casting

Trade Round-Up: A Brief Respite From Mel Gibson News

mark · 07/31/06 03:22PM

Nicole Kidman to joins the cast of The Golden Compass, the first installment of the His Dark Materials trilogy, as the "villainous and glamorous Mrs. Coulter." There is no mention of Mel Gibson's recent anti-Semitic remarks in this totally unrelated story. [Variety]
Bryan Singer signs a seven-figure TV deal with ABC to develop three scripts, one of which is guaranteed to go to pilot. Again, there is no Mel Gibson angle to this story that we can discern. [THR]
Paramount Pictures buys the comedy pitch The Donor from Jon Stewart's Busboy Productions as a starring vehicle for the Daily Show's Rob Corddry. The logline is being kept top secret, but go ahead and assume it has something to do with a guy who embarks on a hilarious quest to sells his internal organs on the black market. [Variety]
Jessica Biel joins Adam Sandler and Kevin James in their "two straight schlubs get gay married for health benefits" comedy I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. If you guessed she'll be playing the hot chick who eventually falls for Adam Sandler, consider an exciting career as a casting agent. [THR]

Trade Round-Up: Striking Writers, Stalling Networks, And Incredibly Expensive Nipples

mark · 07/28/06 03:17PM

ICM acquisition of BWCS is called a "perfect" fit, especially once they get rid of all those superfluous agents that might that fit a little too tight for comfort. [Variety, THR]
CBS will cough up the $550,000 indecency fine for showing Janet Jackson's nipple at the Super Bowl, but only because they have to pay the penalty to fight the ruling in court. [THR]
The WGA and America's Next Top Model writers continue to strike outside the show's offices, while The CW continues to dodge their unionization request by telling the strikers to kill a few months talking to the National Labor Relations Board. [Variety]
· Ed Helms will reunite with Daily Show buddy Steve Carell in a recurring role on The Office. [THR]
ABC's American Idol knockoff The One pulls such amazingly low ratings that's it's canceled a mere week after its anemic debut. We'd like to think this means that viewers are tired of AI clones, but we know that seven more series like this will probably rise to take its place. [Variety]

Trade Round-Up: Disney's Cast Member Massacre Finally Gets Underway

mark · 07/26/06 02:23PM

Disney's Cast Member Massacre started in earnest with a round of layoffs yesterday. But in a happier note, studio chairman Dick Cook seems to be getting a hang of the termination business, as Buena Vista exec VP Karen Glass was let go nowhere near a delivery room. [Variety]
Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence has signed on to adapt and direct the prequel to Fletch, Fletch Won. His friends have instructed him to not "fuck it up," a directive made all the more challenging by the planned miscasting of Zach Braff in the title role. [Variety]
In Hollywood, everything old is senselessly new again: 50 years after its Broadway debut, ABC plans a musical version of Peter Pan for television. [Variety]
Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat movie will premiere at the Toronto Film Festival and maybe we've already gulped the Kazakh Kool-Aid, but even the title has us excited: Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. [Variety]

Defamer Casting: Being Nina Jacobson

mark · 07/19/06 12:59PM

Based on the suggestion of one of our fine commenters, we think that the entire casting process for the lead in CBS's inevitable movie of the week about yesterday's upheaval at Disney, Hard Labor: The Delivery Room Firing Of Nina Jacobson, will consist of a single phone call to SNL star Rachel Dratch's agent. Or should a feature film version go into development, someone might want to check on Jodie Foster's availability and potential willingness to glam herself down for a meaty, heart-wrenching role.

