Crazy Guy Replaced by Crazier Guy

Rourke In, Cage Out: Mickey Rourke will replace Nicolas Cage in the titular role of Darren Aronofsky’s indie drama The Wrestler, immediately making the film 70 percent scarier and 80 percent less annoying. [Variety]

MacDonald and Cross Go Super Deluxe: David Cross and Norm MacDonald sign on to star in vehicles for TBS’s comedy broadband channel Super Deluxe. Cross’s show will feature sketches and commercial parodies, while MacDonald, who continues to give one-trick ponies a bad name, will reprise his Saturday Night Live “Weekend Update� anchor persona in CGI form. [HR]

Mol Memory Keeper’s Mother: Gretchen Mol joins Emily Watson and Dermot Mulroney in the Lifetime telepic The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, based on the best-selling Kim Edwards novel. The telefilm, due in March, is eagerly awaited by numerous viewers hoping to cheat on their book clubs. [Variety]

The Queen to Attend Terrible Concert: Bon Jovi, James Blunt, Enrique Iglesias, Kiri Te Kanawa, and Katherine Jenkins will appear “by royal command� at the Royal Variety Performance Gala at the Empire Theatre in Liverpool, with Queen Elizabeth II herself in the audience. Let’s hope Blunt will defy the royal command and get beheaded. [NYT]

The Cat Is Back: Debbie Allen will direct an all-African-American cast in a new production of Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, opening February 12 at the Broadhurst Theatre. At press time, the finest black New York stage actors were said to be rigorously preparing to lose the leading role to P. Diddy. [Playbill]

Hartnett, Rockwell in End Zone: Josh Hartnett and Sam Rockwell will co-star in George Ratliff’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s novel End Zone, about a Texas college football star having trouble adjusting to stardom. Though any Hartnett vehicle automatically comes with an extreme boredom warning, Ratliff’s previous pic was the nerve-wracking child-as-serial-killer thriller Joshua, so the jury’s still out. [Variety]