We suspect that we may never tire of reading stories about how new NBC co-chairman/rock-star Ben Silverman plans to remake the last-place network in his own fun-loving, party-positive, hey-let's-have-that-meeting-at-The-Standard's-pool! image, especially when such pieces continue to yield details like this one from today's NY Times article on Hollywood's high-fivingest new executive:
Taking inspiration from a successful campaign in which Jericho fans buried the CBS executives responsible for canceling the struggling Debbie Downer of a series under a mountain of salted peanuts, fans of NBC's The Black Donnellys have similarly bought up enough Zesta crackers to feed a developing nation, and diverted the shipment to HBO, where they think the "edgy" Paul Haggis series has a better chance of survival. From the Show Tracker blog:
NBC and News Corp.'s joint online-video venture has gone unnamed so long that it's reaching the point of total absurdity. It now has a CEO, even — former Amazon executive Jason Kilar — but still no name. The clock is counting down, since "NewCo," as NBC and News Corp. employees still style it, appears set to launch in a month. George Kliavkoff, NBC's chief digital officer resorts to calling it "the new site" in an interview with ClickZ. NBBC, NBC's digital-video distribution arm, is getting folded into NewCo and is winding down its current ad campaigns over the next 30 days, which suggests an imminent launch. Just one question: To whom are advertisers going to make out their checks?
Even as NBC janitors continue to scrub away at stubborn blood stains and collect overlooked skull fragments left over from the Memorial Day Massacre that enabled rock-star Ben Silverman's ascendance at the Peacock, freshly whacked president Kevin Reilly is reportedly in talks to reunite with former FX boss Peter Liguori at Fox, an attempt to recapture the magic of a previous collaboration which, in the words of Variety, elevated the then-obscure channel "to a basic-cable equivalent of HBO with cutting-edge fare."
· In earning $27.4 million on its first full day of release, Transformers sets the utterly meaningless record for the biggest Tuesday ever. Equally exciting and inconsequential box office milestones are sure to follow the conclusion of the movie's six-and-a-half-day "opening weekend." [Variety]
· Following an unexpected volume of complaints about how many commercials clogged the feeds of MTV and VH1's Live 8 concerts in 2005, NBC Universal pledges that the ad load for this weekend's Live Earth telecasts will be "significantly lighter than what a normal hour of network television would be." Hooray for somewhat reduced corporate greed! [THR]
· Can Tom Cruise and the German government fuck already and put all this weird tension behind them? It's really getting a little uncomfortable for everybody at this point. [Variety]
· 8 million shut-in pyrotechnics fans tune in to NBC's Macy's Fourth of July Fireworks Spectacular, giving NBC a Wednesday night ratings win. [THR]
· Foreign nations are enjoying American cultural imperialism about as much as the military kind. [Variety]
· In the latest development in the increasingly hard-to-follow story of Valkyrie's Tom Cruise and Bryan Singer's attempts to obtain shooting permits for German government sites in Berlin, the production has been denied permission to film in the historic Benderblock building, where the revered Nazi-hunter to be portrayed by the actor was executed. But not because Cruise is a Scientologist! Government officials understandably just want to preserve the dignity of their memorial, realizing that everything Hollywood touches is instantly desecrated. [Variety]
· Actors who may or may not be joining the cast of Desperate Housewives: Dana Delany, Nathan Fillion, and Lyndsy Fonseca. Fun fact: Delaney was the first choice for the role eventually given to Marcia Cross. [THR]
· Transformers gets a "six-day weekend" to squeeze as much money as possible out of the Fourth of July holiday. [Variety]
· Sad news: We may be falling slowly out of love with the most promising show of the summer, NBC's Kittens Vs. Cougars: The Battle To Bone Onetime Tennis Star Marc Philippoussis, which felt a little desperate and saggy after last night's low-rated, back-to-back installments. (And what happened to companion show Boner Vs. Science?) [THR]
· Spike Lee angry. [Variety]
In an effort to convince sponsors that they're not throwing away millions of TV advertising dollars on commercials that demographically desirable viewers can render harmless with a press of a DVR button, desperately innovative fourth-place network NBC has contracted a research firm to wire up some guinea pigs helpful volunteers to prove that their promotional messages can still penetrate the human brain even through the muted blur of the fast-forward function. Reports the NY Times:
· Deciding that their Ritalin-addled viewers' comedy needs are not being met by episodes of My Super Sweet Sixteen and Yo Momma, MTV is developing three American Pie/Ferris Bueller's Day Off-inspired movies to air on the network. [Variety]
· Richard "Shaft" Roundtree joins the cast of Speed Racer, hopes to avoid the vicious chimp attacks that have plagued other actors on the set. [THR]
· In an effort to keep its leadership intact for the world-ending, multi-guild strike about to wipe Hollywood off the face of the Earth, the DGA elects Michael Apted to a third term as President. [Variety]
· Despite having Sunday night's most watched show in Some Famous People Sing Nice Songs for the Dead Princess, NBC loses the primetime race to CBS. [THR]
· Shrek the Third takes the overseas box office crown with $69.6 million, but Transformers still managed to pull in $34.7 million. [Variety]
You may not have realized it, but at just a couple of minutes before 11 p.m. last night, the final credits rolled on Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, ending Aaron Sorkin's bold, ill-fated experiment in melding the light-hearted Hollywood world of late-night sketch comedy shows with the absurdly high geopolitical stakes of his Emmy-winning White House drama, The West Wing. And while a lesser showrunner recently chose to cloak the last moments of his beloved series in frustrating ambiguity, Sorkin was confident enough in his creative choices to allow a metaphorical Man in the Members Only Jacket to wander the halls of the darkened studio, bringing each storyline to a satisfying conclusion with a bullet to the back of every character's head. Because we suspect that many of you missed the series finale, we're happy to run down how each of your favorite players finished up his or her primetime existence. [Warning to the DVR users whose selfish insistence on time-shifting the show kept it from reaching its Nielsen potential: There are spoilers ahead.]
· Contrary to a previous report, the head of Germany's Bundesanstalt fuer Immobilienaufgaben says that the government won't stop Tom Cruise and his Valkyrie production from shooting on their historical military sites because he's a Scientologist, and should grant the movie a film permit as long as Cruise promises that any massage-and-Dianetics tents he plans on installing on their set won't distract members of the Ministry of Defense from their day-to-day duties. [Variety]
· On Wednesday night, Fox's dancing competition triumphs over ABC's celebrity-impersonator and insane-inventor competitions, as well as NBC's struggling-comedian competition. Please, do yourself a favor and cover your television in a sheet that you swear not to remove until September. [THR]
· The following elements have been attached to Body of Lies, an adaptation of a CIA-set novel by David Ignatius: actor Russell Crowe; actor Leonardo DiCaprio; director Ridley Scottl screenwriter William Monahan. [Variety]
· Do you ache for more Tom Selleck MOW appearances? Suffer no more, for CBS has ordered another installment of the actor's Jesse Stone series. [THR]
· Hunky-but-still-serious actor Ryan Gosling joins Mummy refugee Rachel Weisz in Peter Jackson's adaptation of The Lovely Bones. [Variety]
By now, we've all gotten to know new NBC co-chair/rock-star Ben Silverman well enough that we feel sufficiently informed about his lofty goals, party "problems", recreational passions, and early corporate triumphs, but now that his reign at the network has begun in earnest, we think it's important to recognize the concrete steps he's already taking to promote the Culture of Fun he believes will deliver the Peacock from its fourth-place misery. Among the paradigm-shifting changes already instituted: doing away with those annoying morning meetings, which did nothing but amplify the pain of a skull-shattering hangover with the bad vibes transmitted by the overnight Nielsens. Reports the LAT:
· Hollywood invades the Middle East! MGM partners with a Jordanian animation company on a 26-episode Pink Panther & Pals cartoon series, while Paramount plans to erect a theme park in Dubai that exploits properties like Top Gun, Titanic, Mission: Impossible, and many, many others. Visitors to the UAE park will be moved by an animatronic Effie's emotional delivery of "I'm Telling You I'm Not Going" on Dreamgirls: The Ride. [Variety, Variety]
