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Posts tagged as “Lost”

Absolutely Useless

Tough news to swallow today: Fox has picked up the pilot of the US adaptation of Absolutely Fabulous.
SNL and 3rd Rock‘s Christine Zander has penned the script set in L.A. with basically the same plot as the original UK show.
Will this be Kath & Kim redux?

ABC has picked up another pilot, this time a 2-hour, written by Josh Appelbaum, Andre Nemec and Scott Rosenberg.
The show is named Happy Town and seems to be a bit similar to Twin Peaks.
In the hamlet of Happy Town, peace after a series of kidnappings has been observed for now seven years. But not anymore, as another crime hits the village.
Sounds creepy.
And a bit like CBS’ Harper’s Island.

Meanwhile, Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof have declared that they would be happy to meet US Airways pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger.
Will he make a cameo on Lost?

Come back!

The Oscar nominees were announced yesterday.
What’s up with The Dark Knight being snubbed out of Best Screenplay (let alone Best Directing/Pic)?

Weinstein also had to shed a lot of dough for The Reader to be nominated for Best Pic.

In the TV world, pilots continue to be picked up.
ABC has ordered Eastwick, a show loosely based on the 87 movie about 3 witches starring Cher, Susan Sarandon, Michelle Pfeifer and Jack Nicholson. The pilot is penned by Jack & Bobby‘s Maggie Friedman.

In addition, NBC ordered Mercy, a dramedy revolving around 3 nurses “bound together in friendship”. FNL‘s Liz Heldens is currently writing the pilot.

Other dramas are said to be on the verge of pickups by NBC, such as Dario Scardapane and Peter Berg’s Trauma, an emergency medical procedural taking place “out in the field”, and another project by Alias/Heroes/Lost‘s Jesse Alexander.

The Disney-ABC TV Group is currently in full restructuring with ABC and ABC Studio merging and renamed “ABC Entertainment Group”. ABC’s programming chief Stephen McPherson will head the division.

NBC has meanwhile hired a global marketing firm, Naked Communications, to reposition the net’s brand.

There’s an inextricable link between marketing and programming… These two things define the brand. We’re all aligned against the same goals.

Will they spearhead the network and bring them to less SF/Genre-friendly sked?
Will Chuck be back?
Will NBC change its mind on various pilot picks?
Tune in at an undisclosed future date to find out the electrifying conclusion of NBC: The Brand-Over.

And George Clooney has finally accepted to return for an E.R. cameo. The show’s co-creator, John Wells, recently ordered a closed set for a Clooney appearance.

Also, here is a little clip from Pixar’s next movie, Up.
UPDATE: Vimeo removed the vid.

Pilots in the Woods

Two actors have finally been cast for the Joss Whedon/Drew Goddard extremely-awaited horror movie inauspiciously entitled “The Cabin in the Woods“.
The two actors I am referring to are Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford, also known as great actors. Just Richard Jenkins’ performances in Six Feet Under or The Visitor show how talented he is. Unfortunately I haven’t seen much of Bradley Whitford’s but a lot of praise was given to The West Wing so I’m sure his work there was tremendous.

You can sense by this casting that this horror film is going to twist the “young people stranded in the woods and scared shitless” movie.

Even Goddard (almost) says so:

It’s really just your basic typecasting: When you need two actors to run through the woods in low-cut nighties, you immediately think of Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford.

The pair should play white-collar co-workers that have a mysterious connection to ‘the cabin’.
I just hope we’re not talking about Jacob’s cabin here.

The movie is set for a Feb. 5, 2010 release with a Spring shoot.

I am really excited about this pic. I like genre-twisting, I love Whedon and Goddard, and both Jenkins as well as Whitford are sublime actors; so this is going to be phenomenal.

FOX has ordered 7 pilots for its pilot slate, including 4 comedies, and 3 dramas.
Let’s take a quick look at them.

For the comedies:
The Station co-produced by Ben Stiller’s Red Hour Films, is about a covert CIA operative and his workmates who are embedded in a South American banana republic with a mission to install a new dictator.
That sounds like a prequel to a Fulgencio Batista biopic.
Walorsky revolves around a lazy ex-cop-turned-security guard patrolling a mall in Buffalo, N.Y., and is forced to grudgingly step it up after he is assigned an idiot partner.
Two Dollar Beer centers on a blue-collar couple and their extended family and friends in Detroit.
Sons of Tucson will talk about a charming but misguided hustler hired by three rich young brothers to act as their “father” while their real one serves time for a white-collar crime.
So is that Drillbit Taylor meets daddy-issues?

As for the dramas:
Maggie Hill will be about a brilliant female surgeon who thrives despite enduring adult-onset schizophrenia.
There’s also an untitled reincarnation pilot about ex-investigators using faking the idea of reincarnation to help clients solve mysteries from their past lives in order to resolve their problems in the present.
The Mentalist without the mental in it?
And last but not least we have a 24-companion on our hands with Human Target, based on the DC Comic of the same name. The show centers around a mysterious body guard named Christopher Chance that assumes the identities of his life-threatened clients to become himself the “human target”.

Another great news this morning is the announcement of Michelle Obama’s hairstylist inking a TV deal.
Isn’t that just great.