Joseph Barbera, half of the Hanna-Barbera animation team that gave us the misadventures of Tom and Jerry, Yogi Bear, Scooby-Doo and so many other memorable charcters, died on Monday of natural causes. He was 95. See Reuters for the full obit.... Chris Hayward, an Emmy-winning writer who helped develop characters for the Rocky and His Friends TV show, died of cancer on Nov. 20. He was 81.
Per the Hollywood Reporter, the U.K. Film Council is developing a feature adaptation of Peter Pan in Scarlet, the officially sanctioned sequel to the J.M. Barrie classic.... Willem Dafoe is a Nazi officer whose life is saved by Jewish circus clown Jeff Goldblum in the World War II Holocaust drama Adam Resurrected.... Warner Bros. and producer Jerry Weintraub are developing a new revisiting of the Tarzan tale. Guillermo del Toro is in talks to direct.... Miramax is bringing the Pulitzer-winning Broadway drama Doubt to the big screen.... Per Variety, Julia Ormond is Lindsay Lohan's mother in I Know Who Killed Me.... Dimension Films is turning the comic book Madman into a live-action feature, to be penned by creator Michael Allred and director George Huang (Swimming with Sharks).
Grey's Anatomy's Sara Ramirez is partnering with Dove to invite women to create their own 30-second commercial for the new Dove Cream Oil Body Wash Collection, via DoveCreamOil.com. The best spot will premiere during ABC's presentation of the Academy Awards on Feb. 25, 2007.... Speaking of the Oscars, for the second consecutive year, ABC will lead out of the telecast with a Jimmy Kimmel Live special.... FX has landed cable rights to Martin Scorsese's The Departed, to air in late 2008.... Music-video vixen turned Surreal Lifer Tawny Kitaen has entered a six-month drug-rehab program, after being slapped with a felony charge of cocaine possession last May.
Before I delve into writing this morning's column, I just want to throw this out there for the many and passionate fans of TBS' My Boys: The cabler has ordered nine additional episodes of its first original scripted comedy series, for a Season 1 total of 22. To "celebrate," TBS has bundled together five episodes to premiere the nights of Tuesday, Dec. 26, Wednesday, Dec. 27, and Thursday, Dec. 28 — the final night offering up a "mid-season finale." The nine just-ordered episodes will go into production in early 2007, to air in the summer.
Was ABC programming guru Stephen McPherson reading your comments in this blog over the weekend? Variety is reporting that Day Break, pulled from the network's schedule effective immediately, will finish up its 13-episode run on ABC.com. ABC has also specified that Day Break will be replaced for the next two Wednesdays not just by mere sitcom repeats but by holiday-themed sitcom repeats... of According to Jim and George Lopez. (Please. Stop. Specifying.) Starting Jan. 3, In Case of Emergency and Knights of Prosperity debut and will fill the 9 pm hour. Show Me the Money, meanwhile, is being replaced Tuesdays at 8 with new and old eppys of America's Funniest Home Videos.In noncringe-worthy programming news, ABC is encoring Brothers & Sisters Fridays at 9, beginning Jan. 12.
Per Variety, NBC has scaled back its order for the mid-season Jeff Goldblum drama Raines, from 13 episodes to a mere six, plus the pilot. Still, the series is slated to (finally, finally) make its premiere on Fridays starting in March.
Earning $27 million in its first weekend, Will Smith's The Pursuit of Happyness placed No. 1 at the weekend box office, besting Eragon (which debuted with $23.4 million). Rounding out the top five were Charlotte's Web (opening with $12 million), Happy Feet ($8.5 mil, for a total to date of $150 mil) and The Holiday ($8.2 mil). Last week's champ, Apocalypto, dropped nearly 50 percent, netting a No. 6-worthy $7.7 mil, while Dreamgirls, in a three-city, $25-a-ticket "roadshow" engagement, earned $360,000 across 21 screenings.
