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HBO’s Family Tree hasn’t started with very strong viewing roots. The 10:30 PM debut Sunday of the new comedy pulled in 794,000 viewers. That is a big drop off from the 1.2 million who watched its lead-in Veep and down from the 872,000 who tuned in for the debut of Girls in the same slot on April 15, 2012. Over two plays, Family Tree had about 975,000 viewers, down from the 1.1 million Girls had. Bridesmaids’ Chris O’Dowd stars in the mockumentary series co-created by Christopher Guest as a recently single and unemployed thirtysomething who seeks to discover himself by investigating his wacky extended family. The series is set to premiere on BBC2 in the UK this month. Also on HBO, Game Of Thrones’ four-week record viewership streak came to an end Sunday, with the flagship show drawing 4.8 million viewers for its 9 PM broadcast. It’s still a strong number but down from the 5.3 million who watched the 9 PM episode May 5. Over two plays for the night, Thrones had 6 million viewers, down from last week’s 6.8 million. Veep, meanwhile, was even with its Season 2 debut April 14. The Julia Louis-Dreyfus-starring political satire drew 1.5 million viewers over two plays Sunday.
2013-14 ABC Schedule
ABC FALL 2013-2014 SCHEDULE
(New programs in UPPER CASE; all times ET/PT)
MONDAY
8 PM – Dancing With The Stars
10 PM – Castle
TUESDAY
8 PM – MARVEL’S AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D.
9 PM – THE GOLDBERGS
9:30 PM – TROPHY WIFE
10 PM – LUCKY 7
WEDNESDAY
8 PM – The Middle
8:30 PM – BACK IN THE GAME
9 PM – Modern Family
9:30 PM – SUPER FUN NIGHT
10 PM – Nashville
THURSDAY
8 PM – ONCE UPON A TIME IN WONDERLAND
9 PM – Grey’s Anatomy
10 PM – Scandal
FRIDAY
8 PM – Last Man Standing
8:30 PM – The Neighbors
9 PM – Shark Tank
10 PM – 20/20
SATURDAY
8 PM – Saturday Night College Football
SUNDAY
7 PM – America’s Funniest Home Videos
8 PM – Once Upon A Time
9 PM – Revenge
10 PM – BETRAYAL
2013-2014 NEW SERIES DESCRIPTIONS
Dramas
Betrayal — A chance meeting between photographer Sara Hadley (Hannah Ware) and Attorney Jack McAllister (Stuart Townsend) leads to an instant and undeniable attraction. Sarah’s husband, Drew (Chris Johnson), is a successful prosecutor with political aspirations, while Jack is married to Elaine (Wendy Moniz), the daughter of his boss, Thacher Karsten (James Cromwell). When Karsten’s brother-in-law Lou is murdered, all evidence points to Karsten’s son, T.J. (Henry Thomas). Jack, the company’s lead counsel, will have to defend him, but for Sara’s prosecutor husband, Drew, this is the kind of high-profile murder case that can secure his political future. Just as Sara and Jack’s affair is starting, the lovers find themselves in an impossible situation — on opposite sides of a murder investigation. “Betrayal” stars Hannah Ware (“Shame,” “Boss”) as Sara, Stuart Townsend (“The … Read More »
ABC 2013-14 Schedule: Rebel Wilson Gets Post-‘Modern Family’ Slot, ‘S.H.I.E.L.D.’ On Tuesday, ‘Dancing’ Shrinks To One Night
ABC is launching eight new series in the fall and taking some big swings, including a Tuesday lineup of all-new series, anchored by Marvel’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.. Rebel Wilson’s hot streak continues, with the rising star landing the post-Modern Family slot for her comedy Super Fun Night. ABC is looking to stem Dancing With The Stars‘ ratings decline by eliminating the Tuesday edition, with the Monday 8-10 PM show incorporating both performances and results. Dancing, as well as The Bachelor, Shark Tank and The Taste have been formally renewed for next season. Here is ABC’s fall schedule, analysis and descriptions of all 13 new series for next season, including newly picked up adventure reality series The Quest from The Amazing Race creators Bertram van Munster and Elise Doganieri:
Related: ABC To Air Some Dramas In Two Batches Of 12 Episodes
ABC FALL 2013-2014 SCHEDULE
(New programs in UPPER CASE; all times ET/PT)
