The producers of the online shows One Life to Live and All My Children have announced that a new union dispute has led them to move up a scheduled filming hiatus, starting the break today, almost two weeks early. But new shows will continue on their recently adopted twice-a-week schedule at least through September.
Read the company’s June 5 statement below. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Netflix
It isn’t often you get to utter the words, “Hey, I’ve stood in that women’s prison shower!” But that’s exactly what I said while watching the trailer for the Netflix dramedy Orange Is The New Black, whose set in Queens, NY, I visited earlier this year.
Image Credit: Martin Crook/Comedy Central
John Oliver thinks it would be “fantastic” if Community creator Dan Harmon returns to oversee the sitcom’s fifth season. On May 25, Harmon tweeted “Yes yes yes! I’m back I’m back I’m back. You can thank @joelmchale” in response to a fan requesting a “straight answer” as to his much rumored return. Oliver, who played recurring character Dr. Ian Duncan during Harmon’s original tenure at the show, said he hadn’t heard anything on the Community grapevine about the showrunner returning “but that would be fantastic.”
Image Credit: Michael Yarish/Netflix
Now that America has had time to absorb the new season of Arrested Development (and catch up on some sleep), series creator/executive producer Mitchell Hurwitz (him?) spoke to reporters on a conference call today about the 15 episodes released on Netflix, the future of the franchise, and more. The highlights:
• Hurwitz said that a variety of mediums could have been — and can be used — for continuing the saga of the Bluths: “Give us the canvas and let’s see what we come up with. If it were a movie canvas, we would absolutely tailor to that, but the life of the family does seem to play out episodically, so I think there’s an argument for both things. Really, whoever wants it. Maybe we could do it as a series of articles. Remember when Woody Allen got turned into a comic strip? I think we should go to the comic strip format.”
READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Tamas Kende/SHOWTIME
Showtime has canceled The Borgias, its period drama that stars Jeremy Irons as Pope Alexander VI.
Season-to-date, the drama has been averaging 2.4 million weekly viewers across platforms. The final episode of the drama from Neil Jordan (The Crying Game, Interview with the Vampire) will air on June 16th at 10 p.m. ET/PT. “I never thought I would make a cable series and have enjoyed every minute of it,” said Jordan in a statement. “For a variety of reasons we won’t be doing a fourth season, but, ‘The Prince’ [the final episode], when I wrote it and shot it, did seem like the end of a journey for the family. Whatever bonded them as a family dies in this episode, and the center of the drama for me was always the family.”
Shot entirely on location in Budapest, the series is about the infamous Borgia dynasty and how Alexander VI built his empire by bribing, buying and muscling his way into the papacy. The cast included François Arnaud, Holliday Grainger, Joanne Whalley, Lotte Verbeek, Sean Harris, Thure Lindhart and Gina McKee.
Image Credit: Everett Collection
J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot Productions is turning to the late Rod Serling for its next TV hit.
His Warner Bros. TV-based production company, which is responsible for such shows as Revolution, Person of Interest and Fox’s upcoming drama Almost Human, has nabbed the rights to Serling’s unproduced final screenplay The Stops Along the Way. The hope is to shop the script as a possible “event” series. (That’s code for miniseries, kids).
Serling, best known for his anthology series The Twilight Zone, wrote and produced many screenplays, including Night Gallery, Planet of the Apes, and Requiem for a Heavyweight.
Image Credit: Virginia Sherwood/NBC
NBC’s back-to-back talent shows helped the peacock to take Tuesday in adults 18-49 (3.1 rating/10 share) and viewers (10.9 million), despite their rather unremarkable results.
The Voice was down 6% percent in the demo (3.0/11) to earn its lowest-rated Tuesday results show ever, while the premiere of America’s Got Talent earned a 3.1/9, down 16% from last year’s start (when it had the advantage of bowing mid-May with a 3.7/10). Last night was also AGT’s lowest-rated season premiere ever.
But hey! It actually built on The Voice’s lead-in and was the most-watched show of the night with 11.1 million! So there’s that.
Fox was second for the night in the demo (1.6/5) thanks to its two-hour block of So You Think You Can Dance. ABC tied CBS for third in the demo (.9/3) despite having an original episode of Extreme Weight Loss (1.0/3) at 9. CBS aired back to back repeats of NCIS and NCIS: LA followed by week two of the new series Brooklyn D.A. (.8/2, down 20% from the premiere).
On your mark, get set, go…Chenbot!
CBS announced today that Big Brother will return on Wednesday, June 26 while Big Brother: After Dark will move to TV Guide Network. It will air from 12:00-2:00 AM nightly.
The traditional 24/7 live feed from the Big Brother house will be available via subscription on CBS.com.
“We’re building on Big Brother’s major strides in interactivity – including primetime reality TV’s first live Twitter vote – by bringing the show’s die-hard fans even more opportunities to impact components of the show and interact with this season’s Houseguests,” said Rob Gelick, the Senior Vice President and General Manager of Digital Platforms for CBS Interactive Entertainment, in a statement. “Fans will have the most immersive, 360-degree Big Brother experience ever, across every possible screen, including social media integrations, the Live Feeds on CBS.com, and full episodes on the CBS App.”
Big Brother will be air three nights weekly – Sundays at 8, Tuesdays at 9 and Wednesdays at 8.
Our TV blog is going on the air!
