Every New TV Show Is Going to Be a Musical Now
You can thank Glee for that. Also today: a new time travel movie is confusing, we need a farm boy to go kill a giant, a TV adaptation gets its leads, and an Ugly Betty favorite makes good.
So this is from yesterday, but it is BIG NEWS, so it needs to be mentioned. Remember Glee? Remember how that was a fun show that everyone liked and it had music? Well the rest of TV has seen that people liked Glee and have decided to make their own versions of it. Most intriguingly, Idina Menzel is making a pilot about a mom and daughter that involves music, because the mom is like a wedding and bar mitzvah singer or something. Inevitable Taye Diggs cameo alert!! Menzel is annoying yes, but annoying in a good musical theater way, so this could be good. The other musical show in the works is from a guy who wrote Sharpay's Fabulous Adventure and The Suite Life: The Movie. So you know it's gonna be off the chain! It's a half-hour, lady-driven comedy. So there are your new Glees, ladies and germs. Enjoy 'em. [Deadline]
The hunt (ha, I originally, Freudianly typed "hung" there) for a strapping farm boy has begun. I mean, I think a lot of us are always on the hunt for a strapping farm boy, but this search is a little more formal. Bryan Singer is directing a movie called Jack the Giant Killer (based on "Jack and the Beanstalk" I presume?) and he needs a young man to play the heroic farm boy. In the running are Aaron Johnson, the boombalottie who played in Kick-Ass and Nowhere Boy, Nicholas Hoult, the dreamboat from A Single Man and Clash of the Titans, and Aneurin Barnard, who was in the London cast of the musical Spring Awakening. So those are (some of) your potential strapping farm boys! Are they as you hoped? I know, you'd think they'd be Czech or Slovakian or something, but... that's just in the uh... movies. [THR]
It's a good day to be Michael Urie! First we heard that the Ugly Betty actor will be stepping into the off-Broadway revival of Angels in America, playing Prior, come February. And then we read that the little wiry haired pixiemachine is going to be joining the cast of a new TV pilot!! Now, don't get your featherdusters in a bunch. It's a TNT show, about cops, starring D.B. Sweeney. So... this ain't Christmas. But still. Urie, I'm guessing, will play one of the three nerds that Sweeney teams up with to help him solve crimes. The show is called Brain Trust. Hm. But still! Good news for him. (Another bit of good news in this item is that the delightful Suzy Nakamura landed a role on another TNT show. That is exciting!) [Deadline]
Well, it's official. Jonah Hill will be joined by shellacked gravy totem Channing Tatum in the movie version of 21 Jump Street. It's one of those comedy updates of an old serious show, because those are always funny. And Channing Tatum, well what a sketch, right? He's a total card. Just always has everyone in stitches with his "Dyuhhhh huhhhh hmmmm guhhhh..." routine. That's some gooood comedy right there, brother. Yesss. Can't wait for this movie. [Variety]
Aha! Sundance. It's a month away now, so they've announced their slate of films in competition. There's nothing terribly exciting, because most of the fabulous celebrities have steered clear of the fest for some reason this year. Who cares about movies if there aren't awesome celebrities involved? Borrrring. (In truth, I am curious about the Vera Farmiga one about religious fundamentalism and the one about "a duplicate Earth" being discovered.) [NYT]
Indie fella Paul Dano has joined the cast of the Rian Johnson (Brick) film Looper. It's all about this crime syndicate that can send people back in time, then send "Loopers" back in time to kill them, thus leaving no evidence in the present. Ingenious! There are absolutely no holes in that strategy. Well, actually, there probably are, thus a movie about it. Y'know, finding the flaws or whatever. It's like the inverse of Minority Report or something. Or... I'm already confused. It's Inception meets A Kid in King Arthur's Court, is what I'm going with. [Variety]