Trade Round-Up: 'Superman' Huge In That One Theater In Shanghai

mark · 07/18/06 02:29PM

· Superman Returns finds a record that Pirates hasn't yet claimed, winning the one-day, one-venue Chinese box office prize for hauling in $19,360 at a Shanghai Imax theater. [Variety]
Spike Lee signs an exclusive deal to develop a one-hour drama for NBC, prompting an NBC Universal TV Studio exec to gush, "And what's really exciting is to see his enthusiasm for television. He's already come in with so many powerful ideas," which in turn prompts us to wonder if his movie career's a little slow at the moment. [THR]
· Scarlett Johansson finally chews through her restraints in Woody Allen's dungeon, slipping through the wizened auteur's clutches to star in The Other Boleyn Girl for another director. [Variety]
In a much-needed triumph of tasteful corporate branding over tradition, the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen is renamed the HBO Comedy Festival. [THR]
The CW will begin its life as a network with a couple of days of reruns, giving slow viewers a chance to figure out where their favorite WB or UPN shows now live. [Variety]

Trade Round-Up: JJ Abrams To Rebuild Bad Robot In Solid Gold

mark · 07/17/06 03:49PM

· Warner Bros. TV and Paramount have thrown giant piles of cash at M:i:III director/Lost creator JJ Abram to lock up his Bad Robot production company for TV and film development deals, respectively. Click through to the link at the end of this sentence to hear the sound of various WB and Paramount big-shots clapping themselves on the back for their amazing, visionary ability to write enormous checks. [Variety]
· Hoping to capitalize on the success of their hit Kyra Sedgwick series The Closer, TNT is in talks with Holly Hunter to go basic-cable slumming in the TNT pilot Grace, sort of a combination between Touched by an Angel and, um, The Closer. Hey, no one ever said there's a correlation between original thought and Nielsen ratings. [THR]
· Pirates 2 takes the ten-day box office record, but fails to set the mark for the biggest second weekend record, only notching a third-place finish in that category. You may now commence vomiting in shock at this disappointing shortfall. [Variety]
· Hold that reverse peristalsis! Pirates 2 rolls up $58 million this weekend at the international box office. [THR]
CBS's Nina Tassler admits that Grey's Anatomy's move to Thursdays may "ding" CSI, is immediately called into boss Les Moonves' office to have the soles of her feet beaten with a bamboo rod for showing even the slightest sign of weakness. [Variety]

Trade Round-Up: There Is No Record That 'Pirates 2' Won't Break

mark · 07/14/06 03:03PM

· Pirates 2 is ready to pass Spider-Man 2's one-week record of $192.1 million, and will likely pass the $250 million barrier by Sunday. Fans of corporate profits will now watch with baited breath as Disney eventually reaps a $400 million or $500 million gross for this wise movie-related investment. [Variety]
· Judd Apatow will produce the "buying booze for a party so girls will hook up with nerds" high school comedy Super Bad from a screenplay by pal/muse/actor/writer Seth Rogen, and the project will star everyone's favorite cousin-desiring Bluth, Michael Cera. [THR]
· William Morris president Dave Wirstschafter makes the Alicia Keys space meaningful (there's nothing like an ancient reference on a Friday morning!), as Disney signs up Keys' new vanity production company for a first-look production deal. [Variety]
· Gunshot-phobic Miami Vice cast member Jamie Foxx will produce and possibly star in The Power of Duff (count the minutes until that title changes starting...now), the story of a news anchor whose on-air prayers start coming true. [THR]
· Dirty-talking Insider host Pat O'Brien is obviously being punished for an unknown sin by his bosses, who are forcing the host to appear on three-minute interstitial spinoffs of his show on Showtime. [Variety]

Trade Round-Up: Mogulpalooza!

mark · 07/13/06 02:25PM

· Thanks to Beverly Hills-fleeing agencies CAA and ICM and reemerging studio MGM, Hollywood has returned to Century City. But there goes the neighborhood already: Entertainment lawyers have descended to suck the life from he newly vital area. Anon, to Burbank, where the suits won't dare follow! [Variety]
· DreamWorks Animation takes advantage of the obscure federal subsidy for the bulk-casting of current and former SNL players in a movie, signing up Amy Poehler, Cheri Oteri, and Maya Rudolph for Shrek the Third. With the savings realized from the package deal, they've also secured the services of the hilarious Amy Sedaris. [THR]
· Media bigshots like Rupert Murdoch, Bob Iger, Sumner Redstone, Tom Freston, and Les Moonves gather at the annual Sun Valley Mogulpalooza, where they will spend their brief vacation whitewater rafting, competing in savage pool-based chickenfights (the Moonves-Redstone pairing is utterly unstoppable), and partaking of the always popular session of bow-hunting human prey. (Again, no one can touch Moonves' compound bow skills.) [Variety]
· Each time the European Union stymies the merger of the music divisions of international conglomerates, the baby Jesus cries. [THR]
· After two months of negotiations, House's Hugh Laurie boosts his per episode fee over $275,000, a modest recompense for his valiant efforts at selling the exact same "no one believes the diagnosis of the prickly, brilliant doctor, then he is proven correct" story week after week. [Variety]

