I don’t know if I want to play the Kevin Bacon game (Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon) because the actor is now going to play in a serial killer series for a new Fox TV show in development. I guess things just got real, what if the serial killer kills those close to Bacon? You have to play the game to find him? Okay that is a stretch but weird to think about.

All kidding aside it seems that the project is from Kevin Williamson who recently did the pilot a couple of years ago for Vampire Diares and is better known for his Scream flicks. Bacon’s new series is being described as an “edge of the seat thriller about a diabolical serial killer who uses technology to create a cult of serial killers.” Bacon, fortunately for us fans, will be an FBI profiler who finds himself back in the game to track this nut bag down.

It is amazing the name actors now going to television for projects. It seems the TV networks and studios are realizing that bringing on these big names guarantees advertisers more than newcomers or the actual projection of the pilot itself.

Frank Darabont is not down and out with all the Walking Dead drama that occurred this past summer. Instead the former zombie showrunner has pacted with TNT on a pilot order for “L.A. Noir,” a drama based on the book by John Buntin.

According to Variety the book revolves around,

“Set in the 1940′s and ’50s, project will examine the conflict between the often corrupt Los Angeles Police Department — and its leader, Chief William Parker — and underworld figures such as Mickey Cohen.”

There is no relationship between the series and the book it is based on with the popular video game created by Rockstar games, at least one that is planned at this moment.

The site reports that Darabont will write and direct the pilot much like he did with AMC’s The Walking Dead. He will also exec produce with Michael De Luca and Elliot Webb. This marks an interesting programming strategy for TNT, who is also bringing back a continuation of Dallas, in that this seems like a more scripted kind of series that doesn’t fit with the more episodic series like Leverage, Rizzoli and Isles, and even the Closer (which is ending this season).

Last week TNT gave a 10-episode order to reality series “The Great Escape” from exec producers Betram van Munster and Elise Doganieri. Other pilots recently ordered by the Turner cabler include David E. Kelley’s medical drama “Chelsea General,” western “Gateway” and “Scent of the Missing,” about a canine search and rescue team.

Lost's Emile DeRavin Joins "Once Upon A Time" for ABC

ABC is owned by Disney so it is no doubt they are going to work as many of the Disney princesses from the classic fairy tales into their successful Once Upon A Time Series. I for one am loving this show as it is clever, enjoyable and most importantly has character that are interesting and played by very good actors. Now “a tale as old as time” an actor from a previously successful show is getting recycled onto a new successful show. Lost’s Claire otherwise known as Emile DeRavin will be playing the role of Belle in a Beauty and the Beast centric episode.

In the traditional tales, Belle seems to suffer from Stockholm Syndrome, falling in love with a horrible creature keeping her captive in his magical castle. Once she admits her love, the monster turns into a handsome prince, and the happily ever after commences.

Her role on “Once Upon A Time,” so far is limited to one episode, where reports have her connected in some way to Rumpelstiltskin, portrayed by Robert Carlyle of “Stargate: Universe” fame. I do not know if I like the character tied to Rumpelstiltskin/Mr. Gold considering the latest episode had Cinderella tied to him. It will be interesting to see how this Belle, who will probably be named Bella in Storybrooke, will have her modern reality storyline told. As far as DeRavin’s casting? I love her and think it is a great choice.

Does this fan art warrant a Firefly animated series?

The piece you see above was done by Otis Frampton, and it’s called Fireflies. As many know Fox canceled the series for a variety of reasons one citing the expensive nature of the show. An animated version would certainly solve that and given that most of the actors have voice acted before and still do currently it wouldn’t be hard to get the band back together. I love the idea of a Firefly animated series and would put it right there with my current animated shows, Young Justice and Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.

CBS is remaking the classic western drama, “The Rifleman.” According to sources at Variety, Laeta Kalogridis and Patrick Lussier is penning the script with director, Chris Columbus, setup to direct and exec produce.

