In the Trades Today

More Terminators and Crows

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The fourth TERMINATOR movie, SALVATION,  hasn't even been released yet but Variety reports that a fifth film in the franchise is already in the works for 2011 as the second in an envisioned trilogy. Christian Bale is signed to play John Connor in all three. 

In other franchise news, Variety reports that Stephen Norrington has signed on to write and direct a "reinvention" of THE CROW franchise, which produced four films and one TV series.

For Norrington, “The Crow” deal marks the end of a long screen sabbatical. After making his breakthrough with the Marvel Comics hero “Blade,” Norrington took on a big-budget comic transfer with “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.” Neither the director nor his star, Sean Connery, has made a film since. 

[…]“Whereas [director Alex] Proyas’ original was gloriously gothic and stylized, the new movie will be realistic, hard-edged and mysterious, almost documentary-style,” Norrington told Daily Variety.

Bad News for Writers, Actors, Directors…

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NBC is handing over the 10 p.m. hour, five-nights-a-week, to a talkshow hosted by Jay Leno. That's very bad news for guys like me who write episodic dramas. As Variety reports:

With 10 p.m. now filled by Leno – not to mention Sunday Night Football consuming four hours on Sunday and repeats on Saturday – NBC may program as few as ten hours of traditional primetime fare next fall. With some of those hours likely to be reality shows, there's not much room left for scripted fare.

[…]"What does this mean to my show?" asked one NBC exec producer almost
immediately after word of the Leno move leaked. Indeed, some shows may
wind up with shorter orders than the traditional 22 episode season, as
Peacock's needs may be less.

With cheap reality shows taking up more and more primetime real estate, and with writing staffs on dramas shrinking to cut costs, it's getting harder and harder for veteran TV writers to make a living…or for newcomers to break in.

WGA Slapped Down by NLRB

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Writers-guild-of-america-west-logo
In April, I chastised the Writers Guild of America for sending out a letter to the membership that instructed us to ostracize the 28 writers who went "financial core" during the strike. I thought the letter was incredibly wrong-headed, reprehensible, and probably unlawful. I said, in part:

"[WGA President Patric Verrone's] letter, and his rallying cry to scorn those writers, harkens back to one of the darkest chapters in entertainment history for writers — the blacklist.  In my view, Patric is asking us to engage in that same, despicable behavior… to exclude these writers from work opportunities because of their political views. While I strongly disagree with what those writers did, I resent the Guild asking me to blacklist them because of it.

[…] I hope the NLRB slaps the WGA with stiff sanctions for this. For the first time since I joined the WGA, I am ashamed of my Guild and its leadership. The WGA Board needs to apologize for what they have done."

Now Variety reports that the National Labor Relations Board has determined that the WGA acted illegally and has ordered a full hearing into the matter before an administrative law judge in the next few months.  Unfortunately, the WGA continues to defend their embarrassing conduct and poor judgment in this matter.

This Is A Very Bad Sign

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Publisher's Weekly reports the scary news that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, a major NY publisher, has ordered editors to stop acquiring new manuscripts.

Josef Blumenfeld, v-p of communications for HMH, confirmed that the publisher has “temporarily stopped acquiring manuscripts” across its trade and reference divisions. The directive was given verbally to a handful of executives and, according to Blumenfeld, is “not a permanent change.” 

Blumenfeld, who hedged on when the ban might be lifted, said that the right project could still go to the editorial review board. He also maintained that the the decision is less about taking drastic measures than conducting good business.

“In this case, it’s a symbol of doing things smarter; it’s not an indicator of the end of literature,” he said. “We have turned off the spigot, but we have a very robust pipeline.” 

The action by the highly leveraged HMH may also be as much about the company's need to cut costs in a tight credit market.as about the current economic slowdown.

While Blumenfeld dismissed the severity of the policy, a number of agents said they have never heard of a publisher going so far as to instruct its editors to stop acquiring.

Worse Ratings Are Worst Enemy’s Worst Enemy

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Variety reports that NBC has canceled MY OWN WORST ENEMY after the series notched its worst ratings yet this week. The Christian Slater spy drama will halt production after wrapping their ninth episode, which they are shooting now. 

Meanwhile, ABC is mulling whether or not to pick up PUSHING DAISIES, though showrunner Bryan Fuller vows to continue the show as a comic book if the ax falls.

“The idea would be to finish out the season’s story arcs in comic
books,” Fuller said during a “Inside the Writers Room” night at the
Paley Center for Media Tuesday evening.  The comic would likely be
publshed by DC because “Daisies” is produced by DC’s corporate sibling,
Warner Brothers.  

The purpose of the comic book series would be “to satisfy the fans
and ourselves, to finish up the stories we’d love to tell” and to
“clear the slate for a movie” Fuller said.

Rebooting the Reboot

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The rebooted KNIGHTRIDER is getting a reboot. Half the cast — Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Yancey Arias and
Bruce Davison — has been let go and the concept is being tweaked to make it closer to the original series. Showunner Gary Scott Thompson says:

 "We're moving away from the
terrorist-of-the-week formula and closer to the original,
making it a show about a man and his car going out and helping
more regular people, everymen."

