Sony Pictures Entertainment chairman and CEO Michael Lynton is expected to be named CEO of Sony Corp. of America, according to multiple reports.

In his new role, Lynton will  now oversee Sony’s music division along with the television and movie operations. He’s expected to remain based in Culver City and won’t relocate to the Sony U.S. headquarters in New York City. According to the Financial Times, Lynton’s promotion could become official as early as next week.

Lynton’s promotion is just one of two major moves on the horizon as Kazuo Hirai is succeeding Howard Stringer as chief executive of Sony Corp. on April 1

Sony seems to hate small town America. On last night’s Geekerati radio show, Christian Johnson interviewed Jeff Mariotte, writer of two tie-in novels for 30 Days of Night which opens Friday. Mariotte was Editor in Chief of IDW comics when 30 Days of Night first appeared on the scene. Johnson writes:

Jeff had been planning with his local independent movie theater (The Twin Box in Douglas, AZ) to do a signing during the film’s opening this Friday. He figured that he could use his connection to the product as a way to promote his local theater. Everything was going fine until this Sunday. Sony, IDW, and Pocket Books had all provided promotional materials to be given away and Sony had even taken a “four sheet” ad out in the local paper promoting the release of the movie. The local theater spent a decent sum promoting the event themselves. Everything was going fine and everyone was happy with Sony, until they found out on Sunday that Sony had decided to postpone the Douglas release until November 2nd.

What’s Sony’s thinking? Do they want to test market 30 Days in LA before rolling it out in Douglas, AZ? Or are they shrinking the entire release saturation?

Resident Evil Reigns Supreme
Milla Jovovich and her Resident Evil franchise again took the top spot at the boxoffice over the weekend. The Sony horror pic Resident Evil: Extinction raked in an estimated $24 million while the Jessica Alba, Dane Cook romantic comedy Good Luck Chuck was only good enough for a second place finish with $14 million, reports Variety.

Washington, Scott Together Again
Variety is also reporting that Denzel Washington will reteam with longtime collaborator Tony Scott on a remake of The Taking of Pelham 1, 2, 3 for Columbia Pictures. The studio’s Spider-Man 4 scribe David Koepp wrote the screenplay for the redo which will find Washington in a role originally played by Walter Matthau in the 1974 film.

Changes at MSNBC Confirmed
THR’s Paul Gough reports on some major changes inside MSNBC including news about Dan Abrams and Joe Scarborough. The latter, who replaced Don Imus with a morning show, will get to keep the job and continue hosting Morning Joe.

- CHRIS GARDNER

The Hollywood Reporter has added two reporters to its film staff on the heels of Tatiana Siegel’s exit from THR in favor of a film job at Variety.

And they’re both familiar faces to fellow staffers inside THR‘s Wilshire Boulevard offices. Studio sources tell FBLA that Carly Mayberry and Leslie Simmons have been making calls around town announcing their new gigs.

Mayberry joins THR‘s film department after working on the ‘Convergence’ pages for the paper while Simmons moves to the film desk after covering entertainment law for the now-defunct spinoff, THR Esq.

Both Mayberry and Simmons had bylines in last week’s paper.

FBLA is also hearing a bit about their beats: Mayberry is said to be covering Paramount and DreamWorks while Simmons has been assigned Sony and 20th Century Fox.

- CHRIS GARDNER

Via Hank Grebe, news from the world of animation:

The Zemeckis Studio, aka ImageMoversDigital, is setting up shop in San Rafael. There’s a blog, where artists post their variations on a theme. The image above is from the Hot Rod series.

There’s a little chit-chat about Sony closing the LA studio, but that’s crazy talk. Right?

The Story You Wish You Wrote: In high schools all over L.A., influential drama, cinema and music teachers are retiring, after decades of shaping students who grow up to be accomplished industry titans. Shawn Hubler had the sense to profile one of them.

