R.I.P. Lee Rich 
2011-12 Season Network Rankings: Fox Still On Top But Down, … 
HLN Set To Air Daytime Emmy Awards 
Grant Bowler Cast As Richard Burton Opposite Lindsay Lohan … 
UPDATE: Dish Network And Broadcasters Ask Courts To Decide … 
Cannes Surprise Screening: Change Of Plans On Juan Antonio … 
Kevin Hart In Talks To Join Kevin James In ‘Valet … 
Anthony Hopkins Up For ‘Red 2′ Villain; Can … 
Cannes Conflicted Over ‘The Paperboy’ As … 
RATINGS RAT RACE: ‘American Idol’ Posts … 
Ghost Of 2004 Hovers Over L.A. Screenings As Int’l … 
On The Road To Awards Season? Kerouac Book Finally Makes It … 
Michael Bay’s Name Pushed Paramount To Settle Injured … 
Several More New Series In Recasting Mode; Returning Ones … 
‘G.I. Joe: Retaliation’ Moving To March 2013 To … 
Directors Fortnight Says It Must “Police … 
‘Chronicle’ Helmer Josh Trank Takes On … 
Will ‘Pan Am’ Take Flight With Amazon? 
TOLDJA! ICM Management Buyout Complete 
DESPERATE: HuffPo & Oprah Team Up Now 
Hot Trailer: ‘The Great Gatsby’ 
UPDATE 9:30PM: CIA comedy The Station too is now officially dead. Executive producer Ben Stiller tweeted the news tonight. “I like to produce a failed pilot for Fox about once every ten years,” he wrote. “Latest was the Station. Written directed and acted by a great group.”
UPDATE 6:30PM: And Most Likely To Succeed too is now officially dead at Fox. This one had a lot of fans.
UPDATE 4:15PM: Also dead are comedies Tax Man and Strange Brew.
UPDATE 3:15: Comedy ‘Wilde Kingdom’ (now ‘Running Wilde’) also picked up to series
UPDATE 2:30PM: Breakout Kings, a surprising early frontrunner after great testing scores, is now dead at Fox. The procedural will probably be shopped elsewhere. Also dead is Breaking In, the comedy pilot starring Christian Slater.
PREVIOUS 11:30AM: Fox just picked up comedy pilots Keep Hope Alive and Traffic Light to series. Dramas Lone Star (form. Midland) and Shawn Ryan’s Ridealong also have been ordered. And on the bubble series front, Lie To Me and Human Target both are being renewed for 13 episodes. Word is Chuck executive producer Matt Miller will be joining Human Target as an executive producer and co-showrunner alongside Jonathan Steinberg. As for the remaining Fox pilots in contention, I hear Breakout Kings, which had been competing with Ridealong for a slot, is not looking good despite its high testing marks. Comedies Most Likely To Succeed and Mitch Hurwitz/Will Arnett’s Wilde Kingdom are still in the mix.
TV Editor Nellie Andreeva - tip her here.
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I bet they passed on Breaking in so that they could pick up The Station. They need to have a good relationship with Ben Stiller since he moved his company to Fox after years at Dreamworks/Paramount and he also gave them a great promotion for Avatar when he went on Conan and promoted it and dressing up as a Na’vi at the Oscars.
When does ABC start announcing?
If you read the pilots to PERFECT COUPLES for NBC by Scott Silveri and Jon Pollack and THE UNTITLED COUPLES PROJECT for ABC by Shana Goldberg-Silveri (are you seeing the connection?) the characters are completely interchangeable. Is this what network TV wants? More of the same cookie-cutter shows that have failed so many times in the past? Didn’t NBC do COUPLES (their genius show from a few years back)? Anyone remember how that turned out? Just sayin’… David O. is right. These two (Silveri & Goldberg) worked on Friends, they did NOT create it.
Did they kick your dog or something? Why all the hate?
You guys are right. Each year the same lame ass theme and to show you how far down this idiocy goes BET as a sitcom with the same premise.
Breaking In isn’t getting picked up? That sucks. I hope you’re wrong, Nellie!
I could see Breakout Kings being picked up by ABC (who are in the market for a procedural with a twist ala Castle).
I hope Fox creates a Friday Night Comedy lineup because, CBS dominates Mondays – ABC dominates Wednesdays – NBC dominates Thursdays – and Tuesday comedy lineups tend to fail.
And yeah, I agree with you Jon V, I bet you that The Station will be picked up as per an agreement made between Ben Stiller and Fox – which thus pushes Breaking In out of the loop (although, Traffic Light better be really funny since the plot line sounds so “BLAH”).
Also, is there any word on if Fox plans on making Jack & Dan part of its midseason lineup? Or are those plans contingent on how it does this summer?
