Scripts

Someone IS getting blown up. When “Criminal Minds" ends its turbulent third season Wednesday, one of the show's seven FBI profilers will explode. Of course, who and why is a big, cliffhanger secret to be revealed next season. But the upcoming big bang is a fitting conclusion to a season in which the behind-the-scenes drama rivaled that of the show's on-screen investigators as they chased 19 episodes' worth of serial killers. "I think we're now in Season 3.

Director Steven Spielberg, star Harrison Ford and executive producer George Lucas have signed off on David Koepp's script for a fourth "Indiana Jones" movie, representatives for Paramount Pictures and Spielberg confirmed Tuesday. Koepp's credits include "Spider-Man," "Jurassic Park" and "War of the Worlds."

AS a baby-faced undercover FBI operative, Eric O'Neill, at the time just 27, duped America's most notorious double agent, Robert Hanssen, a paranoid egomaniac and sexual deviant who kept a stash of automatic weapons in his trunk. By comparison, Hollywood's menagerie of control freaks was child's play. Pitch meetings didn't really challenge him, he said, because espionage and movie-making demand a similar skill set: nerves of steel, preternatural charm and a high pain threshold.

Suzanne Francis and Gabe Grifoni apparently didn't get the memo outlining the industry's policy that screenwriters need to take their lumps wordlessly and move on. Former writers' assistants on such television shows as "Sports Night," "Boy Meets World" and "Scrubs," Francis, 33, and Grifoni, 30, bonded during their 16-hour shifts and finally decided to pool their creative sensibilities three years ago.

Gary Scott Thompson, writer and executive producer of the NBC show "Las Vegas," won't be taking a summer hiatus. Instead of enjoying his usual three months off, he and his colleagues have been asked to write scripts and shoot most of next season's episodes, presumably as a hedge against a potential Hollywood writers' strike late this year. Starting Monday, new production for "Las Vegas" starts -- three months earlier than usual -- with the goal of shooting 18 or 22 episodes by fall.

In the world of genies, it's not often that you get a fourth wish. But Jim Herzfeld and Ryan Rowe have just been granted one that they hadn't even asked for: Their long-dormant comedy screenplay, "Genie Bob," which had been active and then silenced three times at three studios over the last 20 years, has miraculously curled back up out of the lamp at Fox to the tune of $1.6 million. Open sesame, indeed. "I was pleased but surprised," Rowe says.

THIS is a tale of two scripts, one that sold for a ton of money, one that remains twisting in the wind. Both are beautifully written, but in Hollywood, while scripts are prized for great writing, they must also give a studio chief enough ammunition to comfortably answer the question: If I spend $100 million on this, will I be bankrolling a big hit, not a colossal failure?

When Emmett/Furla Films co-chairman and producer Randall Emmett announced from Cannes two weeks ago that he was financing the $60-million thriller "Righteous Kill," he implied that the idea for the film had been sparked by the desire of friends Al Pacino and Robert De Niro to work together again. This was news to the script's writer, Russell Gewirtz, who started writing "Righteous Kill" four years ago, before his first attempt at a screenplay, "Inside Man," had even sold.

It's rarely a good idea to greenlight a movie off of a title alone (unless it includes the words "Pirates" and "Caribbean"). That's like falling in love with a MySpace photo. But when Harvey Weinstein pulled the trigger on the latest raunchy comedy idea from "Dogma" and "Clerks II" writer-director Kevin Smith after Smith had written only six words of it, Weinstein's $15 million looked like a pretty good bet. The title? "Zack and Miri Make a Porno."

Well, DreamWorks and Paramount are finally moving forward with their inevitable "Transformers" sequel, and they've done it by putting an enormous down payment on a unique, blockbuster screenwriting crew. In a deal that could ultimately pay out more than $8 million, the studios have hired Ehren Kruger ("The Ring," "Scream 3") to write the film's screenplay with original "Transformers" scribes Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, whose four credited films have produced $1.