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Global Showbiz Briefs: Wesley Snipes, ITV’s ‘The Chase’, Unifrance, Syfy’s ‘Defiance’, Berlin Retro, BBC-Fremantle, ‘The Raid 2′

By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Thursday January 31, 2013 @ 10:58pm PSTTags: BBC, Berlin Film Festival, Defiance, Fremantle, The Chase, Unifrance, Wesley Snipes

Wesley Snipes Comeback Effort Kicks Off With ‘Gallowwalkers’
Wesley SnipesIn advance of the former action star’s impending release from federal prison, Wesley Snipes is trying to get back into the game with the announcement that Gallowwalkers, the long-in-development action/sci-fi/horror film directed by Andrew Goth, will be shown to international buyers at the 2013 Berlin film market. Gallowwalkers features Snipes in the role of Aman, a cursed gunslinger whose victims return from the dead to torment him. The film, which began production in 2006, will have its market premiere February 8. Gallowwalkers also stars Riley Smith, Tanit Phoenix and Patrick Bergin. It is executive produced and produced by Jack Bowyer (Dark Hearts, Private Peaceful) and produced by Courtney Lauren Penn (Dark Hearts), and Brandon Burrows (Darks Hearts) of Boundless Pictures. VMI International is handling sales at Berlin. - Ross Lincoln

ITV Orders 300 More Episodes of ‘The Chase’
The UK’s ITV has renewed popular daytime game show The Chase with what is believed to be the network’s biggest order ever — more than 300 episodes over 2 seasons. The ITV Studios-produced show, which this week was named Broadcast magazine’s Best Daytime Programme, airs daily at 5 PM and has boosted the time-slot average by 1.1 million viewers, a 39% gain vs. last year.
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Canadian Fans Of Super Bowl Ads Spark Yearly Run On Antennas: Report

By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Thursday January 31, 2013 @ 9:23pm PSTTags: Canada, Super Bowl

Ross Lincoln is a Deadline contributor.

In both the U.S. and Canada, the Super Bowl is the biggest TV event of the year. But unlike Americans, a 2012 poll showed that more Canadians planned to watch the ads rather than the game itself. Unfortunately most of the big-budget commercials in Sunday’s game aren’t available to Canadian viewers. The result, according to CBC, is a yearly rush on TV antennas by Canadians living close to the US-Canada border. In the Great White North, stations pay a fee for the right to air the Super Bowl in individual markets. That fee doesn’t include the right to air ads from the U.S. broadcast (due to royalties issues, regional ad strategies and the way media is segregated between different countries). These stations sell their own ad time at a much cheaper rate. While the U.S. ads quickly appear online, Canadian regulations have created what Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos called “almost third-world access” to the Internet. Extremely low data caps and huge fees for exceeding them make streaming video dicey for Canadians. The best option for people living close to the U.S. is to get a pair of rabbit ears and catch the signal from U.S. TV  stations.
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Chelsea Handler Vs. Piers Morgan: Video

By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Thursday January 31, 2013 @ 7:54pm PSTTags: Chelsea Handler, Chelsea Lately, Piers Morgan

Sometimes latenight TV hosts have all the fun. Last night on E!’s Chelsea Lately, CNN’s Piers Morgan was a guest on Chelsea Handler’s show. It began something like this. Handler asked Morgan “What are you looking at?” To which Morgan replied “Well, you’ve either had plastic surgery or makeup because … Read More »

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Disney’s Animated Short ‘Paperman’: Video

By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Thursday January 31, 2013 @ 7:31pm PSTTags: Paperman, Walt Disney Animation Studios

Disney Animation’s black-and-white, dialogue-free toon debuted in theaters last November in front of Wreck-It Ralph. The studio has posted online its Annie- and Oscar-nominated animated short directed by John Kahrs ahead of Saturday’s Annie Awards. Paperman follows the romantic paper trail from an office worker to the woman he … Read More »

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Specialty Box Office Preview: ‘The Gatekeepers’, ‘Sound City’, ‘Koch’

By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Thursday January 31, 2013 @ 6:33pm PSTTags: Koch, Sound City, Specialty Box Office Preview, The Gatekeepers

Brian Brooks is Managing Editor of MovieLine.

