Specialty B.O. Preview: ‘Before Midnight’, … 
2012-2013 Season Network Rankings: CBS Sweeps In Final … 
Full 2012-2013 TV Season Series Rankings 
TOLDJA! Paramount Pocketing $190M From Disney For Marvel … 
‘Good Morning America’ Hits 19-Year Viewership … 
MGM Buys ‘Modern Family’ Producer Ben … 
‘Fashion Police’ Writers Chant On Picket Lines: … 
Universal Makes Seven-Figure Deal For ‘The School For … 
Steven Soderbergh Will Interrupt Retirement To Direct And … 
Cannes: EOne Announces Itself As Player In U.S. … 
Will LIN TV Stations Go Dark On Time Warner Cable? 
Very Crowded Memorial Weekend Kick-Off: ‘Hangover … 
Shareholders Quiz Time Warner Chief On Political Ties And … 
RATINGS RAT RACE: ‘Modern Family’, ‘Law … 
Hammond On Cannes: Paramount’s ‘Nebraska’ … 
Cannes: J.C. Chandor Sets Next Project ‘A Most … 
Hannibal Classics Sets Cast For Nic Cage Pic … 
Hammond On Cannes: Robert Redford’s Brave New Role … 
Hot Trailer: Jennifer Aniston And Jason Sudeikis’ … 
Brad Pitt’s Plan B Banner Promotes Jeremy Kleiner To … 
Hot Trailer: Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s ‘Don … 
MGM Television has teamed with American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance executive producer Nigel Lythgoe for Fame, a scripted series based on the 1980 MGM film and 1982 MGM TV series that chronicled the lives of talented students paying their dues on the road to success. Lythgoe will serve as executive producer on the project, along with Nigel Lythgoe Prods. president Kary McHoul, Segars Media’s Charles Segars (National Treasure) and Chad Gutstein. According to the producers, the new project is a re-imagening of the original film and series that will strive to embody their spirit. Set against the backdrop of today’s unprecedented access to the world of celebrity, it will expose the gritty struggle, heartache and pain endured in the search for stardom. “This is a great opportunity for MGM to partner with world-class producer Nigel Lythgoe, whose unmatched experience with telling the true stories of talented people striving for success will set Fame apart, ” said Roma Khanna, President Television and Digital, MGM. The project is part of MGM TV’s strategy to mine the company’s library for properties suitable for series adaptations/remakes. Alan Parker’s 1980 movie was already remade as a feature with the 2009 Fame.
TV Editor Nellie Andreeva - tip her here.
Loading ...
Further confirmation that the television industry has run out of original ideas.
In fact, creativity, imagination and originality have abandoned Hollywood altogether.
They’ve not run out of original ideas — there are PLENTY of them. Hollywood just doesn’t want to invest in them.
Did no one else get the memo two years ago that “Fame” was a dead franchise when the theatrical remake played to audiences of crickets?
Truth be told, not even the crickets showed up.
It wasn’t the show or the idea, it was just badly written (really, really badly written – there was barely a plot, no characte arc, etc.), the songs were lame, and it tried to lean on a deadly lame ‘urban’ edge (and there was little ‘urban’ and nothing ‘edgy’ about it, plus it was a bad idea). It wasn’t fun, or dramatic, or real, or intersting, or even coherent. Kherrington’s dance number was great, but she got no lines, and a slightly too cool for high school number couldn’t rescue the rest. And Kay Panabaker can *sact*, but her material was awful. It’s great they they are trying again, and Lithgoe is about the best person to cast *real* kids for the show.
Everyone involved in the project must be full of GLEE.
If anybody can pull this off, it’s Lythgoe. He’s got the savvy and the gravitas.
no, it won’t work especially if it’s gonna be like the film remake.
unless they cast Lee Curreri as the music teacher and Carlo Imperato as the janitor
Hating on Danny Amatuelo….harsh!
Don’t criticize Danny. He was the only reason I watched.
“The project is part of MGM TV’s strategy to mine the company’s library for properties suitable for series adaptations/remakes.”
So, MGM TV has basically given up trying to be creative. Can’t wait for their movie division to get the word that all they’re doing is re-hashing someone else’s work. Oh wait, that’s already happened too.
If anyone could make this work it would be Ryan Murphy. But its dated & just plain old.He probably want to do this so he can use those same dancers. Come on Hollywood stop with all the damn remakes. Nigel is annoying
Lythgoe and Co are the perfect players to revision and execute.
If a guy like Lythgoe is pursuing scripted musical stuff it means the contest reality stuff has beyond peaked – and will continue to fall into “do I even get that channel?” no man’s land. Good news for actors and writers. Bad news for community theater and high school drama teachers. Chris Parnell in “21 Jump Street.” Hilarious. There will be a moment in the future when these shows will inspire great stuff. Now is not that moment. This moment was about how and when TV-scripted and inspired teen pop dominated popular music after Elvis but before the Beatles. Not always – but often callow, often shrill, usually, not always, immature. Maybe it’s just me though. Lythgoe has done A LOT for dance however.
Well, if MGM-TV can bring back FAME, maybe they can bring back the STARGATE franchise next
Amen! Though I deeply disliked Stargtae:Universe at first (for a lot of really good reasons) the show actually got very good…. just as the cancelled it. It just took them too long to find their footing, ditch the bad attempt at replicating the dark edge of Moore’s BSG, and to remember why people LIKE Stargate shows; by then, the audience was gone. And it was too bad – if they’d started with the level of the lat six episodes, they’d have had a hit.
So it’s been a movie then a TV show then a movie then a TV show. And somebody has to adapted it as a stage show at some point, right? All that’s left is for it to become a series of Webisodes and a chain of theme restaurants.
While I’m a fan of the original feature from 1980, how many deaths does this thing have to die before they realize no one wants to see this anymore? Tons of original pilots and they keep resurrecting this?
“The project is part of MGM TV’s strategy to mine the company’s library for properties suitable for series adaptations/remakes.”
Stargate.
Heck, I could pitch them three modern Stargate variants that would be cool *right* now.
For the people who say this is a bad idea…well your wrong…..what the 2009 remake did wrong that the original movie and show did is the remake had no characters just a bunch of ambitious people…nothing made them special.
I guess i was one of the crickets who saw the movie.
like someone said hollywood had not run out of good ideas they hussy won’t give them a chance and produce them.
So basically, they’re developing a less annoying Glee.
But there’s already GLEE S4 (aka. GLEE 2.0) and SMASH, both of which are already struggling and starting to lose its viewers. So what’s the point of doing another musical-themed television show?
No wonder MGM got into a financial mess in the first place, they need to look at how many clones of GLEE that are out there and realize they are digging them selves a new hole with a borrowed $500 million dollars… Stargate is a great franchise with actors that still want to take part and sets in working condition, revive that it was a mistake to cancel SGU in the first place….
Hollywood cannot and will not ever admit that to endlessly reproduce the “Fame” template with some vague hope of “getting it right” is to continually invite disaster. The era in which Alan Parker’s original film flourished was a period in which the screenplay’s latent sociopolitical criticism (againist organized religion, school and family authority, consumerism, celebrity culture, and the very notion of The American Dream and Hollywood itself) could be expressed withour fear of studio interference or corporate censorship….and that era, now ancient and politically obsolete, has passed into myth and will never return. It’s critical and financial success was the result of it’s determination to force the audience to recognize within it’s naive and ambitious characters it’s own vanities and illusions with a minimum of sentiment….an honest artistry unallowable and unfathomable to the current Hollywood power structure drowning in it’s own vanity and illusions of seeking to re-create and transcend that which it has no real understanding of in the first place.