Later this month, the CW network's CWTV.com site will begin beta testing a video player that will stream full-length episodes of such series as Supernatural and Veronica Mars, Variety reports. (Until now, CW fare has only been available via iTunes.) Among CWTV.com's bells and whistles will be the option to e-mail a one- or two-minute snippet to your pals/Dawn Ostroff.
In an e-mail obtained by the New York Post's Page Six, Lindsay Lohan details for pals the wear-and-tear she is suffering pole dancing in preparation to play a stripper in the thriller I Know Who Killed Me. In the (very poorly written) missive, the starlet laments being "bruised everywhere. I mean, we're talkin', like, upper- and inner-thigh action bruised." (She then adds — and this is where I get skeptical — "I didn't know it was actually possible to have bruises in such areas of the body.") Be it all for naught, Lo now looks at pole-dancing practitioners with a new eye. "Strippers, dude, I tell you, I really respect the [c-word]s now," she shares in impressive left-handed compliment fashion. Is the admiration mutual? A spokesperson for Exotic Dancers Local 823 shakes her head and says, "Mmm, nope."
Keeping in mind that Natasha Lyonne didn't herself own the dog discussed in Saturday's unsettling news item, Britney Spears has been named the World's Worst Celebrity Dog Owner, unseating last year's dishonoree, Paris Hilton. "Britney was the overwhelming choice," the editor of New York Dog and Hollywood Dog magazines tells the New York Daily News. "She had three Chihuahuas and never left home without at least one of them. [But] as soon as she met K-Fed and had kids, they disappeared." Yeah, at least the dogs only humped peoples' legs.
Apprentice champ Bill Rancic popped the question to E! News anchor Giuliana DePandi on Friday, and now the couple plans to wed in late 2007, in the south of Italy, where DePandi grew up.... Also per People: Jeffrey Tambor and his wife, Kasia, welcomed a daughter, Eve Julia, on Dec. 10.... Skating with Celebrities alum Jillian Barberie is pregnant with her and actor-husband Grant Reynolds' first child, due July 7.
Anteing up a whopping $20 million, USA Network outbid FX, Spike and TNT to snag cable rights to Casino Royale, to debut on the channel in June 2009.... This Christmas morning, in addition to New York's WPIX-TV's cracklin' yule-log tradition, INHD will offer a 24-hour version of its own, in all its hi-def glory.... In light of downright sad ratings for programming originals and even brand-new shows (including Tatum O'Neal's Wicked Wicked Games), MyNetworkTV is considering abandoning its "all telenovelas, all the time" concept.
Consider your Taye Diggs-Moon Bloodgood fix over. Following consecutive weeks of sliding ratings, Day Break has been pulled from ABC's lineup, effective immediately, Variety reports. The serialized thriller, which was originally set to go on hiatus after its Dec. 27 broadcast, will be replaced by — oh, goody — sitcom repeats. (Reader poll: ABC has sitcoms?)ABC is also cashing out William Shatner's Show Me the Money, which but a week ago was granted an additional six-episode order, but again this week posted series-low numbers. Khannnnnnn!DAY BREAK UPDATE: ABC plans to air the remaining episodes of Day Break on ABC.com, Variety is reporting.
Natasha Lyonne, who, among other things, stands accused of threatening to do sordid things to her former neighbor's dog — and for almost a year ignored a bench warrant for her arrest — turned herself in at a New York court on Friday. In the original court complaint stemming from a 2004 incident, Lyonne's former roommate claimed the actress trashed their apartment, then rushed into the neighbor's place, picked up her pup, and said, "I'm going to sexually molest your dog." Yeesh. Talk about screwing the pooch.
Nathan Fillion has claimed the lead role in Drive, the mid-season Fox drama chronicling an underground race across America and exec-produced by former Firefly boss Tim Minear. Fillion, who initially passed on the gig last spring (due to a scheduling conflict), takes over for Ivan Sergei, who played Alex Tully, a charming, rogue landscaper searching for his abducted wife, in the original pilot.In other casting news, courtesy of the Ausiello Report: Happy Days' Marion Ross will swing by Brothers & Sisters in February, playing Sally Field's mother, and Dancing with the Stars alumna Stacy Kiebler has booked a multi-episode arc on What About Brian, playing a super-leggy roadblock for Bri and Bridget.