Documentaries dominate this weekend’s new specialty offerings including Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl’s feature directorial debut Sound City, which premiered at the recent Sundance Film Festival. Grohl has partnered with various companies and groups for traditional and non-traditional rollouts for the film, which will also screen at SXSW in March. Sony Pictures Classics’ The Gatekeepers looks inside Israel’s intelligence agency, Shin Bet. The film gripped audiences at the Jerusalem International Film Festival where it debuted, followed by Telluride and the New York Film Festival last fall. And Hamptons International Film Festival premiere, Koch, will bow in New York — naturally. It’s about former NYC Mayor Ed Koch, who died early this morning in New York.

The Gatekeepers
Director: Dror Moreh
Subjects: Ami Ayalon, Avraham Shalom, Avi Dichter, Yuval Diskin
Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics

Realizing its potential, producer Philippa Kowarsky jumped on the Oscar-nominated The Gatekeepers from the outset. She was “taken by how candid” the former heads of Israel’s security agency, Shin Bet, were and “how their thoughts did not conform with the obvious.” Kowarsky added, “They were not predictable. It got me thinking. I was hoping we could get others to feel the same.” While the subjects seemed forthcoming, the project’s financial makeup posed challenges. It received a mixture of Israeli and European financing plus French-speaking Canadian television. Global partners, however, had agendas that did not always align with director Dror Moreh’s goals. “I think that one of Dror’s greatest achievements is his decision-making during the long editing process,” she added, suggesting Moreh didn’t let the financiers pressure him on the content. Read More »

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Julia Stiles To Play Scribe Frances Marion In Mary Pickford Pic ‘The First’

By JEN YAMATO | Thursday January 31, 2013 @ 6:02pm PSTTags: Julia Stiles

Poverty Row has set Julia Stiles to play groundbreaking screenwriter Frances Marion in the Jennifer DeLia-directed Mary Pickford film The First, based on Eileen Whitfield’s biography Pickford: The Woman Who Made Hollywood. Marion was the first woman … Read More »

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Tony Winner Nina Arianda Joins Toni Collette In ‘Lucky Them’

By JEN YAMATO | Thursday January 31, 2013 @ 5:32pm PSTTags: Lucky Them, Nina Arianda, Toni Collette

EXCLUSIVE: Broadway actress Nina Arianda has been cast in Megan Griffiths’ Lucky Them, the Joanne Woodward-produced comedy shepherded by the late Paul Newman before his death. Arianda will play … Read More »

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VH1 Reups Carrie Keagan, Renames ‘Big Morning Buzz Live’, Taps Showrunner

By NELLIE ANDREEVA | Thursday January 31, 2013 @ 5:27pm PST
Nellie Andreeva

VH1′s live morning show Big Morning Buzz Live will look a little different tomorrow when it will introduce its revamped title, Big Morning Buzz Live With Carrie Keagan. The name change comes as VH1 … Read More »

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Super Bowl Sneak: ‘World War Z’

By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Thursday January 31, 2013 @ 4:53pm PSTTags: Paramount Pictures, World War Z

Here’s the new ad for Paramount‘s Brad Pitt-starrer World War Z, which the studio will show during CBS’ pregame show ahead of Sunday’s Super Bowl. It’s not the first look we’ve had at the zombie pic, but its placement means it will probably be the one most … Read More »

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John Goodman To Star In Amazon Comedy Pilot ‘Alpha House’

By NELLIE ANDREEVA | Thursday January 31, 2013 @ 4:12pm PSTTags: Alpha House, Amazon, John Goodman
Nellie Andreeva