The original half-hour drama ran on CBS from 1958-1963. It starred Chuck Connors as a skilled gunman and widowed Civil War hero who moves to uncharted New Mexico territory to raise his young son and gets recruited by the sheriff to help protect the unruly town.

TV western’s are coming back with AMC releasing their new western series and this makes the second western series CBS is planning to remake with Wild Wild West getting a pilot script.

Yesterday we reported that Brian Grazer said that the budget cuts for The Dark Tower could help the adaptation come to life. However it seems that it won’t be on the big screen. According to an interview between Grazer and MTV, part of Ron Howard’s adaptation of the hit novel will air on HBO.

“We’re going to do ['The Dark Tower'] with HBO,” Grazer told MTV. “We’ll do the TV with HBO, and we’ll do the movie with…to be determined. We’ll do it right.”

Alright so we got one part of The Dark Tower taken care of, but there is still the issue of finding a suitable studio that will take on the large and ambitious adaptation. As we reported the budget cuts actually helped bring the movie closer to being developed.

Grazer added that “We’re going to do that movie. We’ve lost $45 million out of the budget. When people say no to you enough, then you have to lose money, which we’ve done without harming the scope of the film.”

So according to Grazer, all The Dark Tower really lost was $45 million in unnecessary fluff. Considering that $45 million is a lot of cuts in the budget, I am sure that the studio can now consider this a safe bet and not a gamble.

So two episodes in and AMC is already getting ready for The Walking Dead season 3, in fact they have already approved of it. The network has seen a huge spike in the 18-49 demographic in the two episode run. Based on the comic-book written by Robert Kirkman, The Walking Dead is overseen by showrunner Glen Mazzara and produced by Kirkman, Gale Anne Hurd, David Alpert and Frank Darabont

As the comic continues to grow, so does the show, and this new season extension ensures that we get to see Rick Grimes and the rest of the group try to survive the zombie apocalypse for another day. Seeing that very little time has passed between two episodes, this guarantees that we will see character growth, loss, and some very exciting twist and turns and possibly more if season three does well.

Here is the official press release below

AMC announced today the renewal of “The Walking Dead” for a third season. Season two continues to deliver the strongest telecasts for any drama in basic cable history against Adults 18-49 shattering a basic cable record set nearly 10 years ago for a single drama telecast (“The Dead Zone”). “The Walking Dead” is based on the comic book series written by Robert Kirkman and published by Image Comics. Glen Mazzara serves as series’ showrunner. Kirkman, Gale Anne Hurd, David Alpert and Frank Darabont are executive producers. Greg Nicotero is a co-executive producer.

“Today we are pleased to announce that the ‘dead’ shall live as we proudly renew ‘The Walking Dead’ for a third season on AMC and, globally, with our terrific partners at Fox International Channels,” said Charlie Collier, AMC’s President. “We are thankful for everyone’s contribution in front of and behind the camera as we continue to make ‘The Walking Dead’ a unique television experience. And, we are so proud as it continues to set viewership records around the world.”

“The Walking Dead” received rave reviews from countless critics, both domestic and international, who heralded the series as “above all else, “The Walking Dead” hasn’t lost the most important ingredient in its strangely successful recipe: it’s thrilling” (The Hollywood Reporter), “…with Dead’s riveting cast of characters, the personal dynamics are almost as potent as the gory thrills” (Us Weekly), “The Walking Dead is a feast. Dig in.” (The Guardian, UK), “It doesn’t even take three minutes to realize that this series is setting standards” (Der Tagesspiegel, Germany).

Once Upon A Time Proved to Be Magic for ABC but will it keep?

I may have been one of the few perhaps one of the many, not sure which way you would look at it, that really enjoyed “Once Upon A Time.” It seems though no matter what you thought of the pilot episode, the series was a hit on it’s opening.

According to Variety, the series from Lost writers, Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, debuted in strong fashion Sunday night, earning a 3.9 rating/10 share in the 18-49 demo and 12.79 million viewers overall. This was done amidst NFL Football and the World Series, that is pretty amazing if you think about it. Not to mention it was up against The Walking Dead and The Amazing Race.

