You may recall a big announcement last spring about a remake of a Korean film, now called “10a/10b” starring Oscar nominee Marisa Tomei and the very choosy (about picking roles) Liv Tyler. The indie world roared with approval.

Well, guess what? “10A/10B” has been aborted, and the result is a pair of lawsuits and a lot of angry people. In fact, not only was the plug pulled on the film, but last May, when the decision was made by the film’s financiers to kill it, they substituted in a hastily written new script that was tailored for the existing sets.

The new film, called “Columbus Circle,” was cooked up by producer Christopher Mallick on the plane coming home from the Cannes Film Festival, where he tried unsuccessfully to sell George Gallo’s “Middle Men.” On the plane, he says, actor Kevin Pollak pitched him the idea, and Gallo agreed to direct it.

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Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” is a phenom. The wild Brad Pitt starrer  took in $20 million over the weekend, bringing its total to $73 million. Ka-ching! “Basterds” will be the first $100 million movie for The Weinstein Company, easily earning money and restoring faith in investors.

At the same time, TWC’s “Halloween II” followed “Basterds” on the box office chart at No. 2, with $17 million. By the time “HII” has a DVD release for actual Halloween, this movie will also be a huge money maker for TWC.

And they still have “Nine” and “The Road.” Which goes to show us all: he business is cyclical. No one is ever “finished.” Except maybe for Kevin Smith, who must regret his comments to The New York Times now.

Last night, little Sally Draper read “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” aloud to her grandfather on “Mad Men.” It’s roughly May 1963 in the world of the Drapers and their friends. The book could not have been more appropriate.

Perhaps Matthew Weiner was worried about his characters: the end is coming. Last week, Roger Sterling’s daughter chose November 22, 1963 for her wedding. It’s not going to be pretty. All I could think last week was, these poor people do not know what’s coming.

I wish for them that they could live in this oblivious bliss forever, smoking, cheating, drinking and living like John Cheever will never be supplanted by Kurt Vonnegut, Hunter S. Thompson, and Tom Wolfe. If only.

Last night, Sterling (the amazing John Slattery) actually performed in black face at his own party. Peggy tried marijuana. A young couple did the Charleston — this is many years after Elvis, but just one before the Beatles — and an ad man recalled his Princeton singing group days with a barbershop quartet number. This is a delicious moment in time, when no one is the wiser ab0ut anything.

But there are hints: Peggy, who last week slept with a stranger, is pushing into the real Sixties. She may leave the others behind.

Let’s hope 1963 is plotted out slowly. In November we get the assassination. Three months later the Beatles land in America. And then it’s all over. Off will come the gloves. Literally. I hope Weiner is savoring the moment while he can.

P.S. In case you don’t realize it, Bobby Morse is playing Cooper, the owner of the original ad agency. He was on Broadway in 1962, starring the antecedent to “Mad Men,” “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.” It’s intentional, and very clever. Michelle Lee should be brought in as Joan’s mother. That would close the circle.

Best laugh of the weekend: a Brit tabloid’s assertion that Macaulay Culkin is the biological father of Blanket, Michael Jackson’s youngest child.

Are they kidding? This is as preposterous as Mark Lester being Paris’s father.

In each case, there isn’t even a slight hint of physical similarity. Forget that Culkin is blond and blue eyed, and that Blanket is dark and possibly Latino.

It makes no difference to the British press!

We can only imagine the laugh Culkin, who lives in New York’s West Village with his girlfriend, must have gotten.

Who’s next to be revealed as a bio parent of a Jackson child? Eggs from Tatum O’Neal? Sperm from Bubbles the Chimp?

As I’ve reported since 2005, Blanket is the product of Michael Jackson’s biological matter and a surrogate mother. The surrogate was chosen from a catalogue of names presented to Jackson by none other than Dr. Arnold Klein. Neither Dr. Klein, Mark Lester, Macaulay Culkin, nor Topo Gigio is the father.

Website TMZ got punk’d today by a concert promoter who wants a chunk of Michael Jackson’s money.

The site has published a letter purportedly from Frank DiLeo, Michael’s manager, instructing anyone who wants to produce a Jackson tribute concert to come through him. The letter bears a scrawled, indeciperable signature and the very funny sentence “Frank Dileo is the manager of Michael Jackson (deceased) in life and in death.”

The problem is, DiLeo tells me it’s not his letter, nor is it his signature. He didn’t write it, and has no idea who some of the people are who are named in the letter including a Fadi Rashed. “I’ve never heard of Fadi Rashed,” says DiLeo, and a Google search doesn’t help either.

DiLeo immediately called TMZ’s Harvey Levin, but Levin has yet to remove the fake correspondence.

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The Michael Jackson documentary, “This is It,” got a warning notice from the Screen Actors Guild. Someone at SAG must have panicked that the movie has never been registered with them, and that the people in it aren’t getting paid through the union.

A Member Alert went up on the union’s website that reads in part: “The producer of the theatrical motion picture ‘This Is It’ (also known as ‘Michael Jackson’s This Is It’) is not yet signed to an agreement with Screen Actors Guild covering the terms and conditions for performers and background actors employed on the picture.”

Apparently, no one has told then that “This Is It” is a documentary made from footage taken of rehearsals of Jackson’s stage show. It was never intended to be a film. No one is acting in it.

