the industry

R. Kelly to Be Closer to Your House Soon

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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]

R. Kelly to Be Closer to Your House Soon