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Category: Television (1-10 of 321)

Feb 8 2010 11:00 PM ET

Breaking news: '24' movie inching closer to reality

Categories: Film, Movie Biz, News, Television

Jack Bauer may finally hit the big screen. Though Fox has yet to decide whether to pick up a ninth season of 24, an insider confirmed that the film side is in talks with Billy Ray (State of Play) to write a screenplay for the franchise. Word is the scribe came in and pitched his version of the flick.

Any movement on a film may hinge upon the show’s future with the network; Fox toppers Peter Rice and Kevin Reilly will likely want to see how the show performs over the next few weeks before deciding whether to commit to another season of Bauer racing the clock. Through Jan. 31, 24 is down versus last year by 10% in total viewers (11.9 million versus 13.3 million) and by 15% in adults 18-49 (3.9 versus 4.6). The drama remains Fox’s third-most watched show behind American Idol and House.

A decision is needed soon; a source close to the show said the producers are preparing to write the 23rd and 24th episodes of the current season so they need to know whether to pen a series finale. Production on the drama is scheduled to wrap March 24.

In January, star Kiefer Sutherland told EW that he’d love to do a movie (“It would be a two-hour representation of a day”) and thinks the TV show can actually be done at the same time. ”I actually tried to convince a few people of this. In a media world that is changing unbelievably fast, a television series can either act as a great trailer for a film, or a film can act as a great trailer for a television series. And I think the first person who actually does that is going to change the way television interacts with feature films.

“I think the resistance to it is because, in my father’s generation, if you did films, you didn’t even think about television,” Sutherland continued. “That was a death knell. And if you did television, you wouldn’t be allowed to do films. That was when we had three networks. We have six hundred now, and if I want to see Paul Newman in a movie, I don’t have to go out. And so the game has changed. And I think we’re going to have to adjust with it.” – With additional reporting from Nicole Sperling

More 24 from EW:
24 TV recap: Stick it, Renee…but not to Jack!

Feb 7 2010 10:30 PM ET

'Late Show' producer on Leno-Letterman-Oprah Super Bowl spot: Jay wore disguise to taping

by Lynette Rice

Categories: News, TV Biz, Television

EW talked to The Late Show executive producer Rob Burnett about David Letterman’s surprising decision to include Jay Leno in a promotional spot during the Super Bowl.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Why did you decide to do this?
ROB BURNETT: Well, the 10 seconds we did with Dave and Oprah for the Super Bowl in 2007 went pretty well and CBS came back and said we got 10 seconds again for this one. Nothing is more simultaneously exhilarating and fear-inducing than hearing you have 10 seconds in the Super Bowl. We were banging heads together. How do we come close to topping the last one? Then Dave got this idea. My first call was to Oprah – she got it right away – and then I called [CBS Corp. Chairman] Les Moonves to make sure he was OK with Jay being on CBS. I have to give Les credit … he got it immediately. And then I called [Leno's executive producer] Debbie Vickers … who said, ‘Dave and Jay, in the same room?’ She laughed for a good minute and said Jay would want to call. I hung up, and two minutes later it was Jay. He said ‘This is the way show business should be.’ Debbie then cleared it with NBC Entertainment Chairman Jeff Gaspin and NBC-Universal CEO Jeff Zucker.

How did you manage to pull it off without the press catching wind of it?
We began having logistical meetings that would make the CIA proud. We had to figure out a way to keep it a surprise. NBC arranged to have Jay fly on the NBC jet at 7:30 in morning on Feb. 2 and he was at the Teterboro Airport [in New Jersey] at 3:30 p.m. We snuck him through the front door on Broadway. Jay wore a disguise …a hooded sweatshirt, dark sunglasses and a mustache. Fifteen minutes later, Oprah arrived … but not in a disguise. We shot it in the balcony of the Ed Sullivan Theater.

What was it like when Leno and Letterman first saw each other?
It was great, very professional, very cordial. We shot it in 25 minutes, and it went really, really well. It felt like one of those things where you wake up and say, “I had the strangest dream.” There was no frostiness. We were focused on trying to execute the joke. It would have been a more taxing event had it been us all going out to dinner. If anything was awkward, it was how it wasn’t awkward. It’s interesting… there was a lot of internal conversation about whether this was a good thing to be doing from a PR standpoint. Are we rehabilitating Jay’s image? Dave has a simple edict: If it’s funny, we do it. When CBS says it needs 10 seconds, it’s incumbent upon you to do the funniest bit you can do. Then we learned we had another five seconds. That may not sound like a really big deal but let’s face it … that’s someone’s college education [given how much the typical per-second spot goes for during the Super Bowl], so we were really thrilled about that.

