Film and Television

The diagnosis isn’t good for DR. VEGAS…. CBS has picked up the mid-season series NUMBERS, starring Judd Hirsch as an FBI agent who solicits the help of his mathematician brother to solve crimes. Sounds like CSI meets MONK. Other cast members David Krumholtz, Sabrina Lloyd, Peter MacNicol, Rob Morrow, and Navi Rawat.

According to Variety, NBC is pulling FATHER OF THE PRIDE off the air during sweeps, and while they haven’t admitted this, the long lead time and the fact they haven’t already ordered more episodes guarantees that there is absolutely no way they can make more than 13 episodes this season… and odds are strong for cancellation. (Especially since — and I didn’t know this — the deal with Dreamworks has the network paying ALL costs for the show, not just a license fee.)

Also, LAX is only going to air twice in its new timeslot during November — and if it bombs again this Wednesday, it could be pulled entirely. Looks like Heather Locklear’s winning streak has finally been broken…

The networks are looking to their bookshelves this development season…

Variety reports that JUDGING AMY producer Hart Hanson is writing a pilot for Fox based on Kathy Reich’s series of Temperance Brennan novels about a female forensic anthropologist in Montreal (Reichs is also a forensic anthropologist).

But it sounds like they are making a few changes for TV…

Lead character, named Marjorie Miles, will have a team of experts to help her solve the mysteries of the bones, including a reconstructive artist and bug experts who can uncover clues about a case by analyzing the creatures surrounding a corpse.

As with Reichs, Miles also will be a writer, though that won’t be a key part of each episode. “It’ll be more of a pain-in-the-ass obstacle that she’s written this book,” which includes characters like the people she works with, Hanson said.

CBS, meanwhile, is developing a pilot based on Elisabeth Cosin’s novel “Zen and the Art of Murder,” about a PI named Zen who toiled in LA. Cosin is wriiting the script… in addition to being a novelist, she’s also a TV vet with writing credits that include BUDDY FARO and LAW AND ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT.

The Drake Hotel in Toronto will start offering sex toys on the room service menu, according to USA Today. Vibrators, massage oils, condoms, velvet restraints and how-to videos can be sent up the guests. The “pleasure kits” start at $35.

The 19 room Drake is a boutique hotel that attracts artists and actors. The aim is service that complements the hotel’s artsy image.

“We see ourselves as a bit of a trailblazer,” owner Jeff Stober says. The racy room service menu, which arrives next month, is “in keeping with the theme of sex that has always played a role in artistic works. We are embracing that artistic spirit.”

Actual embraces will cost extra.

They aren’t the only Toronto hotel that’s added sex-centives. The Grand Hotel, where our MISSING directors like to stay, provides two channels of free, 24-hour porn, for their guests (for the record, I stay at the Cambridge Suites, which offers no such goodies).

If Governor Arnold wants to keep movie production in California, he can forget about tax incentives and renegotiating with unions. Free vibrators for every member of the film crew! Sexual surrogates sent to the door of every screenwriter faced with a production rewrite!

The rumor around the TV biz today is that there’s been a big shake-up behind-the-scenes on ABC’s LOST… and that “Nash Bridges” creator/showrunner Carlton Cuse has been brought in to run the writing staff under exec-producer JJ Abrams.

Keep in mind, it’s just a rumor at this point…but if it’s true, it raises lots of questions about the surprise hit of the new season. What were the problems at LOST? Was Abrams unhappy with the creative direction of the show… or was it the network? What will the new creative direction be? And why bring pick Cuse, whose background is primarily cop shows?

That is is a first. Instead of a campaign to save their favorite show… fans of THE WEST WING are rallying NBC to cancel it. Who knows… twenty- five years from now, they might even take out full-page ads in Variety urging studios not to make a movie version with the original cast.

The whole brouhaha over the revelation that Ashlee Simpson was lip-synching her songs on SNL is hardly a surprise to anyone who has actually seen Ashlee Simpson “sing” (the only people fooled by her are the nine-year-olds who buy her albums). The real story is what this scandal says about SNL, the folks who used to expose and ridicule this kind of cheap fraud rather than committing it.

