Image Credit: Rick Rowell/ABCJames Franco will return to General Hospital this February, appearing in two episodes of the ABC daytime soap while he’s in Los Angeles to host the Academy Awards. A representative for the show confirms a TV Guide report that Franco, who guested as a serial killer (named Franco) last July, will make two more appearances, beginning the Friday before the Oscars.
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The traditional ball that drops in Times Square on New Year’s Eve is radiant with vibrant colors, but MTV is planning on dropping its own ball this year, and it might have an orange-ish tint. MTV confirms that Jersey Shore‘s Snooki will ring in the New Year by being inside a ball that descends at midnight. Others from the Jersey Shore cast be will on hand for MTV’s New Year’s Bash special with host Whitney Cummings — Pauly D will DJ — and the gang will attempt to lead the crowd in the largest collective fist-pump the world has ever witnessed.
Netflix and Disney-ABC Television Group announced a licensing agreement today that makes more of the studio’s content available on Netflix’s streaming service. Among the licensed shows are: Grey’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, Brothers & Sisters, Lost, Ugly Betty, Scrubs, Reaper, The Secret Life of the American Teenager, Greek, and several Disney Channel series, including Phineas and Ferb and more Hannah Montana episodes. Episodes from current seasons will be available “no earlier than 15 days after initial telecast,” which is a change for some of the shows, which used to be available sooner after air date.
In the annals of celebrity ad appearances, Kevin Bacon’s recent spot for the Logitech Revue with Google TV — which has been lighting up the Internet for the better part of a week now — easily ranks as one of the strangest, and most endearing, in recent memory. As Ivan, the world’s biggest Kevin Bacon fan, the actor sports a paunch, thinning hair, and the most impressive collection of Kevin Bacon tchotchkes — posters, props, painted portraits, you name it — ever assembled inside a single ranch-style home. How did the actor dream up the character? Who came up with all that Bacon-phrenalia? And what does this mean for the famed Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game? The actor gamely phoned up EW to answer all these questions, and more.
But first, just in case you haven’t seen it yet, check out the 60 second ad: READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Janette Pellegrini/WireImage.comApparently, the crew of CSI: New York is ridiculously excited about their latest guest star and frankly, we can’t blame them: EW has learned exclusively that Adrienne Barbeau will appear in a February episode of the CBS drama. She’ll play a clinic manager who plays an important part of an investigation to track down a hit man played by Ne-Yo. (Yes, you read that right. For more on the R&B star’s appearance in the episode, click here).
Barbeau, who’s best known for her work as Bea Arthur’s daughter in the ’70s comedy Maude, is currently playing the role of Suzanne Stanwyck, Brenda’s confidant who also heads a worldwide organization, on ABC’s General Hospital. Previously, she showed up in episodes of The Old Adventures of New Christine, Grey’s Anatomy, and Dexter.
CSI:NY airs Fridays on CBS. The drama has averaged 11.5 million viewers this season.
Image Credit: Michael Muller/HBO; Inset: Chris Jackson/Getty ImagesMore encouraging news for Entourage fans who don’t want to say goodbye to Eric, Vincent, Johnny and Turtle when the HBO show wraps next year: Mark Wahlberg, who exec produces the comedy, acknowledged to EW that he hasn’t stopped thinking about a possible Entourage movie and “we want it to happen.”
“We have one last season left on TV and then it would probably take place after the finale,” Wahlberg said while walking the red carpet for Monday’s premiere of The Fighter. “There are places to go. I’m still here all these years later, aren’t I? My story didn’t end in my 20s.”
Wahlberg added one caveat, however: “We won’t make it if we don’t have a good script.”
Last summer, HBO announced that Entourage will wrap during the summer of 2011 after eight seasons. At the time, HBO chief Michael Lombardo said that Encourage creator Doug Ellin wanted to write a film.
