Nine Minus One: Javier Bardem has stepped out of the lead in Rob Marshall's feature adaptation of Nine. Bardem was set to play Guido Contini, the director who has a hallucinogenic personal crisis a la Fellini's 8 1/2, but pulled out because he's "exhausted from work and awards season," and needs about a year to "recharge his batteries" (apparently he's tired and also a robot). Perhaps he's also exhausted from not having a sexy threesome in Woody Allen's Vicky Christina Barcelona. [Variety]

Bay Scours Down Under: Justice League may be sunk, but Australian actress Teresa Palmer has nimbly leapt into the cold, metal arms of Transformers 2. IESB's casting cheat sheet comes through again; they predict she'll play Shia LaBeouf's ex-girlfriend, a cerebral yet "arty girl that leads her own punk band." Nerds across the world are praying for a love triangle with Megan Fox, because everyone knows the only thing better than a robot fight is a catfight. [CourierMail, IESB]

MGM Goes to Zametherea: MGM has picked up a fantasy comedy spec from Peter Speakman and Michael M.B. Galvin called Executive VP David M. Murch's Adventures in the Land of Zametherea. The story follows a kid who travels to a Narnia-like land, then grows into a hardened adult, but must go back and save his childhood world. That’s funny, we remember Ben Stiller buying this project last month when it was more pithily called The Return of King Doug. [HR]

Sinise Leaving Earth: Gary Sinise will narrate Discovery Channel's When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions. What better man to narrate this heroic and amazing saga than a guy who's pretended to be an astronaut not just once, but twice! Don't act like you want to hear "one of the real American heroes, a guy who actually went to space." Sinise even pretended to go to Mars. Eat that, Aldrin! [Variety]

Wayans Gets Better: Damon Wayans will return to ABC as the lead of its comedy pilot, Never Better, about a guy "trying to be a good husband and father despite somewhat misguided attempts." Listen up, ABC, we're all in favor of testing the same pilot year after year with a different lead — it's network TV, after all — but couldn't you at least ... ah, never mind, we're watching YouTube anyway. [HR]