Meantime, I am told that the film is coming along nicely in the editing room. Every day director Kenny Ortega shows assembly of footage to a variety of producers involved in the project. The word is that everyone is very happy with what they’re seeing.

Most importantly, they do say that we’ll see Michael giving cogent instructions to dancers and singers, and interacting with his crew and cast. This should end once and for all the accusations that Jackson was out of it to perform, or to do the shows in London.

Meanwhile, no one knows why the police investigation into Jackson’s death is taking so long. Many people close to Jackson right before his death still have not been interviewed by the police. Nevertheless, one Jackson intimate has been very much in touch with the police, and is warning friends that something “big” and “dangerous” is about to happen. Let’s hope so.

Oscar Isaac

One of Hollywood’s hottest up-and-comers has just landed the male lead in a big new film.

Oscar Isaac, who’s already the star of this fall’s historical epic “Agora” with Rachel Weisz, has been tapped by “Watchmen” director Zack Snyder for Warner’s “Sucker Punch.”

Isaac will be in good company, with Carla Gugino, Vanessa Hudgens, Jena Malone and Abbie Cornish all vying for his attention. Jon Hamm even makes a cameo.

We’ll see Oscar next summer with Russell Crowe in “Robin Hood.” He plays King John. It’s his second Ridley Scott-Russell Crowe movie, after “Body of Lies.”

I should point out that Oscar is managed by Jason Spire, the same guy who’s got Anthony Mackie — hot as a pistol — on track for a Best Supporting Actor nod in the current “Hurt Locker.” Mackie is currently appearing in the Public Theatre’s Central Park production of “The Bacchae.” You may not recognize him, though. In the second act, he wears a lovely frock and high heels. Let’s just say it’s an unforgettable sight!

Tom Hanks, Sally Field and a bunch of stars are about to give a charity party, even if it upsets the people it’s benefiting.

The charity is the Motion Picture and TV Fund, which operates the Motion Picture Home, Hollywood’s premiere retirement community for entertainers.

Every year on the night before the Oscars, DreamWorks Animation chief Jeffrey Katzenberg hosts a star-studded event to raise money for the Fund called “The Night Before.” But last winter the Fund announced it’s going to close the long-term care facility at its Woodland Hills campus and transfer more than 100 patients who expected to live out their lives there.

That hasn’t stopped Katzenberg. He’s throwing a similar bash on the night before the Emmy Awards, called The Evening Before. And some of the people connected to the home don’t want a fancy party while their friends are being evicted from the very place that’s supposedly being preserved.

A group called Saving the Lives of Our Own (www.savingthelivesofourown.org) has written letters to the party’s sponsors — Target, People magazine and Sprint — as well as to celebrity hosts like Sally Field, Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jon Stewart and Hugh Laurie.

What do they want?

According to the letter, which they’ve given to yours truly:
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Getty photo

Dominick Dunne passed away yesterday at age 83. He was a great friend, something of a mentor and adviser, and a rare man of substance who loved the superficial. You’ll read a lot about him today, but I think of Nick covering the O.J. Simpson trial, making his way downtown every morning from the Chateau Marmont, taking notes. We discussed the how and why of O.J. a lot — how and why he killed two people — and Dunne always had the best theories. He skipped the Michael Jackson trial after covering Scott Petersen, but knew everything about Phil Spector. He relished the details, and was always helpful with hints and information he couldn’t incorporate into his own stories. It’s just impossible to think that he and his writer brother John Gregory Dunne are now each gone. The substantial people to whom we looked for direction seem to be vanishing quickly. I will really miss Dominick Dunne.

Ellie Greenwich had a heart attack and died at 68 yesterday after a bout of pneumonia. I didn’t know her, but like everyone, just loved the music she made. Her off Broadway show at the Bottom Line, “Leader of the Pack,” was a triumph. Her songwriting credits number into the hundreds. So many hits, from the Phil Spector stuff like “Baby I Need Your Lovin”" and “Be My Baby” to the Beach Boys’ “I Can Hear Music,” as well as her signature hit, “Leader of the Pack.” Her songwriting partner was Jeff Barry. They wrote one of the greatest songs in the pop canon, “River Deep Mountain High.” (Ike and Tina are good, but check out the Supremes-Temptations version.) What else? “Chapel of Love,” “Do Wah Diddy Diddy,” “And Then He Kissed Me.”

Thanks, Ellie, for all of it.

Lars von Trier’s “Antichrist” was reviled at Cannes this year, although the jury gave Charlotte Gainsbourg an award for living through it. I didn’t see it, but reaction was so hostile that one of my colleagues, Baz Bamigboye of the Daily Mail in London, gave the director quite a dressing down at the press conference. Now I know why.

Last night, the U.S. publicist handling screenings did everything she could to keep me out of the first U.S. showing. She was rude, obnoxious, and disrespectful. She pretended I hadn’t even RSVP’d, and asked me to prove I had on my Blackberry. She was so over-the-top unprofessional that I thought, “What is she up to here?” Once I took my seat, though, I got it. Maybe she was trying to tell me something, like “Run!”

“Antichrist” is a horror, and a horror film. And a horrible film. It’s laughably sensational, pornographic for effect, and ridiculous. The sexual violence is so contrived and disgusting that the people who did make it into the Broadway screening room laughed out loud when the real fun began.

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