Last year Aimee Copeland was ziplining across the Little Tallapoosa River in Georgia, when her homemade line broke and she sliced open her leg, requiring 22 stitches to close. And then the nightmare began.
· Ron Howard and Akiva Goldsman are frantically finalizing the shooting script of Da Vinci Code sequel Angels & Demons before the Oct. 31st deadline, hoping that the mad rush towards production won't jeopardize the duo's ability to produce the kind of easily digestible, crowd-pleasing entertainment that always results from their lucrative collaborations. Meanwhile, star Tom Hanks has been presented with a hair-growing schedule that will barely provide the actor with enough time to reproduce his character's signature demi-mullet. Truly, no one is immune from the pressures of the looming™ strike. [Variety]
· In what is always a good sign for a floundering series, The Bionic Woman gets another new showrunner, not even two months after "creative differences" ended NBC's short-lived love affair with Glen Morgan. [THR]
· The WGA, in an aggressive measure meant to show the studios that the protracted ball-tickling session that's defined the negotiations until now must come to an end, has redrafted and broadened their strike rules to now allow for "pug-faced studio types so much as looking at us funny." [Variety]
· Hollywood's dreamy consciences George Clooney and Leonardo DiCaprio may team up for Warner Bros.'s adaptation of Farragut North, a play loosely based on the Howard Dean campaign. (Sorry Jake, torture-lovers not invited to the party.) [Variety]
· The rumors are true! After 50 years, NBC is moving from its legendary plot in Burbank to a spot across the street from Universal Studios. NBC plans to sell the real estate to a single wholesale retail giant, who'll develop it into independent nation state Costcovia, where every man, woman, and child is guaranteed a pickle-barrel-sized container of mayonnaise. [Variety]
· Private Practice's audience continues to grow, and Pushing Daisies won its timeslot despite coming down from its premiere numbers. Bionic Woman, however continues to plunge steadily since its first week, throwing the future of Isaiah Washington's triumphant comeback into question. [THR]
· Medium creator Glenn Gordon Caron gets a two-year deal at CBS, mainly on the strength of his Patricia-Arquette's-Rack-in-3D initiatives. [THR]
Isaiah Washington, now a member of Bionic Woman's big happy family, is never too busy to shatter the deafening, one-day silence that followed his ouster from Grey's Anatomy at the hands of a shadowy cabal of moustache-twirling gay foes. Speaking to Extra, the actor delivered a curiously roundabout answer to a question about whether or not potential Bionic viewers might be turned off by his year of very bad press:
The set of much-buzzed-about new NBC Fall series Bionic Woman—eagerly anticipated by late-70s television nostalgists, the indestructible-heroine-loving Heroes set, and fanboys drooling over their weekly primetime appointment with star Michelle Ryan's six million dollar rack alike—may be officially troubled™—Var reports that "creative differences" (not the Mandy Patinkin kind, we'll assume) have forced the network to part ways with showrunner Glen Morgan, and discusses rumors that the series might be taking a "getting its shit together" hiatus:
With the announcement that gay-slur-spouting primetime orphan Isaiah Washington was placed into Bionic Woman foster care by NBC rock-star/case-worker Ben Silverman, the actor's mood went from a volatile Mad As Hell And Not Going To Take It Anymore to Quietly Vindicated, But Still Wanting to Break My Silence a Few More Times. After a recent Larry King Live appearance in which Washington reassured America of his enduring admiration of Gays, the actor went on to explain to Access Hollywood how the real villain—aside, of course, from mastermind T.R. Knight, pulling his pink puppet strings from on-high—was Patrick "McEvil" Dempsey:
Realizing that explaining the reason that Isaiah Washington has unexpectedly joined the cast of their new series was, "Because Ben Silverman knew everyone would go apeshit if we put the angry Grey's Anatomy doctor onto our show. And, by golly, Ben was right! People hate that guy!" might get them off on the wrong foot with their new boss, the executive producer of Bionic Woman was more politic in discussing why he was willing to take on the actor's prohibitively heavy baggage. Reports TVWeek.com's TCA blog:
Prospects had looked bleak for Grey's Anatomy shitcannee Isaiah Washington, who seemed all but certainly headed for the dinner theater circuit, where the mercurial actor would live out the remainder of his career silencing talkative audience members by climbing down from the stage to personally stuff an olive roll into their mouths. Credit the infectious positivity and counterintuitive vision of NBC co-chairman/rock-star Ben Silverman, then, for seeing in Washington a skilled and appealing actor, where lesser network heads might have merely seen a litany of choking-related lawsuits. Reports USA Today:
In between super-sizing, over-ordering, and spinning off every decently rated property on its current programming roster, NBC managed to slip a couple of semi-original shows onto its Fall schedule. To whet your appetite for their upcoming September offerings, the network has posted a number of teasers to its YouTube page, including the above clip from its Bionic Woman update. Network president Kevin Reilly did proudly disclose his "choke on our classy hits" strategy yesterday, so we're not too surprised to discover that the show feels a little like Heroes in atmosphere (why not just go all the way and have the one with the pissed-off reflection turn up to bust Jamie out of the hospital?). If you're still feeling nostalgic for the original even after watching the rebuilt heroine nearly kill her physician because she's less than thrilled with her new legs, a clip of its classic opening credits follows after the jump:
As the TV upfronts are intended to be a weeklong celebration of possibility and hope, there is generally no place in a network's presentation to advertisers to pause briefly and remember the once-beloved projects that won't be going forward into the Fall season; accordingly, it took a reporter's uncomfortable question to get NBC president Kevin Reilly to reflect upon the legacy of the newly euthanized Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, whose uncompromising, visionary showrunner was just one year ago anointed the savior of the last-place network. Notes the TV Week upfronts blog:
