Saturday, February 19, 2011
A new Wonder Woman of America
America's new Wonder Woman! Bad guys better get out of town!
A new Wonder Woman has finally been cast for the remake of the classic ‘70s super hero TV series.
The gorgeous Adrianne Palicki, who wowed viewers and Hollywood honchos alike during her brief turn on Fox’s cancelled "Lone Star," will put on her bullet-proof bracelets to play the role made iconic by Lynda Carter.
Palicki was thought to be perfect for the role, and she was the only actress invited to do a screen test. Perhaps Palicki’s statuesque beauty had something to do with it—standing at 5’11”, she’s the ideal height to portray an Amazon crime-fighter.
Prolific producer David E. Kelley teamed with Warner Bros. to bring the series back to television, but not without some hiccups.
The concept was initially shot down by all the major networks. NBC finally gave the green light for Kelley and Warner Bros. to produce a pilot in late January.
In the remake of the classic D. C. Comics character, Wonder Woman/Diana Prince is not just a vigilante crime fighter in modern Los Angeles, but also a successful corporate executive. The series will follow the character trying to balance being a super hero, a businesswoman and a singleton.
Grammys: On a Night of Bold Performances, Safe Choice Lady Antebellum Rules
On a night of bold and flat-out weird performances, the 53rd annual Grammy Awards ultimately played it safe by heaping awards on the country-rock trio Lady Antebellum.
Canadian rockers Arcade Fire (pictured below) claimed album of the year for "The Suburbs" and got to perform twice, including to close the show. Their first performance, one of the rawest of the night, featured BMX riders with cameras mounted to their bikes.But Lady Antebellum dominated. The Nashville-based group, formed in 2006, won record of the year, song of the year, country album, country song, and country performance by a duo or group with vocals for "Need You Now."
When it came to performances, the standout performers were the artists who took the wildest risks.
Cee-Lo Green and Gwyeth Paltrow did a duet that included Green looking like a peacock-ified Elton John and a gaggle of puppet backup singers.
Justin Bieber and Usher performed a medley that included corny canned dialogue about how they met, drummers dressed like ninjas, and a guest appearance by Jaden Smith.
Also odd -- but compulsively watchable -- was an Eminem performance that segued from a duet with Rihanna into a tribute to his mentor, Dr. Dre. It was Dre's first live TV performance in a decade, but he hadn't been gone from the scene long enough for many viewers to realize he had left it.
Bob Dylan also stood out, but seemed like part of a different show: He and his band wandered out onstage to perform "Maggie's Farm" like the Grammys were just another stop on a freewheeling carouse.
Mick Jagger's first Grammys appearance was in a tribute to Solomon Burke that exploded with energy. "Mick Jagger is crazy fresh!!!," tweeted Kanye West, getting it exactly right.
Barbra Streisand made the bold move of showing up, making an exceedingly rare live TV appearance.Lady Gaga, a master of stealing shows, offered a straightforward performance of her new single, "Born This Way" -- once she emerged from an egg. Her midriff-baring outfit did little to steal attention from the Madonna-inspired song. Later she won best pop vocal album for "The Fame Monster," wearing a leather bubble-butt thing you can try for yourself to make sense of (left). She also won best female pop vocal performance and best short form music video for "Bad Romance."
Aside from the standout numbers, the telecast bounced around amiably from a tribute to Aretha Franklin to Miranda Lambert to a driving perfomance by Muse to a Motown-influenced Bruno Mars number.
Leelee Sobieski Cast in Robert De Niro's 'Rookies' Pilot for CBS
Leelee Sobieski has been cast in CBS' Robert DeNiro-produced "Rookies," TheWrap has
confirmed.
The "Joan of Arc" actress joins an impressive team: "Clockers" writer Richard Price wrote the pilot, and James Mangold ("3:10 to Yuma") is directing.
De Niro's Tribeca Prods. and CBS TV Studios are producing the series, which will follow six rookie cops who patrol especially dangerous areas.