Once Upon a Time, for the most part is a set-up as are most first episodes. The pilot treads on a bit of exhaustion trying to make this two-world story concept just right for viewers. Most of the episode revolves on exposition, explaining why this happened and then giving us all the character set-ups. It starts off at the end of the traditional Snow White tale. Prince Charming kisses her and the happily ever after begins. This of course is not the case as the evil queen decides she wants to curse everyone so she can get her happy ending. Flashforward to Storybrooke, Maine, a modern day, small town where the same fairy-tale characters including the likes of Mother Goose, Red Riding Hood, The Huntsman, Rumpelstiltskin, and Jiminy Cricket exist but they are ordinary human citizens. The Evil Queen, she is the mayor of the town. They all have no memory of their literary heritage and that is the twist, well at least one of them. The series for the most part seems like it will revolve around the two Jennifers; that is Ginnifer Goodwin as Snow White and Jennifer Morrison as Emma Swan.

Morrison’s Emma Swan is the grown-up daughter of Snow White (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Prince Charming (played by Josh Dallas). Swan is visited one night after a job, she is a bondsman, by a young boy named, Henry (Jared Gilmore), who says he’s her birth son, having figured that out by reading a book of fairy tales. When returning him to his town she can’t get over how nothing is what it seems. A clock stands at 8:15 and according to Henry has never moved because “time is frozen”. However, once Swan decides to stay in the town for a bit, the clock starts ticking, setting some interesting events in motion.

The show does a fairly good job setting up the two-worlds, for the most part setting up how these fairy-tale creatures came to be in our reality. I as a fan of fantasy began to wonder though how they would plan to keep the dark fantasy elements going on in the fairy-tale world given we saw it’s demise already. Staying and watching the next week promo, I was surprised to see where they planned to go with the show and I am excited. Kitsis and Horowitz learned a lot on Lost and that is evident in this series. They learned how to balance the fantasy with non-fantasy, develop backstories but more specifically go in an interesting non-linear episodic narrative style that revolves around flawed characters and questionable decision making.

I have been waiting for this kind of show to take off on the primetime level as I think there is an audience for this kind of escapist television. I also think women and teens gravitate more to a series revolving around famed Disney fairy-tale type characters rather than sci-fi elements that may have killed interest in Lost for them. People can draw upon their child hood memories of these characters in a live-action setting but also the idea of these characters being trapped, we know too well what that feeling is like. I just hope the show keeps and judging by the numbers it seems like a hit for now. I will be interested to see the second episode drop off. Now that the series is set up I can’t wait for real interesting developments, especially, Robert Carlyle’s Rumpelstiltskin/Mr. Gold who is seems like another Machevellian type character ala Ben Linus/Arvin Sloane to get excited about.

There was a huge anticipation for the season premiere of The Walking Dead on Sunday. In fact it was one of the most watched season opener. But it just didn’t feel like it was the highly anticipated season opener that AMC made it out to be, and in fact felt like a large webisode to fill in the gaps between season one and season two. So here are five things that I thought The Walking Dead season opener could have done without.

1. Andrea whining about not dying her way for 10 minutes.
Fans already knew that Dale denied Andrea’s death by taking her away from the CDC’s decontamination in both the marathon that preceded the season premiere and the sneak preview minutes before it. But I understand that we need to get Andera’s side of the story to feel her pain and feel that something she had the right to do was taken away. There also needs to be tension to not only divide the group but build the story. But there is no need for the show to let her to go on and on and on to Dale that he took her suicide away made the story drag. Andera had plenty of time to commit suicide so why not do it then, why not just let herself get bit, she knows she will die either way. Hopefully she does leave with Shane that way I don’t have to hear her bitch at Dale for a majority of the show.

