We Are Never Going to Get Rid of These Dang Zombies
Not if AMC has anything to say about it, anyway. They want more zombies! Also today: True Blood geniusly casts a genius, a Broadway show has its life cut short, as does an NBC show, and Steve Carell news.
Aha, here is some happy news for television people. It seems that AMC has officially ordered a second, 13-episode season of their new hit show about shuffling zombies Rubicon The Walking Dead. That's very exciting! Though I do get a terrible, despairing feeling of dread in my insides every time I watch the show, it is still exciting. Though it is very hard for me to fall asleep afterwards and sometimes I need a few glasses of wine and some cigarettes and maybe some episodes The Simpsons to get the nightmare flashes out of my eyes, it's exciting news. I'm excited. So excited. So... scared. [Twitter (DEAL WITH IT)]
Amazing casting alert. True Blood has gone and cast best-theater-actress-of-her-generation Fiona Shaw as basically head villain for next season. She'll play Marnie, a timid two-bit psychic who winds up possessed by a very powerful witch. [HOLD FOR CHRISTINE O'DONNELL JOKE TKTK] Shaw is known in the film world as Aunt Petunia in the Harry Potter series, but in the theater world she's known as creating a definitive Medea, for a gender-bending Richard II, and for doing a one-woman performance of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. I saw her do the mostly-a-monologue Happy Days at BAM and it was grrrreat. Plus she's a lesbian! So, basically, excellently done True Blood. Perhaps this will make up for them completely underusing Alfre Woodard last season? (What happened with that anyway?) [Deadline]
Oh, sad bad casting alert. Bobcat kitten made human by a fairy potion Chad Michael Murray has been added to the cast of The Haunting in Georgia. If that title sounds vaguely familiar, it is because this is the continuation of a planned franchise that began with last year's The Haunting in Connecticut. So it's like the Sufjan Stevens project of B horror movies! I'm particularly excited for The Haunting in Delaware about [CHRISTINE O'DONNELL GAG TKTK]. Or The Haunting in Alaska, in which Sarah Palin. Whatever, in which she does something. We need new jokes, people! But, yes, kind of a boo on Chad Michael Murray. I mean, don't get me wrong: Mrroowwwrrrr! But on the other hand: One Tree Hill. Kate Sackhoff got cast too, so all the nerd boys will have a reason to go see this and later sackhoff. (That's a good joke.) [THR]
I missed this at the end of last week, so here it is now. NBC has canceled their J.J. Abrams spy show Undercovers. They'll air the six remaining episodes and that will, in fact, be that. This is too bad for a few reasons, one being the obvious blog-bait RACE angle, the other being that Gugu Mbatha-Raw is a great name that should be in the public sphere more prominently. This is not too bad for one simple reason: Undercovers was not a good television program. I know that sounds really complicated and multifaceted, but just take it as I say it: Undercovers was a bad TV series. That's not necessarily why it got canceled! (I mean, look at Two and a Half NCIS Minds.) But it is a reason why one shouldn't be too sad that it did get canceled. Go watch an episode if you don't believe me. I'll be here, thinking up Lady Gugu/Gugu Dolls jokes. [NYT]
A dude named Dan Fogelman who has written a lot of animated movies (Bolt, Cars, Bolt Car: The Electric Automobile) has gotten a job writing and directing — for $3 million!!!!!! — a Steve Carell movie called Imagine, about an old musician who discovers an unread letter sent to him by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, prompting him to try to turn his sad old life around. Steve Carell plays his estranged son that the musician, of course, reconciles with. Sounds fun. So who will play the old rocker dad? Nothing formal yet, but judging by how things are going these days, my guess would be either Fiona Shaw or Chad Michael Murray. [Deadline]
Today's just a theatery day, guys. You're going to have to live with it. The Broadway revival of David Mamet's comedy A Life in the Theater will close on November 28th, five weeks ahead of schedule. Not good news for the play's stars, Patrick Stewart and T.R. Knight, who is probably missing the comfy, money-bestowing confines of ol' Seattle Grace Hospital right about now. Too bad his character didn't just leave for another hospital or go missing or something. Then he could maybe come back. But poor George was hit by a damn Seattle bus. Which is the most embarrassing, but probably most definitive, way to die on a television show. Sorry, T.R. Your life in the theater was a short one, it seems. (Oof.) [THR]