The real story was summed up very nicely in, of all places, a comment left on former-kid-actor-turned-author Wil Wheaton’s blog.

i missed the ASHLEE SIMPSON fiasco for many of the same reasons you and TONY PIERCE mentioned…it is hard to maintain your edge when you’ve been cutting with it for 35 years…when i think of SNL now…i think of bad television parodies…loud, senseless, time consuming sketches that that seem to have been made to order copies of all that have been played out on SNL before…the ASHLEE episode is the kind of pop SNL used to avoid…such candy coated pop was a favorite SNL target for derisive humor…now the humor is lost in the parody of itself that SNL has become…is this a sign post that SNL can look to as a signal that a change is needed…or will the irony of it all be lost to them…at some point you have to have different aspirations than to be the 7,462th man on the moon…too many trips to the same old place…there are other planets out there to explore…is anyone ready to make the trip?

USA Network has ordered a TV series based on the hit USA miniseries THE 4400. But it’s not as simple as it sounds. Behind that series order is an interesting business story, as reported at zap2it.com, of deal-making and awkward timing.

“The 4400” was caught in a business vortex not of its own making. Its studio, Viacom Productions, has been folded into Paramount Network Productions; and its broadcast outlet, USA Network, was involved in the recent merger between Universal and NBC.

There was, according to other press reports, protracted haggling between NBC, its broadcast partners USA and SciFi, and supplier Paramount. NBC reportedly wanted to retain some rebroadcast rights (ala MONK on ABC & USA, “Law and Order” on NBC and USA, etc.). There was even some question about which NBC/Universal network the series version of THE 4400 would actually air on.

Once that was all ironed out, more problems remained.

When “The 4400” finished its run, none of the producers or actors was retained on contract. The executive producer and show runner, Ira Steven Behr, has since gone on to CBS’ “dr. vegas,” while his predecessor, Rene Echevarria, is now working on NBC’s midseason drama “Medium.”

DR VEGAS isn’t exactly wowing audiences, and the rumor is the show is destined for cancellation. The folks behind THE 4400 are well aware of that… and have been hinting that showrunner Ira Behr may soon be free.

“Maira and I are going to talk about the possibility of having him come over,” says co-executive producer Scott Peters, “because we’re not going to be up and running until March in terms of shooting. This means we have to start writing earlier than that, but not tomorrow.”

Meaning, they can wait for DR. VEGAS to tank. The big hurdle now is getting the cast back for the series…

As the production team reassembles, a bigger challenge may be reassembling the large cast for the drama, in which 4,400 people returned mysteriously in a ball of light. Some had been missing a short time, some for decades. All hadn’t aged and didn’t remember where they had been. Some returned with extraordinary or even dangerous abilities.

The cast included Joel Gretsch (“Taken”) and Jacqueline McKenzie as federal agents dealing with the returnees, with Peter Coyote as their boss. Among those playing returnees were Mahershalalhashbaz Ali, Laura Allen, Patrick Flueger and Michael Moriarty. Mark Valley (“Keen Eddie”), currently a regular on ABC’s “Boston Legal,” joined midway through the run, as did Billy Campbell.

“We’re still negotiating with actors I want,” Peters says. “I want everybody back, because there’s a winning combination. Right now, Joel and Jackie are definitely coming back, which is good, because it would be an awfully difficult show to do without them. It would be hard to do it without any of them, as a matter of fact, because they’re all integral to the success of the show. We have to get Billy Campbell back. He’s tied up at the moment, but we’re going to try to figure out a way to get him back.

Zap2it.com is reporting that ABC is moving forward on a private eye drama from “Usual Suspects” scribe Christopher McQuarrie called HARD TIME.

The drama focuses on a convict who gets out of jail and becomes a successful investigator thanks to his ability to see misdeeds from the perspective of the criminal.

Um…wasn’t that THE ROCKFORD FILES?