2. T-Dog and Daryl are buddy buddy now.
Exactly what happened between these two for them to be BFFs? Didn’t T-Dog leave Daryl’s brother to die? Everything about Daryl in season one would of left T-Dog for the walkers to eat, so what happened between the CDC decontamination and the herd crossing for Daryl to feel compelled to save T-Dog? Everything about this particular dynamic seems off. While I enjoy Daryl being the bad ass of the group, killing zombies with cross bows, tracking kids, and performing zombie autopsies, I want to know why he didn’t leave T-Dog to die.

3. Exactly how much time can you spend at church?
Sophia’s gone! You searched the premises so why stay behind to shout a prayer? With only hours of daylight left, and the search party spilt, you need to find Sophia as quick as you can and not just dilly-dally. As the age-old saying goes for these apocolyptic movies “God cannot help you now,” so why bother asking him for a break. Honestly aking him for a break seems out of the question since he let the dead walk and eat 99.9% of the population.

4. Hey kids have fun roaming the empty freeway, don’t worry about the threat of zombies.
Responsibility. These parents have none. I get that Sophia needed to get lost to build the story, but losing her this way only shows the irresponsibility of the parents and wrongfully blames Rick, who was trying to do his job. I would of rather had them be separated trying to out run the herd in the middle of the freeway graveyard. Those kids were not contributing to anything, they should have stayed within arms distance.

5. Nothing Has Changed.
If anything bothered me about The Walking Dead season premiere it’s the fact that none of the characters changed except for Shane. He is the one character, who wants to do something. In fact he already has a plan and it is a plan that makes sense. For all his suffering, for all the inaccessibility, and all his love for Lori, he is willing to separate from the group, all because Rick is now in the picture. But Andrea still wants to kill herself, Dale is trying to save and keep everyone together, I still wonder why Carol is in the picture (she doesn’t serve any purpose other than being a mom to Sophia), and T-dog, well we don’t get to see enough of him so I can’t complain. But after escaping the CDC decontamination, surviving a pack of zombies, and failing to find Sophia, the only character growth was Shane?

Overall the episode was decent and just didn’t live up to its expectation. It started off fairly strong and then it just went down hill before Carl getting shot looking at “the sign.” Hopefully the show can pick up from there, other wise its going to be a long 13 episodes of looking at how great the zombie FXs are.

Cougar Town might not return until mid-season but you can catch your favorite stars and cast members from the cul-de-sac comedy in various other shows on TV right now as they will be cameoing regularly.

According to USA Today, the cast will be popping up on more than a dozen shows as uncredited background actors. Starting on Thurs., Oct.13 the cast will be infiltrating shows across several networks. Look for Ian Gomez to kick things off at 9PM ET on ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ and Courteney Cox and Christa Miller to play a lesbian couple at a fertility clinic on ‘Private Practice’ at 10PM ET on ABC.

Series co-creator Bill Lawrence said the cameos were designed to promote the show. It is possible this idea came out of last year’s surprise cameo crossover with NBC’s “Community,” where Abed showed up in the background of an episode of Cougar Town only to then reference it humorously in the episode “Dinner with Abed”. Cougar Town returned the cameo favor with Dan Byrd and Busy Phillips appeared as background characters on ‘Community,’

AOL TV says that “13 shows are game for the cameos, but Lawrence told USA Today he’s hoping to have more than 20 participating. In addition to ‘Grey’s,’ ‘Private Practice’ and ‘Dancing,’ look for ‘Cougar Town’ actors to pop up on ABC’s ‘Body of Proof,’ ‘Castle,’ ‘Man Up!’ and ‘The Middle.’ Actors will also appear on ‘How I Met Your Mother’ and Nick Jr.’s ‘Yo Gabba Gabba!’ Cameos on NBC’s ‘Parenthood’ and CBS’s ’2 Broke Girls’ are also in the works.”

Watch Abed hilariously in the background here. If you remember in the Community episode he tells us that he crapped his pants in the moment, haha!