Angelina Jolie Combines Latest Acting Job WIth Exciting Adoption Opportunities

mark · 07/13/06 12:48PM

Long before she devoted much of her time to crisscrossing the world to feed individual grains of rice to famine-afflicted infants with a tweezer, and before she was occupied with the even more vital task of bringing to term the most genetically perfect child ever conceived, Angelina Jolie was an actress. Now that the Chosen One has been expelled from her blessed womb and can embark on her own global missions of mercy, Jolie is ready to once again ply her trade. Unsurprisingly, the role she's chosen for her return to the screen is a weightier one than last summer's fucking-and-fighting blockbuster with eventual impregnator/orphan molder Brad Pitt, which while a fine piece of work in the I-can't-decide-whether-to- rip-off-your-shirt-or-shoot-you-in-the-face genre, would hardly be an appropriate choice for the World's Most Socially Conscious Hollywood Citizen now. According to Variety, Jolie will play Mariane Pearl, the widow of kidnapped and cruelly executed journalist Daniel Pearl, and to keep her next career step in the family, partner Pitt's Plan B is producing. And in another family bonus, the project's likely location shoots in Pakistan should afford Jolie plenty of window-shopping time at the country's overflowing orphanages, where a suitable, race/gender/nationality-coordinated addition to her multicultural brood can easily be selected.

Trade Round-Up: Raven-Symone To Sit Helplessly On Couch As Children Go On Adventures Without Her

mark · 07/12/06 02:53PM

· Lionsgate will produce a remake of evil-cornea-transplant thriller The Eye, with Jessica Alba in talks to star based solely on the studio's appreciation of her acting ability. [Variety]
· The now startlingly chubby Raven-Symone (what happened?) will star in Disney's remake of Adventures in Babysitting, which in a departure from the original will center on a psychotic babysitter's attempt to devour the children in her temporary care. We never thought we'd see that day where we'd do two cheap "Raven-Symone is fat" jokes in the same post, but there you have it. [THR]
· Comedy Central plans to finally re-air South Park's Emmy-nominated, Tom-Cruise-baiting "Trapped in the Closet" episode on July 19th, which still gives the network plenty of time to pull the show again and reap an extra round of publicity by caving to pressure from Cruise and/or Scientology. [Variety]
· Fox crushes all competition with the baseball's All-Star Game. [THR]
· MTV and Cingular get together to ensure that your cellphone can receive a constant stream of Viacom product. OMG! It's like having the entire cast of Laguna Beach in your pocket! LOL! [Variety]

Trade Round-Up: Is Paramount Through With Tom Cruise?

mark · 07/11/06 02:40PM

· Increasingly cost-conscious studios are reexamining what kind of financial return they're getting on their expensive producing deals. So tight-fistedly cautious is the current climate that Paramount is reportedly dragging its feet on renewing its deal with Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner, perhaps thinking they can coax a more favorable dollars-to-publicity-disaster ratio from other producers. [Variety]
· Heavy-handed, Oscar-winning fauxteur Paul Haggis wants to break Vince Vaughn free of his eight-figures-per-picture comedy jail and smuggle him back to his Return to Paradise day by casting him in his Serious Adaptation of Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies. [THR]
· This just in: Italians love to watch World Cup soccer! [Variety]
· Matt Leinart's defection to CAA is representative of Hollywood agencies' new thirst for pure, healthy athlete blood. [THR]
· Something called Psych earns something else called USA Network "the highest-rated debut episode of a basic-cable series so far this year." Oh, look at us pretend to never have heard of a basic cable network! [Variety]