De Niro and Price are executive producing.
One Wicked Witch: Mila Kunis May Fly to 'Oz'
This is definitely not your grandfather's wicked witch.
"Black Swan's" Mila Kunis is in talks to play the Wicked Witch of the West in Sam Raimi's "Oz, the Great and Powerful," TheWrap has learned.
Academy Award nominee James Franco remains in talks to play the Wizard. Robert Downey Jr. and Johnny Depp had been reported to be considering the role.
Joe Roth is producing the Walt Disney Picture movie, which is slated to be released in 2013.
The movie is about a young magician who is forced to flee from a traveling circus. His hot air balloon gets caught in a tornado, and he winds up in Oz, which is run by a pair of wicked witches.
Details of Dramatic Changes for Oscars Telecast
Oscar producers Bruce Cohen and Don Mischer explain to The Hollywood Reporter that they are taking a radical departure from past shows.
The Oscars are entering the world of virtual reality.
“We’re doing six or seven scenic transitions during the show, but they are each sort of a different concept,” Cohen explains. “In other words, one might be a scene from a film, one might be a more specific time in history, one might be a specific event, one might be a specific genre. The hope is that we briefly leave the Kodak in 2011 -- not literally, but metaphorically -- and take the audience, both in the room and on television, to a specific time and place.”This year’s Academy Awards telecast is taking a radical departure from past years. Producers of the Feb. 27 show are abandoning the concept of a traditional set. Instead, they will rely on a series of “projections” to give the show a constantly changing look.
“Our design this year is actually going to reflect more content than you would usually expect of an awards show of this type,” producer Don Mischer tells The Hollywood Reporter in an interview with fellow producer Bruce Cohen in the Kodak Theater. “We’re using our environment to take us to different places, different times, and it will change dramatically. The look will change from act to act.”
Producers plan to take viewers on a trip through Hollywood history.
Pressed for more detail, Cohen adds, “This is the tenth anniversary of the best animated feature Oscar, so we go to an animated environment to present that Oscar -- actually two, animated feature and animated short -- but the reason we are there is to celebrate that this is the tenth anniversary of the best animated feature Oscar.”
The transitions, Mischer explains, will not be long segments, but 30-45 second set-ups. “We are not going back to teach history, but to put the awards in context.”
The design scheme grew out of the theme that the two producers devised once they began working on the show back in June. In an extensive review of past broadcasts, they were struck by the two-fold nature of the assignment. On the one hand, they have to come up with something new and different. On the other, they wanted to recognize the previous 82 years of Oscar history.
“Is there any way to approach the show where those two ideas are working together and not fighting each other with every single decision?" they asked themselves. The solution, they decided, was somehow to combine the old and the new.
To that end, they cast Anne Hathaway and James Franco -- two of the youngest hosts to ever front the Oscars -- as audience surrogates for the journey.
“Yes, they are famous, but they are on their way up,” Cohen says of the two stars. “They are not untouchable, they are not unreachable. We hope they will offer [the audience] a way in. So everyone come along, and we’ll see through the eyes of these two up-and-coming stars.”
The hosts’ job, he says, will be “to take the audience on this journey of a show that will hopefully start in one place, and if it all goes according to plan, it will take you back to where we started at the end.”
To realize that on stage visually, the producers have been working with production designerSteve Bass, who’s previously worked with Mischer on such shows as the 62nd Primetime Emmy Awards and We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial.
While the production has moved into the Kodak to set up the show, it’s been using the daytime hours to hang the physical scenery on which the projections will be displayed, and then during the night another team has been programming the projections. Working throughout this weekend, the goal is to have the whole system up-and-running by Monday.
So how did the two producers sell the concept of their novel approach to the Academy and ABC, since it wasn’t simply a matter of constructing the sort of physical models that have been used in the past?