Joel and Ethan Coen

With titles like Raising Arizona, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, No Country for Old Men, A Serious Man, and True Grit under their names, the Coen Brothers (Joeal and Ethan) are ready for their newest venture. Television. The project is titled HarveKarbo, and it has received a script commitment with a significant penalty from Fox. In laments terms it means this project will most likely happen. HarveKarbo will feature the type of quirky, offbeat characters that have become a staple of the Coen brothers’ movies. HarveKarbo has the title character — an ill-tempered LA private investigator whose cases frequently involve the depraved doings of the Hollywood elite — and his deadbeat friends in Los Angeles’ El Segundo.

The two co-created the new single camera project with Phil Johnston, who will also co-produce, in conjuction with Imagine Entertainment’s Brian Grazer and Francie Calfo at Fox.

Deadline

Now that new pilots have aired, networks are making their final decisions on whether or not to cancel their new shows. Fox has already picked up a full season order for the new Zooey Deschanel comedy New Girl, after it has received amazing ratings and now NBC has made their own announcement by giving the Will Arnett, Christina Apple Gate and Maya Rudolph comedy Up All Night and White Cumming’s Whitney full season orders and cancelling The Playboy Club. I am surprised that Whitney is getting a pick up, the writing is weak, the comedy is forced, the laugh track is distracting, and the performances are artificial. But the network, who has made plenty of mistakes, decided that it deserved the full season order. Although I am not familiar with Cumming’s comedic styles, I’ve heard that she is a wonderful comedian and Whitney is nothing like her stand-up.

However, I am throughly enjoying Up All Night. Think of it as the true comedic answer to Modern Family, but with just one family. The writing and the comedy are on point as it tells the story of a family trying to adjust their lives to their first child.

“We made comedy an important goal for us this season and I’m very pleased to be making full-season commitments to both ‘Whitney’ and ‘Up All Night’,” said Robert Greenblatt, chairman of NBC Entertainment. “We’re thrilled with the creative direction of both shows as well as the potential for them to continue to build loyal audiences over the coming months. We’re proud of all of the producers, writers, actors, and directors who have worked so hard to bring these shows to life.”

NBC’s other new shows like Prime Suspect and Free Agents await their fates, The Playboy Club, starring Amber Heard, wasn’t so lucky. Weak writing and low ratings brought down the retro show that tried to be the network’s Mad Men into cancellation.

[comingsoon.net]

Carlton Cuse Is Producing a Spiritual Drama for ABC

Former Lost showrunner and Executive Producer, Carlton Cuse, is teaming with famed author/Pastor Rob Bell for a new spiritual drama for ABC. The series titled Stronger will have spiritual overtones with a story revolving around Tom Stronger, a musician and teacher, and his spiritual journey as he becomes a benefactor and guide to others. ABC dabbled a bit before with a spiritual series known as Eli Stone. Pushing Daises was also a stylized comedy that discussed morality, death and other spiritual stuff.

CBS’ had huge success in the 90s, early 2000s running spiritual based series such as The Promised Land, Joan of Arcadia and Touched By an Angel.

It seems like genre is coming back in these “perilous times” for those who want to see shows about spiritual struggle. I commend the network for taking the risk or rather the “leap of faith.”

Deadline reports that “music is expected to be a big part of the show, which features autobiographical elements as Bell is a former musician and played with rock/gospel bands in the 1990s.”

The site also reports that the idea from, Cuse and Bell, came when they met at the 2011 Time 100 gala.”The two immediately hit it off and soon concocted the idea for Stronger. While spiritual, Stronger won’t be supernatural. It will touch on the spiritual side of people’s lives much like the final season of Lost did and like Bell has done in his career as a pastor speaking to congregations of more than 10,000.”

Cuse has another project, Civil War drama Point of Honor, in development at ABC. Co-written by Cuse and Randall Wallace, Point of Honor was sold late last year and remains in consideration. The site reports that Cuse is also writing a film for Fox with Shawn Levy attached.