Trade Round-Up: Boffo Bruckaneers

mark · 07/10/06 02:53PM

· We'd like to publicly thank Variety for coining the term "Bruckaneers," which conjures a pleasing, fitting image of the superproducer raping and pillaging his way through Hollywood. [Variety]
· Samuel L. Jackson will star in Doug Liman's sci-fi thriller Jumper, playing the role of "dogged agent pursuing protagonist" traditionally filled by Tommy Lee Jones. [THR]
· Pirates 2 takes in $46.6 million overseas in only 7
territories, a gross variously described as "boffo" and "socko." [Variety]
· The weird guy from Ally McBeal will join the cast of 24 next season, whom we imagine will make a suitably strange love interest for Chloe. [THR]
· A federal judge finds that CleanFlicks, Family Flix, CleanFilms and Play It Clean Video are not allowed to scrub out all the good parts of filthy/violent Hollywood fare and resell the sanitized product to crazy Puritans. [Variety]

Defamer Casting: Be A Freaky Pirate, Part II

mark · 07/06/06 05:54PM

Defamer is committed to assisting its physically unique readers in fulfilling their dreams of appearing in a major motion picture. Prospective fame-seekers interested in sharing screen time with Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean 3, sure to be one of next summer's biggest blockbusters, must be able to "play ethnic," "play small," or "play pigment-free." From the ongoing background casting call for Pirates 3:

Trade Round-Up: Hollywood Loves The Emmys!

mark · 07/06/06 03:27PM

· The trades have Emmy fever! Browse their lists of this year's nominees and join in the fun! [Variety, THR]
· The stars react to their nominations with an refreshing mix of humility, surprise, and surprised humility! Really, it's an honor just to be reading about these nominations. [Variety, THR ]
· Hollywood Out of Ideas, Defiling Christmas Edition: The evil stocking-plunderers at NBC will make a completely unnecessary live-action version of the 1974 stop-motion animation classic The Year Without a Santa Claus, with John Goodman starring as Santa. [Variety]
· David Duchovny, whom we'd assumed had given up acting for a quieter life bagging groceries somewhere in Montana, will join Benicio del Toro and Halle Berry in the highly buzzed about DreamWorks project Things We Lost in the Fire. [THR]
· Dakota Fanning is among 120 new invitees to join AMPAS, all of whom she plans to ruthlessly slaughter in an attempt to show fellow Academy members who's going to be running things for the next forty years. [Variety]

Trade Round-Up: 'Superman' Solidly Unspectacular

mark · 07/05/06 02:54PM

· Superman Returns pulls in just™ $106 million over its seven-day opening weekend, as well as a Fantastic Four/Hulk-trailing, somewhat disappointing™ $52 million over the traditional three-day frame. [Variety]
· THR is not as reflexively pessimistic as we are, saying Superman "avoided the kryptonite of overhype and muscled its way to an estimated gross of a sturdy $106 million." "STURDY!" should make an excellent pullquote for the next round of movie posters. [THR]
· Foreigners love Superman! Moderately and solidly! Though the Man of Steel is still awaiting his debut in faraway lands that care about the World Cup. [Variety]
· Paulie Walnuts and Silvio finally settle their contract dispute with HBO and will continue on The Sopranos, obviating the need for a clumsy, expository pork store scene in which Bacala rushes in to tell the guys how the pair "got whacked by Big Chris Albrecht on their way over from last season." [THR]
· Ben Stiller will direct and executive produce a CBS comedy pilot starring wife Christine Taylor, who will play the typecasting-busting role of an actress married to a movie star. Stiller will be trotted out for cameos where appropriate. [Variety]

