The Small Return of Elijah Wood
Frodo is back and smaller than ever! He's on the small screen, that is. Also today: happy employment for Angela Bassett, confusing employment for Heather Graham, upsetting employment for Ashley Greene, and sad unemployment for a bunch of Starz actors.
Aw, look who's back. Little Elijah Wood has finally found his way out of the Shire, exhausted and scared but still alive, and winded up at the FX television network in a new pilot. He'll play the human lead in Wilfred, an adaptation of an Australian comedy. And yes, I did say human lead. The title character is "part Labrador Retriever and part Russell Crowe on a bender" and will be played by the guy who played him in Australia. So... It's like the dog in Happily Never After that talked only to the Al Bundy guy? Or maybe like a drunken Harry and the Hendersons? It's confusing. The presence of Elijah Wood is even more confusing. You've blown our minds, FX! [THR]
Speaking of confusing things, Heather Graham finds continued employment for another baffling year. She'll be playing "wacky Aunt Opal" in a movie version of the kids books Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer. Which is a fantastic title. The porn version will be called Pootie Booty and the Hot Bum Her Summer. Why they would make a porn version of it I have no idea, but they will. And that will be the name. Heather Graham will probably be in that one too. [Variety]
Twilight beauty Ashley Greene has joined the cast of the Miley Stinkvirus film LOL as a "bad girl" who goes to Stinkvirus' high school. For her part, Stinkvirus is playing a young woman whose more "sexually experienced" boyfriend dumps her. So this is a movie in which Miley Stinkvirus and the idea of sex coexist, which is about as unpleasant as movies get these days. Um... oh, Thomas Jane from Hung has also joined the cast, playing Miley's dad. So now not only do we have to think of Stinkvirus and sex, we have to watch scenes of Stinkvirus talking to her dad and think about her dad's enormous penis. Good christ is this movie going to be horrific. The only thing that could make it worse would be if — OH GOD, yup, of course. Demi Moore's in it. [THR]
Fiddlesticks. The Starz network for winners has canceled two of its series. The no-one's-ever-heard-of-it comedy Gravity (starring Krysten Ritter, Ving Rhames, Rachel Hunter, Ivan Sergei, Eric Schaeffer, and Jessica Walter? What???) has been canceled, as has... brace yourself folks... Party Down. People kinda liked that show, didn't they? I've seen clips of it, looked funny. But I guess it wasn't enough. Apparently on their recent season finales, their viewer totals were 74,000 and 54,000 respectively. Which is like... I'm pretty sure more people go to Broadway in a weekend than that. That's like... nerfin'. Straight up nerfin'. Sorry guys. Maybe they can assemble that truly bizarre and eclectic Gravity cast on some other show? Maybe not on Starz so I can watch it? Because heavens is that weird and fascinating. [Deadline]
Old British bitch Jude Law has nabbed a role in Marty Skorkzee's new picture, Hugo Cabret, about French robots. Richard Griffiths, Ray Winstone, and Christopher Lee have also just been added. They join Ben Kingsley, Sacha Baron Cohen, and Chloe Moretz, the killer girl from Kick-Ass. So basically it's the most British movie ever made, and then there's American tween killer. I can't wait for beautiful tracking shots of her brutally killing French and English people. Maybe with the help of robots? They're, like, retro robots. The whole thing just sounds... interesting. [THR]
Angela Bassett, one of the most underemployed actresses in the biz, has joined the cast of Jumping the Broom. She'll be playing the high-profile Washington mover-and-shaker mother of Paula Patton in the wedding comedy, which takes place on Martha's Vineyard but is shooting Nova Scotia. Loretta Devine, who is in every movie ever made, has also joined the cast. Good for Angela! Though, bad that she has to shoot in Novia Scotia. At least it's summer? Bassett also just got done playing a part in the Green Lantern movie. Hopefully the surprise is that the whole movie is actually about her becoming the Green Lantern and we get to watch her fight crime for two hours. Just this once, movie people? Just this once? [THR]