Category: Fox

Fringe again on the fringe … of cancellation

The J.J. Abrams sci-fi drama FRINGE seems to be suffering without Peter Bishop on the screen so far this season. The show is drawing steadily in the 1.2 to 1.5 range, which is dangerous territory. The network almost gave up on the show last spring before it rebounded late, saving itself from the ax.

Whether it remains through the season, however, is currently in doubt, and its producers may not like their season’s greetings cards this December, as they may well contain a pink slip for the show.

House loses Cuddy

Lisa Edelstein has opted out of returning for a ninth, and likely final, season of the FOX hit drama, HOUSE. While Dr. House’s season-ending actions leave room for Cuddy’s exit, it will be intriguing to see how the show resolves the remaining conflicts and unanswered questions left hanging at season’s end.

Sure, House is better when he’s solving medical mysteries surrounding hgh releasers or whatever, but the mini-soap-opera in the Huddy coupling will now end on House’s house-wrecking moment, which may not be the final word on the relationship long-time viewers were hoping for.

BONES renewed

The David Boreanaz-Emily Deschanel procedural dramedy, BONES, has been renewed by Fox for a seventh season. Consistently the second-highest-rated drama on the network, behind HOUSE, the show received its renewal a couple weeks ahead of network up-fronts.

Based on the novels of Kathy Reichs, who serves as one of the show’s executive producers, the show has improved Reichs’ profile and book sales results since its debut. The program revolves around the relationship of forensic scientist Temperance Brennan and the FBI agent who works closely with her to close cases, Seely Booth.

Most episodes revolve around a grisly death where the unique skills of Brennan and her team are required to extract information from a skeleton and other degraded human remains to identify the body and thus lead to the solving of the crime. While that may not be as challenging as finding a source for cheap laptop batteries, it keeps Booth, Brennan and the gang pretty engaging.

Running Wilde running on last legs

Here’s something that’ll speed along Will Arnett’s stress related hair loss: Fox has decided against ordering the back nine episodes of his sitcom co-starring Keri Russell, RUNNING WILDE, which was a personal favorite of the new shows this season. The network even bagged the series from taking part in November sweeps.

This is a clear sign Fox will be canceling the series soon; although it hasn’t officially been canned just yet, these are the early signs that usually precede cancellation. And it’s unfortunate, considering how good the show is.

Still, the upside for Arnett is strong; he’s a fan-favorite to replace the outgoing Steve Carell on The Office next season, and Arnett’s run on Running Wilde proves he has the comedic chops to provide a character that would be a fresh blood injection into The Office, offering a different but equally clueless sort of boss to Carell’s Michael Scott.

Bones spinoff in the works

It took awhile, but the dark circles under TV producer Hart Hanson’s eyes are explainable; he’s busy preparing to introduce a new character to the cast of BONES who, if successful, would spin off into his own series as early as next fall.

The character of Walter Sherman is basically the male analogue to Dr. Temperance Brennan and his special skill is that he’s able to find anything. Based on the novel series known as The Locator, penned by Richard Greener, the series would also be helmed by Hanson, who currently only pilots Bones.

Raising Hope gets full season order

Fox’s post-GLEE sitcom, RAISING HOPE, received an early pick-up of the “back nine” episodes of the show’s freshman season, which is good news for the one-time producers of MY NAME IS EARL. The blue-collar comedy contains the same comedic voice that made at least some of EARL’s episodes seem inspired.

Martha Plimpton as the 40-something grandma to the titular HOPE is the glue that holds the otherwise less-experienced cast together, and she seems certain to garner a best supporting actress in a comedy nomination come next Emmy season. The show that follows HOPE, RUNNING WILDE, is still awaiting word on their back nine.

Personally, I enjoy RUNNING WILDE slightly more than RAISING HOPE, mostly because it marks the successful return of both Keri Russell and Will Arnett to weekly television. Both are great in their roles, and Arnett is quite amusing, always seeming to be a combination of goofy and having stair rods shoved up his spine. Funny guy.

Of course, rumor has it that NBC has Arnett on their wish-list to replace Steve Carell on THE OFFICE next season, and as nicely as that might work, it would be a shame of RUNNING WILDE didn’t take off; it’s a fresher franchise and whoever steps into THE OFFICE next season is almost guaranteed to last only a season or two before the show is put out to pasture.

First Class, six degrees…

When he’s not hocking natural products for acne on an infomercial, Kevin Bacon still pops up as an actor once in a while; the rumor mill is hot right now that the notoriously tight-wadded Marvel Studios (Fox is releasing) is allowing X-Men: First Class director Matthew Vaughn pursue Kevin Bacon for a super-villain role in the flick.

While lately Bacon’s best-known for the cheesy Hollywood name-association game built around the once-prolific actor, Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, the former star of Footloose is reportedly willing to deal himself into the X-franchise.

No word on which villain he’s play, although considering they have Emma Frost in this story, Bacon might be a nice fit for Sebastian Shaw of the Hellfire Club. Time will tell.