You and Dave must have realized you had the potential to upstage the Super Bowl.
Well, that’s not our problem! [He laughs]. I’ve been asked the question more than once about all these advertisers who spent millions of dollars on their ads. My response is: They had a year, millions of dollars, and 30 seconds! We had one week, no money, and 15 seconds. The bottom line is, if you’re a comedian and you have the chance to do something funny in front of 100 million people, you should do it.

Watch Leno and Letterman declare a grumpy truce during the Super Bowl

Feb 6 2010 12:28 AM ET

'FlashForward' loses showrunner/co-creator: Report

by Lynette Rice

Categories: News, TV Biz, Television

More bad news for the ratings-challenged FlashForward: Variety reports that showrunner/co-creator David Goyer is leaving the ABC series to focus on his film career. Goyer, who often boasted of having outlined the high-concept drama for the next several seasons, will remain as an executive producer. It’s unclear who will replace Goyer, who was the second showrunner to serve on the series (after Mark Guggenheim) that stars Joseph Fiennes and John Cho.

The freshman show will likely have a tough time attracting new viewers when it returns with originals on March 18. Despite lots of early fanfare, FlashForward’s audience dropped from 12.5 million to 7.07 million in just three months. Not coincidentally, ABC has had an equally tough time launching its other high-concept show, V – which lost 35% of its audience (14.3 million to 9.3 million) over just four airings last fall. It will return March 30.

The difficulty of programming such sci-fi dramas surely played a role in NBC’s decision to downgrade Day One – an apocalyptic drama from Heroes scribe Jesse Alexander — to a two-hour backdoor pilot that may (or may not) air sometime this season.

Feb 5 2010 10:08 PM ET

'Biggest Loser' star Danny Cahill offered free plastic surgery from 'The Doctors'

by Lynette Rice

Categories: News, Reality TV, Television, Uncategorized

Ex-contestants of The Biggest Loser who’ve lost the weight but are stuck with lots of excess skin may want to do the daytime talk show circuit – especially if it involves appearing on programs hosted by physicians. During an episode of the syndicated show The Doctors this week, recent winner Danny Cahill, 40, was offered free surgery to remove the significant fold of extra flesh that’s currently circling his gut. Cahill, who won the cash prize in December for losing 239 pounds, agreed to flash his flabby tummy on TV and was instantly rewarded with the mother of all rewards – a free trip to the O.R. To see the moment, click here.

EW asked Cahill at the finale about his excess skin and he said the following: “I’ve got some skin and you know what? Those issues will be taken care of in time (he laughs). When you weigh 430 pounds, and you had a stomach as big as I did, you’re gonna have some skin. But that’s okay, because you know what? I can run a marathon now, thanks to The Biggest Loser.”

Not everybody agrees with such hasty procedures. A doctor from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons told That’s Fit that it’s better to wait. ”As a general rule, the longer the better,” said Dr. Al Aly. “You don’t want to operate on people where there’s a greater potential they can regain their own weight. We say anywhere from three to six months minimum weight stabilization, and preferably a year.”

UPDATE: A spokeswoman for The Biggest Loser told EW that Cahill has no plans to do the surgery in the near future because he’s training for another marathon.

Feb 4 2010 11:14 AM ET

'The Bachelor' exec producer on Internet spoilers: 'It's something that kind of bugs us'

by Lynette Rice

Categories: News, Reality TV, TV Biz, Television

As ABC announced last week, Bachelor producers are busy preparing for the Jason Mesnick-Molly Malaney nuptials on March 8 – the first-ever wedding to come out of the seven-year-old series (Ryan and Trista Sutter met on The Bachelorette). But in some ways, the wedding opens old wounds for producers — specifically how the spoilerific blog realitysteve.com, run by Steve Carbone, accurately revealed last year that Mesnick would first propose to Melissa Rycroft and then dump her for Malaney on a shocking After the Final Rose special. So far this year, Carbone’s blog has already leaked several details about the latest season of The Bachelor starring Jake Pavelka (pictured), including locations of dates, which contestants received “date roses,” and who would be sent home. He’s even posted spoilers about who he claims will be the final two women standing, and who ultimately gets the final rose.