MONDAY
8 PM – Dancing With The Stars
10 PM – Castle
TUESDAY
8 PM – MARVEL’S AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D.
9 PM – THE GOLDBERGS
9:30 PM – TROPHY WIFE
10 PM – LUCKY 7
WEDNESDAY
8 PM – The Middle
8:30 PM – BACK IN THE GAME
9 PM – Modern Family
9:30 PM – SUPER FUN NIGHT
10 PM – Nashville
THURSDAY
8 PM – ONCE UPON A TIME IN WONDERLAND
9 PM – Grey’s Anatomy
10 PM – Scandal
FRIDAY
8 PM – Last Man Standing
8:30 PM – The Neighbors
9 PM – Shark Tank
10 PM – 20/20
SATURDAY
8 PM – Saturday Night College Football
SUNDAY
7 PM – America’s Funniest Home Videos
8 PM – Once Upon A Time
9 PM – Revenge
10 PM – BETRAYAL
From ABC’s returning series, left off the schedule are comedy Suburgatory and reality series The Bachelor, which comes on in midseason, and The Taste.
2013-14 Fox Schedule
FOX FALL 2013-2014 SCHEDULE
(New programs in UPPER CASE; all times ET/PT)
MONDAY
8-9 PM Bones (fall) / ALMOST HUMAN (late fall)
9-10 PM SLEEPY HOLLOW (fall) / The Following (midseason)
TUESDAY
8-8:30 PM DADS
8:30-9 PM BROOKLYN NINE-NINE
9-9:30 PM New Girl
9:30-10 PM The Mindy Project
WEDNESDAY
8-10 PM The X Factor (fall) / American Idol (midseason)
THURSDAY
8-9 PM The X Factor Results (fall) / American Idol Results (midseason)
9-10 PM Glee (fall) / RAKE (midseason)
FRIDAY
8-9 PM JUNIOR MASTERCHEF (wt) (fall)
9-10 PM SLEEPY HOLLOW encores (fall)
Late Fall:
8-9 PM Bones
9-9:30 PM Raising Hope (late fall)
9:30-10 PM ENLISTED (new; late fall)
SATURDAY
7-10:30 PM Fox Sports Saturday
11 PM-12:30 AM ANIMATION DOMINATION HIGH-DEF
SUNDAY
7-7:30 PM NFL Game (fall)
7:30-8 PM The OT (fall)
8-8:30 PM The Simpsons
8:30-9:00 PM Bob’s Burgers
9:00-9:30 PM Family Guy
9:30-10 PM American Dad
Schedule TBAs: GANG RELATED, SURVIVING JACK, US & THEM, MURDER POLICE
2013-2014 NEW SERIES DESCRIPTIONS
New Comedies — Fall
Brooklyn Nine-Nine — From Emmy Award-winning writer/producers Dan Goor and Michael Schur (“Parks and Recreation”), and starring Emmy Award winners Andy Samberg (“Saturday Night Live”) and Andre Braugher (“Men of a Certain Age,” “Homicide: Life on the Street”), BROOKLYN NINE-NINE is a new single-camera ensemble comedy about what happens when a talented, but carefree, detective gets a new captain with a lot to prove. Detective JAKE PERALTA (Samberg) is a good enough cop that he’s never had to work that hard or follow the rules too closely. Perhaps because he has the best arrest record among his colleagues, he’s been enabled – if not … Read More »
Fox 2013-14 Schedule: Comedy Block And ‘Bones’ On Friday, ‘Sleepy Hollow’ Monday
Male-friendly new comedy and drama series dominate Fox‘s new series picks. Fox is launching six new series in the fall — comedies Dads, Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Enlisted and dramas, Sleepy Hollow and Almost Human — and one reality series, Junior Masterchef. Midseason will be as important with six new shows slated to unspool then: comedies Surviving Jack, Us & Them and animated Murder Police, dramas Rake and Gang Related and event series Wayward Pines, from M. Night Shyamalan. Without further ado, here is Fox’s 2013-14 schedule, with analysis and new show descriptions below it:
FOX FALL 2013-2014 SCHEDULE
(New programs in UPPER CASE; all times ET/PT)
MONDAY
8-9 PM Bones (fall) / ALMOST HUMAN (late fall)
9-10 PM SLEEPY HOLLOW (fall) / The Following (midseason)
TUESDAY
8-8:30 PM DADS
8:30-9 PM BROOKLYN NINE-NINE
9-9:30 PM New Girl
9:30-10 PM The Mindy Project
WEDNESDAY
8-10 PM The X Factor (fall) / American Idol (midseason)
THURSDAY
8-9 PM The X Factor Results (fall) / American Idol Results (midseason)
9-10 PM Glee (fall) / RAKE (midseason)
FRIDAY
8-9 PM JUNIOR MASTERCHEF (wt) (fall)
9-10 PM SLEEPY HOLLOW encores (fall)
Late Fall:
8-9 PM Bones
9-9:30 PM Raising Hope (late fall)
9:30-10 PM ENLISTED (new; late fall)
SATURDAY
7-10:30 PM Fox Sports Saturday
11 PM-12:30 AM ANIMATION DOMINATION HIGH-DEF
SUNDAY
7-7:30 PM NFL Game (fall)
7:30-8 PM The OT (fall)
8-8:30 PM The Simpsons
8:30-9:00 PM Bob’s Burgers
9:00-9:30 PM Family Guy
9:30-10 PM American Dad Read More »
UPDATE: ABC Picks Up ‘Once Upon A Time’ Spinoff, ‘Mixology’, ‘The Returned’, ‘Killer Women’, ‘Lucky 7′, ‘Betrayal’, ‘Trophy Wife’, Cullen Bros, ‘Influence’, ‘The Goldbergs’, ‘Super Fun Night’, ‘S.H.I.E.L.D.’ To Series
When all was said and done tonight, ABC picked up a total of 12 new series — seven dramas and five comedies. All comedies are single-camera as ABC passed on both of its multi-camera pilots. Here is how it all ca
me down today as the network opened the pickup process with one Disney-friendly shoo-in pilot, Marvel’s S.H.I.E.L.D., and closed it with another, the Once Upon A Time spinoff. Descriptions of all ABC series and first-look photos at the bottom of the post.
ABC’s Once Upon A Time is officially a franchise as the network just ordered spinoff Once Upon A Time In Wonderland to series, joining the original series, which also was renewed.
Also picked up at ABC are ensemble comedy Mixology, which had been heating up, drama The Returned, now called Resurrection, said to be one of Paul Lee’s favorite pilots, and female procedural Killer Women, executive produced by Sofia Vergara and Ben Silverman. The Malin Akerman starrer Trophy Wife also has gotten a series pickup.
It’s a great day for David Zabel, who just got a pickup call for both of his ABC pilots, dramas Lucky 7 and Betrayal.
Two more series pickups at ABC to two 20th TV pilots, the Cullen Bros. comedy starring James Caan and executive produced by Aaron Kaplan, titled Back In The Game, and the Steve Zahn-Christian Slater procedural Minds Games (formerly Influence).
Also getting a series pickup at ABC is comedy frontrunner Adam Goldberg, whose autobiographical 1980s dysfunctional family comedy is now called The Goldbergs.
ABC wants to be in the Rebel Wilson business. The network’s first new comedy series pickup went to Wilson’s Super Fun Night. The pilot was not perfect, but with Wilson’s star rising so fast, the network couldn’t pass up the opportunity to have her on its air.
