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Consumer product giant Procter & Gamble is gearing up for a fifth family friendly 2-hour movie/backdoor pilot to air on NBC as a time buy. The project, Passport, stars Robyn Lively as Meredith, an expert chef 
skilled in Piloxing (Pilates mixed with boxing) who is raising her teen kids alone because of her geologist husband Simon’s (Loren Dean) erratic travel schedule. When Simon doesn’t return home from his latest trip, Michelle launches an investigation and discovers that he has been leading a double-life as a covert intelligence operative with CAD 
(Clandestine Activities Division). Along her teenage daughter (Skyler Day), she travels to Europe to save Simon, who was abducted during his latest mission and must work together with his captor to bring down a traitor at CAD. Joel Rice, Jeff Grant & Brian Wells are executive producing the movie, which was written by Sheryl Anderson and will be directed by Paolo Garzman. Production is slated to begin in early April start in Montreal. P&G and Walmart’s first 3 movies/backdoor pilots that aired on NBC as time buys, Secrets of the Mountain, The Jensen Project and A Walk in My Shoes, ran on Friday. Secrets of the Mountain, which aired in-season, did respectable business, winning its slot with 7.8 million viewers and a 1.3/5 in 18-49. Jensen, which aired in the summer, did far worse, 3.9 million, 0.9. None of the three has spawned a series. The fourth movie, Magic Eye, is targeted to air on June 11, a Saturday. P&G also recently backed 2-hour movie/backdoor pilot Dear Annie, which will air as a time buy on Fox. Lively and Dean are repped by Fortitude, Dean is managed by Anonymous. Day is with Main Title and Corsa.
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Say what? Sounds like a very bad movie…Piloxing? Seriously, piloxing? Maybe 7 people world wide have dine that…but I guess that’s how she’s going to take down the bad guys…with some hardcore piloxing
They left out the part where he can turn into a werewolf and she’s a rock star in her free time.
What is worse is that the picture of the movie is horrible.
I’m German and I traveled in Europe a lot and at the same time I’m a little geographic nerd and what I noticed when I walked through Vieux Montreal today was the terrible depiction of the so-called Czech license plates on the cars. TERRIBLE, any Euro would immediately notice that they are fake because they have the Czech short cut (CZ) under the European Union flag on the left of European license plates BUT the abbreviations of GERMAN cities like HRO meaning Hansestadt Rostock, HH – Hansestadt Hamburg, KA – Karlsruhe, FR – Freiburg and so on and so on…I went up to a security person and asked her who made those plates but she unfortunately had no idea. I wish I could have spoken to the person in charge and corrected him/her.
Where is Frits?
This has GOT to be an April Fool’s Joke. Right? Right?!?
I detest P&G. They let 125 years worth of entertainment history go down the tubes with the cancellation of “As The World Turns” and “Guiding Light”. I consider them as responsible ad CBS Daytime and Les Moonves’ wife (Julie Chen, who wanted to play Barbara Walters with her own silly attempt to copy “The View”).
P&G has a very narrow definition of “family friendly” and it doesn’t include historic gay supercouples like ATWT’s “Luke and Noah” or GL’s “Olivia and Natalia”.
The one upside is that once ATWT ended in September my loyalty to P&G ended along with it and I discovered that “store brand” items are just as good as Crest, Tide and everything else P&G makes and for half the price!
They canceled my favorite show (ATWT) so I canceled them right back by easily skipping over their products. They can produce all the one-dimensional pablum they want it won’t buy back the decades of viewer and consumer loyalty they so casually flushed down the toilet.
P&G, Walmart and Comcast’s TV network (formerly known as NBC) all deserve each other, a “Big Love-style” three-way marriage made in right-wing heaven.
Soaps are a dying business; they are a 50′s business model in the 21st century. Why do you think Disney is replacing SoapNet with Disney Junior? Like the BetaMax, 8 track players, the cassette, they are all things of the past, once used to sell soap.
These “family friendly” movies might be better off on the Hallmark channel, but it really doesn’t cost NBC anything and who knows one may hit.
You are ridiculous and delusional. There are simply too many channels and too few eyeballs out there for networks to continue to produce all-scripted prime-time schedules, let alone daytime. The daytime serials are dinosaurs and soon will all be gone. And you can blame everyone you want and do all of your silly boycotts and it won’t make one bit of difference.
And if a cheaply-made, poorly-written daytime soap opera was your “favorite show”, then your taste is lousy as well.
What gives you the right to denigrate Ron’s taste because he loves soaps? Let me guess: you are a huge fan of reality programming with its stellar scripts and terrific production values? He has every right to express his disgust at P&G dropping GL and ATWT – and imposing its ridiculously narrow view of love on the writing of same-sex characters. If we all sit back and do nothing in the face of huge corporations taking actions which anger us, we are nothing more than sheep. Btw, some boycotts do work – Exhibit A: Ford.
Hey Ron, it’s just TV…
Oh, Teen Witch. How I missed you. I hope she uses magic alongside her pilates/boxing skills to find her man. Now Top That!
Teen Witch! Robin Lively was awesome on “30 Rock” high school reunion ep and she deserves this.
“I wanna be the most popular girl.”
I loved Robyn Lively!! she is going to be great!!
This is the second article recently about P&G and their backdoor pilots that fails to mention Best Laid Plans/Change of Plans.
I only watched Change of Plans as I happen to be a fan of Joe Flanigan’s, the male lead (much overlooked! – someone, somewhere, please sign up this guy for something decent – he has industry awards in him!) but I found the movie poorly written, with implausibilities and little research. It broke my heart to see this good actor in such a movie. All the actors did their best – even, Brooke White, in her first acting role – but they could do no more. Why do actors keep being duped to sign up for these, with their empty promises of a series if they’re fast gaining a reputation of going nowhere?
So if Change of Plans is anything to go by, I can’t imagine I’d enjoy any of the others.
Family friendly might be a commendable enough concept but if it drains a story dry of all drama in its effort to protect the kiddies from all those nasty things in life, (and one day they’ve got to face upto them for real…) who wants to watch? But it’s ok to subject the kids to blatant product placement? That’s a double standard. And really demonstrates that P&G isn’t producing these movies out of the kindness of their hearts or from a sense of caring for the moral upbringing of the next generation.
Who do you think makes the store brand stuff?
Also, you’re free to hate whoever you want, but just because I want lower taxes, doesn’t mean I’m out to impede or destroy gay tv culture. I can’t fucking wait for Torchwood to return.
Teen Witch piloxing equals family entertainment worth not avoiding like radioactive iodine in produce.
Secrets of the Mountain was a fun kids movie. But yes, just a one-off and not series material.
I’m sorry, I feel asleep during the description of the show. Does it sound any good?
Does this mean they’ll be doing more of their
gag-inducing ads a la the Olympics campaign saluting Olympic moms??
This sounds like an idea some exec’s trophy wife thought of – during a piloxing class. She came home with a brilliant idea!
As a veteran actor of over 20 years on daytime television – I appreciate Ron’s anger at P & G and his allegiance to the soap opera medium, but alas, Ron – the medium is on it’s last throes of a very long and painful death. P & G was very good to this medium for decades and it paid them handsomely. They are a mega-corporation and when the bottom line didn’t make sense they still continued to support their shows because they cared. So – this is capitalism at it’s finest and most painful. P & G was very good to me – but they are not obliged to give money away. I am happy they are still in it and putting their money where my business is.
I am delighted to see that you are making family friendly films.
There is so much garbage on television today that is influencing our young people. Bravo to you. I pray this movie will be a big time hit, and you will have a popular series on your hands.