“That’s something that kind of bugs us,” executive producer Mike Fleiss told EW exclusively. “In some ways, it’s just more promotion. We would like to find out [who his source is].” While Fleiss says the show has taken extreme measures in the past to track down leaks — “We spent a lot of money and we hired these guys from the Israeli secret service to shake down people and look at phone records and stuff like that. We ultimately found out who it was. That person no longer works for us.” — he has not gone to such lengths to suss out Carbone’s mole. “We would love to know if anyone knows [who the source is]. I’m offering a $25 reward!” Fleiss’ laissez-faire approach to the leak is due in part to the fact that the realitysteve.com spoilers did not keep fans from tuning in to Jason’s season: The After the Final Rose bombshell scored 17.5 million viewers last March.

As for Carbone, the blogger says he relies on several tipsters who “just fell into my lap.” A former sports talk deejay from L.A. — he’s now living in Texas while working as a national sales rep for home furnishing companies — Carbone says that while he wouldn’t want to read spoilers on his favorite shows like Survivor or American Idol, he likes to “one up” The Bachelor simply because he can. “I don’t go looking for this stuff, it comes to me because I’m willing to throw the show under the bus,” he explains, adding that he’s never received a complaint from ABC or Fleiss. Since his site gets only about 400,000 to 500,000 page views a week, Carbone doesn’t believe it impacts the show negatively. “I spilled everything about this season on Jan. 6, and I don’t think the ratings have suffered. People are still watching because they want to see it play out.”

And (once again), he’s right about The Bachelor: The audience for the Feb. 1 episode grew by 200,000 viewers for a total of 11.7 million, and the show is up 10% in viewers versus the same time last year.

To hear more from Fleiss on the Mesnick-Malaney nuptials, pick up the next issue of Entertainment Weekly, on stands Feb. 5.

Feb 3 2010 05:40 PM ET

Jeff and Jordan on 'The Amazing Race': 'It's a totally different game'

by Lynette Rice

Categories: Big Brother, Reality TV, Television

Apparently, it took CBS all of three days after the Big Brother 11 finale last September to approach Jordan Lloyd and Jeff Schroeder about competing in the 16th edition of The Amazing Race, which premieres Feb. 14. Despite attempts by fans to blow the lid off their latest endeavor, Lloyd and Schroeder couldn’t talk about their participation until now — and they’re not ashamed to admit they’ve watched about as much AR as they have BB. Which is to say, they almost never tuned in before agreeing to hit the race course. “We thought we were going to coast through it like BB, you know, like ‘oh we never saw this before’ and Jordan is like, ‘I never watched BB so I can do this, too,’” Schroeder tells EW. “But it’s a totally different game.”

Ya think? The couple can’t give discuss specifics, though Lloyd recalls having some concerns about the show’s physical demands. “I don’t like to work out. Everybody knows that. If I work out one day, I want to see results and so yeah I was worried,” she says. “Though I was more so worried about having to eat a bug or something. I would rather Jeff eat a bug than me.” When asked if the two ever got hurt, Schroeder would only say, “We are in perfect health right now.”

And apparently, so is their relationship. Though the couple definitely had their share of spats on the course, Schroeder insists their bond remains strong. “To throw a couple into a stressful situation like this, you are going to see different sides to both people,” says Schroeder. “We definitely didn’t stray from who we are. We got along, we got through it and we’re still together. It made us stronger, I think.” And now their goal is to eventually end up in the same state. Lloyd has since moved back to North Carolina, where she resumed her job as a receptionist at a hair salon, while Schroeder is back in Chicago, Ill. where he returned to his sales gig in advertising (the couple made a brief appearance on CBS’ The Bold and the Beautiful in October). “This is the longest we’ve gone without being together,” says Schroeder. “One of us has to move … I’m not saying anyone’s getting engaged though, anything like that.”

For more on Lloyd and Schroeder’s participation in Amazing Race, pick up the next issue of Entertainment Weekly – on stands Friday.

Photo Credit: Monty Brinton/CBS

Jan 29 2010 05:58 PM ET

'All My Children' creator on cancellation of 'As the World Turns' and 'Guiding Light': 'could have been saved'

by Lynette Rice

Categories: Soap Operas, TV Biz, Television

In Los Angeles recently to celebrate the 40th anniversary of All My Children, creator Agnes Nixon — aka the 82-year-old queen of daytime television — talked about her show’s controversial move to the west coast, the future of her other soap One Life to Live, and whether CBS made a mistake in canceling two of its daytime dramas.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: If you had to single out one crowning achievement in those 40 years, what would it be?
AGNES NIXON: All the socially relevant stuff, like the storyline about AIDS. The lesbian and gay story. Because of my having grown up in Nashville, Tenn., a very segregated city, being able to have integrated the show was to me the most important thing.