Tune in tonight at 5 p.m. PT/8 p.m. ET to hear the first installment of Inside TV on Entertainment Weekly Radio, SiriusXM 105. Tonight’s guests on the weekly show hosted by Lynette Rice are Fox’s outgoing reality chief Mike Darnell, who talks about his legacy and the future of American Idol; ABC’s head of scheduling Andy Kubitz, who addresses the net’s decision to program four new shows on Tuesdays this fall; and TLC’s Suzanne Rauscher, about another (frightening?) season of Toddlers & Tiaras.
Listeners can also check out EW’s full programming schedule here.
Fox reality chief leaving after 18 years
Best and worst decisions of 2013 upfronts
Fall TV schedule 2013
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Bad news for Oprah, good news for the rest of us: Kathy Griffin is just as funny as ever. Tonight Bravo will air her record-breaking 16th stand-up comedy special, Calm Down Gurrl. In the new special, Griffin brings her signature shock-and-dish style to everything from the Justins (Timberlake and Bieber) to Amanda Bynes and Jodi Arias. “[My fans] don’t expect to hear some pensive, thoughtful bit about me raising my kids and what I’ve learned as a mother having teenagers,” Griffin said with a laugh. “They know I don’t like children! I want to figure out where Amanda [Bynes] gets her wigs.”
Griffin may not be able to crack the wig mystery, but even without that intel her new special is sure to delight fans wondering what exactly goes down at Jane Fonda’s birthday party. Griffin spoke with EW last week about women in stand up and drawing the line about who makes the act. She even looked back on some of her biggest moments and backlashes (Paging the Tea Party!). Read on for an edited Q&A.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Congratulations, first of all, on your record 16 stand-up specials.
KATHY GRIFFIN: I was so excited to learn from somebody that I had broken a record because I was doing [another interview] and we were talking about females in stand up and [they were] wondering ‘Is there sexism?’ and I was like, ‘F*** yes. What are you f***ing thinking?’ If I hear one more female stand-up comedian say, ‘Oh no, everything is equal now, we’re all good!’ usually the people who say that have 20 million dollar development deals or something. READ FULL STORY »
Millions of Game of Thrones fans are feeling sadness, outrage, and, sure, some perverse excitement after watching Sunday’s episode titled “The Rains of Castamere.” But for Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin, such reactions to “The Red Wedding” are nothing new. Martin has been receiving exclamatory emails about the disastrous Tully-Frey union for more than a decade, ever since he published his Song of Ice and Fire saga’s third novel, A Storm of Swords. Below, the author reveals why Robb had to die, gives his reaction to upset readers and spills the scene’s horrifying real-life inspiration.
Former Storm Chasers star Tim Samaras and colleague Carl Young, along with Tim’s son Paul, were killed Friday while following a tornado in Oklahoma.
Discovery, which aired Storm Chasers for five seasons, will dedicate tonight’s special “Mile Wide Tornado: Oklahoma Disaster” to the trio’s memory. The cable net released this statement: “We are deeply saddened by the loss of Tim Samaras his son Paul and their colleague Carl Young. Our thoughts and prayers go out to their families.”
National Geographic also had this to say about the trio: “We were shocked and deeply saddened by the news that longtime National Geographic grantee Tim Samaras was killed in a tornado in Oklahoma on Friday, along with Tim’s son Paul and their colleague Carl Young. Tim was a courageous and brilliant scientist who fearlessly pursued tornadoes and lightning in the field in an effort to better understand these phenomena.
“The National Geographic Society made 18 grants to Tim for research over the years for field work like he was doing in Oklahoma at the time of his death, and he was one of our 2005 Emerging Explorers,” the statement continued. “Tim’s research included creation of a special probe he would place in the path of a twister to measure data from inside the tornado; his pioneering work on lightning was featured in the August 2012 issue of National Geographic magazine. Though we sometimes take it for granted, Tim’s death is a stark reminder of the risks encountered regularly by the men and women who work for us. This is an enormous loss for his family, his wide circle of friends and colleagues and National Geographic.”
Samaras founded TWISTEX, the Tactical Weather Instrumented Sampling in Tornadoes Experiment, to learn more about tornadoes and increase time for warnings.
The Doctor is out. Or at least he will be soon.
The BBC announced today that Matt Smith will leave Doctor Who after four years on the long-running program. Smith, who arrived on the show in 2010, will part ways with the TARDIS at the end of this year after starring in the 50th Anniversary special in November. According to the BBC, he’ll also regenerate one last time for this year’s Christmas special.
“Doctor Who has been the most brilliant experience for me as an actor and a bloke, and that largely is down to the cast, crew and fans of the show,” Smith said in a statement. “I’m incredibly grateful to all the cast and crew who work tirelessly every day, to realize all the elements of the show and deliver Doctor Who to the audience.”
Smith continued, “The fans of Doctor Who around the world are unlike any other; they dress up, shout louder, know more about the history of the show (and speculate more about the future of the show) in a way that I’ve never seen before, your dedication is truly remarkable. Thank you so very much for supporting my incarnation of the Time Lord, number Eleven, who I might add is not done yet.” (Read his full statement here.)
Steven Moffat, the lead writer and executive producer of Doctor Who, also released a statement in which he thanked Smith for his work as the Time Lord. “Bow ties were never cooler,” he said. Moffat’s already looking to the future, though, as the quest to find a new Doctor gets underway. “Now the search begins. Somewhere out there right now – all unknowing, just going about their business – is someone who’s about to become the Doctor. A life is going to change, and Doctor Who will be born all over again! After 50 years, that’s still so exciting!”
What say you, Whovians: Are you sad to see Matt Smith go?
James Hibberd
@James_Hibberd
Lynette Rice
@EWLynette
