According to a report released late last night by the Associated Press, Rosie O'Donnell will be replacing Meredith Vieira on The View. Um, OK? Was ABC particularly impressed with Rosie's big gay cruise? Is that what precipated this decision?
ABC fired Lloyd Braun in 2004 for greenlighting some expensive prime-time dramas. These, of course, were "Lost" and Desperate Housewives." So Braun, vindicated more with every week's Nielsen report, landed a posh job at Yahoo, heading the Media Group. One of his new goals: to bring established TV content into the rich environment of Yahoo.com.
· Sofia Coppola's Marie-Antionette, Richard Linklater's Fast Food Nation, Richard "Donnie Darko" Kelly's Southland Tales, Pedro Almodovar's Volver, and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Babel all land in competition at Cannes, while hack-helmed, big-budget blockbusters Da Vinci Code and X-Men: The Last Stand appear just for the free trip to France. [Variety]
· Mick Jagger digs deep to find a piece of his soul he hasn't already sold, then offers it to ABC in exchange for a role in a sitcom pilot. [THR]
· Suspicious that the folks at CAA must know about a secret warehouse full of fresh babies somewhere in Century City, ICM follows the juggernaut toddler-gobbling agency out of Beverly Hills and into new office space in the MGM building [Variety]
· KristieAnne Reed (not a typo, there's no space in her first name as far as we can tell) is promoted to executive VP of Bruckheimer TV. "KristieAnne is one of the brightest and most talented executives I've had the pleasure of working with," said Jerry Bruckheimer, who then brutally murdered her as a tie-in for a planned CSI episode taking place in Hollywood, defying his forensic detective stars to connect him to the slaying. [THR]
· Legendary Pictures is developing a live-action film adaptation of Paradise Lost, which will be reimagined as a romantic comedy between Adam and Eve in hopes of attracting Matthew McConaughey and Reese Witherspoon as stars.. [Variety]
· Paramount and Tom Cruise will premiere M:i:III in Rome on April 24, a fitting tribute to the city that so warmly hosted hosted the coming out party for the world's most suspicious relationship. [Variety]
· William H. Macy will class up Touchstone's City Slickers Meets The Hell's Angels flick Wild Hogs, joining a casting-by-dartboard ensemble of John Travolta, Tim Allen, and Martin Lawrence. [THR]
· Disney pushes Mel Gibson's Apocalypto from a late summer to a Dec. 8th release, perhaps downgrading the film from "blockbuster" to "holiday heartwarmer" or "Oscar bait" status. The studio is also considering dubbing the movie from Mayan into its proprietary Atlantean dialect, hoping the move from obscure to fictional language might impress Academy voters. [Variety]
· ABC finally proves that not everything can be a hit following Desperate Housewives, as new series What About Brian shed 27% of its cherished key demographic viewers. [THR]
· The casting of Kate Winslet in Elton John's CGI Gnomeo and Juliet (just what it sounds like—Shakespeare with "tacky garden gnomes") may have saved the project from the cutest circle of Miramax's development hell [Variety]
· 20th Century Fox TV takes all of the suspense out of the next few seasons of 24, virtually guaranteeing that Jack Bauer will survive a host of close shaves by signing up Kiefer Sutherland to a three-year, eight-figure deal. Sutherland will also get a shingle on the Fox lot with the deal, tentatively named I Am Only Beheading This Guy For The Good Of The Country Productions. [Variety]
· ABC further probes the possibilities of internet delivery by posting episodes of Lost, Desperate Housewives, and others on their website the day after they originally air. Advertising fans annoyed by a DVR's fast-forwarding features will be thrilled to discover that online viewers will have to sit through unskippable commercials. [THR/Reuters]
· In perhaps the most inevitable syndication deal of all time, Lifetime has bought the basic-cable rights to rerun episodes of Desperate Housewives. [Variety]
· Will Arnett quickly moves on from Arrested Development's death, selling a pitch to DreamWorks and Paramount about a "former U.S. vice president's privileged son, who is assigned an ambassadorship in Europe, where he quickly becomes the quintessential ugly American." For now The Ambassador seems to have one the title coin-flip over The Ugly American. [THR]
· Has it really taken Hollywood an entire year after her death to buy the rights that would allow someone to make a TV movie about the Terri Schiavo story? This place is really slipping. [Variety]
· Because merely propping up a Kate Couric RealDoll in a chair next to Matt Lauer would be too creepy for the morning show demo, NBC steals The View's Meredith Vieira to replace Couric on Today. And nope, still can't make ourselves care. [Variety]
· Great news for Lost fans: Touchstone TV throws piles of money down the hatch to keep showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse with the show for at least another season. [THR]
· Var beat us to the Extreme Makeover joke, but ABC's comedy development team is on the way out. We suppose that someone had to pay the price for the Jake in Progess/Emily's Reasons Why Not no-see TV block. [Variety]
· Seemingly Bizarre Studio Choice That May Only Make Sense Two Years From Now Of The Day: Bend It Like Beckham and Bride & Prejudice director Gurinder Chadha will take over the big screen remake of Dallas for Fox. [THR]
· CAA will branch out to eat babies on behalf of sports stars, poaching IMG agents Tom Condon and Ken Kremer (who between them have clients like Peyton and Eli Manning) from IMG. [Variety]
We're sitting here, watching the View and listening to Meredith Vieira talk about Katie Couric's move to CBS, when our ears perk up at the sound of Barbara Walters abruptly switching to her soft-and-sensitive voice: "And after the break, some news of our own."
