Robert Downey Jr. Is the Wizard of Oz
Or he could be! In a movie. Also today: You Lauren Graham fans will have reason to celebrate, another British TV show gets dragged over to the States, a new food channel, and Curb Your Enthusiasm enthusiasm.
You people and your Lauren Graham. You just can't get enough of her, can you? Well, no one came running when she was in that rickety old steamship revival of Guys & Dolls, but on the TV, you guys like you some Lauren Graham. You watched enough of that Parenthood show to get it renewed for a second season. Yup. You did that. All you fast-talking Gilmore Geighs tuned in and now there will be more Lauren Graham for you to inexplicably love. Which, fine, whatever. But you know what else crawled through the hell mouth that you Gilmore Gunks gnawed open? Dax Shepard. Yeah, that's on you. You have to live with that. [Variety]
The latest British TV import is the vroom vroom reality spectacular Top Gear, a sort of variety show about cars. It will be on the Lifetime network, naturally. Hey look, our gearhead brother who spends all his time in the garage would like to talk to you about this: [Jalopnik]
Next year's Oscar hopeful Stretch Armstrong — starring the Brando of our day, Taylor Lautner — has a director and a new writer. The guy who directed the documentary Monsters vs. Aliens (about Joe Arpaio's police work in Phoenix) will direct, while the guy who directed the wonderful Forgetting Sarah Marshall will rewrite the script. God. How do you sit down and start writing a script based on the Stretch Armstrong toy? Does he have any sort of backstory? Or is it just "Hey, look... He stretches." Either way, seems difficult. Good luck boys! At least you have the brilliant chameleon skills of Taylor Lautner to rely on. [Deadline]
Oh loooook. The Food Network, a productive Sunday afternoon's mortal enemy, is launching a new companion network. The Cooking Channel will skew a little younger and will really focus on the cooking, not so much the "omigod is she going to drop that cake!!" stuff. For now. Eventually we'll probably get some foodie version of The Hills about sexy young chefs being sexy and young and chefs. But for now it's straight up cooking and food-info programming. There's a show hosted by Mo Rocca! That sounds suspiciously like Good Eats. But, um, younger! [The Wrap]
There's a rumor afloat that Robert Downey Jr., the Drew Barrymore of men, will be playing the Wizard of Oz in a new prequel to be directed by rumpled Briton Sam Mendes. It would be something of an origin story, describing how a mild-mannered Kansas-area homosexual ended up floating in a balloon all the way to the Emerald City. Sounds vaguely promising, right? The only thing we're concerned about is that it's being written by the dude who wrote The Whole Nine Yards. That movie was cute and all, but, y'know. Anyway. Prequels! [EW]
Larry David has grumbled and whined and finally said "All riiiiight, fine." So there will be an eighth season of Curb Your Enthusiasm. We can already hear the wumm WUMP wump opening music. Pretty exciting. Pretty, pretttyyyy exciting. [THR]