bionic woman
Trade Roundup: Possible Strike Quietly Rushing Ron Howard’s Middlebrow Genius
6:00AM Defamer Hollywood | · Ron Howard and Akiva Goldsman are frantically finalising the shooting script of Da Vinci Code sequel Angels & Demons before the Oct. 31st deadline, hoping that the mad rush towards production won’t jeopardise the duo’s ability to produce the kind of easily digestible, crowd-pleasing entertainment that always results from their lucrative collaborations. Meanwhile, star Tom Hanks has been presented with a hair-growing schedule that will barely provide the actor with enough time to reproduce his character’s signature demi-mullet. Truly, no one is immune from the pressures of the looming™ strike. [Variety] · Smelling Oscar, Jamie Foxx will star in DreamWorks’ adaptation of the book The Zebra Murders: A Season of Killing, Racial Madness and Civil Rights, playing one of “trailblazing black detectives who set out to solve a series of racially motivated serial killings that rocked San Francisco in the autumn and winter of 1973-74.” It’s a serial killer flick! It’s a socially conscious civil rights tale! Academy voters are already fantasising about checking off Foxx’s name on their ballots. [Variety] · Demonstrating that Hollywood Cares About The Wildfires, Disney kicks in $2 million in relief. [Variety] · Michael Mann is making plans to butch up a gone-too-soft Robert De Niro. [Variety] More »
Trade Roundup: WGA Fires Warning Shot Above Studios’ Heads
4:30AM Defamer Hollywood | The WGA, in an aggressive measure meant to show the studios that the protracted ball-tickling session that’s defined the negotiations until now must come to an end, has redrafted and broadened their strike rules to now allow for “pug-faced studio types so much as looking at us funny.” [Variety] Hollywood’s dreamy consciences George Clooney and Leonardo DiCaprio may team up for Warner Bros.’s adaptation of Farragut North, a play loosely based on the Howard Dean campaign. (Sorry Jake, torture-lovers not invited to the party.) [Variety] More »
Isaiah Washington More Popular Than Hillary And Barack Combined, Thank You Very Much
8:00AM Defamer Hollywood | Isaiah Washington, now a member of Bionic Woman’s big happy family, is never too busy to shatter the deafening, one-day silence that followed his ouster from Grey’s Anatomy at the hands of a shadowy cabal of moustache-twirling gay foes. Speaking to Extra, the actor delivered a curiously roundabout answer to a question about whether or not potential Bionic viewers might be turned off by his year of very bad press: Extra: Did you ever worry about any negative feeling that might affect the ratings of this show? [...] Washington: I was just recently at the Congressional Black Caucus, this past weekend. And there was a gentleman there who was a member of those 43 members by the name of Sen. Barack Obama. And there was also two young women there – or, women there – one named Nancy Pelosi, and another named Hillary Rodham Clinton. More »
Trade Roundup: Hillary Locks Up Crucial Meathead Endorsement
5:15AM Defamer Hollywood | Rob Reiner officially endorses Hillary Clinton, immediately embracing her campaign’s talking points on Barack Obama: “Based on the experience I have had in politics, and I have been on the front lines in a lot of these fights, I came around to realising that we do need the most experienced and most qualified person to run the country.” [Variety] The much-anticipated premiere-night Nielsen deathmatch between NBC’s Bionic Woman remake and ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy spin-off is won by Bionic; meanwhile, Kid Nation dropped off from its unspectacular debut numbers of last week. [THR] Mark your calendars, Michael Bay fans, because giant fucking robots are coming again, eventually: Paramount and DreamWorks have staked out June 26th, 2009 for Transformers 2. And the project stays even if Spielberg and his pals go. [Variety] Bonnie Hunt is getting a daytime talk show. [THR] And on the development battlefront, NBC and ABC set up competing, Famesque projects about young people chasing their performing arts dreams in NY. [Variety] More »
‘Creative Differences’ End NBC’s Romance With ‘Bionic Woman’ Showrunner
4:00AM Defamer Hollywood | The set of much-buzzed-about new NBC series Bionic Woman – eagerly anticipated by late-70s television nostalgists, the indestructible-heroine-loving Heroes set, and fanboys drooling over their weekly primetime appointment with star Michelle Ryan’s six million dollar rack alike – may be officially troubled™ – Var reports that “creative differences” (not the Mandy Patinkin kind, we’ll assume) have forced the network to part ways with showrunner Glen Morgan, and discusses rumours that the series might be taking a “getting its shit together” hiatus: There had been word around town that “Bionic” was also shutting down production, but an NBC rep said that isn’t the case. However, industry insiders believe it’s possible the show – which is now in production on its fifth episode – still might take a break for a while in order to give the writers a chance to focus on refining the show’s directions. More »
Isaiah Washington Reveals How NBC’s Ben Silverman Swept Him Off His Feet
9:00AM Defamer Hollywood | By now, we thought that former Grey’s Anatomy star Isaiah Washington serial silence- breakings about the turbulent events of his recent career would be yielding diminishing returns, with nothing he could offer at this point possibly topping the virtuoso gay-conspiracy theories and McDreamy character assassinations to which we’ve been treated since his firing. But we were wrong. So very, very wrong. In an interview with EW.com meant to clarify the timeline of his controversial addition to the cast of Bionic Woman, Washington recounts the amazing speed with which newly installed NBC rock star Ben Silverman moved to adopt him into his network family once he discovered that the actor had been disowned by ABC. We pick up the narrative at the Chateau Marmont, where Ozwald “House of” Boateng, upon hearing that his buddy Isaiah needed a new job, set into motion the following series of completely fucking insane events:
Isaiah Washington Curious To Know How McDreamy Likes Him Now, Punk
3:45AM Defamer Hollywood | With the announcement that gay-slur-spouting primetime orphan Isaiah Washington was placed into Bionic Woman foster care by NBC rock-star/case-worker Ben Silverman, the actor’s mood went from a volatile Mad As Hell And Not Going To Take It Anymore to Quietly Vindicated, But Still Wanting to Break My Silence a Few More Times. After a recent Larry King Live appearance in which Washington reassured America of his enduring admiration of Gays, the actor went on to explain to Access Hollywood how the real villain – aside, of course, from mastermind T.R. Knight, pulling his pink puppet strings from on-high – was Patrick “McEvil” Dempsey: “Patrick is… Patrick is Patrick Dempsey. And he protects himself well,” Isaiah said. “He did what he felt he needed to do and remained silent.” [...] More »
‘Bionic’ Producers Believe In Second Chances, Whatever Ben Silverman Tells Them To Say About Hiring Isaiah Washington
5:15AM Defamer Hollywood | Realising that explaining the reason that Isaiah Washington has unexpectedly joined the cast of their new series was, “Because Ben Silverman knew everyone would go apeshit if we put the angry Grey’s Anatomy doctor onto our show. And, by golly, Ben was right! People hate that guy!” might get them off on the wrong foot with their new boss, the executive producer of Bionic Woman was more politic in discussing why he was willing to take on the actor’s prohibitively heavy baggage. Reports TVWeek.com’s TCA blog: “We believe in second chances,” said executive producer Jason Smilovic. “The way to change a problem … rather than excommunicate somebody, is to allow them to make amends.” More »