Glee gets third season

The first season isn’t even over, the second season hasn’t even gone before cameras, and already Fox has decided it’s so hot on the musical comedy Glee that they have approved it for a third season; Glee’s second-season renewal came late in 2009.

But that’s not all; the producers are also reportedly negotiating with Fox to expand Glee’s future seasons from the standard 22 episodes to 25-episode orders. The reason behind this has more to do with merchandising that storytelling, however.

You see, each of Glee’s soundtracks have become instant iTunes best-sellers and the physical CDs even sell well enough to impact the top of Billboard album sales charts. Glee recently also surpassed a record held by U2 for the most charting singles in history… or something like that.

By expanding a season order of Glee from 22 episodes to 25, producers figure to add an additional soundtrack release to each season of Glee they produce in the future.

This season has seen Glee spawn three volumes of musical soundtracks based on season one, as well as a standalone EP-sized soundtrack for the special “Power of Madonna” episode. A volume four soundtrack is expected over the summer, sometime after the season finale airs.

That’s four full-sized soundtracks, plus one Madonna-power EP soundtrack. By adding three additional episodes, that number could expand from five to as many as six or even seven soundtrack releases per season, counting special EP releases in the vein of the Power of Madonna EP.

The point is, the multimedia approach to Glee is helping both the producers and the network make money hand-over-fist through non-traditional revenue streams, and an early green-light on the third season helps keep costs low before stars and producers start asking for improved contracts. Of course, if the ratings are still strong mid-way through the third season, producers can always avoid expensive re-negotiations with most of the cast by the very nature of the show: Glee’s biggest breakout star, Lea Michele, portrays a high school sophomore in season one, so a season four would be unlikely anyway; so long as new cast members are added every season and current stars are cycled out as they “graduate,” the show can avoid becoming overly expensive to produce by constantly being a launching pad for new talent, rather than a long-term showcase for any one star… even Lea Michele.

Setting Glee in high school among the Acneticin-needing crowd, therefore, was a wise way for producers to structure the show for long-term success.

Of course, the fact that Glee’s ratings significantly improved in the second half of the first season, following American Idol, played no small part in securing that third season renewal early. If all goes well, Fox may even have Simon Cowell’s new musical talent showcase, X-Factor, to pair with Glee in the fall!

Fox pressuring O and Os on Conan time slot

At the moment, the official word is that Conan O’Brien and Fox are in talks, but no deal has been made; despite that, the network is already pressuring their O and Os to keep the post-news, pre-midnight timeslot open for a presumptive late night talk show featuring O’Brien, which would go head-to-head with Leno and Letterman, beginning as early as next fall.

Some affiliates are balking at the heavy hand Fox is employing, considering no deal in finalized yet and that affiliates would make more with reruns of The Office and other proven syndicated hit shows. Even the best joint supplements won’t ease the limb-pulling going on, but in the end, you just know that it’s going to happen; Fox is the biggest network without a signature late night talk show, and O’Brien’s profile has never been higher.

Glee second-half spoiler

Glee star Iqbal Theba, who plays Principal Figgins on Fox’s musical comedy, has revealed a major plot point prior to the April debut of the second half of the show’s first season: The uptight principal will be caught in a compromising position with Jane Lynch’s Sue Sylvester!

How the development plays into the storyline of the rest of the season remains to be seen, but at the end of the first part of the season, Sylvester was vanquished and promised glee-club coach Will that she’d go on a brief vacation, come back tan and rested and “more committed than ever to bring you down, Will Schuster.”

The principal may want to get a solid sexual harassment insurance quote, because it’s a half-decent guess that Sylvester gets Figgins in the compromising position to gain leverage to regain her power position over Will. Still, we’ll have to wait until Glee’s April debut to see just how it all plays out!

Captain Jack to play it straight in US?

Former Doctor Who showrunner and Torchwood creator Russel T. Davies has been tapped by US producers to adapt his original series, Torchwood, to a US audience. While that’s the good news, the cautionary note is that US producers are asking Davies, who is gay, to transform Torchwood’s male lead character, Captain Jack Harkness, from an “omnisexual” character to one who is straight.

While Davies is allegedly willing to consider such a change for US audiences, the actor who originated the role on the BBC version, John Barrowman, isn’t excited by the prospect, regardless of whether he’s tapped to reprise the role, play it out via security cameras, or not involved at all0.

Barrowman has said, “The last thing I would want would be for Jack to become this heterosexual, straight hero. He’s an omnisexual guy. He likes men, women, aliens, whatever. I think we should continue going down that route.”

Fox is currently the US network showing the most interest in a US adaptation of Torchwood. Whether Captain Jack remains gay/omni/metro or not, however, the biggest challenge to adapting the show to US audiences is redefining the series concept; on BBC, the show was a direct spin-off of Doctor Who, and Torchwood is actually an anagram of the words Doctor Who; without a US version of Doctor Who to help explain the origin and purpose of Torchwood, the show could come off as a cheap imitator of Fringe or X-Files.

Neil Patrick Harris confirmed guest on Glee

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.