Meanwhile, Wahlberg’s relationship with HBO continues to extend far beyond Entourage. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Sam Jones/FoxA little less than a month after benching their freshman comedy series Running Wilde, Fox has declined to order the back nine episodes for the Tim Roth drama Lie To Me, currently in its third season. But fans should hold their tears for now.
Since mid-November, we’ve known that Lie to Me would surrender its timeslot to newbie cop drama The Chicago Code, which is produced by Shawn Ryan, the man behind The Shield and the recently shuttered Terriers. The shift was not completely surprising, considering the series has over the course of its run performed solidly in a number of timeslots. (Its series premiere even held its own when it went head-to-head with the fifth season premiere of Lost.) The show’s versatility could prove its saving grace come renewal time.
Most recently, the show went into its scheduled hiatus on a high note. The Nov. 29 episode posted the show’s highest numbers of the season in both total viewers (6.4 million) and in the 18-49 demographic.
Image Credit: Janet Mayer/PR PhotosOprah Winfrey may be making a return to acting. HBO confirms to EW that Winfrey and Kate Forte will exec produce an adaptation of Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Ruined for HBO Films. Nottage will write the script, set in a brothel in war-torn Congo. The project is being developed as a potential starring role for Winfrey. It centers on Madam Mama Nadi, the women who work for her, and her struggles to avoid getting caught between the government and rebel armies. The off-Broadway production of Ruined, inspired by Bertolt Brecht’s classic Mother Courage, received an A when reviewed by EW last year. “For all of the ugliness and horror Nottage so vividly describes — wild-eyed 18-year-old Sophie was so badly abused that she walks with a pronounced limp, while young Salima was kidnapped, chained to a tree, and raped for five months — she also finds joy, beauty, and laughter in her characters’ lives,” we wrote. Like Brecht’s original Mother Courage, the show features live music, mostly sung by the character Sophie. “You come here to forget/You say drive away all regret,” she sings. “Will the sound drown out your sorrow/So you’ll remember nothing tomorrow?”
Image Credit: HBONot a bad run for Nucky Thompson: The season finale of Boardwalk Empire on Sunday averaged 3.3 million viewers. Combined with the 11 p.m. airing, the episode ended up drawing 4.2 million fans for the night.
For the season, Empire - which stars Steve Buscemi as Nucky – has drawn 10.5 million viewers per episode. (HBO arrived at the number by combining linear plays with DVR usage and HBO on Demand). It’s HBO’s second most popular series behind True Blood and marks the largest debut season for an HBO series in nearly a decade (since Six Feet Under in 2001).
The second season of Empire is expected to bow in late 2011.
Boardwalk Empire season finale: Ending with love and loyalty betrayed
Image Credit: Danny Feld/TNTThe Emmy nomination for co-star Andre Braugher and the critical claim didn’t do quite enough to lure more people to the second season premiere of Men of a Certain Age on Monday. The drama from Ray Romano and Mike Royce only averaged 2.4 million viewers on Monday and 990,000 adults ages 25-54. The drama was averaging 4.4 million viewers per week in its first season.
TNT ordered 10 episodes of the series that also stars Romano and Scott Bakula. The drama has turned into an Everybody Loves Raymond reunion, of sorts, in the writer’s room this year: Both Romano and Royce, as well as Men scribes Tucker Cawley and Lew Schneider, wrote for the CBS comedy.
Men of a Certain Age season premiere review: Making failure funny and funny, and touching
Men of a Certain Age scoop: Ray Romano gets a new galpal
Three new faces will be joining True Blood next season, HBO confirms to EW. Christina Moore (Hawthorne), Neil Hopkins (Lost), and Chris Butler (The Good Wife) will all appear in multiple episodes on the upcoming fourth season, expected to start summer 2011.