No surprise here — ABC’s first new series order for next season has gone to Marvel’s S.H.I.E.L.D., from The Avengers’ Joss Whedon. The network will air a first-look at the series, officially titled Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., during the season finale of Once Upon A Time on Sunday. This marks the first pilot and first series for Disney-owned Marvel on ABC.
Read More »
Hulu Touts Record Revenue, Original Series At Upfront Presentation
Hulu said today during its upfront presentation in New York that it set a revenue record in the first quarter of this year with $695M, and that Hulu Plus subscriptions passed 4 million subscribers after doubling in 2012. The service now has almost 2500 TV series and about 57,000 hours of content. Among the talent on hand was Seth Meyers and Michael Shoemaker to promote their animated superhero series The Awesomes, one of four original series that will debut this year. Among Hulu’s four announced exclusive series is the Eva Longoria-starring animated series Mother Up!, about a disgraced former music exec who must transition to a life of suburban motherhood. Other talent working up shows are Mario Batali, Carson Daly and Jay Mohr, who is toplining the new game show Money Where Your Mouth Is. Hulu also is streaming Prospect Park’s revamped soap operas All My Children and One Life To Live, which launched yesterday and were the two most-watched TV episodes of the day. Here is Hulu’s descriptions of its new series: Read More »
Summer 2013: Sleeper Movie Forecast
Anyone who predicts sleeper hits ahead of the summer is either very brave or very spun. But these are the pics expected to emerge through the cracks of tentpole action: All benefit from obvious counterprogramming, festival hype, and demo-targeted storytelling. In chronological order:
– IFC’s Frances Ha has high awareness among its targeted younger-skewing arthouse crowd and exhibitors. “It’s certainly getting talked about in the right places for the audience they’re going for,” one NATO member tells me. Star Greta Gerwig and director Noah Baumbach are indie darlings and scored a talked-about New Yorker piece last week that boosted their profile as a filmmaking couple. According to an IFC Films rep, it’s the sleeper they’re banking on when it releases May 17. “We think we’re going to get great word of mouth,” they tell me.
– CBS Films has two indie pickups budgeted at under $2M each that they’ve slotted into the summer. Sundance pickup Kings Of Summer (formerly Toy’s House) stars three youngsters and has TV stars Alison Brie, Nick Offerman, and Megan Mullally supporting. The studio’s hoping for its Stand By Me-esque story to build momentum with a May 31 limited release. “It’s a movie about discovering in general — which people who see arthouse films spark to,” a studio insider tells me. “And discovery is part of what makes a sleeper hit”. CBS Films is hoping it becomes this year’s Salmon Fishing In The Yemen which was a surprise success for the studio last year.
– Upstart distrib A24 is new to the summer game and has two more youth-skewing pics on tap after scoring a minor youthquake with the sexploitation Spring Breakers in March. The first is Sofia Coppola’s Bling Ring will get a NY-LA limited opening June 14 two weeks after its Cannes premiere.
Read More »
Kristen Wiig And Ben Affleck To Close Out ‘SNL’ Season
Kristen Wiig will make her first appearance as host of Saturday Night Live on May 11, and Ben Affleck will close out the late-night show’s 38th season the following week. Wiig memorably signed off the NBC late-night series at the end of last season, wrapping a seven-year stint on the show. 
Her feature film career is on fire, having earned an Oscar nomination for co-writing Bridesmaids and starring soon in pics like Girl Most Likely, Despicable Me 2, Anchorman: The Legend Continues and The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty. Vampire Weekend will be the musical guest for her show. Affleck, whose Argo won the Best Picture Oscar this year, will host for the fifth time for May 18′s season finale, with Kanye West as musical guest. The show already revealed that Zach Galifianakis will host May 4 with musical guest Of Monsters and Men.