While the two producers walked the Academy and ABC through what they call “the story of the show,” Cohen admits, “We weren’t able to show them what the actual images would look like, but we were able to show them what the images would be. For better or worse, I think they have a very clear idea in their heads of what we think the show is going to be. We’re kind of as curious as they are [to see] when it’s all up this weekend, how similar what we’ve had in our heads for the last month or two is to the actual experience.”
Cameron Diaz to Star Opposite Colin Firth in the Coen Brothers' 'Gambit'
Glen Basner's FilmNation will launch the project to foreign buyers at the European Film Market in Berlin.
Cameron Diaz is attached to star opposite Colin Firth in the Joel andEthan Coen-scripted Gambit, a remake of the 1966 British caper starringMichael Caine and Shirley MacLaine.
Gambit is one of the first projects financed by Crime Scene Pictures,launched in May by writer/director/producer Adam Rippand agent-turned-producer Rob Paris.
Glen Basner’s FilmNation will launch Gambit to foreign buyers at the upcoming European Film Market in Berlin. FilmNation and Crime Scene announced Diaz’s casting on Tuesday. Firth, a frontrunner for the Oscar for his performance in The King’s Speech, was previously attached to Gambit.
Michael Hoffman (The Last Station) is directing the remake. Mike Lobbell is producing alongside Ripp and Paris.
Hoffman begins shooting in London in May.
Storyline revolves around a London art curator (Firth) who plots an elaborate scheme to con a wealthy collector into buying a fake Monet painting. As part of the ruse, he recruits a Texas steer roper (Diaz) to play the part of a woman whose grandfather liberated the painting at the end of WWII.
Diaz, who is currently in theaters with The Green Hornet, recently wrapped Bad Teacher.She’s repped by CAA.
Kat Dennings to Costar in Whitney Cummings CBS Pilot
Co-executive produced by Michael Patrick King, "Two Broke Girls" centers on two under-employed New Yorkers trying to make it in the big city.
Kat Dennings has closed a deal to co-star in comedian Whitney Cummings’ CBS pilot Two Broke Girls.
The single-camera comedy from Warner Bros. revolves around two under-employed New Yorkers trying to make it in the big city. Cummings wrote the pilot and will executive produce with Sex and the City alum Michael Patrick King.
It’s not the first time Dennings has worked with King; the actress broke out when she landed a part on a 2000 episode of Sex and the City playing a precocious 13-year-old who hires Samantha to do publicity for her bat mitzvah. She went on to land supporting roles in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Big Momma’s House 2 and Kenneth Branagh’s upcoming Thor.
Stalwart comedy director James Burrows will direct the Two Broke Girls pilot, which should give Girls a fighting chance if past experience is any guide. Burrows -- a co-creator ofCheers – has directed myriad pilots including Will & Grace, The Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men. Last year, he directed the pilots for CBS’ Mike & Molly, $#*! My Dad Saysand Better with You.
Oscars Nixing Montages, Elaborate Nominee Tributes From Telecast (Exclusive)
Producers Bruce Cohen and Don Mischer have booted a number of familiar elements from the Feb 27 show.
As preparations for the 83rd annual Academy Awards move into high gear, producers Bruce Cohen and Don Mischer have booted a number of familiar elements from the Feb 27 show.
Gone will be the movie montages -- like last year’s salute to horror movies -- that often contribute to the broadcast’s unwieldy running time. While there will be film clips from the ten best picture nominees and brief filmed introductions to different segments of the show, “Within the body of the show, we are not doing any film montage sequences,” Cohen tells The Hollywood Reporter in an interview.
Gone too will be the relatively new tradition, established just two years ago, of using five presenters to offer tribute testimonials about each of the best actor and actress nominees. “We’re not going to do that this year,” Cohen says. “What we did love about it was that it was a moment where each of the nominees really gets their due. [But] we found a version of that, without using the five people on stage, from the 1970 Oscars, and we stole it.”
The producers also have enlisted the nominees’ mothers to participate in promotion and pre-show activities, and some of them will be in the audience for the telecast.
