We’re fairly certain (and extremely hopeful) that this won’t result in purple costumes and exclamation marks being scattered throughout any movies.  Still, there’s a rumor that former Yahoo CEO Terry Semel might invest in New Line Cinema or MGM.

Nikki Finke reports, "I’ve heard that Semel is seriously kicking the tires at New Line and has already had a confab with Time Warner about it. . . .  As for MGM, you may remember that Semel was seriously thinking of heading that beleaguered studio back in 1995 when Ron Perelman was thinking of making a run at it."

It’s hard to know how to take this news; the entertainment industry isn’t something on which we’ve kept an especially close eye.  The idea of Semel’s involvement didn’t seem to disturb Finke, though, and she made clear that New Line’s founders deserve to get fired.  So that’s a decent start.

In other New Line- and MGM-related news, Guillermo del Toro is supposedly in talks to direct both "The Hobbit" films.  The release dates are a long ways off – 2010 and 2011 – but if they turn out either well or badly, it could have us forming a definite opinion on Semel’s involvement.