TV Bits: 'Powerless' Cancelled, 'Wag The Dog' HBO Series, Damien Chazelle, Jesse Eisenberg & More

On this edition of TV Bits:

According to Polygon, NBC has pulled the remaining two episodes of its superhero-adjacent series Powerless from its schedule. I'd heard decent things about this DC Universe show, which followed a group of inventors and researchers who live in a world in which superheroes and villains are constantly clashing and making life difficult for regular people. Justin Halpern, one of Powerless's co-showrunners, answered some questions for fans yesterday on Reddit after the news came out, and he speculated that the remaining episodes might get burned off on Hulu, but the network hasn't released any official plans for it yet. He also teased what would have happened in the finale:

Wish you could have seen the finale. LexCorp and President Luthor try to destroy the earth and our guys stop them. We really went for it in the finale. I think we spent 5 episodes worth of our effects budget on it. MONEY IN THE TOILET, NOW, FOLKS

The whole Q&A is definitely worth a read if you were a fan of the show. Reruns of Superstore will air in its place at 8pm on Thursdays.

La La Land Director Heads To The Eddy

Hot on the heels of his Best Director Oscar for La La Land, Whiplash writer/director Damien Chazelle will be directing for television for the first time in his career – and, unsurprisingly, this project involves music.

THR reports that Chazelle will direct The Eddy, a musical drama set in Paris that "revolves around a club, its owner, the house band and the volatile city that surrounds them." It doesn't have a home network yet, but with Chazelle's heat in the industry right now, I imagine it won't take long to track one down. Jack Thorne (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child) is writing the script. In the meantime, Chazelle's next film will be the Neil Armstrong biopic First Man.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice star Jesse Eisenberg is teaming up with J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot Productions for a new comedy called The Market. Deadline reports that Eisenberg will write, star in, and direct the half-hour single camera series, which follows a recently widowed man named Howard Katzman, "who moves to Pittsburgh to live with his adult son, Stan (Eisenberg). Both men simultaneously lose their jobs due to the changing American economy and are thrust into an unforgiving job market." No word yet on who's playing Howard.

I've read a couple of Eisenberg's pieces in The New Yorker, but didn't realize he's also a playwright, having written three plays over the past six years. The multi-hyphenate has appeared in a couple of TV shows thus far (including Get Real and Modern Family), but this will be the first time he's integral to the creation of a series.

And finally, The Hollywood Reporter reveals that Barry Levinson's 1997 political satire Wag the Dog is getting revamped for the modern era as a half-hour scripted comedy on HBO. Levinson will return to direct if the network orders a pilot, and he'll executive produce alongside the movie's star Robert De Niro. Rajiv Joseph (Draft Day, My America, Army of One) is writing the script, and HBO describes the new adaptation like this:

"[It's] an ode to the classic film but moving the weapons of mass distraction beyond politics and into business, entertainment and, yes, nonprofits. In the 21st century with the tools of social media at their hands, nothing is off limits to a small group of operators when it comes to manufacturing reality. Fake news is so yesterday."

Sound like something you'd tune in to see?