Per Variety, DreamWorks Animation is developing a CGI feature based on Mr. Peabody & Sherman, the time-traveling duo that first boarded their WABAC time machine in 1959, as part of the Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoon series. The maiden theatrical voyage for the genius dog and his "pet boy" ? boy, did this item suddenly adopt inappropriately homoerotic undertones ? will be helmed by Rob Minkoff (The Lion King, Stuart Little).
American Idol producers Nigel Lythgoe and Ken Warwick are on board for another reality series, albeit this time starring in it. Per Variety, Fox Reality's Corkscrewed: The Wrath of Grapes, premiering Nov. 22, will follow the duo as they pursue their long-held dream of owning a vineyard. Looks like somebody wanted some wine after so much cheese.
Pat Corley, whom TV fans may best remember as Phil the bartender on Murphy Brown, died of congestive heart failure on Sept. 11. He was 76. The actor's five-decade career also included roles in the films Coming Home and Against All Odds, and TV's Hill Street Blues.... An estimated 6.9 million viewers tuned in for Meredith Vieira's Today debut on Wednesday, maintaining the NBC morning program's lead over Good Morning America (which had 4.4 mil).... Fox News Channel has axed its long-running DaySide ? is that what those studio-audience recruitment signs outside our building have been about? ? and replacing it with The Live Desk with Martha MacCallum, starting Sept. 25.
Following in the footsteps of countless other couples whose unions were at one time chronicled by a reality show, Whitney Houston, citing "irreconcilable differences," has filed papers requesting a legal separation from Bobby Brown, her hubby of 14 years. Brown's lawyer was quick to spin the event as "a legal separation... not a divorce or a divorce petition." Houston has asked for custody of the couple's 13-year-old daughter, Bobbi Kristina, and that Brown be allowed visitation rights.... In happier news
When you reach 5,000 episodes, you deserve a celebration, so Jeopardy!, that game show of a certain age, will do it up big with two weeks of Celebrity Jep. TV Guide has learned that among the 30 names hitting the buzzers for charity for November-sweeps broadcasts are hopefully smart-and-nimble Desperate Housewives guys James Denton and Doug Savant, Law & Order franchisees Sam Waterston, Christopher Meloni and Kathryn Erbe (all competing against each other), Anderson Cooper, Rachael Ray, Paul Shaffer, Martin Short and Regis Philbin, who says he wants to make up for the "broken buzzer" he had during his last time on the show.Additional reporting by Ileane Rudolph
Tuesday's two-hour premiere of Dancing with the Stars' third season was watched by an average of 20 million people, a 19 percent bump from the Season 2 bow and the series' third best ratings ever. As such, Dancing handily bested the 8 o'clock hour's House (watched by 15 million, a 19 percent dip from last week's premiere) and the Big Brother 7: All-Stars finale (8.4 mil), then went on to trump Fox's Standoff (9.3 mil) and CBS' "Rock Star: Your Name Here" (7.1 mil) at 9. ABC's Men in Trees, previewing on a special night, was the 10 pm champ (over SVU and NCIS reruns) with a better-than-Boston Legal tally of 12.4 million.UPDATE: On Wednesday at 8 pm, Dancing's audience "Tuckered out" a bit, dipping to 16.1 million, but still bested Bones (8.45 mil) as well as Rock Star and Dateline: To Catch a Predator (each of which drew 7.1 mil). At 9 Dateline proper was the winner with 10.7 million viewers, while Justice came in third ? behind a Criminal Minds repeat ? with 7.5 mil, a significant d...
When Fox Home Video releases the three-disc My Name Is Earl: The Complete First Season on Sept. 19, the DVD will have every episode shown on NBC... and one that wasn't. Introduced by star Jason Lee in full Masterpiece Theatre regalia, the phony "alternate pilot" has Earl learning about karma not from the compassionate Carson Daly, but from the vengeful Stewie Griffin of Family Guy, which leads Earl to get back at everyone who's done him wrong. "It was great playing Earl without a conscience," Lee admits. "I get to be a little meaner and a little more ignorant, which makes for good fun."Additional reporting by Paul Semel
Fox has committed to a comedy pilot from Denis Leary and Don Reo, the cocreator of My Wife and Kids. The as-yet-untitled project centers on a 15-year-old thief who moves in with his similarly sticky-fingered grandpa.... CBS has given a pilot order to The Meant to Be's, a clumsily titled romantic drama from Medium creator Glenn Gordon Caron about a young dead woman who must return to Earth and help others before she can "pass over." Wait, so she's Jewish?
Kyra "The Closer" Sedgwick will play ruthless sports agent to Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's footballer in The Game Plan, a comedy starting production Sept. 24. Morris Chestnut and Paige Turco also star.... Per Variety, reality-TV guru Mark Burnett has snatched up the feature rights to The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel, a children's fantasy-book series debuting in May 2007.
ABC and iTunes have partnered for "Million Hit Lowdown," a promotion designed to help viewers get caught up on their favorite shows, before the new seasons premiere, by offering free downloads of last season's finales of Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy and Lost, as well as highlight specials for all three serials. Go to ABC.com for more.... NBC has announced plans to stream free, ad-supported episodes of its prime-time lineup, each accentuated by live premiere-night blogs from assorted producers and performers.