Are There Editors Left At The LAT? And do any of them read the online Photo Galleries before they go live? The Studio Chief Scorecard is a cute idea — and we’re guessing it took more work than the reporters and photographers had initially anticipated, but what’s with the wording? In the entry for former Sony president John Calley, the LAT sums up his future projects this way: “A Da Vinci sequel and a few other projects in development, but Calley is looking old.” Looking old? He began producing films 40 years ago. How’s he supposed to look?

Ben Silverman To Bring More Tetas To NBC: Apparently the new NBC honcho is bringing the tits, and this Meg James story kinda makes him sound like an ass.

Just the other day, David Carr in the NY Times admitted what we already knew: New Yorkers don’t understand show biz all that much. And today, Hollywood’s own Nikki Finke tears into Sharon Waxman’s version of events surrounding art-chick Julie Taymor’s battle with Joe Roth over some musical romance movie called Who Signed Off On This?, Across the Universe.

The musical uses songs by the Beatles, now owned by Michael Jackson and Sony. Sony Pictures is distributing the movie. Waxman didn’t bother to mention this little detail, but does go on about Taymor’s MacArthur grant.

Finke points out that Taymor’s movies haven’t been (a) very good and (b) profitable. Joe Roth, who Finke thinks should have known better with a girl like Julie, cut his own version of the movie, and it’s not all that hot either. And the songs aren’t performed by the Beatles, they’re covered by the actors, including Evan Rachel Wood and Jim Sturgess. With puppets. And Eddie Izzard as Mr. Kite. Taymor even cast Selma Hayek. Did we mention the puppets?

Is this Ishtar for the new millenium? Is it Heaven’s Gate for the YouTube set? One of the IMDB commentors says:

an advertisement for LSD

We’re betting Peter Travers uses that line as his blurb.

Tom Cruise and Ben Stiller ARE The Hardy Boys, er, Men. Cruise and Stiller will star in a comedy based on the mystery series. Stiller will produce, Shawn Levy will direct and get this:

Cruise and Stiller have been friends for years–an alliance that grew out of Cruise’s admiration for Stiller’s penchant for doing Cruise impersonations.

“I love it when you do me.” Does that sound as Brokeback to you as it does to us?

Red Envelope, the production arm of Netflix, will produce a doc. about ancient but game Tony Bennett, EP’ed by Clint Eastwood, who’ll also show up in the film. Netflix plans a theatrical release, a tv airing, and a live event for the film. Why?

“Tony Bennett has been at the enter of the culture for more than 60 years,” said Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos. “There are not that many people on the planet who can talk about Duke Ellington, Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy in the first person.”

In fact, no one can talk about them in the first person, because (a) one can only refer to oneself in the first person and (b) they’re dead.

CBS hired former NBC drama excec. Chris Castalloas to oversee reality programming. Sounds nonsensical, but he’d worked with Glen Maynard, exec. vp of alternative programing before, and Hollywood is all about who you know.

Second Life creator Philip Rosedale tells all. Five gigabytes of code!

Sony has acquired all media rights for Afterworld, a futuristic animated episodic drama. Right now it’s on Bud.TV, but soon it will be a game, a tv series, a web series, a cell phone series and a breakfast treat.

Goldwyn will distribute Goya’s Ghosts, Milos Forman’s
film about the Spanish artist. Natalie Portman stars as his muse.

ShoWest honors Bruce Joel Rubin as screenwriter of the year next month in Las Vegas. Rubin won an Oscar for Ghost.

Bob Wright, Survived By Jeff Zucker, Is Out At NBC. He was 63: Meg James writes up Bob Wright’s departure from NBC Universal as though it were an obit, which we guess it kinda is.

Life In The Fast Lane: The state has run out of carpool lane stickers for hybrid drivers. Great. Now all these guys are going to be smug and road-rage-y.

Colts Who? Sony’s The Real Winner: Sony has had the number one Super Bowl weekend movie seven years running with The Messengers. Of course, that streak may be due to the fact that no other studio really pays attention to Super Bowl weekend, but whatever. A streak is a streak, and Sony got Josh Friedman to write about it.