Hollywood Digest

EMMY'S NEW HOME?

According to a report in Daily Variety, the Emmy Awards are getting closer to a deal for a new home in downtown Los Angeles.

Plans calls for the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences to sign a 15-year deal to hold the annual primetime Emmy Awards at the Anschutz Entertainment Group's proposed "L.A. Live" development near the Staples Center by 2006.

The academy's board of directors voted this week to send a letter of intent to the developers, indicating its intention to be the anchor tenant for a 7,000-seat theater and 1,200-room, 45-story hotel complex at "L.A. Live."

"To take a bigger-than-life award show and match it with a state-of-the-art theater that AEG promises, that's the stuff Hollywood dreams are made of," said academy Chairman and CEO Bryce Zabel.

AEG intends to break ground on the project in 2003.

SPIELBERG TO THE RESCUE -- AGAIN

Steven Spielberg has once again bought an Oscar statuette at auction and returned it to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Spielberg reportedly paid more than $200,000 for the Oscar that Bette Davis took home in 1935 for "Dangerous." Sotheby's put the trophy on the auction block with other items being sold off by the financially troubled Planet Hollywood.

Spielberg plans to turn the statuette over to the academy, the same as he did with two other Oscars. He paid $578,000 last year to rescue Davis'd other Oscar, for "Jezebel" in 1938, and laid out $607,500 for Clark Gable's Best Actor Oscar for "It Happened One Night."

TORONTO CRITICS LIKE 'ADAPTATION'

The Toronto Film Critics Association has named "Adaptation" and its star Nicolas Cage as best picture and best actor of 2002.

The Toronto group named Julianne Moore best actress for "Far from Heaven." "Adaptation" won two other top awards from the TFCA -- supporting actor for Chris Cooper and best screenplay for Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman.

CASTING NOTES

Amanda Peet will reportedly join Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton in the cast of an upcoming comedy by the writer-director of "What Women Want."

Nicholson plays a man with a girlfriend young enough to be his daughter who finds himself falling helplessly in love with her mother (Keaton). Peet is best known as the co-star of "The Whole Nine Yards" and "Saving Silverman."

The cast also includes Keanu Reeves ("The Matrix") and Frances McDormand ("Fargo"). Writer-director Nancy Meyers worked with Keaton previously on "Baby Boom" and "The Father of the Bride."

MANDY PATINKIN'S NEXT

Mandy Patinkin is filming a guest-starring role in "Law & Order," scheduled to run during the upcoming February sweeps.

Patinkin -- who won the Emmy for outstanding lead actor in a drama series in 1995 for the CBS medical drama "Chicago Hope" -- will appear in episode entitled "Absentia," about two seemingly unrelated murders and a case of mistaken identity. The title refers to a legal circumstance in which a defendant is tried for a crime without being present at trial.

Patinkin won a Tony Award for his performance on Broadway in "Evita," and was nominated for a Tony for "Sunday in the Park with George."

'CROSSING JORDAN' SPINOFF?

NBC is reportedly planning a spinoff from its hit drama "Crossing Jordan," built around the good-guy detective Woody Hoyt, played by Jerry O'Connell.

Citing sources, The Hollywood Reporter said talks are under way on the project. "Crossing Jordan," starring Jill Hennessy as a brilliant and sexy medical examiner in Boston, is in its second season on the network. Other cast members include Miguel Ferrer, Ken Howard, Kathryn Hahn, Steve Valentine, Mahershalalhashbaz Ali and Ravi Kapoor.

O'Connell joined the cast late in the show's first season as a love interest for Hennessy's character.