EXCLUSIVE: John Goodman is set to star in Alpha House, one of Amazon Studios’ first six original comedy pilots. Written by Oscar nominee and Pulitzer-Prize winner Garry Trudeau (Doonesbury), Alpha House follows four senators who live together in a rented house in Washington DC. Goodman will play North Carolina Senator Gil John Biggs, a large man with large appetites. His cranky sense of entitlement comes from years of being revered as a successful basketball coach, but when the Duke basketball coach decides to run against him, he finds his Senate seat in jeopardy. Amazon has been going for a mix of big TV names and up-and-coming young talent for its comedy pilots. Frasier and Cheers alumna Bebe Neuwirth was recently cast in Browsers. Since a story about Democratic politicians Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, George Miller and Bill Delahunt sharing a rented house gained popularity several years ago, there have been several attempts to use the setup for a TV show. In 2010, ABC ordered a pilot for Greg Malins’ comedy Freshmen, executive produced by Arianna Huffington, which revolved around three newly-elected members of Congress who share a house together.

Related: Amazon Studios Greenlights Five Children’s Pilots Read More »

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Universal Moves Richard Curtis Pic ‘About Time’ To Fall Slot

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Thursday January 31, 2013 @ 4:11pm PSTTags: Rachel McAdams, Richard Curtis, Universal Pictures
Mike Fleming

Universal Pictures has moved Richard Curtis‘s new film About Time from its May 10 slot to a limited engagement on November 1 and a nationwide release November 8. The film, labeled a comedy about love and time travel, … Read More »

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Taylor Hackford Won’t Seek 3rd DGA Term

By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Thursday January 31, 2013 @ 4:09pm PSTTags: DGA, Directors Guild Of America, Taylor Hackford

Taylor Hackford says he won’t run for a third term as president of the Directors Guild of America. Hackford, whose latest feature Parker opened last weekend and who’s directing the pilot Company Town for The CW, revealed his decision in … Read More »

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Brenda Song Cast In Fox’s Wellesley Wild/ Alec Sulkin/Seth MacFarlane Comedy Series

By NELLIE ANDREEVA | Thursday January 31, 2013 @ 4:03pm PSTTags: Fox, Seth MacFarlane
Nellie Andreeva

EXCLUSIVE: Brenda Song (The Suite Life On Deck) is the first actor cast in the Fox multi-camera comedy series from Ted co-writers Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild and co-writer/director/star Seth MacFarlane. Written by … Read More »

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Oscar-Nommed ‘A Royal Affair’ Team Boards Epic Don Winslow Novel ‘Power Of The Dog’

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Thursday January 31, 2013 @ 4:02pm PSTTags: Don Winslow, J.D. Salinger, Shane Salerno
Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: Nikolaj Arcel and Rasmus Heisterberg, who scripted the Swedish The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and followed with the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nominee A Royal Affair, have found their next project. It’s a feature adaptation of The Power Of The Dog, the epic Don Winslow bestseller framed around the drug war and a 30-year struggle between a hard DEA agent and a family of cartel kingpins in Mexico.

Arcel will direct, and the script will be written by Heisterberg, Arcel and Shane Salerno. Salerno will produce through The Story Factory. This is the same Salerno who wrote, directed, produced and financed the J.D. Salinger documentary Salinger that earlier this week was licensed in the U.S. for an American Masters broadcast and is being shopped for feature distribution after a companion biography sold in a 7-figure deal to Simon & Schuster. Read More »

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Lifetime’s ‘Witches Of East End’ Picked Up To Series

By NELLIE ANDREEVA | Thursday January 31, 2013 @ 3:41pm PSTTags: Lifetime, Witches Of East End
Nellie Andreeva