Ponderous. Breakout Kings had it all! Masterful script, proven concept and a great latin star. I don’t get it.
Where was the concept proven? You know how often people break out of jail in this country? Not often enough for a “realistic” show. Not even close.
This idea was totally untenable. It’s an series concept that fails the “Blink” test.
Feel bad for the writers if you want. But it was their idea that ultimately got passed on. Not the great execution, but still… their idea.
Oh right, I forgot tv needs to be realistic to be successful, like 24, and Lost, and the fact that the FBI profilers at the BAU have their own jet and the CSI guys actually investigate crime and arrest culprits. Thanks for the realism.
Something tells me Olmstead and Santora will ‘breakout’ of this mess with a big hit next season.
Yes — I see it now…. this one will be about a group of Juvenile Hall delinquents who go out on the lam! It’ll be called JUVI BREAKERS!
Hope Imagine takes Most Likely to Succeed to ABC.
Me too. It was hilarious at screening.
What’s really interesting is how BAD network TV actually is. It is so incredibly formulaic, the same actors (god bless ‘em, always being better than the writing) are in every damn show, the plots, you can see coming ten miles away.
Then you switch over to HBO or Showtime or AMC or SOME other cable stuff, and, man it just ROCKS.
The acting, the writing, DWARFS the network bullshit. And people get all hot and bothered about the fall network season as if it’s artistically relevant, when all the good shit – and I mean ALL the good shit – is on cable.
Network TV is like the reworked starting 22 of the Houston Texans. Every year. “Here they come… here they come… here they COME! AND. THEY. SUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Just to switch to movies, same thing. Same EXACT thing. Studio movies? Wow. Talking about all looking the same, all having the EXACT same 30 people in them, and the vast majority of them JUST. BLOWING. CHUNKS.
My wife and I saw “Iron Man 2″ last Friday, and, it’s like: let’s get EVERY SINGLE GO-TO ACTOR IN EVERY SINGLE ROLE.
Samuel Jackson? Who the FUCK WAS HE? Some black dude in a long black leather coat? With a fucking EYE PATCH? Was that the name of his character? What the FUCK was he even DOING in that movie?
Anyway, priceless – there’s tons of kids in the rows behind us, Downey slowly walks out of Paltrow’s office, stops, and my wife whispers to me “he’s going to see his father’s
World’s Fair mock-up is a circuit board.”
And the kids are making all this noise, until, SUDDENLY!
Downey STOPS. Starts to slowly turn towards the board – and some kid yells out:
“QUIET! HE’S ABOUT TO HAVE AN EPIPHANY!”
WE laughed so fucking hard under our breath for five minutes.
It was the best thing in the movie, by far.
And the movie, as far as sequels go, wasn’t that bad. Hey, they played “Highway to Hell” with original singer Bon Scott at the end – REAL LOUD. That was worth the $24.
Stiller is tweeting that his Fox pilot is a bust. That would be The Station, no?
Why would anyone want to watch a series called “Tax Man”? That has to be the worst name for a show ever.
Wow… Breakout Kings not making it is really sad.
What happened with “Pleading Guilty”?
Anyone know if they ended up re-editing the Tax Man pilot? Obviously it’s dead to them now, but I had heard that there was a new edit they were working hard to send around last week. The initial one only really sang when Short appeared IMO.
Here’s hoping both Matthew Broderick and Marty Short find better vehicles in the next go round.
This doesn’t even seem like news at all. 24′s status, that’s news. Since that show has been canned, what does Fox have? KITCHEN NIGHTMARES? HOUSE? FRINGE has already done a musical. Seriously, what happened?!? What is the next 24? Seriously, I want it!
I was just pondering. Wasn’t STACKED an awesome sitcom by the creators of current hit MODERN FAMILy? Didn’t it get great ratings? Did it ever have a second season? Fox! What happened?!?
Nirvana was passed on as well. Heard from one of the lead actors that they received word.
I couldn’t stand Lie to Me, but I just finished the brillian The Sheild and on imdb it says Shawn Ryan took over as showrunner for Lie to Me so I will probably check out his episodes this summer and then move over to Ride Along in the fall.
Three sitcom pickups? Something tells me one of them ends up on Sunday night, either at 8:30 or 9:30. (American Dad would move to 7:30 so they can pre-empt it every other week or so through February for NFL and NASCAR, and stretch what could be its last season out into two like they did with Futurama and King Of The Hill.) They can fill out the night with “Bob’s Burgers” when it’s ready.
HELP = i love the cast of Lie to Me but the writing SUUUCCCKKSS!!! get REAL – i want to see ONE SHOW without massive ridiculous errors of obvious practical facts and a reasonable premise. i know fox knows how to get good writers – they have House (well SOME good stories despite exploding ora)
want to like this show