Jay Scherick and David Ronn weren’t too pleased when their pitches at the Hollywood studios brought them nothing but rejection. Maybe it wasn’t until they stopped telling everybody they co-wrote ‘Norbit,’ that almost one year later they finally made a deal.

The script ‘Zookeeper’ is about a zookeeper who gets dating tips from the talking animals he works with. MGM made the deal and proudly describes it as ‘Hitch’ with animals. Apparently, Disney and Dreamworks were interested in the script too, both fitting candidates. And this way, Scherick and Ronn got “a $2 million advance against a $3 million if the project gets made.”

I just hope they bring something new to the ‘talking animals table.’ They pretty much have to, with that amount of money.

Hollywood may have had a record in their home country with $9.6 billion during last year, but Germany is struggling and saw a 5.7% drop in ticket sales in 2007. Cinemaxx, one of the leading chains in Germany, saw a 34% decrease in profits compared to 2006.

“The film industry, including Cinemaxx, cannot be satisfied with the development of the market in 2007. Despite a high number of high-profile films, the number of admissions remained below expectations,” the company said in a statement.

It’s true, last year had some big titles and they paid off in the US. A factor in all this may be the delayed release dates in Europe. While the Hollywood studios are doing more and more simultaneous releases, some movies are still coming out when the DVD hits the US shelves. That’s when the German audience can chose between a click on the internet or a ride to the theater.

MTV continues their ‘what could have been’ series, with this time Brendan Fraser as Superman. “First they offered it to me. Then they didn’t offer it to me,” Fraser said. “Then a huge swath of guys came in to put the suit on. We acted scenes as Clark Kent and [Superman].”

He goes on about how the script, at that time the one by J.J. Abrams (the creator of ‘Lost’), was “really really really,” yeah really awesome. It actually sounds like he’s saying it was “really” better than the script that was actually used. Check the video below for the full interview at Comic Con.