This year’s producing team is restoring individual performances of the four nominated songs, which were eliminated last year. Producers were upset that Cher, a major audience draw, was not nominated for her Burlesque ballad, “You Haven’t Seen the Last of Me.”
“We were surprised, and we were disappointed,” Cohen says when of the song, which won its composer and lyricist Diane Warren a Golden Globe but failed to earn an Academy nom.
They have lined up most of the other names associated with the songs that were nominated, though: Randy Newman will perform his “We Belong Together” from Toy Story 3; Mandy Moore and Zachary Levy, who sang the duet “I See The Light” on the Tangled soundtrack will reteam with composer Alan Menkin; and Gwyneth Paltrow, who sings “Coming Home” in Country Strong will reprise that tune on the broadcast.
Because Dido, who was nominated along with Rollo Armstrong and A.R. Rahman for the song “If I Rise,” from 127 Hours was not available, the producers have drafted Florence Welch from Florence and the Machine to appear with Rahman.
“We feel we really lucked out, and this is a good year to bring the best song performances back,” Cohen says.
Britney Spears' 'Hold It Against Me' Video
Twitter users react to the singer's latest video, which premiered Thursday night on MTV.
Britney Spears debuted the new video for her single "Hold It Against Me" on Thursday night.
The video debuted at 9:55 p.m. ET/PT on MTV, and the singer also tweeted a link to it.
"Without further adieu, I present my video for Hold It Against Me, directed by the wonderfulJonas Akerlund," she wrote, then added: "Hope you guys love it as much as I do. If you didn't I'll kung fu kick you like I did to that chick in the video."
There were several instant, mixed reactions from Twitter users.
"FINALLY. Thank you BritneySpears for FINALLY actually doing a lot of choreo in a video! This is the BritneyI LOVE!" wrote JorBae, while JordannLewis added: "Killed it!!! PS her body looks AMAZING !"
Another Twitterer called glamloverx wasn't as enthusiastic: "Just watched BritneySpears's Hold it against me video.... doesn't interest me. She is too the same as everyone else."
Spears had posted a 30-second sneak peek Thursday ahead of the full video's release after her managed tweeted that its debut would be delayed.
Watch the full video below (please be patient; the video takes a moment to load).
Inside Lady Gaga's Late-Night 'Born This Way' Session With Clarence Clemons
What Lady Gaga wants, Lady Gaga gets -- just ask Clarence Clemons, longtime saxophonist for Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band.
Clemons told Rolling Stone, "She said, 'We'll put the tape on and you just play. Play from your heart. Play what you feel.' It was all very pure."On a Friday afternoon three weeks ago, the musician was putting together an exercise machine at his home in Florida when a call came that Gaga wanted him in her recording studio stat. He dropped what he was doing, flew to New York, met Gaga at midnight and had a track recorded three hours later.
Clemons' sax can be heard throughout the "Hair" single, including a solo.
He says he was a Gaga fan prior to working with her and is an even bigger supporter now, "She's the real deal. All the craziness and stuff, there's a purpose to all of it. She has no boundaries. It's a day I'll never forget."
Lady Gaga's Born This Way album will be released in May.
Prince William-Kate Middleton Wedding Sends Cable Networks Into Programming Frenzy
A slew of shows and specials about the royal family will precede the couple's April 29 nuptials.
Royal fever is catching on in the U.S., and cable networks plan to capitalize on the frenzy with a series of specials leading up to the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.
In addition to Lifetime, which plans to air a biopic about the couple titledWilliam and Kate, other networks such as BBC, TLC and Wedding Central will bombard U.S. audiences with programming to generate excitement about the event, which will take place April 29 at Westminster Abbey.
BBC Worldwide America, the American branch of the U.K.-based public broadcaster, leads the pack with the most extensive pre-wedding coverage. The network has already aired two specials, William & Kate: Modern Monarchy and Modern Monarchy: Here and There, and intends broadcast up to half a dozen others about the royal family before the event.
