EXCLUSIVE: Michael Lohan denies reality series! THE PRODUCERS STRIKE BACK: "It's real! Yes, there's a reality show! No, it's not like Dina's!"

Michael Lohan is quoted by E! Entertainment gossip Tina Dirmann this morning, denying he’s involved in a reality television project:

"No way," Michael Lohan exclusively tells E! Online. "I am definitely not looking for my own reality show. That's Dina's thing and I've got my own thing."

As for that video that's been floating around YouTube— the so-called Michael Lohan Reality Project featuring 10 minutes of footage showing the Lohan patriarch alternately in prayer, going to divorce court, talking about Lindsay's meltdowns and working with a lady from an organization called 'Hookers for Jesus'—Michael swears he wasn't behind it.

"That tape was pirated from me and then spliced together with a title that made it look like some show I was putting together," he says.

"Some of it's footage for my ministry's promotional campaign, and some of it is just other stuff thrown in, like me going to court," he continues. "But most of that footage was actually for a promotional video I was doing for Teen Challenge."

Well, Miss Dirmann may be a good gossip, but she's got some work to do in the reporting department. The Michael Lohan Reality Project pitch tape is the real thing, all right, and sources tell us the Lohan project was first pitched to E!, but rejected because the network already had a deal with Michael’s ex, Dina.

“The Michael Lohan Reality Project has been in the works since 2004. The shooting was interrupted when Michael went to prison,” says producer Brett Hudson of Frozen Pictures. “We picked it up again after Michael’s release."

“I can understand why Michael denies he’s pitching a ‘reality show,’ especially after Lindsay’s new boyfriend supposedly denounced Dina’s reality series. But this project is nothing like the manufactured ‘reality’ of a Simple Life, or the phony image Dina’s presenting on E! This is raw, real life— a documentary project that takes us inside one man’s struggle to rebuild his life and family after hitting bottom, and his desperate efforts to reach out and help his daughter after seeing her make the same mistakes. Michael's got nothing to hide. And Lindsay would be proud. This project will restore 'reality' to Reality Television. As for the tape, I don’t know who let it out, but it’s the real thing."

“The project is real and the tape is real,” adds fellow producer Burt Kearns, currently in post-production on the Frozen Pictures documentary film, The Seventh Python. “The progress of the project has been documented on our website (Frozen Pictures) since the spring and we’ve been pitching the series the past month in New York, Los Angeles and London. Yes, Teen Challenge is a huge part of this. No, this is not ‘Momager.’ Yes, this is a real project. No, the tape that got out is not a spliced-together fake.

“In fact, since it’s gone over so well on the web (approaching 100,000 views on YouTube), we’re thinking of rolling this out as a webisode series.”

Stay tuned for more.