· Get excited: Legendary Pictures will pump $1 billion into its co-financing and co-production deal with Warner Bros. Who can't get psyched when multimedia conglomerates and financing entities hook up to minimize the financial risks of producing another overbudget Superman sequel? [THR]
· In the most hotly anticipated hosting announcement of the largely unwatched summer TV season, Joey Fatone will oversee the smooth operation of NBC's karaoke clusterfuck The Singing Bee. [Variety]
· Speaking of the summer TV wasteland, Fox wins the 18-49 demo with Top Chef: Shouty, Brain-Damaged Edition, while NBC fails to win behind a two-hour, all-Mark-Consuelos-hosted block of our new favorite shows, Kittens Vs. Cougars and the premiering Science Vs. Penis. [THR]
· Even with American Idol drawing tens of millions of teenagers away from their MySpaces twice a week, Fox's median viewer age passed 40 for the first time last season. Expect some emergency counterprogramming in the form of the Wilmer Valderrama-hosted So You Think You Can Watch Our Channel, You Old Fuck? [Variety]
Former Grey's Anatomy star Isaiah Washington has been devoting a good portion of his newly cleared schedule to the granting of angry, uncensored interviews, in which he connects the not-so-obvious dots to help us better see T.R. Knight as the Machiavellian, closet-exiting opportunist he truly is. And while the natural impulse for most of us would be to set up folding chairs in order to take in one of the most spectacular career-immolations in recent memory, Washington is quick to point out to EW that the offers have been flooding in since Dr. Burke's untimely demise:
Today NBC's Matt Lauer participated in a conference call with journalists about the Dateline interview he did recently with Prince William and Prince Harry, and about the Concert for Diana that NBC is broadcasting on Sunday. But some journalists didn't want to play along—they kept asking him pesky questions about whether he'd gotten the interview with the princes because the network had ponied up $2.5 million for the rights to air the concert. Not surprisingly, Lauer denied it.
Having trouble keeping up with the Paris Hilton media circus? You're not alone. It's hard, what with all the back and forth: she's being interviewed by Barbara Walters! No, wait, she's being interviewed by Meredith Vieira! NBC is paying her $1 million to be interviewed! No one pays for interviews! NBC never had a deal with Paris! The Post is reporting that People will pay Paris in the neighborhood of $300,000 for "exclusive" photos! People doesn't pay for interviews, but if Paris just happens to do an interview before, during, or after her photo shoot, well, you know... Basically, this has turned into one great big media crazystorm, which is just how Paris (and her slick spokesman, Mike Sitrick—you remember him from his work with Ron Burkle!) seem to like it.
Somehow missing an obvious opportunity to invoke the burning of Rome in their exclusive on NBC's cancellation of the upcoming Paris Hilton's One Million Dollar Jailhouse Revelations Spectacular, TMZ declares the project "dead" based on reports relayed from the microscopic spies they injected into the heiress's bloodstream on the eve of her incarceration. The site claims that "no reason was given" for the abrupt move, but we suspect that the sudden appearance of a Fox helicopter dumping $25 million onto the property of Hilton's West Hollywood home figured in NBC's laudable decision to choose journalistic ethics over Nielsen-friendly sensationalism.
· Paramount Vantage just can't win with A Mighty Heart: They curl Angelina Jolie's hair and slather her in bronzer so she seems less Caucasian-y, and they catch shit. They invite the Council on American-Islamic Relations to co-sponsor a panel discussion on religious tolerance, and a Jewish activist likens it to "David Duke co-sponsoring 'Schindler's List.'" At least Jolie isn't pissing off reporters by asking them to sign waivers demanding they don't ask questions about her personal life, because they hardly need another headache. [Variety]
· On the bright side, Jolie's performance in the movie is already generating Oscar buzz. [THR]
· Exec VP of corporate communications Janet Hill is leaving Paramount after two eventful years of throwing herself upon the steady stream of hand-grenades lobbed at frequently embattled Paramount emperor Brad Grey. [Variety]
· TBS buys the rerun rights to My Name is Earl and The Office, reportedly paying $600k-$700k per episode of each series. [Variety]
· Fox hires former NUTS executive Laura Lancaster as head of drama development, giving her the mandate, "Please, for the love of fucking God—and we don't care how you do it—find us a show that will last longer than Drive." [Variety]
