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The Morning Fix: ‘Bully’ rejects rating. Finding next ‘Games.’

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After the coffee. Before deciding if I should throw my hat in the ring to coach the Saints.

The Skinny:Tuesday’s headlines include Hollywood’s hunt for the next teen franchise, and the Weinstein Co. deciding no rating is better than an ‘R’ for ‘Bully.’ Also, Jimmy Kimmel has been tapped to host the Emmys on ABC this fall.

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Daily Dose:Sony Pictures is trying to gin up attention for May’s long awaited sequel “Men in Black 3” with a viral campaign that mixes UFO fears with, well, legal warnings. A bus bench ad sighted in Los Angeles’ Los Feliz neighborhood encourages folks to call a toll-free number allegedly set up by a teenager with the code-name Bug Eyes. He shares his fear that “extraterrestrials live among us” and encourages people to leave messages with “any information on extraterrestrial sightings.” The sense of paranoia is dampened a bit, however, by Bug Eyes’ warning that, “By leaving a message, you grant TheMenInBlackSuitsAreReal.com permission to use your voice and anything you tell me about yourself and any portion of the content of your message in audio or text form as part of The-Men-In-Black-Suits-Are-Real experience without additional consent or compensation.”

Finding the next ‘Hunger Games.’ The success of ‘Twilight’ and ‘The Hunger Games’ has Hollywood studios and agencies scouring young adult fiction in the hopes of finding the next big franchise. Not only are teen books being gobbled up left and right -- regardless of whether they were bestsellers -- there is even intense bidding for movie rights to books that haven’t even been published yet. ‘Every single studio wants to capitalize on a young-adult franchise,’ said ICM agent Josie Freedman. ‘It’s what’s selling on the publishing side and on the film side.’ The Los Angeles Times looks at Hollywood’s hunt for the next big teen hit.

Weinstein won’t be stymied. The Weinstein Co. has decided to release its documentary ‘Bully’ without a rating from the Motion Picture Assn. of America. The MPAA wanted to slap ‘Bully’ with an ‘R’ rating because of profanity. Harvey Weinstein has argued that an ‘R’ would make it difficult for teens -- the very people who need to see the movie -- to get into theaters. Now the risk is that some theaters may avoid carrying an unrated movie. More from the Los Angeles Times and Indie Wire.

There’s a movie in here somewhere. If the folks who rush out to see Universal’s ‘Battleship’ get bored with the movie, they can start playing ‘count the product placements.’ According to Variety, Coca-Cola Co., Subway and Kraft are the big promotional partners backing ‘Battleship,’ a big summer release for the studio.

‘Terra Nova’ to remain extinct. Netflix is going to pass on trying to rescue ‘Terra Nova,’ the dinosaur drama that Fox canceled after just one season, according to TV Guide. The studio behind ‘Terra Nova,’ 20th Century Fox Television, has been hoping to sell the show to either another network or Netflix. But the production costs and the amount of time it takes to make episodes of the special effects-filled show, coupled with the low ratings, make ‘Terra Nova’ too risky a bet for many.

‘Mad Men’ hype pays off. The return of AMC’s ‘Mad Men’ drew 3.5 million viewers Sunday night. That number pales in comparison with the network’s hit ‘The Walking Dead,’ but it was a record for the drama about 1960s advertising executives. While ‘Mad Men’ has a small audience, it is a favorite among critics, meaning that the coverage surrounding the show is way out of proportion to its ratings. More on the numbers from Bloomberg.

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Inside the Los Angeles Times:ABC has tapped Jimmy Kimmel to host the Emmys this September. Tribune Co., parent of the Los Angeles Times, is threatening to pull its TV stations from satellite broadcaster DirecTV in a dispute over carriage fees, also known as retransmission fees.

-- Joe Flint

Follow me on Twitter and we’ll ride the storm out together. Twitter.com/JBFlint

Photo: Harvey Weinstein. Credit: Kris Connor/Getty Images.

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