Legendary comic book writer, novelist and silver screen scribe Neil Gaiman has been snagged to pen one episode of the new season of British sci-fi show, Doctor Who. While many folks have worried about the direction of the show following the exit of scribe Russel T. Davies, who proved to be the Joss Whedon of Great Britain during his four-series-plus run at the helm of the legendary BBC TV franchise.

However, new showrunner Steven Moffat, who penned a well-received parody of Doctor Who about 10 to 15 years ago, when the show was on hiatus, has proven to be adept at drawing some of the top talent available to work on the re-configured show.

As everyone who follows Doctor Who knows by now, tenth doctor David Tennant is out, as are all of the companions that befriended the Doctor during Tennant’s run. In are new, eleventh doctor Matt Smith and an all-new companion, portrayed by Irish actress Karen Gillen, who will be known by the name Amy Pond on the show.

Smith’s Doctor is a dapper dresser more in the mode of Tennant, rather than an eccentric dresser in the mode of fourth Doctor Tom Baker or many of those who followed him. At least he won’t ruin the nice dramatic tone of the new show by carting around used golf balls or something wacky like that!

Anyway, in addition to Gaiman, some other talent Moffat has snagged for the new series of Doctor Who includes director Richard (Love Actually) Curtis, as well as Torchwood writers Chris Chibnall and Toby Whithouse. Still, in most people’s books, Gaiman is the biggest “get” of the new season.

Glee, which will have it’s season-one bow on June 8 and is already renewed for a second season, has just nailed down a Horrible guest star. Doctor Horrible, that is; How I Met Your Mother’s Neil Patrick Harris.

Unlike some stars who prefer to spend their spare time hawking auto insurance quotes, Harris found a gap in his HIMYM schedule to fit in a guest spot on the musical comedy, Glee, allowing him a chance to show off his singing ability once again after a dazzling and humorous performance in Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible, as well as a musical number extolling the virtues of suits earlier this season on How I Met Your Mother.

Glee returns on April 13 on Fox.

The Martin Scorsese-directed, Leo DiCaprio-starring spooky drama, Shutter Island, held on to the top spot in US box office for the second week in a row, fending off challenges from buddy comedy Cop Out and splatter-fest, The Crazies.

Shutter Island drew $22.2 million in new business, down almost 45 percent from opening weekend, but still strong enough to stay at the head of the pack. Shutter Island has drawn $75 million to date, just $5 million short of its $80 million production budget.

Cop Out, which co-stars Bruce Willis and 30 Rock star Tracy Morgan, as well as Sean William Scott, pulled in a strong but below expectation $18.5 million, while The Crazies drew $16.5 million despite having no notable big-screen stars.

Avatar held steady at fourth place with $14 million, the only other film this past weekend to top the $10 million mark. Soon the promotional items will outsell the movie tickets for the SF epic.

March should come in like a lion with the new Johnny Depp-Tim Burton collaboration, Alice In Wonderland, the only notable release of the coming weekend.

Season Three of the HBO vampire blood could result in the series’ vamps sucking more than just blood; word has it there will be a male-on-male pairing that doesn’t involve the show’s resident male gay, Lafayette.

In a swerve well away from the novels of Charlaine Harris, it appears show creator Alan Ball is set on having Vampire Bill Compton hooking up with were-dog Sam Merlott in a horizontal way. Of course, true to the show’s vampiric origins, the coupling will come as a result of a blood exchange between the pair that was necessary at the end of season two for Bill to save Sam’s life.

In the Harris novels, the sharing of blood between vampire and human has been established to create a psychic and sexual bond. So it’s not that the two will be suddenly talking about the best face cream with each other; it will be the result of a plot device long-established in the Harris novels, but never exploited in exactly this pairing.

Who could father cool doc Hank Lawson and hip brother Evan on the USA dramedy Royal Pains? Turns out the mystery figure in the doorway from last season’s cliffhanger is none other than the former Arthur Fonzarelli himself, Henry Winkler.

Now it all makes sense, right down to the two brothers’ CliniSlim looks.

The Fonz won’t get a warm welcome, however, as Eddie Lawson was revealed to be the responsible party in last season’s finale for taking the majority of money out of HankMed and fleeing. What kind of comeuppance will he receive? Well, that’s why they expect you to tune in, silly.

David Goyer, the writer-producer who helped create the SF drama based on Robert Sawyer’s novel, is out as show runner for ABC’s FlashForward. Goyer was preceded by Mark Guggenheim, who was brought in to help the less-experienced Goyer, but stepped away last fall to work on other projects.

No replacement for Goyer has yet been named; the show is currently shooting episodes 17 and 18 of a 23-episode order this season, but all these behind-the-scenes shake-ups can’t be good for a show in its first season. It also probably isn’t much of a testosterone booster for Goyer.