The Writing on the Wall

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The once-hot HEROES has cooled considerably. The ratings are declining, producers are getting fired, and now Bit-Tech reports that Ubisoft has abruptly canceled plans for a HEROES game.

Though no official information was ever given out on the game or why
exactly it has been cancelled, speculation is that Ubisoft is
responding to declining interest in the show, which is now in the third
series. Though the show proved phenomenally popular in the first
series, the second series came to an abrupt end thanks to the writers
strike and the third season has struggled to get positive reviews.

I wonder how much longer NBC will stick with the show, which reportedly costs well over $4 million an episode.

UPDATE: The New York Times reports on NBC's attempts to save HEROES from sliding any further.

The impetus for the firings came from the top, according to two people
close to the production who spoke on the condition of anonymity. (These
and others close to the show were not authorized to speak on the
record.) They said that Jeff Zucker, president and chief executive of NBC Universal
and Mr. Silverman’s boss, was greatly upset by an Entertainment Weekly
cover story two weeks ago that said some of this season’s developments
were “jump-the-shark preposterous” and concluded that the series “may
no longer be a pop-culture phenomenon.”

[…]Yet on Friday, Entertainment Weekly also reported that Bryan Fuller,
one of the lead writers in the first season of “Heroes” who left to
create “Pushing Daisies” for ABC, is considering a return to “Heroes”
if ABC fails to extend “Pushing Daisies” beyond the 13 episodes it has
ordered for this season.

Boston is Back

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Boston-Teran
I haven't heard much about Boston Teran in years, but in the last few weeks he's been back in the news. Teran is a nom-de-plume for a secretive author, perhaps already well known under his own name. His first book under the Teran moniker, "God is a Bullet," got a lot of attention and an Edgar nomination, but his follow-up novels never generated the same heat. That could be changing.
Variety reports that his as-yet-unpublished western "Creed of Violence" has been bought by Univeral.

Story, set in 1910, revolves around an estranged father and son
trying to thwart an arms smuggling ring bringing weapons to Mexico.

The
novel caught fire among studios after the Natasha Kern Literary Agency
submitted it to book publishers. Universal, which hasn't yet assigned a
producer, made an aggressive offer and took the book off the table.

Several foreign territory publishing deals have already been made, but no U.S. publisher has been selected.

A few weeks back it was reported that hot screenwriter Ehren Kruger was adapting  "God is a Bullet" for a feature film that he might also direct. Is Boston Teran set for a comeback?

(the portrait of Boston Teran is from www.danielpeebles.com)

Is the New TV Season DOA?

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TV critic Tim Goodman of the San Francisco Chronicle thinks so:

NBC's "Chuck" and "Life" haven't exactly lit up the Nielsens – so much for all that Olympics hype – and ABC's entire Wednesday night line-up, from "Pushing Daisies" to "Private Practice" to "Dirty Sexy Money" was essentially DOA when it premiered last week. If it doesn't improve
substantially tonight – and odds are that it won't – ABC is going to be forced to either cancel series or drastically alter its schedule. That's not what you want to hear with the opening bell of the fall season still ringing faintly in everyone's ears.

Poor "Pushing Daisies" did horribly last week – laid out even by the dreadful "Knight Rider," which shouldn't even be on television. And the network can't claim one
of their favorite excuses – less people are watching television – since
more than 70 million watched the vice presidential debate last week.
The people are out there. Thanks to the financial crises cratering our
economy, those people are even at home. They're sitting right there! On
the couch! But guess what? They don't like the network leftovers. Hell,
they don't even like former hits, like "Heroes." The trajectory of that series? Down. How far down? Down.

James Poniewozik of Time Magazine agrees with him.

So we've pretty much established that nobody's watching anything this season.
New shows are middling at best in the ratings, relaunched shows like
Chuck and ABC's Wednesday have cratered—even hits like House and Grey's
are not doing so hot.

[…]The conclusion? After the writers' strike, viewers didn't want a
"do-over." They wanted a clean slate. They wanted to forget most of
what they were watching before and see something brand-new, that would
remind them why they missed TV. They still want brand new. And it looks
like they will end this season still waiting for brand-new.

Speaking of "brand new," I saw MY OWN WORST ENEMY and thought it was a great pilot. I have no idea how they are going to pull it off as a series, but at least it wasn't a re-tread of a 1970s show, or a remake of a British program, or another grim procedural.

Absolutely Scary

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The wave of British TV series remakes on American networks is continuing. Variety reports that Fox is developing a U.S. version of  "Absolutely Fabulous" set in Los Angeles. Christine Zander, a writer for "Saturday Night Live," will write the script and exec produce with Mitch Hurwitz, Ian Moffet and the original creator/star/producer Jennifer Saunders. This is not the first time a U.S. network has tried an Abfab redo.  Roseanne Barr and Carrie Fisher teamed up for a U.S. version ten years back for ABC but it went nowhere.