Have you had a chance to look at the new studio in Los Angeles for All My Children?
It’s three times as big as what we had in New York, which is so exciting. The sets are left up now. It’s just amazing. They’re more beautiful. The problem in New York was they had to be trucked back and forth every day. (Read full post)

Jan 27 2010 03:11 PM ET

'NCIS' versus 'American Idol': Mark Harmon is gaining on Simon Cowell

by Lynette Rice

Categories: American Idol, TV Biz, TV Ratings, Television

American Idol is still referred to as the Death Star in Hollywood, but it’s not entirely immune from the charms of Mark Harmon: last night’s original episode of NCIS attracted 20.15 million viewers — the drama’s closest competitive position ever to the Fox talent show in the demographic (24.19 million). In fact, NCIS doesn’t appear to be impacted at all by Simon Cowell and Co.; the drama, now in its seventh season, is actually up 12 percent in viewers and 16 percent in adults 18-49. At the same time, Idol doesn’t seem to be affected by the presence of Harmon and Michael Weatherly, either; though its ratings aren’t nearly as stratospheric as they were in the early years, Idol is still up 3 percent in viewers and 4 percent among adults 18-49 versus last year (a side note, however: last night’s episode was actually down versus last Tuesday by 8 percent in viewers and 12 percent in adults 18-49). In the end, Idol (naturally) won the timeslot while NCIS was second.

For the season, Fox is still down on Tuesdays by 23% in viewers while CBS is actually up by 10%. No one else has anything to brag about for the night: ABC is down by 13%, NBC, 11%, and CW, 21%.

For more about Tuesday night programming:
Tuesday ratings: ‘Idol’ wins again
‘American Idol’: Team Kara or Team Katy?
Exclusive: ‘NCIS: LA’ star goes AWOL

Jan 27 2010 02:16 PM ET

Jay Leno tells Oprah he'd like to talk to Conan O'Brien

by Lynette Rice

Categories: News, TV Biz, Television

To promote Jay Leno’s appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show tomorrow, Harpo Productions released a short transcript from the interview that was taped yesterday on the set of the comedian’s cancelled primetime show. There’s nothing extraordinary about this particular exchange – Leno typically keeps his feelings to himself during most interviews — but apparently, he goes on to address his decision to return to The Tonight Show and the public reaction to the negotiations, which is obviously being reserved for tomorrow’s broadcast. Here’s an excerpt from the interview:

Winfrey Have you talked to Conan in person?
Leno I haven’t talked to him through all this. No. I haven’t.
Winfrey Did you want to pick up the phone?
Leno Yeah, but it didn’t seem appropriate.
Winfrey Why?
Leno I don’t know. I think it — let things cool down and maybe we’ll talk, you know.
Winfrey Were any of the things that he said about you hurtful?
Leno No. They were jokes. And that’s okay. I mean –
Winfrey So jokes don’t hurt you.
Leno It’s what we do, you know? You can’t — it’s like being a fighter and say when you got punched in the head, did it hurt? Well, yeah. But you’re a fighter. That’s what you do.

On Tuesday, NBC indicated that Leno’s doomed franchise in primetime will go off the air on Feb. 9 – two days earlier than expected.

Jan 26 2010 04:06 PM ET

'The Jay Leno Show' will be off the air by Feb. 9

by Lynette Rice

Categories: News, TV Biz, Television

NBC has quietly indicated that its doomed franchise, The Jay Leno Show, will go off the air on Feb. 9 – two days earlier than expected. The network released an updated programming schedule for February today that announced plans to air a repeat episode of Law & Order: SVU at 10 p.m. on Feb. 10, followed by two back-to-back repeat episodes of The Office on Feb. 11. The network had originally said that Leno’s final day in primetime would be Feb. 11.

Ratings for The Jay Leno Show have remained largely consistent since NBC announced that he would return to 11:30 p.m. During the week of Jan. 18-22 – when just about every media outlet was focusing on the late night bruhaha at NBC – Leno averaged a 1.5 ratings among adults 18-49 and 4.8 million viewers, which was about equal to his season-to-date average. He attracted his biggest audience on Jan. 19, when an average 5.9 million tuned into hear him comment about the ongoing negotiations with Conan O’Brien.