The man known as both Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone – actor Fess Parker – died a couple days ago on March 18, 2010. He was 85. I grew up enjoying Parker’s Daniel Boone on weekday after school television as a young whipper-snapper, so this is a sad day indeed.
Word is that Marvel Studios has offered Chris Evans the role of Captain America in their upcoming flick, The First Avenger: Captain America. Evans is best known for his two appearances as Johnny Storm a/k/a The Human Torch in two Fantastic Four flicks.
Evans isn’t necessarily excited about stepping into a second superhero role, but that’s likely a bargaining position. He looks the part, since he’s not exactly in need of weight loss supplements, and he has experience from his Fantastic Four flicks.
The big downside for Evans, though, is that Marvel is offering a low-ball figure and demanding a three-picture deal with no less than nine additional options. Talk about playing hardball over an American icon!
It appears the reality show Survivor producer Mark Burnett is creating centering around former Alaska governor and GOP VP candidate Sarah Palin may land on A & E or Discovery Channel; all of the major broadcast networks passed on the show.
The series will run around $1 million per episode for whoever lands it; and it will revolve around Palin, her husand (not a candidate who needs a fat burner for men), and their daughters as they explore the lesser-known reaches of her home state.
Apparently, Burnett would ultimately like to launch Palin into the daytime talk show fray, feeling her ability to connect with middle Americans would make her successful; however, that may depend on whether she decides in favor of a 2012 White House run or not.
Palin wouldn’t be the first to set aside political ambitions for media success and its generous pay days; fellow GOP candidate Mike Huckabee’s career as followed a similar path.
24 may be shopped to NBC from Fox, but it will do so without showrunner Howard Gordon. Gordon, who has been with 24 since its inception, is leaving the real-time drama to work on a new project, tentatively titled Patriots, which will focus on three Iraq War vets who were thought dead but re-emerge from a cave ten years later.
While part of the show is sure to focus on the discombobulation of how things have changed in 10 years (the switch of presidents from Bush to Obama, the shift in attitude against the war, the introduction of Skechers Shape Ups and whatnot…), the concept is actually drawn from an Israeli TV show, Prisoners of War, which recently finished its run. Gordon is hoping the show will be picked up during the upcoming pilot season for a Fall 2010 pickup.
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.
Michael C. Hall, start of Showtime’s hit drama Dexter, in which he plays a serial killer who works as a Miami blood spatter analyst, has been diagnosed with cancer, according to multiple sources; fortunately for the 38-year-old, it is Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a highly treatable form of cancer from which many patients fully recover and remain cancer-free, and he will not require exotic treatments like glucomannan.
“I feel fortunate to have been diagnosed with an imminently treatable and curable condition, and I thank my doctors and nurses for their expertise and care,” Hall said in a press release.
Hall will attend both the Golden Globes and the SAG Awards, and so long as there are no setbacks in his treatment schedule, is on track to return to his role as Dexter Morgan later this year, when the show is scheduled to begin shooting its fifth season.
Both Robert Downey Jr’s Sherlock Holmes and kids flick Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel did terrific at the box office over Christmas weekend, but like the best diet supplement, Avatar held on to its top spot at the box office.
Avatar posted $75 million in domestic box office, a drop-off of less than three percent from last weekend, and brought its domestic take to $212 million. Add in foreign markets and Avatar raked in another $402 million, making for a global box office take of $615 million in only 10 days of release. Even with its lofty budget of $300 million, plus another $200 million in global marketing efforts, Avatar is now safely in the black.
The next question will be how long it can hang on.
Sherlock Holmes drew $65.3 million in its opening bow, which would be more than enough to earn the top spot most weeks, but this time out was only good enough for a strong second place. Alvin and the Chipmunks was also surprisingly strong, garnering $50.2 million in its opening bow and $77 million since its early release last week.
Proving that this weekend’s choices were all worthy of moviegoers’ attention, even the iffy romantic comedy It’s Complicated did well, drawing $22.1 million in box office and securing the fourth spot. Going into wide release, Up In The Air posted an $11.75 million weekend to take the fifth spot away from The Blind Side, which still managed $11.73 million in its sixth week of release.