Image Credit: Walter McBride/Retna Ltd; FoxWe swear this is true: David Mamet will pop up on The Simpsons. Simpsons executive producer Al Jean tells EW exclusively that the award-winning playwright/screenwriter (Glengarry Glen Ross) will lend his voice to an episode in which he plays a version of himself — one that was a writer on Thicker Than Waters, a hokey ‘80s family sitcom that Homer becomes obsessed with. In a scene that winks at Mamet’s penchant for using profanity, Homer winds up watching a documentary about the fictional comedy, which features old footage of Mamet getting an earful from one of the Thicker actors. “He just keeps swearing at him, saying, ‘Why don’t you f—ing learn how to f—ing write an f—ing script?’” explains Jean. “And David says, ‘Hmmm, f—. I can use that… ‘” (Obviously, the f-words will be bleeped out.) Jean adds that he was thrilled to include a Mamet cameo on The Simpsons. “Obviously, it’s an honor for us,” he says. “In fact, we clearly ripped off the Jack Lemmon character from Glengarry Glen Ross and used him as our underachieving salesman Gil.” The episode, titled “Homer the Father,” airs Jan. 23 on Fox.
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The promo for Thursday’s midseason finale of The Vampire Diaries (The CW, 8 p.m. ET) shows the unthinkable happening: Stefan (Paul Wesley), now trapped in the tomb with Katherine (Nina Dobrev), giving in to her. If the teaser is any indication (watch it below), it could be the hottest captive sex scene since a certain cage encounter on Lost. “First, Jeremy getting trapped in the tomb was like, Katherine wins! When Stefan came in, she’s like, ‘Wow, I couldn’t have planned this better if I tried. The one person I want to be stuck with, here he is, and now he’s got nowhere to go. I will seduce him, I will tease him, I will anger him.’ The line between love and hate truly is very, very thin,” Dobrev says. “So she has a chance to egg him on, and he can’t do anything about it. He has no choice but to listen, and yeah, it is a very kind of sexy, manipulative scene, and he gives in. It’s pretty crazy.” But is it real? “It’s pretty crazy,” she says again, coyly.
As we’ve noted in our recaps, the walls on this show’s sets must be seriously reinforced — people are always getting thrown up against them during fights and/or foreplay. (Not that we’re complaining.) “I especially have been thrown around the set on a number of occasions,” Dobrev concedes with a laugh. “They try to make sure we’re safe when we do those things, but we as actors can’t help but get into it. We want to feel the pain. We want to make it real. So sometimes, we go overboard and slam each other a little too hard. Like that scene in particular, they padded it a little bit, but you can only do so much before you actually see the padding. It was a lot of throwing around.” So she sported some bruises afterward? “Oh, I have bruises on a daily basis. I always have bruises on my body. I’m black and blue all over,” she says. “Thank goodness for Arnica.”
Moving on to Dobrev’s other role, Elena, the synopsis for the episode says, “Elijah (guest star Daniel Gillies) makes an unexpected appearance with an offer that could change everything.” Elena wanted to sacrifice herself last episode to spare the lives of her friends, who are trying to save her from Elijah (and the as-yet-unseen Klaus). Will Elijah work that angle? All Dobrev will say is this: “Elena is in a predicament in the sense that she has a challenge, and she is out of control for the first time in a long time. When Elijah comes into her life on this day, it’s even more challenging, and tempting. Elena is the one who has to make a decision, and this time, she’s not in control, which is very frustrating for her. Elena doesn’t like to not be in control.”
Dobrev agrees that the introduction of Elijah and the concept of The Originals has been great for the show. “It’s gonna keep getting gorier and better and darker,” she says. “It adds a whole other layer. As difficult as it was for all the characters before, now they’re faced with an even more epic danger. Everyone is at risk.” But not Katherine, right? She won’t be getting a stake in the heart anytime soon, we hope. “I can’t imagine what the show was before Katherine came around,” Dobrev says. For a second, you wonder if that’s the sleep-deprivation from her schedule playing the doppelgängers for half a season talking. But it’s not. “If she ever left, I think that would be a really big mistake. She’s like another Damon,” she continues, “but now Damon is getting a lot softer, and you still need that kind of playful bad character.” READ FULL STORY »
James Hibberd
@James_Hibberd
Lynette Rice
@EWLynette
