Your favorite television show is delayed, I'm afraid. Indefinitely. Also today: Total Recall casting continues, as does TV pilot casting. Plus, The Office plans big fireworks for its finale.

  • AMC's Mad Men, the show that everyone talks about but only a few people watch (mostly because the people who create the conversation about it are the people who watch it, duhhh), was supposed to start its fifth season later on in 2011, but now it looks like we might not see the return of sad Don and sad Betty and sad everyone else until the year 2012, the last year of any of us. Yeah, AMC and Lionsgate are doing their usual bickering over who gets how much of what, profits and stuff wise, so production is delayed, meaning the whole damn season is likely to be pushed back past the new year. Arghhh! When will we get to find out if Booth and Bones are going to get together and whether Ziva and Tony will ever "will they"? Plus obviously we don't know if it's just going to be Angus T. Jones and Jon Cryer this season, which is huge, and Simon hasn't picked new judges yet. So this is going to be a big Mad Men season and I want it now! Not later! Now! [NYT]
  • Breaking: Olivia Munn Is Out of a Job. Her sitcom Perfect Couples has been pulled from NBC's schedule, even though there are two episodes all filmed and ready to go. Which basically means it's been canceled. Not good news for the celebrated comedienne. The show will be replaced by The Paul Reiser Show, which is essentially Paul Reiser's network version of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Well. Back to her comfortable home at The Daily Show I guess, where everyone loved her. [EW]
  • The long-gestating Cleopatra project, the big movie starring Angelina Jolie as the famed Egyptian ruler, is in talks with yet another director. First it was going to be James Cameron, but then he decided to go back to Pangea and diddle his space dragons a few more times. Then it was Paul Greengrass, but he decided to do a biopic of Martin Luther King, Jr. instead. What, like that's important?? And now the torch has arrived at David Fincher's doorstep. Will the Social Network Oscar-loser (boo!) take on this big, sandy epic? Possibly! He's also working on that Girl With the Airport Book Tattoo series, so that's gotta be a lot of work. But I think he'd be an interesting choice. The movie is way more serious about Cleo's political skills than it is about her being va-va-voom hot, so that seems like a good fit for the relatively sexless Mr. Fincher. We'll see! By the time this is all done, it'll probably be Shawn Levy directing Anne Hathaway and then 2012 will come and it won't matter. [Deadline]
  • Rumpled genius Jeff Daniels is rumored to be in talks to join the cast of Aaron Sorkin's very exciting-sounding HBO pilot about a cable news show. Daniels would play the lead role, the anchor of the program. Sorkin has done backstage well (Sports Night) and not at all well (Studio 60), so this is crapshoot, but I think a newsy bent is perfect for his walking-and-talking business. Plus it's on premium cable so you can do more and it's a subject that we've not seen on a scripted show really, so I am optimistic! You know who they should get? Tea Leoni. This seems like a Tea Leoni kind of show, doesn't it? I mean, she already did the MSNBC anchor thing in that documentary Deep Impact, so she's got it down. Get her on the line, somebody. [THR]
  • The producers of The Office are going to jam the end of this season with so many goodies you won't be able to see straight and hopefully won't notice until you tune in next season that, hey wait a minute, Steve Carell is gone. Yeah, they've already got Will Ferrell doing a few episodes after Carell leaves on April 28th, and now they're getting Ricky Gervais, whose own weirdo British version of the show is based on the American one, and one-time (maybe still) hope for Carell's successor Will Arnett to guest on the finale. Plus there will be more celebrity surprises! Basically it's going to be a bunch of celebrities singing and dancing in the foreground while Carell scuttles around in the back and packs up the last of his things and disappears through a side door. We'll never knew what hit us. [EW]
  • A few casting tidbits: Elizabeth Perkins has jumped aboard Vince Uncensored, the Conan O'Brien-produced comedy pilot about Michael Chiklis deciding to live a life of absolute honesty. So that would make Perkins the Jennifer Garner part in a bizarro-world version of Invention of Lying, or the Maura Tierney part in Liar Liar. Hard to say? [THR] Ian McShane will play a king in the big Jack the Giant Killer movie. McShane has played a king before, most memorably (for me, anyway) on NBC's short-lived Kings, a show that teased us with a whole gay prince plot line, only for it to be snatched away from us by the ignoring eyes of heedless Americans. A pox on your houses! Plagues on your fields. I'll salt your earth! I want my gay prince back. [THR] Some poor actress was cast on a new pilot called REM and was to play the lead guy's "tennis coach and confidant," so like a fit, sexy friend or something. But now she's been reshuffled and will play the guy's mom. That can't feel all that good, can it? I mean, you're still on a TV show. There's still that. But... When reached for comment, the actress, Laura Allen, said: "Monique's mother? I'm not Monique's mother! Angela Lansbury is Monique's mother! Shelley Winters is Monique's mother! Sean Connery is Monique's mother! No, No, Sean Connery is Monique's boyfriend! He may be three hundred years old, but hes still a stud." [THR]
  • Plans for the Total Recall remake (well, reimagining) continue apace, and now they have to figure out who's going to play the Sharon Stone and Rachel Ticotin parts. The list so far? Diane Kruger and Kate Bosworth are apparently reading this week for the Stone part, while Eva Mendes and Paula Patton are up for Ticotin's good girl (well, better than Stone) role. But Mendes might also be up for Stone's role, and Jessica Biel is in there somewhere too. (Is Jessica Biel mentioned for basically every single big movie that's getting cast, and then not actually ever getting cast? That seems to be how she functions in Hollywood. "Well, I read a lot...") Personally? I think the roles should go to Sharon Stone and Rachel Ticotin. How about that, Hollywood? [Deadline]