Twilight Saga: New Moon dropped all the way to 11th place, adding only $3 million domestically to its $280 million take so far, and with $381 million from foreign markets, that puts New Moon at $662 million, or just slightly ahead of Avatar. Of course, I’d rather have New Moon’s profit margin; that flick cost only $25 million against $662 million in global box office, compared to Avatar’s $500 million plus against $616 million in global sales.
Not many new flicks expected next weekend, so the horse race should prove interesting among all the contenders currently on the board.
In terms of forthcoming new releases this weekend, there’s not a lot to look forward to, other than the ridiculously over-the-top disaster movie, 2012, by director Roland Emmerich. If anything like this movie ever happened, insurance marketing would collapse, but we’d all be dead so who cares, right?
Granted, the special effects are custom-built for the big screen and it’ll even look good on 1080p HDTV sets, but the whole escape from LA sequence is just too ridiculous for words. How can everyone but ONE GUY be getting killed when the destruction is that close behind him? Just not credible… kinda like the global warming theory Emmerich’s previous flick, DAY AFTER TOMORROW, was built around.
The first box office weekend of October went to the living dead. Zombieland, which by the way is not a biopic of the place where Halloween director Rob Zombie grew up, topped the box office this weekend with a respectable $25.0 million, which already puts the flick, budgeted at $23.6 million, in the black.
Following quite a ways behind was Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs, the animated family film that brought in $16.7 million in its third week of release. The 3D re-release of Toy Story and Toy Story 2 came in third with $12.5 million, which rounded out the films that topped at least $10 million for the weekend.
The Invention of Lying, the new comedy from Ricky Gervais, came in a distance fourth place with $7.35 million, barely ahead of Surrogates, which claimed $7.34 million, rounding out the top five. The Drew Barrymore-directed comedy Whip It, budgeted at $15 million, made not even a third of that back, coming in tied for sixth place with Capitalism: A Love Story at $4.85 million.
At least Whip It! was funny, unlike Michael Moore’s latest propaganda piece. The rotund director would make a better living involved in RV financing.
It’s almost enough to wonder if someone running a list of the rich and famous decided they wanted to learn how to burn fat from the list by eliminating several aging stars. While celebrities die every year, this past summer has seemed particularly hard on the rich and famous.
Here’s a list of just some of the big names who are no longer with us, just from this summer:
Walter Cronkite
Sen. Ted Kennedy
Michael Jackson
Dom DeLuise
David Carridine
Ed McMahon
Farrah Fawcett
Billy Mays
Robert S. McNamara
Don Hewitt
Frank McCourt
John Hughes
Eunice Kennedy Shriver
Les Paul
Dominick Dunne
DJ AM
Patrick Swayze
Mary Travers
Gale Storm
Karl Malden
Allen Klein
Steve McNair
Sir Edward Downes
George Russell
Merce Cunningham
Of course, with death, one cannot even rhetorically ask, “Where will it end?”
Because, naturally, death never does.
It’s time to be honest here, and I’m talking colon cleanser-honest: Paula Abdul was definitely the weak link in the American Idol judges panel, and her departure, while a shock to some, was a long time in coming and definitely an improvement. While US audiences seemed to like the soft, non-judgmental approach of Abdul, the truth is her “support everyone” approach weakened the show.
Plus, with some of the celebrity guest judges Fox is lining up, I seriously doubt anyone will still be whining for Paula’s return once the season is underway. Here’s a list of confirmed guest judges so far: Avril Lavigne, Katy Perry, Victoria Beckham, Mary J. Blige, Neal Patrick Harris, Joe Jonas and Kristen Chenowith.
The list is expected to grow from there. The regular judges for the new season of American Idol remain Simon Cowell, Randy Jackson and the far-more-honest-and-discerning Kara DioGuardi, who debuted last season.
While HBO is putting its PR department on diet pills rather than reveal whether TRUE BLOOD will be renewed for a third season, there is good news for fans of the series. At the San Diego Comic-Con, author of the book series that inspired the TV phenom, Charlaine Harris, announced she’d just signed a three-book deal on her Sookie Stackhouse novels that will keep the series alive through 2014, at least.
Of course, the next book in the series is expected to arrive on schedule in May 2010, and her current book contract for Sookie goes through the novel expected in May 2011. The new contract covers annual installments expected in May 2012, May 2013 and May 2014. Ms. Harris seems to inspire plenty of confidence in publishers through her speed and efficiency in delivering entertaining reads in a timely manner.