The first new drama series from Lifetime‘s most recent batch of pilots has emerged. The cable network has given a series order to drama Witches Of East End, starring Julia Ormond, Jenna Dewan-Tatum, Rachel Boston and Mädchen Amick. The 10-episode series, produced by Fox 21, will premiere later this year. The Witches Of East End was one of four hourlong pilots Lifetime ordered last summer. Of the other three, two have been completed, the Renee Zellweger-produced Cinnamon Girl, whose fate is still up in the air, and The Secret Lives Of Wives, which Lifetime passed on earlier this month. The fourth, HR, is still casting. Read More »

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Oscar Voter Warning: Friday Is Firm And Final Deadline To Request Paper Ballot

By PETE HAMMOND | Thursday January 31, 2013 @ 3:39pm PSTTags: Deadline, Hawk Koch, Oscar Ballots, Oscars, Ric Robertson
Pete Hammond

OK, Academy members, this is your last chance to switch from online voting to a paper ballot or simply  even request a paper ballot to vote in the finals for the 2012 Oscars. Balloting begins February 8th and runs to 5 PM PT on February 19th, but if you find yourself frustrated by what some members feel is a too-complex online voting experience during nominations, you only have until tomorrow, February 1, to switch to paper by calling 1-800 251-0185 or emailing the membership department at membership@oscars.org.

The Academy Of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences seems to be doing everything it can to avoid some of the problems members had with online voting for noms, mostly just by just trying repeatedly to inform members they do have the option of paper but must make that request by tomorrow. A follow-up to last week’s email informing voters of their options was sent to members by President Hawk Koch earlier this afternoon. It was simply to inform them of tomorrow’s deadline to request paper with a P.S. that all members would be receiving a package of DVD screeners for the nominated Live Action and Animated shorts and Documentary Features by start of voting. Rather than allowing voting for these films only at special screenings, this is the first year the Academy is sending them to the entire membership in order to foster greater participation. Read More »

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‘Greedy Lying Bastards’ Eco-Docu Set For March 8 Release

By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Thursday January 31, 2013 @ 3:20pm PST

EXCLUSIVE: One Earth Productions has announced a March 8 release date for Greedy Lying Bastards, a searing documentary about climate change. The filmmakers say the docu investigates the reasons behind stalled efforts to … Read More »

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‘Shrek’ Producer Aron Warner Named President Of Animation At Reel FX

By JEN YAMATO | Thursday January 31, 2013 @ 2:21pm PSTTags: Andrew Adamson, Reel FX

Reel FX Aron WarnerEXCLUSIVE: Oscar-winning Shrek, Shrek 2, and Shrek The Third producer Aron Warner will head a growing slate of original animated features as newly anointed President of Animation at Reel FX. Warner first segued into animation in 1998 as a producer on Antz after overseeing films like Independence Day, True Lies, and Titanic as VP Production at Fox. He’ll hit the ground running as the design, VFX, animation, and live-action studio aims to ramp up its original animation slate, which includes a lineup of features already in the works.
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Mike Tyson’s ‘Law & Order: SVU’ Episode Moved Up A Week

By NELLIE ANDREEVA | Thursday January 31, 2013 @ 2:20pm PSTTags: Law & Order: SVU, Mike Tyson
Nellie Andreeva

Ever since we broke the news of former boxer Mike Tyson‘s guest stint on NBC’s veteran crime drama Law & Order: SVU, the casting has become a lighting rod for controversy as it involves Tyson, who was convicted of rape 20 years ago, appearing on a show about getting justice for sex crime victims. NBC has now moved up the episode, originally scheduled for February 13, to February 6. According to the Washington Post, the move was made so that the Mike Tyson episode does not air on the eve of One Billion Rising, a global event supporting rape and abuse survivors. It follows weeks of pressure from advocate groups who have protested the casting, including launching a petition asking NBC to recast the role. In a recent TV Guide interview, Tyson, who continues to profess his innocence in the 1991 incident involving a Miss Black America pageant contestant for which he served 3 years, defended his gig. “I’m just trying to feed my family,” he said. “I’m clean and sober five years, I haven’t broken any laws or did any crimes. I’m just trying to live my life.” Read More »

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