It looks like Russell Brand might want to be the next Beetlejuice - the Brit comic is planning to play a ghoul in the upcoming comedy "RentaGhost."

According to Deadline.com, Brand will star as Frank Mumford, a deceased man who hopes to be more productive in death than he was in life. So, he partners up with a few fellow specters to open up a temp agency that rents out ghosts to the living. Naturally, things don't quite go as planned.

"RentaGhost" is based on a popular BBC1 series that ran from 1976 – 1984. A release date has not yet been set for the movie.

In the meantime, Brand, 35, has plenty of other projects in the pipeline, including "The Tempest," which opens December 10; "Hop," an animated April comedy in which he voices the Easter Bunny; and a remake of the '80s comedy "Arthur," out sometime next year.

Update, 12/9 5:00 p.m.: TV Guide Canada has since posted a retraction of the story quoted below, saying that actor Ed O'Neill was misquoted in the piece.

"Unfortunately, Mr. O’Neill’s comments were misquoted, which resulted in the erroneous interpretation of his comments," the retraction reads. O'Neill's comment should have read as follows, according to TV Guide:

“I’m one of Jane Lynch’s biggest fans. I love Jane Lynch. She is a genius. But at the same time I said ‘Sophia could win’ because … and I’ve only seen Glee a couple of … I’ve only seen Glee once. But I thought Jane’s role is rather one-dimensional. It’s kind of strident. It’s always kind of the same. I’ve seen her be much better. So I thought ‘Sofia’s funnier,’ and I think she is in these two comparative roles. Anyway, Jane won. But I was hoping that Sophia would."

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As the illegal immigration debate rages on, one of Hollywood's heavyweights is weighing in with her own experience: Salma Hayek.

The Mexican-born star recounted in the Spanish edition of V magazine the brief period of time when she was an illegal immigrant in the States.

"It was for a small period of time but I still did it," the 44-year-old told the magazine, according to E! News.

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The spirit of Michael Jackson lives on in the just-released music video for his song "Hold My Hand."

The video, which premiered today on MichaelJackson.com, VEVO.com, and YouTube.com, opens with a crowd of people standing outside a building and proclaiming, "I love you, Michael." As they release balloons into the sky, a child can be heard saying, "Come back."

Footage of Jackson performing on stage is woven with images of children dancing joyfully along with shots of rapper Akon, who also appears on the track.

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Hopefully the Black Eyed Peas aren’t too salty about their latest album’s record sales – the super-group arrived at No. 6 on the Billboard 200 albums chart with their latest effort, “The Beginning.”

Although there was incentive to snag a copy of the ensemble’s album, since fans could win a chance to see the Peas perform live during their halftime performance at the Super Bowl XLV, the record sold 119,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Billboard speculates that the lower-than-last-time debut could have something to do with the middling reception to the album’s single, “The Time (Dirty Bit).” Comparatively, when the group’s last album, “The E.N.D.,” debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard charts in June, 2009, their single “Boom Boom Pow” was enjoying its 11th week as the top single on the Billboard Hot 100.

Yet the group’s still faring better than others – Soulja Boy of “Crank Dat” and “Pretty Boy Swag” fame has sold only 13,000 copies of his latest album, “DeAndre Way.”

Besting them all, including last week's chart champions Kanye West and Nicki Minaj, is Susan Boyle, whose album "The Gift" is sitting pretty at No. 1 with 272,000 copies sold.

He won a Golden Globe for the 2001 biopic "James Dean," and now James Franco is set to tell the story of the icon's "Rebel Without a Cause" co-star Sal Mineo.

Franco has optioned the film rights to author Michael Gregg Michaud's "Sal Mineo: A Biography," and will likely write the screenplay and direct it on the big screen, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

As of now, Franco does not plan to star in the biopic.

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There's definitely life out there as far as the two-part "Alien" prequel is concerned. Though the release dates were said to be delayed until 2013 and 2014, New York magazine's Vulture reports that production is set to begin in March, with the first of the films hitting theaters in late 2011.

According to Vulture, filmmaker Ridley Scott had planned to hold off on filming "Paradise" – the official title of the two-part prequel – because he wanted to accommodate the schedule of Leonardo DiCaprio, who is set to shoot Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar Hoover biopic. But now Scott is moving forward without the 36-year-old "Titanic" star on board.

While no other cast members have officially been announced, 30-year-old Noomi Rapace, who stars as Lisbeth Salander in the Swedish "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" films, is said to be the favorite to play "Paradise's" heroine Elizabeth Shaw.

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[Editor's Note: If you're sensitive to spoilers, stop reading now.]

That meltdown on last night's "Top Chef: All-Stars" might have been one of the most epic I’ve ever seen.

But before we get to that performance at the Judges’ Table, let’s talk about what led to the fireworks.

The Quickfire Challenge was to make a midnight snack for 150 kids who were having a sleepover at the American Museum of Natural History. Joe Jonas was on hand for judging, and Dale T.’s lack of recognition of the pop star (“At first I thought he was a pastry chef”) was hilarious. Should I be worried that I recognized him immediately?

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Ed O'Neill made some headlines this week (TV Guide Canada has posted a retraction on the story that led to those headlines), but when it comes to his performance on "Modern Family," Wednesday's episode showed why he deserves an Emmy nomination himself (or even a Golden Globe nod next week).

The episode found all of our characters dealing with major disagreements. Needless to say, O'Neill's character Jay was my MVP of the week, determined to show Manny and Luke - at the mall just before their first dance - what it means to be a man: "Pretty soon you get some hair on your chest, you start answering the phone and people don't think you're ladies."

As you can imagine, Phil had a very different idea of what that means.

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His past series have been hits for HBO, but the company has opted to pass on the latest Alan Ball project.

Ball, the man behind the HBO series “Six Feet Under” and “True Blood,” also helmed the pilot for “All Signs of Death,” a show based on the Charlie Huston novel “The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death.”

Deadline reports that there is speculation HBO couldn’t find a place for the show in its schedule. The pilot was written by Huston and directed and executive produced by Ball. HBO is owned by the same parent company as CNN.