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TOLDJA! Paramount Heads To ‘Nebraska’ With Bruce Dern And Will Forte

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Monday August 6, 2012 @ 2:59pm PDTTags: Alexander Payne, Big Deals Film, Bruce Dern, Nebraska, Paramount, Will Forte
Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: Paramount has given a green light to Nebraska and has set a mid-October production start on the black & white film Nebraska, Alexander Payne’s followup to The Descendants. And while the road trip pairing of Bruce Dern and Will Forte seemed unusual when Deadline first reported that’s what Payne wanted two months ago, deals are now being closed with both actors to star in the film.

The $13 million budget film was scripted by Bob Nelson and Dern will play a crotchety alcoholic dad who receives a pro forma sweepstakes letter in the mail, thinks he’s struck it rich and wrangles his underachieving son (Forte) into taking a road trip to claim the fortune. As I reported, Payne has been very specific about who he wanted as his stars. An initial courtship of Gene Hackman did not coax the actor out of retirement, and then Payne came up with Dern, who is good in every movie. Neither Dern nor former Saturday Night Live cast member Forte have the star power of Payne’s Descendants lead George Clooney, but Thomas Haden Church and Paul Giamatti didn’t either and both got career boosts from Payne’s Sideways. This is a big opportunity for both Dern and Forte. The film will be release Oscar season 2013.

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Alexander Payne Wants Bruce Dern And Will Forte To Accompany Him To ‘Nebraska’

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Tuesday May 15, 2012 @ 11:31am PDTTags: Alexander Payne, Big Deals Film, Bruce Dern, Nebraska, Will Forte
Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: I’m hearing that Alexander Payne has fixed on Bruce Dern and Will Forte for the main roles in Nebraska, the black and white $13 million budget road trip comedy for Paramount. Payne wants to make the Bob Nelson script … Read More »

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EMMYS: When Is A Guest Star Really A Guest Star?

By NELLIE ANDREEVA | Thursday July 14, 2011 @ 8:08pm PDTTags: 2011 Primetime Emmy Awards, 20th Century Fox TV, Alan Cummings, Bruce Dern, Cara Buono, Cloris Leachman, Fox, Jane Lynch, Joan Cusack, John Slattery, Margo Martindale, Raising Hope
Nellie Andreeva

Cloris Leachman today landed her 22nd career Emmy nomination for her role on Fox’s freshman comedy Raising Hope and may add to her haul of eight Emmy Awards, which is already a record for a female performer. But, despite being featured in the main credits of the show before the title card, listed as a cast member on Fox’s website and included on panels for the series, Leachman, who appeared in 20 of Raising Hope‘s 22 episodes, was nominated not as a supporting actress in a comedy series but as a guest star. The move probably helped the Oscar winner to snag a nomination in the less-crowded guest star field, but it also raises the issue of what really constitutes a guest star on a TV series as the line between a guest and supporting actor has blurred in recent Emmy races.

According to Emmy’s rulebook, “Comedy/Drama series guest performers with ‘guest star’ billing, or who are contracted as such, are eligible in the guest performer categories without regard to the number of episodes he/she appeared in.” The definition was originally limited to a single episode but was later expanded to three episodes and eventually the limit on the number of episodes was lifted altogether. Per 20th Century Fox TV, which produces Raising Hope, Leachman was technically a guest star on the first season of the show despite appearing in virtually every episode, so she was eligible for the guest starring category, something she won’t be next year as she is being promoted to a regular for Season 2.

Leachman’s guest starring nomination is part of a growing trend of the TV Academy moving away from the traditional guest starring stints involving a splashy performance in a single episode and awarding nominations for playing characters built over the course of one or more seasons that often feel like supporting roles. Not a single actor from a primetime series nominated in the guest starring categories this year has done only one episode of the show they got nominated for. Read More »

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Ben Affleck Circling Big ‘Great Gatsby’ Role

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Thursday April 7, 2011 @ 6:05pm PDTTags: Baz Luhrmann, Ben Affleck, Bruce Dern, Carey Mulligan, Catherine Knapman, Catherine Martin, Craig Pearce, Doug Wick, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Leonardo DiCaprio, Lucy Fisher, The Great Gatsby, Tobey Maguire
Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: Ben Affleck is in talks to play the role of Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby, the Baz Luhrmann-directed 3D adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald literary classic at Warner Bros. Now, Affleck will have to work to fit … Read More »

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