Defamer Casting: The Deadest Guy In The Room

mark · 07/05/06 12:34PM

We normally don't concern ourselves with "national news," especially the kind that "doesn't involve Lindsay Lohan suspiciously visiting a bathroom stall multiple times in the course of a meal she's not eating anyway," but from time to time, we like to help our friends at CBS cast their inevitable ripped-from-the-headlines movie of the week, and today's sudden passing of former Enron robber baron Kenneth Lay seems like perfect fodder for a forgettable, modestly budgeted biopic. Normally, we'd wrack our brains trying to come up with an inspired choice for the project, but this time we've outsourced casting duties to the celebrity face-recognition database at MyHeritage.com. (An idea we shamelessly stole from our sibling site Gawker.) The results, we're sad to say, were mixed at best: Robert De Niro's still at least a year away from taking MOW work, and Mark Harmon would probably need expensive prosthetics work to pull off such a physical transformation. (Or, at the very least, the reversal of several pricey cosmetic procedures.) We gave our virtual casting agent another chance by submitting a different photo, but we're pretty sure that even at their drunkest, CBS's staff wouldn't put in a call to Jackie Chan's people to see if he wanted to take his career in a different direction, so their jobs should be safe until this promising technology catches up with its flesh-and-blood competition.

Trade Round-Up: Charlize Theron Closer To Dream Of Playing A Smack Addict

mark · 06/29/06 03:10PM

· Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman will star in the Rob Reiner-directed comedy The Bucket List, about "a wish list that two terminally ill men try to fulfill before each kicks the bucket." Hey, you don't want to fuck up a perfectly good high-concept idea by getting cute with the title. [Variety]
· Charlize Theron "lures" British director Alan Parker out of a five year hiatus to helm her "passion project," Ice at the Bottom of the World. And by "passion project," we of course mean the chance to land an Oscar nomination by playing a heroin addict with an appropriately edgy multi-racial child. [THR]
· As usual, the second half of the year will shift from superhero movies to biopics and "earnest topical movies," so get all of the fun out of your system before the serious, Oscar-baiting shit takes over. [Variety]
· Leo DiCaprio finds a way to use development funds to bankroll several months of heavy hallucinogen use. [THR]
· Paramount buys the pitch Frenemies, about two friends who become enemies. See above re: not getting too cute with titles for high-concept ideas. [Variety]

Trade Round-Up: A Bear-Hug For Berman

mark · 06/23/06 03:02PM

· Pity TV development executives, whose summer vacation plans are ruined by the current shift to year-round programming. [Variety]
· The festivities in honor of Paramount's We're Number Two! Week continue, as THR hoists once-embattled studio president Gail Berman on its shoulders and parades her around the Melrose lot to celebrate Nacho Libre's strong second-place opening. [THR]
· Today's opening of Click should serve as the John the Baptist for the twin blockbuster Christs that will deliver Hollywood unto summer box office salvation, Superman Returns and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. [Variety]
· THR's Up With Female Studio Execs Day also features a fine piece on how Stacey Snider is doing in her new gig at DreamWorks. [THR]
· New Line unambiguously declares its desire to be in the "rakish-but-charming bachelor finally opens up his heart and meets the woman of his dreams" business, signing up Matthew McConaughey's production company to a development deal and working to insert the actor into two of its pre-existing comedy vehicles. [Variety]

Trade Round-Up: Moonves Considering Getting Into Wrasslin' Pictures

mark · 06/21/06 02:29PM

· The hands-down winner of the most intriguing lede of the day: "Few grown men get as fired up about princesses and fairies as Andy Mooney..." Also, "Magic blingdom" is a pretty amusing title. Is everyone at Variety totally high today? [Variety]
· Bloodthirsty CBS Corp warlord Les Moonves muses about taking baby-steps towards getting into the movie business, with an eye towards eventually crushing Viacom rival Tom Freston's Paramount product. [THR]
· HBO's Lucky Louie pulls in some decent ratings numbers after a week's worth of showings following its low-rated series premiere. [Variety]
· Natalie Portman and Eric Bana are in negotiations to star in The Other Boleyn Girl, a period drama whose lavish costumes will probably afford Portman yet another opportunity to avoid tastefully done cinematic nudity. [THR]
· News Corp wil expand MySpace into countries like France and Germany, where teenagers previously lacked a way to share their favorite Fall Out Boy songs in a web-based medium. [Variety]