CinemaCon: Hollywood’s Male Focus Shortchanges Women And Box Office Sales, Panelists Agree
“It is a decades-long trend,” actress Geena Davis, who founded the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, said at a luncheon panel on the subject. “We want to believe that things are getting better. But the evidence shows that it’s not.” The conventional wisdom is that “women will watch men but men won’t watch women…It’s not true.” Director Paul Feig said that he faced “enormous” pressure to have his film Bridesmaids succeed. Casting women in lead roles “was always shut down so quickly. ‘We can’t have a woman as a lead.’ It was almost a rule…I was terrified.” Hunger Games producer Nina Jacobson says the problem is exacerbated by popular culture. She cited a reader survey by the blog SFGate that deemed Anne Hathaway as the year’s “Most Annoying Celebrity” to illustrate that misogyny is “a sport in the media.” She adds that women have been shortchanged by “franchise fever” which has “squeezed out the variety of movies that are made” and by efforts to reach boys with PG movies. The trends are bad for business says Regal Cinemas CEO … Read More »
CinemaCon: Fox Unveils Ben Stiller’s ‘Secret Life Of Walter Mitty’ Which Could Be Oscar Bound
20th
Century Fox (“and it is called 20th Century Fox,” as Distribution President Chris Aronson wryly noted in his welcoming remarks) presented to theater owners at CinemaCon today. The highlight was about 12 minutes of selected scenes from the studio’s holiday release The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty as a “special presentation” at the end of Fox’s 2013 preview. Clearly, Fox is hoping to 
replicate last year’s success with unveiling 15 minutes of footage of The Life Of Pi. The film directed and produced by and starring Ben Stiller is a reinvention of the 1947 Danny Kaye comedy which was based on the short story by James Thurber about a meek writer who lives 
vicariously through his rich fantasy life. Now Stiller is an ordinary photo editor imagining himself in numerous epic situations only to become immersed in a real life global adventure of his own. Like Life Of Pi this comedy-drama is hard to describe but the footage seemed to wow the exhibition crowd. One theater chain head told me it looked “phenomenal - the perfect holiday movie. This could be Ben’s Oscar chance.” Others compared it to the Oscar-winning Forrest Gump. Those will be music to the ears of the studio since this project had been in development through several different iterations and scripts and stars for years until Stiller and writer Steve Conrad cracked the code. Indeed, of all the footage on display this week at CinemaCon, at … Read More »
Paul Feig’s Feigco Taps Jessie Henderson As Exec Veep
Paul Feig’s Feigco Entertainment has tapped Jessie Henderson to be the company’s executive vice president. Henderson, who leaves Chernin Entertainment to take this job, will be in charge of finding and developing new projects 
for the company to produce as well as shepherding the ones generated internally. Feigco Entertainment has a first look deal at Fox to fine commercial and edgy R rated comedies in the spirit of his hit Bridesmaids. His latest, The Heat, opens in June.
Feig also recently set with Chernin Entertainment a mother daughter comedy to be scripted by The Heat writer Katie Dippold, so between The Heat and that film, there’s been a lot of co-mingling with the Chernin folks. Feig also promoted Joshua Thurston.
‘The Heat’ Scribe Katie Dippold Makes 7-Figure Sale To Chernin Entertainment
EXCLUSIVE: Chernin Entertainment and Fox are so convinced they have a hit in the Paul Feig-directed comedy The Heat with Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock that they moved the picture right into the heat of the July 4th holiday corridor. Now, Chernin Entertainment has closed a low-7-figure deal with that film’s writer, Katie Dippold, for another comedy that she will write as a directing vehicle for Feig. I’ve heard it described as a mother/daughter action comedy, but all parties are keeping the logline under wraps beyond that.
Dippold makes her feature debut as a screenwriter on The Heat, which stars McCarthy and Bullock as mismatched crime fighters in an unabashedly R-rated comedy. This new deal will be her second project. Where did she come from? Dippold was a writer and co-producer of the NBC sitcom Parks And Recreation, and before that she was a writer on MAD TV and other shows.
This is a neat fit for Fox, which finances Chernin-produced films, and also has a first look deal with Feig, the Bridesmaids helmer who’ll also produce this project.
