Universal and, despite rumors to the contrary, claim they never really considered leaving. Pact will allow Imagine to maintain Hollywood’s highest correlation of movie success to lookin’ goofy. [Variety]

Watts Joins Owen: Naomi Watts signs on to star in Tom Tykwer’s The International, banking thriller featuring Clive Owen. Watts and Owen are both so great that we might even stay awake for this entire movie! [HR]

Hollywood Hunts for Next Harry: Warner Brothers and Relativity Media make deals for two epic British children’s series. Warners buys Angie Sage’s Septimus Heap, projected seven-volume series about a boy and a girl switched at birth, published by HarperCollins. Relativity buys much-hyped Tunnels by Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams, to be published this winter by Scholastic. [Variety]

Sorkin Makes DreamWorks Deal: Aaron Sorkin makes three-picture writing deal with DreamWorks. First screenplay will be The Trial of the Chicago 7, set in aftermath of the 1968 Democratic Convention. Imagine our surprise when we discover that the famous trial took place entirely in hallways and corridors. [Variety]

Ever After Aiming for Broadway: Ever After, musical adaptation of 1998 Drew Barrymore film subtitled “A Cinderella Story,� stages reading in preparation for an eventual Broadway launch. Zina Goldrich and Marcy Heisler write; Doug Hughes directs; Rob Ashford choreographs. The reading stars Elena Shaddow and Max Von Essen. [Playbill]