The network’s aggressive wedding drive will culminate with Royally Mad, a two-part series that takes four American royal wedding fanatics to London for their first time to visit the people and locations that feature into William and Kate’s story. So You Think You Can Dance's Cat Deeley will host the show, set to premiere April 12.
"We wanted to do a combination of programming that took an affectionate look at the wedding but could also have a sense of humor," Perry Simon, general manager of BBC Americas, told the Associated Press. He added, "It's wedding fever here. All wedding, all the time."
TLC also has a number of royals-themed programs on its slate, including specials on Princess Diana’s bridesmaid India Hicks and hoarders of royal memorabilia. Meanwhile, Wedding Central, a relatively new offshoot of women’s network WE TV, is working on its first original program, a documentary called William and Kate: The Wedding of the Century that will feature interviews with the people involved in making the big day happen.
The wedding itself will receive extensive coverage on most major news programs, but will not be broadcast in 3D as previously rumored.
'Unknown' Edges 'Number Four' for No. 1 Spot at Friday Box Office
The Liam Neeson action-thriller Unknown overtook the Alex Pettyfer sci-fi adventure I Am Number Four at the Friday box office, grossing $6.7 million from 3,043 theaters for Warner Bros. and Joel Silver’s Dark Castle.
I Am Number Four, from DreamWorks and Touchstone, grossed an estimated $6.2 million from 3,154 theaters. Pic is the first DreamWorks title to be distributed by Touchstone under Disney’s output deal with Steven Spielberg and Stacey Snider’s company.
Box office observers aren’t ready to call the weekend race between Unknown and Number Four, since bad weather on the West Coast affected Friday’s grosses, although some are now betting onUnknown, which should open in the mid $20 millions over the four day President’s Day weekend.
Heading into the holiday, tracking showed Number Four in the lead. Unknown’s strong showing is similar to Neeson’s Taken, which was a sleeper box office hit.
Elsewhere at the box office on Friday, Sony’s Adam Sandler-Jennifer Aniston romantic comedy Just Go With It came in No. 3, falling only 44% from the previous Friday to an estimated $5.3 million for a cume of $47.9 million.
Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son, from 20th Century Fox and New Regency, opened at No. 4, grossing an estimated $4.8 million from 2,821 theaters.
Disney’s Gnomeo & Juliet beat Paramount’s Justin Bieber: Never Say Never to come in No. 5, grossing an estimated $4.3 million from 3,014 theaters for a cume of $35.3 million.
Never Say Never had a big fall in its second week, as expected. The movie fell 69% to an estimated $3.8 million from 3,118 theaters for a cume of $38.7 million.
The Weinstein Co.’s The King’s Speech will jump the $100 million mark at the domestic box office this weekend. The awards contender grossed an estimated $1.5 million on Friday for a cume of $98.2 million.
Robert Downey Jr. May Shoot 'Inherent Vice' for P.T. Anderson This Fall
Robert Downey Jr. is making plans to fill the fall hole in his schedule with the lead role in Inherent Vice for writer-directorPaul Thomas Anderson.
Anderson has been working on a screenplay adaptation of the 2009Thomas Pynchon novel while trying to get another film -- an untitled exploration of a religious organization sometimes referred to as The Master -- off the ground. Once Downey dropped out of Disney's Oz, the Great and Powerful last month, it freed him to do another movie later this year after he shoots The Avengers for Marvel and Disney. His commitment to Anderson's movie has recently grown serious.
Vice is a comparatively accessible Pynchon work that tells the story of a stoner detective who gets wrapped up in a number of mysteries in 1969 L.A. while the Manson Family trial growls in the background.
Downey, who last starred in Due Date and Iron Man 2, has wrapped filming on Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows for director Guy Ritchie and Warner Bros. That sequel comes out in December. The actor has a number of projects in development at his Team Downey shingle, plus Iron Man 3 to film for Marvel and Disney in time for a summer 2013 release. Avengers is scheduled to begin shooting in the coming months.