Listen for the doorbell and you might hear the click-whir of Shutter Island, the period chiller by Martin Scorsese that stars Leo DiCaprio this weekend; that’s about the only film opening big enough to challenge Valentine’s Day, The Wolfman, Percy Jackson and Avatar for box office dominance going into the third weekend of February.

Everything else is either opening small or won’t be released until later on. After seeing The Wolfman today, and viewing the preview for Cop Out, I’m now kind of looking forward to the Bruce Willis-Tracy Morgan-Sean William Scott buddy cop flick coming out at the end of February, but after that, there’s nothing much of interest until the middle of March!

Following a weekend when the underdog romantic comedy, Dear John, shocked the world and stopped Avatar’s unbroken run atop the weekend box office charts, this past weekend three new movies all opened stronger than Avatar, pushing the seven-week champ to fourth place, in front of Dear John, which bested it last week.

Sitting atop the charts was the favorably-positioned Valentine’s Day, a rom-com with great timing that garnered an impressive $56.4 million in its opening bow. The overly gore-ridden remake of The Wolfman came in second place with $31.7 million, while the Harry Potter-wannabe film, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, came in third place with $31.4 million, a virtual photo-finish.

In fourth place, Avatar held steady with $23.5 million domestically, and climbed to $2.35 billion in worldwide box office. That’s almost enough to purchase some rare Ferrari parts for your old Ferrari!

Dear John rounded out the Top 5 films with a still-respectable $16 million in its second week and facing tremendous competition from a formidable trio of films. No other films drew more than $6 million.

One-time LOST star Cynthia Watros is setting up House as her post-Lost career. The actress has been cast as the first of Wilson’s three ex-wives, and word has it that when Watros joins the show in April, she’ll be on board for several episodes as… his new girlfriend.

Watros becomes the first Wilson romantic interest since the death of Amber a couple years ago, a season finale that sent both House and Wilson spinning all through last season and much of this season.

So get out your plasma mounts and DVRs… House is worth getting Lost in!

Following a couple of flirtations with becoming the titular mother on How I Met Your Mother, actress Sarah Chalke now has her post-SCRUBS career lined up; she’ll star as a freshman congresswoman who is politically successful but unlucky in love in the new ABC comedy FRESHMEN.

The role is not all political backroom deals and Paris vacations; the comedy will place Chalke at odds with the imbalance between her personal and political life. The show is the product of left-wing political blogger Arianna Huffington and former FRIENDS scribe Greg Malins.

Despite that origin, with the appealing Chalke in the lead role, once can only hope the focus of the show is more on the funny and less on the political stances.

Desktop computers around the world burned up bandwidth with the news that the CBS comedy How I Met Your Mother had been renewed for a sixth season already, far ahead of the spring deadline.

That’s great news for the comedy that two years ago almost faced cancellation until the stunt-casting of Britney Spears broadened the audience of the critically-acclaimed show, which many regard as a latter-days Seinfeld.

With the pickup, CBS’ Monday night slate of comedies is now seventy-five percent secure, as How I Met Your Mother joins The Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men as renewed for future seasons. Only the Jenna Elfman cougar-comedy Accidentally On Purpose is still up in the air.

Seven… count ‘em, seven… weeks atop the charts for James Cameron’s Avatar is the longest any single movie has reigned in a mighty long time; and sad to say, but even though business was down on Avatar to only a $30 million weekend in the US, it was still nearly twice as much as the nearest competitor raked in.

You could buy a lot of metal buildings with Avatar’s $594 million domestic gross, but when you add in $1.44 billion from overseas sales, you have a weekend in which Avatar went over the $2.0 billion mark in worldwide box office. That’s impressive.

The Mel Gibson thriller Edge of Darkness did better than I expected it to do, possibly benefiting from Avatar-exhaustion. It was a distant second place with $17.1 million in its opening bow.

The movie I expected to do better than Mad Mel’s, rom-com When In Rome, pulled in only $12 million for the former Veronica Mars and Heroes star, Kristen Bell. Duane “The Rock” Johnson’s The Tooth Fairy was the only other movie to top $10.0 million… gaining almost exactly that.

On the horizon for next weekend are Dear John, another rom-com with dramatic pretensions that probably won’t register against Avatar; however, From Paris With Love is also debuting, featuring John Travolta in his fiftieth comeback attempt, or something like that. It doesn’t look like my cup of cocoa, but who knows? If Avatar drops below $27 million and Avatar-exhaustion kicks up another notch, From Paris With Love could knock Avatar from atop the box office charts without even deserving to.

If neither of them do the trick, though, look for Avatar not to make it nine in a row, because with rom-com Valentines Day, a remake of the classic Universal horror flick The Wolfman, and the Harry Potter-wannabe movie, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightening Thief all debuting on February 12, there’s no way Avatar can hold off the challenges any longer for box office domination.

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