When last we left Bryan Fuller‘s reboot/re-imagining/overhaul of the classic Sixties TV show The Munsters, it was being described as a mix of True Blood and Modern Family. While difficult to imagine exactly what that means, at least it sounded encouraging. The latest update sounds less encouraging. TV Line is reporting the show has been renamed from The Munsters to Mockingbird Lane, after the street the family lives on. Read more after the jump. Read More »
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Tim Burton has two movies coming out in 2012, Dark Shadows and Frankenweenie, but what he does after that is very much up in the air. The Batman, Edward Scissorhands and Alice in Wonderland director is attached to several different projects but, as of this moment, his interest is mostly on something new: a live-action version of the classic Carlo Collodi book and Disney film Pinocchio. And he’d like Robert Downey Jr. to play the woodcarver who makes a real life boy. Read more after the jump. Read More »
Posted on Monday, December 12th, 2011 by Angie Han
Each December since 2004, studio executive Franklin Leonard has compiled the best unproduced screenplays of the year, as voted by hundreds of execs, agency guys, and high-level assistants. Titled The Black List, the compendium highlights both established screenwriters and up-and-comers, and has served as a launching pad in the past for projects like Juno, Lars and the Real Girl, and (500) Days of Summer. Last year’s list included Margin Call, Crazy, Stupid, Love, The Hunger Games, and Snow White and the Huntsman.
It should be noted that the headline is somewhat misleading — some of these screenplays have already been acquired and are already in development, though according to Leonard none will have entered principal photography by December 31, 2011. Also worth pointing out is that, as in previous years, there have been rumors that some of the participants have been accused of using the Black List to promote their own clients or friends. Finally, as Leonard reminds us each time, “The Black List is not a ‘best of’ list. It is, at best, a ‘most liked’ list.”
Regardless, we can always rely on the Black List to stir up conversation among both industry insiders and outside spectators alike, so without further ado, hit the jump for the complete 2011 list.
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Posted on Monday, December 5th, 2011 by Angie Han
We’ve been following Bryan Fuller‘s reimagining of The Munsters for NBC with a mixture of curiosity and trepidation ever since it was first announced over a year ago. On the one hand, another reboot of the beloved ’60s series seems totally unnecessary, and there’s always the fear that the new version won’t do the old one justice. On the other, if someone has to do it, the guy who brought us Pushing Daisies and Dead Like Me seems like a pretty good pick. Our hopes crept up just a little bit higher when Bryan Singer boarded the project last week to produce and direct the pilot. Now we have more details on the project, and while it doesn’t sound bad, it doesn’t sound exactly like the Munsters we remember, either. Read on after the jump.
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In 2010 when talk first started to surface about a new version of The Munsters, it was to be a collaboration between Guillermo del Toro and Bryan Fuller (Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls, Pushing Daisies). The show stalled out and when NBC eventually asked Fuller to rework the pilot script into something edgier, Guillermo del Toro was already moving forward with Pacific Rim.
A new name from the roster of geek-friendly film directors has joined the production, however. Bryan Singer will now act as executive producer of the new Munsters, and he’ll direct the pilot, too. Read More »
Posted on Thursday, November 17th, 2011 by Angie Han
We’ve got a lot of the usual news bits about casting, renewals, and so on in today’s TV Bits, but first, don’t you want to read about a possible racial slur in a decades-old episode of Fraggle Rock?
After the jump:
- A Texas man reports an offensive slur in a 1984 episode of Fraggle Rock
- Fox’s J.J. Abrams-produced Alcatraz changes showrunners
- NBC picks up Bryan Fuller’s The Munsters pilot
- Comedy Central renews South Park for like the next million* seasons
- Becki Newton heads to CBS’ How I Met Your Mother
- Lone Star actor James Wolk lands on ABC’s Happy Endings
* And by “million,” I mean “five.”
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Briefly: In September French film studio Gaumont announced the LA opening of Gaumont International Television, a company set up to produce TV shows for the North American market. One of two projects mentioned at the launch of the company was Hannibal, a TV series based on the Hannibal Lecter character created by novelist Thomas Harris in the book Red Dragon, and immortalized on film by Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs. (Brian Cox had played ‘Hannibal Lecktor’ in Manhunter, the original film based on Red Dragon, before Hopkins played the role, but it was Hopkins who turned Lector into a screen icon.)
Hannibal, the TV show (not to be confused with the Ridley Scott movie of the same name from 2001), is written and exec produced by Bryan Fuller. The hour-long drama has now been set up at NBC, and if the network execs like Fuller’s first script the project will skip the pilot stage and go straight to a 13-episode order. We still don’t know much about the story; all that has been said is that the series would “center on Lecter’s early days, namely his time going head-to-head with FBI agent Will Graham.” No casting has been publicly mentioned at this point. [Deadline]
French film studio Gaumont is launching an LA-based TV production arm, Gumont International Television, and in doing so plans to bring an iconic screen killer back to life. Two projects are mentioned in the release informing of the new company. One, written by Michael Hirst, is a six-hour Madame Tussaud mini-series. The other, written by Bryan Fuller (Heroes, Pushing Daisies) will be about the early days of Hannibal Lecter, the serial killer who became one of the world’s most famous film characters thanks to Anthony Hopkins’ portrayal in The Silence of the Lambs.
(Brian Cox had previously played the character in Manhunter, and Gaspard Ulliel later played him in Hannibal Rising.)
All the press release offers as far as details is that the show will “center on Lecter’s early days, namely his time going head-to-head with FBI agent Will Graham.” So this is a drawn out cat and mouse procedural? Sounds like that’s the case, with the show taking place between the events of Hannibal Rising and Manhunter. Combining a universally-known character with the perennially popular crime procedural seems like such an obvious move I’m surprised it has taken this long to occur. [via ComingSoon]
