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Ice Cube 's new movie  " Lottery Ticket " doesn't come out for another week -- but there's already a legal fight over the flick ... from a screenwriter who claims his agent ripped off his idea and gave it to another one of his clients. The man filing the lawsuit is Tom Huang -- who once wrote an episode of " The Mullets " back in 2003. According to legal documents, Huang claims he came up with an idea for...

Michael Weaver has scored a leading role in The Greatest Game Ever Played for Walt Disney Pictures. Weaver will play the role of John J. McDermott, the defending champion in the 1913 U.S. Open, a character who has no intention of letting any Brit take the championship. He didn't need to worry. Based on the true story of the 1913 Open, the film also stars Shia LaBeouf as Francis Ouimet, an amateur golfer from Massachusetts who stunned the world by winning the tournament and beating British champion Harry Vardon, who was the leading golfer of his day. The film is written by and based on Mark Frost's best seller The Greatest Game Ever Played: Harry Vardon, Francis Ouimet and the Birth of Modern Golf. Bill Paxton is set to direct, with Larry Brezner, Mark Frost and David Blocker producing and David Steinberg executive producing. Jason Reed is overseeing for the studio. Production is slated to begin late July. Weaver's recent credits include UPN's The Mullets as well as feature films Club Dread and Super Troopers. Weaver is represented by Untitled Entertainment and Paul Kohner Agency.

Walt Disney Pictures has picked up Ruprecht, a broad comedy pitch about Santa Claus' former partner by The Simpsons writers/executive producers Josh Weinstein and Bill Oakley. Andrew Gunn is producing. The story recounts how, in Victorian times, Santa left presents for all the good children and Ruprecht was responsible for leaving switches and coal for the naughty ones. Ruprecht went away when the partnership soured, and kids eventually stopped getting coal. The story picks up in the present day when Ruprecht resurfaces, determined to balance out Christmas and today's naughty kids with some overdue lumps of coal, causing a battle that turns Christmas on its head. Ann Marie Sanderlin is executive producing. Brad Epstein is the Disney executive on the project. In addition to The Simpsons, Oakley and Weinstein's writing credits include Futurama and The Mullets. They also served as consulting producers on the former and exec producers on the latter. The writers are repped by CAA and attorney John Moonves.

UPN has picked up its new comedy Rock Me Baby for a full season. The network has given a back-nine episode order to the Warner Bros. TV series, which in the Tuesday 9-9:30 p.m. slot has posted a 17% improvement vs. last year in total viewers as well as in the network's target demographic of adults 18-34. With the order for Rock Me, UPN has secured four of its five new series, including All of Us, Eve and Jake 2.0, for a full first season, with freshman comedy The Mullets still on hiatus.

The WB Network scored some demo gains with the debut of its new Thursday lineup, while UPN got a decent sampling for its new comedy The Mullets. Meanwhile, the premiere episode of NBC's new comedy Whoopi delivered a second impressive showing. The encore presentation of the Tuesday sitcom's pilot episode drew 9.6 million viewers and a 4.7 rating/13 share among adults 18-49 at 9:30 p.m. Thursday, holding onto 92% of its Will & Grace 18-49 lead-in, the best retention in the time period with a show other than Will & Grace since March. The one-hour premiere of the WB's Steve Harvey's Big Time (3.6 million, 1.4/5) at 8 p.m. came short of the big premiere of Family Affair (4.6 million, 1.6/5) in the same slot last year but was up in such key WB demos as persons 12-34 (1.6/6, up 7%), adults 18-34 (1.5/5, up 15%) and female teens (2.4/12, up 14%), according to Nielsen Media Research data.