R. Kelly to Be Closer to Your House Soon

R. Kelly Tours! For music-lovers who like their concerts spiced up with nonstop sexual innuendo and a heavy police presence, R. Kelly launches a 39-date tour of the U.S. this winter with R&B stars J. Holiday and Ne-Yo. [Billboard]

Murphy to Speak A Thousand Words: DreamWorks assembles a comedy dream team as Eddie Murphy and Brian Robbins, the geniuses who brought us Norbit, join forces with screenwriter Steve Koren, the man who wrote Click, for a new comedy called A Thousand Words, about a man who learns that he can only speak 1,000 more words before he dies. They can go ahead and cancel the 2009 Razzies now. [Variety]

Big Dough for Transformers Scribes: And DreamWorks keeps the quality comin’ with a writer’s strike-induced $5 million to $7 million dollar deal for Ehren Kruger to join the writing team of Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman to pen the sequel to the summer megahit Transformers. That sure seems like a lot of writers and a lot of money for “And then the plane and the car turn into huge robots and fight. Shia LaBeouf looks scared.� [HR]

Abrams Back in Television: J.J. Abrams and his Bad Robot partner Kathy Ling will produce an as-yet-untitled drama for ABC about a cable-access psychologist, written by Grey’s Anatomy scribe Jill Soloway. Cue the maddening viral-marketing campaign! [Variety]

World’s Ugliest Woman Headed for Broadway! George “Norm!� Wendt takes over the role of Edna Turnblad in the Broadway hit Hairspray! starting October 23. If we could pick one single celebrity we’d like to see in a dress, dancing and singing on Broadway, it would have to be… not George Wendt. [Playbill]