Dippold is repped by WME and 3 Arts; Feig by CAA and attorney Warren Dern.
Global Showbiz Briefs: Helen Mirren, BBC & ‘Pompidou’, Cannes Critics’ Week President Named, World Cup Windfall
Helen Mirren’s Sam Mendes Quotes Misquoted
Helen Mirren is never shy of a making a bold statement or two. But stories circulating in the British press following her appearance at Sunday night’s Empire Awards have misquoted the actress as criticizing director Sam Mendes for naming an all-male list of his inspirations. In a speech earlier in the evening, Mendes had praised inspirational moments from the likes of Stanley Kubrick, Billy Wilder and Akira Kurosawa, which Mirren highlighted when she stepped up to receive a lifetime achievement prize. But far from tearing down Mendes, she used his list to illustrate how much attitudes had changed since she started. “When I first came into the film industry it was a really bloke-y world,” she said. “Nowadays, that’s really changed and it’s great to see women in cinematography, in sound, and obviously in producing and writing.” She said she was certain that in “five or ten years” a successor to Mendes would include female directors on their list of inspirations as a result. “Nothing against Sam, absolutely,” she insisted. “They were great, great moments he chose.” Given the press fervor that greeted her misrepresented comments, it’s no wonder she earlier joked, “The critics bloody well piss me off. What do they know, honestly?” – Joe Utichi Read More »
‘Sapphires’ Star Chris O’Dowd In ‘St. Vincent De Van Nuys’ Talks
EXCLUSIVE: Chris O’Dowd, who opens today in The Sapphires, is in early talks to join Bill Murray and Melissa McCarthy in St. Vincent De Van Nuys, the film that Ted Melfi will direct from his script for The Weinstein Company and Chernin Entertainment. O’Dowd will play a sympathetic Catholic priest shocked to see the influence that the title character has on an angelic 12-year-old boy whose hardworking single mother (McCarthy) foists the child care duties on Murray’s character. He is a cantankerous train wreck who takes the kid under his corrupt wing. The project, which Chernin Entertainment developed for two years with Melfi’s Black List script, has been compared to As Good As It Gets or even TWC’s recent Silver Linings Playbook for the way it mixes comedy and human pathos.
Related: Melissa McCarthy To Get Offer For Coveted Female Lead In ‘St. Vincent De Van Nuys’ Read More »
Hot TV Teaser: HBO’s ‘Family Tree’
Chris O’Dowd (Bridesmaids) stars in Christopher Guest‘s spring HBO series as a recently single and unemployed 30-something man who discovers himself by investigating his wacky extended family. Frequent Guest players Michael McKean, Fred Willard, Don Lake, Ed Begley Jr., and Jim Piddock (who co-wrote and exec produces the series with Guest) join Matt Griesser, Maria Blasucci, Amy Seimetz, Nina Conti, and Tom Bennett in the single camera docu-style series. Family Tree debuts in May on HBO and BBC Two in the UK. Here’s the show’s teaser:
Related: Searching For Roots In ‘Family Tree’: TCA
Branding Blitz: Is SXSW The Next Comic-Con For Studios?
Every studio with something to push books pricey space a year or more in advance at Comic-Con, which last year packed 130,000 fans into a downtown San Diego papered with promotional branding. But this year’s SXSW saw a sign of things to come as film and television brands took that strategy to Austin, targeting the festival’s estimated 64,000 registered attendees. Universal, Warner Bros Television, A&E Network, Showtime, and Syfy jumped ahead of the pack with marketing blitzes sure to multiply by next year as other entertainment brands set their sights on the plugged-in, social media-active demographic of influencers that pour into the annual multimedia festival. This year’s edition wraps this weekend.
Growth here has accelerated rapidly in the past three years in terms of attendance and prestige, thanks to distribution deals and buzz-building debuts in the film festival portion and the hot tech conference on the Interactive side. But thanks to its unique overlap of Film and Interactive components, SXSW this year attracted the attention of studio marketers with no films in the program. All of the major companies I spoke with made their first-ever trips to SXSW in 2013 and reps tell me they’d return next year if they had the right property to promote.
