In the Trades Today

Point of Impact

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Variety reports that Mark Wahlberg will in SHOOTER, the movie version of Stephen Hunter’s POINT OF IMPACT, the first in his popular, long-running series of novels about a master sniper named Swagger (and several prequels about Swagger’s father). Antoine Fugua will direct with a script by Jonathan Lemkin. The film has been kicking around Hollywood for a while now. It was originally developed as a vehicle for Keanu Reeves and, before that, Robert Redford.

I’ve read most of Hunter’s books, and while POINT OF IMPACT is one of his best, I think my favorite novel of his is DIRTY WHITE BOYS.

Better Late than Never

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Lots of old pilots are being dusted off and redeveloped this season. The latest is  THE WEDDING ALBUM, which Fox passed on five years ago… and is now greenlighting as a pilot again. Variety reports that VP Craig Erwich has always loved the script, about a NY wedding photographer and his assistant who attempt to find romance in their own
lives while shooting the weddings of others, and was just waiting for the right time to resurrect it. If it was about a crime scene photographer, or one of them talked to God, it could have been shopped to CBS years ago.

God Is A Bullet…and a Movie

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I found this nugget in Variety today…Nick Cassavetes is writing and directing an adaptation of Boston Teran’s novel GOD IS A BULLET.  You may recall that Boston Teran is a pseudonym … reportedly for a well-known mystery author who wanted to try a different voice.  While GOD IS A BULLET generated some heat, the follow-up book didn’t.

Gone Baby Gone

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Variety reports that director/writer Ben Affleck’s feature film adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s book GONE BABY GONE has started production in Boston, with Casey Affleck and Michelle Monahan as private eyes Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro.

Getting LOST

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Variety reports that a whole bunch of JJ Abram’s ALIAS scribes are moving over to his show LOST, which may now have one of the largest writing staffs on episodic television. Drew Goddard, Monica Breen, and Alison Schapker have just inked two-year, seven-figure overall deals with Touchstone Television that includes working on LOST and developing new programs. Abrams is clearly loyal to, and appreciative of, the talented people he works with. I wonder if this means the Others will turn out to be members of the ALIAS cast…

It IS Brain Surgery

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Last season, CBS  shot the pilot 3 LBS, which starred Dylan McDermott and Reiko Aylesworth as brain surgeons.  It was written by Peter Ocko, produced by Tom Fontana, and directed by Barry Levinson.  Despite the A-list talent involved, the pilot wasn’t picked up to series. But CBS and Ocko haven’t given up. They are re-developing the idea for this season with a new script and a new cast. Now it will be about a brain surgeon with a neurological disorder who recruits a new partner.

Pilot Parade

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Perseverance pays off. Five years ago, writer Jed Seidel wrote a sitcom pilot for Fox called MORE PATIENCE, about a NY psychiatrist named Patience More who has troubles in her personal life. The title turned out to be prophetic. The pilot was shot with Mary McCormack in the lead role, but Fox didn’t pick the show up.  Seidel didn’t give up — he  convinced the network to redeveloped it as an hour-long drama.  That version failed, too.  But Seidel, who went on to VERNONICA MARS among other things, didn’t give up. Now MORE PATIENCE is back again…Fox has given a cast-contigent pick-up on another pilot version of the show.

In other pilot news, ABC is developing a TV series version of MR. AND MRS. SMITH, which will be directed by Doug Liman and written by Simon Kinberg, the same team behind the movie.

Spike has ordered 13 episodes of BLADE, based on the the movie that starred Wesley Snipes and the comics by Marv Wolfman. Kirk Sticky Jones (FX’s "Over There") stars as the vampire hunter in the TV version.

What Happens When the Mystery is a Mystery to the People Writing the Mystery

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The Fox show REUNION was supposed to be murder mystery that spanned decades in a single season.  But the show was cancelled in November, leaving the show’s handful of fans wondering whodunit. The problem is, the writers of the show didn’t know whodunit either. Zap2it reports:

When FOX lowered the boom on
"Reunion" in late November, the show’s creator says there was no way to
resolve the show short of a full season because of how "intricately
plotted" it was.  It was so intricately plotted, in fact, that the question of who committed the murder at the show’s center was still up in the air.

That, at least, is the word from FOX Entertainment president Peter Ligouri, who on Tuesday (Jan. 17) addressed the show’s early demise with reporters at the Television Critics Association press tour.

"’Reunion’ was particularly cumbersome in terms of trying to provide an ending for
the audience," Ligouri says of the show, in which each episode represented a year in the life of six friends, one of whom ends up dead. "How [creator Jon Harmon Feldman] was laying out the show to gap those additional 14, 15, 16 years was an incredibly complex path. There were a number of options, and he didn’t make a definitive! decision on which option he was going to go with as to who the killer was, and there was just no way to accelerate that time."

Feldman himself hinted at that in a statement following the show’s cancellation, saying that solving
the mystery of who killed Samantha (Alexa Davalos) was "partially reliant on characters we haven’t yet met — and events we haven’t seen."

Ligouri says the network and the show’s team talked about several ways to go with the killer’s identity, but "the best guess was at that particular time that it was going to be Sam’s daughter," whom she gave up for adoption early in the series. The why of the murder remains a mystery.

Especially to the show’s writers, which may be why the series didn’t work. If the show’s writers didn’t even know whodunit or why, then what were they writing about? If the clues led nowhere, how did they expect the story to actually payoff in the end? Is it any surprise viewers didn’t get hooked by the mystery since it, um, actually didn’t exist?

(Thanks to Bill Rabkin for the heads-up!)

Extending the 24 Franchise

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The gimmick of the Fox series 24 is that the stories play out in real time over 24 hours. Entertainment Weekly reports that the producers of 24  are seriously considering a feature film version that would follow a story that unfolds in real time over two tense hours. They also forsee the possibility of extending the 24 brand into spin-off series, ala LAW AND ORDER and CSI, with any number of different heroes in different settings in stories that play out over a single day.

I see a real difference between the LAW AND ORDER branding and what has been done with CSI. The three LAW AND ORDER shows are essentially stand-alone, unique series that share the same name, music cues, and style. The three CSI shows, however, are exactly the same show set in different cities. 24 could, concievably, strike a middle ground between the two approaches to branding…only the storytelling device is the same and everything else is different. But will viewers tire of the real-time gimmick? They haven’t lost their interest in the three identical CSIs yet…

DaVinci Mania

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On the eve of the release of the DAVINCI CODE movie, Publishers Weekly reports that the book is finally coming out in mass paperback…with a five million copy first printing (that’s few more than the print run for my new book, MR. MONK GOES TO THE FIREHOUSE).

Anchor Books will print a total of 5 million copies of the paperback edition of The Da Vinci Code
when the company publishes the mass market and trade paperback editions
of the huge bestseller. The company has confirmed Friday’s PW Daily report that it will release the paperback editions of Da Vinci
March 28, about seven weeks ahead of the release of the movie on May
19. The mass market edition, which Anchor is calling the movie tie-in
edition, will sell for $7.99, while the trade paper will have a $14.95
price.

In addition, Broadway Books will issue a 200,000 copy printing for the trade paperback edition of The Da Vinci Code Special Illustrated Edition on March 28. And leaving no stone unturned, Broadway will print 200,000 copies of the trade paper edition of The Da Vinci Code Illustrated Screenplay May 19, while Doubleday will release 25,000 copies in hardcover.