Upfronts, Peacocks And Low-Grossers
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· Good news, advertisers, entertainment journalists, and fans of overblown montages of new shows that will likely be canceled before December: The upfronts are back on! The networks may continue them in some modified form, but it seems as if they're planning on maintaining the most crucial part of the tradition: free booze. [Variety]
· This year's five Best Picture nominees have earned just $295 million at the box office (and Juno is responsible for about $120 mil of that), putting the group on pace to be the second-lowest grossing crop of Academy honorees in two decades. You should all be ashamed of yourselves, especially if you haven't seen No Country or There Will Be Blood yet. [THR]
· Ellen Page and Cillian Murphy will star in Peacock, in which Murphy will play a small town guy with a multiple personality disorder that leads him to live life as both a man and his wife, and Page the "struggling young mother" who touches off a domestic dispute between the two sides of his fractured psyche. Disclosure: a friend of ours co-wrote this script, and it's fucking brilliant. We're not even going to be objective about this on our last day. [Variety]
· USA buys the cable rights to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (as well as those of the first three Indy installments) in a deal that could cost $40 million, depending on how much Crystal Skull earns in theaters. [Variety]
· The AMPTP says it's ready to start bargaining with SAG on a new contract, but reserves the right to walk away from negotiations in bad faith should they decide at any point that doing would be a good PR move that makes the actors seem "greedy" and "unreasonable." [Variety]