'Sex' on the Big Screen! Wait, Didn't We Know This?

Kristin Davis, Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall and Cynthia Nixon may finally be bound for a film adaptation of HBO's "Sex and the City." (By Norman Jean Roy -- Associated Press)

Two entertainment Web sites set off fireworks on the Fourth of July with reports that Time Warner-owned New Line Cinema was finally moving ahead with Time Warner-owned HBO on the long-time-a-comin' "Sex and the City" flick, about two years after the idea was hatched.

"Exclusive Major Sex and the City Movie News!" shrieked TVGuide.com, adding, "It's the climax we were all hoping for," and urging, nay begging, readers to post their "sure-to-be-orgasmic" reactions.

Trade paper Variety, meanwhile, vamped that New Line Cinema was "getting in bed with HBO" on the movie "after much foreplay."

Word of the flick first broke in 2004, right around the time HBO was winding down its six-season-old series about the travails of Manhattan sex-advice columnist Carrie Bradshaw and her three BFFs.

Both sites reported all four "Sex" chicks would be back for the flick, including star Sarah Jessica Parker and BFFs Kristin Davis, Cynthia Nixon and even Kim Cattrall, who reportedly gummed up the big-screen project back then because she wanted control of the script and a paycheck closer to that of Parker, who was also paid as an exec producer on the show, which Cattrall was not.

Both sites reported Cattrall has gotten over her diva-ness. Maybe because her post-"Sex" work has included a gig as a skating coach in the flick "Ice Princess," a paralyzed woman who wants to die in the West End drama revival of "Whose Life Is It Anyway?," British TV commercials for Tetley tea and a part in the unmade ABC series "Him and Us," about an aging gay rocker and his entourage and loosely based on the life of Elton John.

At any rate, both sites reported -- exclusively, natch -- that shooting would start in the fall and that longtime "Sex" exec producer Michael Patrick King would direct from the script he'd written.

The Web reports, coming as they did on one of the slowest entertainment industry news days in recorded history, set off a stampede of "strap on your Manolos" and "raise your cosmos in toast" lead-writing among The Reporters Who Cover Television.

Truth be told, "Sex" star Parker told "Entertainment Tonight" back on June 7 that the movie was in the works, explaining it "was a very complicated puzzle to put back -- not for the reason that people speculate about, because as far as I know all of the actresses want to be together again for this movie," and that "in my brain I think the timing is fortuitous because if we had done it years ago . . . we couldn't have done it now." Uh-huh.

Sadly, Parker's stunning news got lost in the tsunami of gimongous entertainment industry stories that broke that fateful day, including word that Paris Hilton had been fitted with an ankle bracelet and sent home after three days in the slammer because pookums wasn't eating or sleeping in the pokey. That was also the day cops were called to the home of David Hasselhoff's ex after the two of them got into it again over custody of their two daughters -- I think shoes were involved. It also was the day Jessica Alba finally was able to speak at length about her six-month ordeal taking violin lessons in order to assume the role of a blind violinist in the upcoming horror movie "The Eye," including such details as: "I don't know much -- or anything really -- about classical music -- unfortunately -- and I had to learn in six months to play Beethoven and Mozart. It was so hard, I practiced for hours."

And a month earlier, "Sex" regular Mario Cantone told MTV that King would direct the long-awaited big-screen adaptation of the popular series, marking King's cinematic debut. Filming would start in the fall, though at that time none of the actresses had a done deal, Cantone said, adding, "HBO's just gotta give everybody what they want."

Apparently HBO did, including giving Cattrall "input on her scenes," whatever that means, and a future series deal with the premium-cable network.