• New York to anoint hot young editors; those photographed rumored to include TNR's Franklin Foer, The Atlantic's James Bennet, Roger Hodge of Harper's, and the Paris Review's Philip Gourevitch, who, at 44, calls the whole conceit into question. [Media Mob/NYO]
• The Times nominated Dargis for a Pulitzer, and no one there understands why; New York is pitching a Look Book book. [WWD]
• The Washington Post gets 88 New York Timeses every day, costing $18K annually. At least it's nice to know someone other than us isn't getting free papers. [WCP]
• Cargo was confused, and nobody will miss it. Um, yeah. [Slate]
• Bob Woodruff, the ABC anchor badly wounded in Iraq, last night received the Radio and Television Correspondents Association's David Bloom award, named for the NBC correspondent who died while covering the early days of the Iraq war. [B&C]
The feel-good TV industry has never been more cutthroat, with the likes of Oprah, the Miracle Workers, and even Deal or No Deal's Howie Mandel locked in a pitched battle to lavish America's tragedy-afflicted souls with their own brand of televised redemption. Nowhere is this suffering-talent crunch felt more acutely than at ABC's genre-leading Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, where the casting department has assembled a wishlist of interesting diseases and tear-jerking hard knocks that they feel will help keep their series atop the Nielsen mountain during their new season. The Smoking Gun has obtained an internal e-mail enlisting the help of ABC's affiliates in tracking down families touched by these dramatic misfortunes:
Paul Haggis is in final negotiations to direct and produce the adaptation of counterterrorist adviser Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies for Columbia. Before you sigh with relief that Haggis isn't writing the project, take note: he's "supervising" writer James Vanderbilt, leaving plenty of opportunity for him to spin the tale of terrorists who blow things up because that's the only way they can truly connect with their fellow human beings. [Variety]
Even Alicia Silverstone gets another chance during pilot season: Silverstone joins ABC women-in-the-workplace comedy Pink Collar, Jennifer Coolidge signs up for Fox's comedy If You Lived Here, You'd Be Home Now (real title TBD, we'd guess), and Shawn Hatosy also goes for Fox comedy in Southern Comfort. [THR]
Variety Censorship Minute: The Stone in China, The Simpsons in the Middle East, Catholics vs The DaVinci Code, and more! [Variety]
· Everyone without access to The Sopranos premiere (or without friends with HBO) watched Grey's Anatomy last night, which pulled an even better number than fading lead-in Desperate Housewives. [THR]
Diddy, Ben Silverman, and NBC team up for television's latest foray into the hot Celebrities Performing Tasks For Which They're Ill-Suited genre for Celebrity Cooking Showdown, a mix of (do we even need to explain?) Iron Chef and Dancing with the Stars. The lineup of washed-up celebs willing to scald themselves in the name of programming fads has yet to be announced. [Variety]
Maybe a clue as to why Crash beat Brokeback Mountain last night can be found in the Oscars' ratings themselves: The audience for the "gay Oscars" was down significantly from last year, making it the second-lowest rated Oscars in history, behind only the year Chicago arguably a gayer movie than Brokeback, Capote and Transamerica combined took top honors. Could The Gays be ratings poison for Oscar?
New Line signs up John Travolta and Queen Latifah to star in the movie adaptation of the Hairspray musical, with Travolta logically playing the role originated by Divine, John Waters' cross-dressing muse. What? Travolta and Divine both have unusually large heads, OK? [Variety]
THR notes that this year's Oscar season is full of "serious" nominees, relatively devoid of dirty campaigning. Yeah, we kind of miss Harvey Weinstein, too. [THR]
Hollywood proves it can be generous when promised a big party, as Variety and Jeffrey Kazenberg's Night Before event has raised $6 million for the Motion Picture and Television Fund. [Variety]
MTV2 makes a content deal with YouTube, enabling the website to serve up annoying Andy Milonakis clips alongside its already impressive catalogue of Brokeback parodies. [THR]
The Idol ratings juggernaut has a dark side (well, besides the obvious ones): Wednesday night's show drove Lost to a season low number for a first-run episode. Not cool, Fox. Hey, how about counterprogramming Desperate Housewives instead? [Variety]
In keeping with the its unofficial nickname, ABC is charging Gay Super Bowl prices for a 30-second commercial on this year's Oscar telecast not quite the network's personal best of $2.6 million per spot for the actual Super Bowl, but a pretty penny nonetheless for a ceremony honoring five movies that have barely come close to grossing $100 million:
Perhaps finally provoked by a joylessly over-the-top an outrageous storyline in which Eva Longoria's character cold-cocks the nun she believed to be seducing her husband, the endearingly nutty TV watchdogs at the American Family Association (whom we're sure you remember from their recent anti-drug-addicted-Episcopalians and down-with-pop-trailer-trash-cameos-on-the-gay-show campaigns) are calling for a boycott of Desperate Housewives' sponsors, who surely will forsake the show's 20-plus million viewers to placate some publicity-addicted bible-thumpers:
An operative notes some curious activity going on right now at Les Moonves's television fortress:
