HollywoodIdiocy.com

Although it’s on tap as a replacement series for next season, rather than the official fall schedule, series creator Rob Thomas and ABC are full-steam ahead on the big remake of the late 90s dramady, Cupid. A person could put up a small business for sale trying to guess the whims of Hollywood execs, but at least the show is in full-on casting mode.

The latest member added to the cast is Sarah Paulsen, who most recently appeared as Harriet Hayes on Aaron Sorkin’s Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and previously had appeared on several series in supporting roles, most notably on the old WB Network’s dramady, Jack And Jill. Paulsen will reprise the role of Dr. Claire Allen, the pyschiatrist assigned to look after former mental patient Trevor Hale, who is convinced he’s the god of love.

Allen was originally played by actress Paula Marshall; when Cupid was canceled after less than a season on the air and she joined 2-3 other series in their final season, Marshall gained the reputation of being an actress who was “the kiss of death” for any show she was cast in. Paulsen has no such reputation.

Actor Bobby Cannavale is taking on the role of Trevor Hale, originally portrayed by the charismatic Jeremy Piven. The remake of Cupid promises to be one of the more interesting remake/relaunch stories of the coming TV season.

Jack Black’s PG-rated Kung Fu Panda thoroughly thrashed Adam Sandler’s PG-13-rated You Don’t Mess With the Zohan at the box office this weekend, with the family-friendly animated feature pulling in 50 percent more than the live action teens-and-up flick.

Kung Fu Panda exceeded expectations with a $60 million weekend, while Zohan brought in a respectable but lower-than-expectations $40 million, as the pair dominated ticket sales over the weekend. In third place, Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Crystal Skull surged back to third place, overtaking last week’s challenge by chick-flick Sex and the City, which fell to fourth place.

Indiana Jones posted $22.8 million over the weekend, while Sex and the City posted $21.3 million. Behind those four, all other films posted less than $10 million on the weekend. The strongest of those was the surprisingly resilient The Strangers, which took fifth place with $9.2 million. Iron Man held on to sixth place with $7.5 million, Prince Caspian drew $5.5 million for seventh place, and What Happens in Vegas drew $3.4 million; nothing else broke even $1 million on the weekend.

Iron Man remains ahead of Indiana Jones in the early race for the top-grossing movie of Summer 2008.

Well, at least the cast of Reaper won’t go on strike!

AFTRA and AMPTP burned the midnight oil Tuesday into Wednesday and today announced they had reached a tentative three-year deal on the dozen or so prime-time and cable shows over which AFTRA has jurisdiction.

The deal sees AMPTP giving way to AFTRA on the “actor’s consent” stipulation for use of movie clips online, which was also a stumbling block in SAG negotiations. While this clearly will put pressure on SAG to make a deal rather than strike, SAG’s fate is still up in the air as AMPTP and SAG are scheduled to resume negotiations this week.

For more details, I’ll be posting about this topic again, later tonight, in greater detail, over on my writing blog, ScriptSuperhero.com.

The Peacock network is relying on a defective detective to prop up its summer ratings; USA Network’s obsessive-compulsive detective, Monk, played by Tony Shaloub, will move from USA to NBC for its seventh season, scheduled to start in July.

The one-hour dramady, which has flourished on USA, has been airing reruns on NBC along with its companion show, Psych, for about a month and doing decent numbers. The move from USA to NBC for the summer half of Monk’s season is a big show of faith by the NBC parent network in the show, which has also done well in DVD complete season sales.

There is, of course, a risk that the show could do poorly and fade from memory as a result, although it is more likely that the show would just move back to cable netlet USA if it doesn’t perform well on the broadcast net.

So far, there is no word on whether the new, third season of Psych will join Monk in the NBC jump, or if it will remain on USA. Keep in mind, SAG and AFTRA continue to hold the looming threat of a possible actors strike, which could begin as early as June, could shut production back down in Hollywood on these and all other shows.

President George W. Bush will make a surprise appearance on NBC’s Howie Mandel-hosted game show, Deal or No Deal, to wish contestant Captain Joseph Kobes well in his quest to win the game show and thank him for his service to his country. Capt. Kobes has served in Iraq for three tours of duty and has won both the Purple Heart and a Bronze Star, two of the highest honors given by the US government.

Bush’s message was taped at the White House and is an appropriate honor for a serviceman who has given so much for his country during a time of war. While NBC did not reveal whether Captain Kobes fared well in his quest for as much as $1 million, you can bet his elation at a message from his commander in chief did not elicit a taciturn response and would have set off motion sensor lights when he saw it.

Without Britney Spears and Sarah Chalke to pump up the ratings, CBS’ comedy-on-life-support drew only a 3.4 Nielsen this week in an episode with no guest stars for How I Met Your Mother. Still, the show did build on the ratings lead-in from Big Bang Theory, which drew a 2.9.

While those numbers are on Orovo diets compared to what was considered great ratings 20 years ago, the improvment HIMYM is showing off its lead-in may be just enough to show that the show does not require guest stars every week, and that it has enough oomph to build in the ratings bar set by its lead-in.

A brief prayer wouldn’t hurt, but signs are good that HIMYM’s demise might have been diagnosed a bit prematurely. Like, say, by Dr. Elliot of a certain NBC comedy soon destined to appear on ABC, perhaps?

CBS drama Jericho seems to be down for the count again; the show is largely rumored to be headed for the cancellation bin, despite delivering a second season that was far more even, suspenseful and interesting than the first season proved to be. So forget the teak outdoor furniture and start investing in nuts to send to CBS again?