Read More »
Melissa McCarthy To Get Offer For Coveted Female Lead Opposite Bill Murray In ‘St. Vincent De Van Nuys’
EXCLUSIVE: Melissa McCarthy will soon be offered the female lead in St. Vincent De Van Nuys, the film that Ted Melfi will direct from his script for The Weinstein Company and Chernin Entertainment, with Bill Murray in the starring role. This is a role that all the top comic actresses chased, and it should give McCarthy a chance to show some of her colors as an actress after playing vulgar characters in Identity Thief (which grossed over $116 million domestically) and when she next opens opposite Sandra Bullock in The Heat, helmed by her Bridesmaids director Paul Feig.
Murray plays the title character, a cantankerous train wreck of a neighbor who takes under his corrupt wing the 12-year-old son of a struggling single mother who has moved in next door. McCarthy is the choice to play the single mother and she campaigned hard for this. The project, based on Melfi’s Black List script, has been compared to As Good As It Gets or even TWC’s recent Silver Linings Playbook for the way it mixes comedy and human pathos. Much the way that Jennifer Lawrence Skyped an audition that got her the Oscar-winning role in Silver Linings Playbook even though David O Russell initially thought she might be too young, McCarthy auditioned for this role and her work put her atop the list and will win her this job.
McCarthy will first make Tammy, which she’s directing with her husband and co-writer Ben Falcone. She’s got time from her series Mike & Molly, so the scheduling right after July 4 fits into her wheelhouse.
Of the single mom’s decision to entrust Murray’s character with her son, Melfi called it “the worst parenting decision ever made by this single mom, but she works two shifts at the hospital and the guy next door seems harmless enough.” Melfi told me this when TWC acquired his Black List script, which he’d spent two years developing with Chernin Entertainment. “The relationship transforms both the man and the boy and even though he teaches the kid everything about his decadent lifestyle, from fighting to drinking, gambling and how to cheat lie and steal. And the 12-year-old has such a pure soul that he only extracts the good from all this.”
Melfi makes his directorial debut on the $13 million budget movie, which became a big priority all over town when Murray agreed to play the title character. Shooting begins in July. The film will be produced by Chernin Entertainment’s Peter Chernin and Jenno Topping, Melfi, Fred Roos and Don Cheadle who is producing via Crescendo Prods. TWC production president Dylan Sellers is overseeing it. Read More »
5 Films With Something To Prove At SXSW
SXSW isn’t a sales-dominant fest, but two years ago Universal’s Bridesmaids debut here paid off when the Kristen Wiig pic became a $288 million global box office hit. Now studios with spring openers and genre fare are hoping SXSW can be a similar launching pad for strong word of mouth. Here are the mainstream pics hoping to squeeze hot buzz out of SXSW:
The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (Warner Bros.):
Director: Don Scardino, Story by Chad Kultgen & Tyler Mitchell and Jonathan Goldstein & John Francis Daley. Screenplay by Jonathan Goldstein & John Francis Daley. Cast: Steve Carell, Jim Carrey, Olivia Wilde, Steve Buscemi. Warner Bros opens the Steve Carell – Jim Carrey magician comedy nationwide next week but the mixed critical reaction after its SXSW opening night premiere won’t help.
Evil Dead (Screen Gems):
Director/Screenwriter: Fede Alvarez, Screenwriter: Rodo Sayagues. Cast: Jane Levy, Shiloh Fernandez, Lou Taylor Pucci, Jessica Lucas, Elizabeth Blackmore. Producer Sam Raimi’s fingerprints have been all over this quasi-remake, which was the hottest ticket in town on Day One. Raimi didn’t make the trip to Austin to stump for Evil Dead with director Fede Alvarez and fellow producer Bruce Campbell — he was busy opening Disney’s Oz: The Great And Powerful — but the gory R-rated remake made an impression on the late night genre crowd.
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