Variety reports that Oprah Winfrey has sold a pair of reality-TV projects to ABC, at least one of which she will appear on, if not host. Oprah Winfrey's The Big Give, which has an eight-episode order, hands money and resources to a group of 10 people who then must find dramatic ways to help others. The fabbest newfound philanthropist will be granted his or her wildest wish. The second series, tentatively titled Your Money or Your Life, sends an "action team" to save a family in crisis. I like to think of it as "Extreme Makeover: Harpo Edition."
Country crooner Sara Evans, who excused herself from Dancing with the Stars in October so as to deal with her divorce (and accompanying accusations of infidelity and such) from husband Craig Schelske, will join the reality contest's road tour, it was announced on Thursday. While others on board for the tour — Jerry Springer, Harry Hamlin, Drew Lachey and Joey Lawrence included — will hit multiple cities, Evans is only slated to hoof it to Nashville, on Jan. 21.
CBS has set a Jan. 10 debut for Armed & Famous, a reality series in which Erik Estrada, Jack Osbourne, La Toya Jackson and others brave a police academy and then go on patrol — strapped and all — in Muncie, Indiana.... Oxygen has announced a Jan. 10 premiere for Season 2 of The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency.... Disney Channel's Cory in the House, a spin-off of That's So Raven, premieres Jan. 12.... E! is developing High Maintenance 90210, a look at the domestic staffers of the rich, famous and super-demanding.
Rosie O'Donnell's bid to make nice after painting the Chinese language as only so much "ching-chong, ching-chong," didn't fly with Unity: Journalists of Color, Inc., a group representing more than 10,000 reporters. On Thursday's The View, Rosie said, "Asian people have told me that ['ching chong'] is as bad as the N-word. I was like, 'Really? I didn’t know that.' It was never my intent to mock, and I'm sorry for those who felt hurt. [But] there's a good chance I'll do something like that again... 'cause that’s how my brain works." That, Unity's president-elect tells the AP, "really didn’t sound like an apology to me. By allowing [such] cheap jabs... to go unchecked, [ABC] is essentially condoning [slurs]." Didn't all this slurring start with Danny DeVito?
Calling in to Howard Stern's Sirius radio show on Thursday, Pamela Anderson confirmed that Kid Rock, from whom she recently filed for divorce, indeed had issues with her role in Borat. "I don't know why — you'd have to ask him — but he really was very unhappy about that," she shared. When Stern said he would have been jazzed as her beau, Pam responded, "That's what I'm looking for. Someone who is excited about me." Hmm, define excited.Elsewhere, Shanna Moakler, the soon-to-be ex-Mrs. Travis Barker, is dating her Dancing with the Stars partner, Jesse DeSoto, says the New York Post's Page Six.... Six Degrees' Bridget Moynahan and her boyfriend of three years, Patriots QB Tom Brady, have split, says Us.
Donald Trump, who owns the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants, is considering stripping Tara Conner, the reigning Miss USA, of her tiara, due to reports of the 20-year-old's underage drinking, late-night carousing and unbridled man-chasing at NYC nightclubs. I sensed trouble the moment she, instead of wishing for world peace, expressed a hope to one day do beer funnels with Tara Reid.
CBS has announced "My Grammy Moment," an opportunity for unsigned recording artists to audition to perform with Justin Timberlake at the 49th-annual Grammy Awards, airing Feb. 11. Details and voting procedures can be found at the My Grammy Moment website.... CBS will launch in January CBS Records, a digital label that will sign artists and aim to promote them via iTunes, TV-show placements and the network's broadband channel.... Ahmet Ertegun, the founder of Atlantic Records (springboard for the likes of Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin and the Rolling Stones), died on Thursday, at age 83.