Not likely. While the nut strategy worked last season, it’s unlikely that the show will be saved this time; thanks to the strike-shortened season, any show the networks have any amount of faith in at all are being renewed. If Jericho isn’t among that number, its chances of being picked up for a third season are about as remote as the chances of Floyd “Money” Mayweather would have in a real fight, outside of a WWE ring, against Paul “The Big Show” Wight.

You can dress Britney Spears up in equestrian clothing or bury her in a nurses’ garb, and nothing changes; wherever she goes, the Pop Tart causes chaos. Shortly after announcing the casting of the unstable Spears in a small supporting role on CBS’ How I Met Your Mother, Alicia Silverstone, selected recently for a multi-episode arc that may have revealed her as the long-awaited Mother of the show’s title, canceled her commitment to the show.

Silverstone’s reps reportedly fears Spears’ notoriety would overshadow Silverstone’s appearance on the show, which isn’t far-fetched. The latest word is that the female doctor Silverstone was slated to play will now be portrayed by Scrubs’ Sarah Chalke, and the storyline will center more on Spears’ character.

The good news is that Silverstone remains open to appearing on How I Met Your Mother, and the show’s creators have stated they hope to create a different character for her soon. Meanwhile, the doctor who seemed destined to become “Mother” now will be reconceived as just another ship that passes through Ted’s long night of the soul, since Chalke’s schedule was too full to accommodate anything more than one episode, since Scrubs is still in production and may even be renewed for a previously-believed-to-be-unlikely eighth season, be it on NBC or ABC.

The fourth-season debut of Ghost Hunters on the SciFi Channel, scored record ratings for a regular-season broadcast, notching a 1.9 Neilsen, making the broadcast tops among all cable channels last Wednesday night. Boasting a more scientific, “attempt to disprove it all” approach than other paranormal investigation shows, Ghost Hunters focuses on the adventures of Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson’s “The Atlantic Paranormal Society,” known popularly as TAPS, as they investigate a variety of reported hauntings, trying to measure alleged paranormal activity at such sites.

Only broadcast nets scored biggest numbers in that time period, which makes Ghost Hunters the current darling of cable netlets owned by parent corporation GE under the NBC-Universal banner. If the ratings hold, expect Ghost Hunters to remain on SciFi for some time to come. You don’t need a Jaeger LeCoultre to tell you that right now, on SciFi, it’s Ghost Hunters time.

Two of the most central characters to the TV show Smallville - Kristin Kruek’s Lana Lang and Michael Rosenbaum’s Lex Luthor - won’t be returning next year, the show’s eighth season, according to TV Guide’s online edition. While they are negotiating how many episodes they will actually appear in, in season eight, neither will be weekly regulars after this strike-shortened season comes to an end.

Since TV Guide’s Michael Ausseillo is generally more reliable than life insurance quotes, the question now remains whether the show can maintain its popularity without two of the show’s “core four” returning.

The “core four” for Smallville have been Clark, Lana, Lex and Chloe for the past seven seasons; that list used to include a fifth, Pete Ross played by Sam Jones III, who exited after the third season. While the show can theorhetically survive without Kruek’s Lana - who, after all, is not Superman’s bride in the comics, and the show already has her replacement, Erica Durance’s Lois Lane, in place for the past several seasons - but replacing Rosenbaum’s Luthor could be the real problem.

From the debut episode, the emotional core of the show has been the almost brother-like friendship between Clark and Lex, and the devolution of that friendship into a bitter enmity that sets them up as future rivals. There is no established replacement who can play the foil to Clark at the same level that Rosenbaum’s Luthor is able to, setting up the potential for the show to become, once more, a “villain of the week” melodrama, much as it was in the first season.

Of course, the show has survived multiple exits; John Schneider’s Johnathon Kent was written out via a character death in season five, while Annette O’Toole’s Martha Kent has been largely absent throughout the current season, the show’s seventh. Yet with only Chloe Steel and Clark Kent surviving from the first season to next fall’s eighth season, it appear more likely than ever that next season could be the show’s final bow.

OK, this could just be the grape juice talking, but the word on the street is that actress Alicia Silverstone could become the mother everyone’s been waiting to meet on the CBS sitcom, “How I Met Your Mother.” In fact, I’d almost be willing to wager a month’s worth of sleepnig on a foam mattress on it, and I’m an air mattress addict!

Here’s the clues so far: Silverstone is indeed signed to a “multi-episode arc” when production resumes on the CBS sitcom in a few weeks. The post-strike episodes have a chance of being the last ones to air, because CBS has not yet renewed the show - even though it’s renewed several others so far. Plus, the producers have promised we’ll meet “mother” this season; if the show is indeed canceled for some strange reason, this would also give producers a chance to wrap the storyline up in a tidy way.

So, all that seems to point to Silverstone being the mother in question. And here I was hoping, given the presence in the regular cast of Buffy alumn Allyson Hannigan, that “mother” would turn out to be Sarah Michelle Geller. Oh well.

While it may do a lot for Hollywood investor relations, tonight’s 80th annual Academy Awards are nothing I care about all the much, other than the pending broadcast of the ceremony helped bring the writer’s strike to an end at last.

To be honest, there’s simply no actor, actress or movie nominated this year that I feel very strongly about, and given the recent trend toward blatently politicizing the Oscars anyway, I have plenty of more-pleasant ways to spend my evening. For exmaple, taking my wife out to a movie, if she’s up for it; or writing my blogs, or doing some Torah study, or flipping in a movie to watch.

No matter what I do, it’s certain to be a better use of my time than watching a bunch of HollywoodIdiots pat themselves on the back for being good at their craft. Never mind that fewer and fewer of these films are going over well with large audiences.