Nobody Expects Alyssa Milano
It's true, but then there she is, sneaking up on you and getting ratings. Also today: Mad Men drops in July, a trailer for a stoner movie, bad news for the Spider-Man musical, and a Kyle Chandler update.
Oohhh, you've got a date! Ha, no lonely fool, not a date, date. A premiere date for a television show, that you will watch alone. Mad Men returns for its fourth season on Sunday, July 25th at 10pm. AMC has also announced the series premiere date for their new spy show Rubicon. It'll debut on August 1st. So set your TiVos to Fun and close the blinds and forever entomb yourself, a lonely Aida without a Radames. That's what we'll be doing! [THR]
Speaking of things that are fun to do alone: Weed! Here is a cryptic teaser trailer for the Adrien Brody movie High School, about being high and school. Michael Chiklis from The Shield wears a funny wig. Because he's hiiiigh. [Collider]
OK. Billy Crudup and Toby Jones have signed on to the period film Enchantress of Numbers, directed by Bruce Beresford (the directing one, not the reality show-producing/maybe wife-killing one). The film stars Zooey Deschanel as Ada Lovelace, the daughter of famous fruity poet Lord Byron who is deemed by some the first computer programmer. Because she did stuff with "scientific computing" or something. Computer nerds in the 1800s! Nature finds a way... [Playlist]
While on the topic of nerds. Rhys Darby from Flight of the Conchords is slowly making his way into cinema. He's headed to his native Kiwistan to play in the film Love Birds, in which he'll play a sadsack with a sick bird who has a romance with Sally "Happy-Go-Lucky" Hawkins' wacky veterinarian character. Rhys Darby, New Zealand, sick birds, and Sally Hawkins? Can a movie handle this much twee/quirk?? This is the Wes Anderson or Mike White of weirdo accent movies. [Deadline]
Oh here we go, a little antidote to that last item. Here's a real American beef-man doing real American things like traveling back in time to live with American Dinosaurs. Yes, brooding, barking, but secretly kind Friday Night Lights football coach Kyle Chandler may be about to sign a money-fattened deal with the Fox Television Programming Network to star in a new Steven Spielberg show called Terra Nova. It is about a family from the future who travels back to the past to hang out with dinosaurs. One can assume that they are a goodly Evangelical family who has set their dials to 6,000 BC, when there were many triceratops monsters to ride. Yay Coach Taylor! [EW]
The new Alyssa Milano comedy Romantically Challenged wasn't challenged in the ratings! That's the joke that everyone is making these days about this show. The hilarious ads got 11.6 million people to tune into the program, about a sad woman (Milano) who has a sad life (teenage son) and would like to date. It costars Kyle Bornhemier from that Worst Week show and an actor named Josh Lawson, our Cousin From Anutha Completely Different Family Tree. So good for them! That seems rather remarkable. Will that number slip in the ensuing weeks? We'd guess yes, but we also guessed that the show would be canceled in the middle of the first episode, which clearly didn't happen, so what the hell do we know? Alyssa Milano is always likable, forever, so perhaps this is a good thing. [THR]
Cumming is going. Alan Cumming has dropped out of the much-delayed and problem-laden Spider-Man musical Turn Off the Dark. Not even Julie Taymor directing and U2 scoring could keep him involved. Ah well. He's going to do more episodes of The Good Wife instead. So who will play the Green Goblin now? We vote for John Lithgow. Because why the hell not. [Variety]
A young fellow named Shiloh Fernandez has been cast in Catherine Hardwicke's upcoming creepy, twisted Little Red Riding Hood picture, The Girl With the Red Riding Hood. He'll play the love interest of Amanda Seyfried, who is being harassed by a, yup you guessed it, nasty werewolf. John Lithgow has been cast as the grandmother. [HeatVision]