The Hollywood Insider

MOVIES
Enough with celebrating what they've done in the past. What are this year's Oscar winners and nominees shooting next? Sean Penn is in talks to join director Doug Liman's drama Fair Game — about outed CIA agent Valerie Plame (Naomi Watts) — as Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson.... Mickey Rourke is about to start production on writer-director Sylvester Stallone's rock-'em, sock-'em action thriller The Expendables, and he is still negotiating to play a Russian bad guy in Iron Man 2.... Richard Jenkins has lined up roles as Johnny Depp's boss in The Rum Diary and as a technician in producer Joss Whedon's twisted take on the horror genre The Cabin in the Woods.... Anne Hathaway will start her summer on stage in NYC, playing Viola in a Shakespeare in the Park production of Twelfth Night.... Meryl Streep is at work on an as-yet-untitled romantic comedy from writer-director Nancy Meyers (Something's Gotta Give).... Melissa Leo is playing a misguided cop opposite Hilary Swank in the drama Betty Ann Waters.... Robert Downey Jr. will do voice work for the DreamWorks Animation's comedy Master Mind.... Michael Shannon has been tapped to join Steve Buscemi in the pilot for HBO's Prohibition-era series Boardwalk Empire, directed by Martin Scorsese.... In March, Amy Adams begins filming the romantic comedy Leap Year in Ireland.... And Slumdog Millionaire's Freida Pinto will join Josh Brolin in Woody Allen's new, still-untitled project. ''I haven't even read the script,'' Pinto tells EW. ''I'm going to do it because it's Woody Allen. [It's] the sweetest Oscar gift ever.'' — Adam Markovitz and Adam B. Vary, with additional reporting by Dave Karger and Nicole Sperling

MUSIC
The Beastie Boys are putting the finishing touches on their eighth studio album. ''It's a pretty weird record,'' rapper Adam Yauch (a.k.a. MCA) tells EW. And unlike 2007's vocal-free The Mix-Up, he promises it will feature ''a lot of rhyming and playing and sampling — all combined.'' Beyond that, details are scarce, but Yauch hints that the venerable trio has been (no surprise here) experimenting with new sounds: ''We still have a good time working together. It's fun to be able to reinvent yourself every time.'' They're aiming for a summer or fall release, though no date has been set; tentative titles being batted around include Tad Lock's Glasses, a reference to a former tour bus driver's distinctive eyewear. — Simon Vozick-Levinson, with additional reporting by Carrie Bell

TV
Youth may be king, but when it comes to reality TV shows, older is better: Viewership for long-in-the-tooth franchises like Survivor (13.6 million), The Bachelor (10.8 million), The Biggest Loser (10.6 million), and Hell's Kitchen (9 million) is either up or generally holding steady — which certainly bodes well for the return of The Celebrity Apprentice and the umpteenth edition of Dancing With the Stars. What's going on? ''We've gone though three phases with the reality genre since 2000,'' explains NBC head of scheduling Mitch Metcalf. ''In the first phase, everything seemed to work. Then reality, like drama and sitcoms, took a 20 to 30 percent hit in ratings. Now it's only the mature shows that are working — while it's tough to launch new shows.'' Oh, we know. We sat through America's Toughest Jobs too. — Lynette Rice