Anderson last wrote and directed There Will Be Blood, which grossed $76 million worldwide in 2007. He has spent the last few years developing The Master for Philip Seymour Hoffman to star, and now he is trying to secure financing for both films.
Both Anderson and Downey are repped by CAA, which declined to comment.
CNN Hires Camille Grammer for Oscar Coverage
CNN has hired Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Camille Grammeras a celebrity and fashion commentator for its 2011 Oscar coverage.
Actress Sheryl Lee Ralph and syndicated radio host Carlos Diaz are also part of the Showbiz Tonight Oscar team along with hosts AJ Hammer andBrooke Anderson.Grammer, the ex-wife of Frasier starKelsey Grammer, will be part ofShowbiz Tonight's red carpet team for the Showbiz Tonight: Road to Goldspecial airing Sunday, Feb. 27.
CNN Entertainment and Showbiz Tonight senior executive producerDave Levine said in a statement, "We can't wait to get Camille's unabashed take on Hollywood's biggest night. She will be perfect for Showbiz Tonight."
Musician Sues After Studio Shuts Down 'Twilight' Tribute (Exclusive)
An Ohio musician with ambitious plans to have his music heard by fans of The Twilight Saga is now suing the film's distributor,Summit Entertainment, for standing in his way.
Matthew Smith, who works under the moniker Matt Heart, created a song entitled "Eternal Knight" in 2002. This past November, Heart engaged in a bold marketing campaign to connect the song to new audiences. He posted the song on YouTube and sold it via iTunes, CD Baby, Amazon and other sites. Most audaciously, he says he negotiated to distribute and promote the song in various movie theaters for 28 weeks, hoping to reach an estimated 5 million viewers via an agreement with Screen Vision, which sells ads in theaters around the nation.
But Heart got into trouble when he commissioned a CD cover for "Eternal Knight" indicating it was inspired by the Twilight Saga. The cover art shows a moon and uses a similar typeface to that ofTwilight's movie poster.
The move caught the eye of Summit's legal department, which alerted YouTube, iTunes, Amazon and others to alleged infringement of its intellectual property. Heart's song was removed from those outlets.
Heart and Summit's legal counsel then e-mailed each other, with Summit lawyer Regan Pedersontelling him that "YouTube's digital infrastructure does not differentiate between copyright infringement and trademark infringement," but that Summit was concerned about the trademark violation and had thus initiated a takedown. Pederson wrote Heart that absent the Twilight mark, Heart could repost his music so long as there was no reference whatsoever to Summit's intellectual property.
Heart now claims in his lawsuit, filed yesterday, that Summit misrepresented its legal rights and that the song couldn't have infringed Twilight since it was written and copyrighted first. Never mind, it seems, that Heart may have done a bit of misrepresenting himself over how the work was inspired.
He's suing Summit for fraud, misrepresentation, infliction of emotional distress, tortious interference, and defamation for allegedly getting in the way of his contractual agreements on the song. He wants at least $75,000 in damages.
Heart isn't the first to kick up a legal fuss over a supposedly illegitimate takedown. See the Stephanie Lenz saga. But the case of the entrepreneurial musician against the protective studio is certainly a strange one that could provoke an interesting legal response. In the meantime, we've reached out to Summit and we'll update if we hear anything.
Paris Hilton’s pricey birthday cake was snatched from party
: It sounds like Paris Hilton’s 30th birthday party was perfect except for the fact that she didn’t get one bite of cake at the end of the night.
Paris’ cake at her Hollywood bash was reportedly stolen from the party by a party crasher named “Paz,” states UsMagazine.com. “Paz” posted a message about the night on Facebook along with a picture of the cake: “I crashed Paris Hilton’s Birthday Party and Accidentally the Whole Cake.”
“Paz” then went on to talk about how he and a friend crashed the party, drank for free and then tricked security in order to steal the untouched cake. The cake reportedly cost about $3,200.
Do you think this bothered Paris Hilton at all?
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