According to MTV.com, a San Diego judge ruled on Tuesday that the producers of CBS' Rock Star: Supernova must come up with an alternate name for the band composed of Tommy Lee, Jason Newsted, Gilby Clarke and the winner being crowned tonight. Last month, Supernova, a punk trio from Orange County, California, filed for a preliminary injunction halting the Rock Star quartet from performing or recording as Supernova if the band fails to modify its name. (Sorry, Tommy, I already have dibs on "Supernova: Our Take.") Yesterday's ruling acknowledged that "the marks are identical, the parties operate in very similar or identical markets, the [name] Supernova is distinctive and therefore strong, and there is evidence of actual confusion in the market." The group now-never-to-be-known-as Supernova is slated to launch a tour December 31 in Las Vegas, complete with $85 concert shirts that say "?"
Depending on which tabloid you read in the back corner of the convenience store, on Tuesday Britney Spears gave birth to a second son. Or her first daughter. (Having paid close attention in high-school bio, I can tell you that at least one of the stories is right.) At press time, the consensus seemed to be that there's a stem on the apple, though the newsstands had recently trumpeted the news that Spears had a girl on board, and had even decided to name the lass Jailynn, after her folks Jaime and Lynn. Instead, Spears and her hubby may opt to go with a combo of Kevin Federline's parents' names, which, K-Fed guesses, "would be Mop. Or maybe Pom?"
In a statement cited by the Hollywood Reporter, the NAACP has said that it will wait and see before coming down hard on the segregated Survivor: Cook Islands, premiering Thursday. "Whether we like the concept or not
Just one episode into the new season of The Wire ? and despite a 21 percent dip in total viewers (versus those who tuned in for the previous opener) ? HBO has picked up the crime drama for a fifth and final round. "I had no question in my mind about the quality of the show, but you never know," HBO entertainment prez Carolyn Strauss tells the Hollywood Reporter. "The show is extraordinary and breathtaking." Though the network's options on the cast have expired, Strauss expects the core ensemble to be back for Season 5, the length of which has yet to be determined.
Turning a blind eye to the horror that was The Grinch, Jim Carrey again will give life to a Dr. Seuss character, this time voicing the titular elephant in a CGI-animated take on Horton Hears a Who, Variety reports. The Office's Steve Carell will voice the Mayor of Whoville.... Dustin Hoffman, Kevin Kline, Christopher Lloyd ("Marty!!"), William H. Macy and Sigourney Weaver are among the voice cast of The Tale of Despereaux, an animated adaptation of the award-winning children's book about a mouse, a rat and a servant girl with cauliflower ears.... Warner Bros. is remaking Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?, this time minus the "of Europe" (xenophobia alert!) and featuring Huff's Oliver Platt as a dessert chef's ex.
Fox's House was named outstanding drama series, and Hugh Laurie was crowned best drama actor, in the first annual MediaVillage TV Fan Awards, which were based on online voting at Jack Myers MediaVillage.com. Other winners include The Office (best comedy), Veronica Mars' Kristen Bell (drama actress), Grey's Anatomy's T.R. Knight and Sandra Oh (in supporting categories), and Scrubs' Zach Braff and Gilmore Girls' Lauren Graham (as comedy leads).
The coroner who examined Anna Nicole Smith's son, Daniel, after he suddenly died on Sunday, tells the New York Daily News, "We have a cause of death, but I am reserving it pending complete toxicology reports," suggesting that drugs may have figured into the 20-year-old's passing. "It was not natural causes," adds the coroner. "[And a] heart attack was ruled out." Though unconfirmed, one newspaper from Nassau, Bahamas, where Daniel Smith died just days after meeting his newborn sister, has alleged that "various medications, along with drugs," were found in his system.
Having worked alongside Lindsay Lohan on Georgia Rule, Jane Fonda says "it was good" that the production company's CEO recently and publicly scolded the hard-partying ingenue, whose late nights and tardy arrivals on the set irked cast and crew. "Every once in a while, a very, very young person who is burning both ends of the candle needs to have someone say, 'You're going to pay the piper, you better slow down,'" Fonda told Tuesday's Access Hollywood. "You always know what she's doing because you can just read about it in the tabloids. She's young and she can get away with it.... But it's very hard after a while to party very hard and work very hard. She learned that, I hope."
Today on The View, Rosie O
Yeah, yeah, Angel Cohn, among others, beat me to blogging about our favorite new fall shows. But out of fairness to ABC, I was waiting on the screeners for Brothers & Sisters and Men in Trees, among others. Which new series most impresses me? Is it Friday Night Lights, Six Degrees or Men in Trees? Here's how my assorted expectations met reality:SundayBrothers & Sisters, ABC: Expectations were modest, as a stellar cast (Calista Flockhart, Sally Field, Rachel Griffiths, Ron Rifkin, to name but a few) was balanced out by foreboding backstage buzz and shuffles. The pilot starts off slow (the first 20 minutes felt like an eternity), but by the end I was pulled in. The show is just a wee heavy-handed with the constant references to Calista's character being this Ann Coulter-type talking head. We. Get. It.The Game, CW: This one (as well as ABC's Knights of Prosperity) I have yet to watch, sorry. I never watched UPN's Girlfriends, so perhaps I'm afraid I'd be helplessly adrift with ...
Isaiah Washington has kept his troubled past hidden ? until now. The Grey's Anatomy actor opens up about his own surprising brush with violence on the Sept. 21 Judge Hatchett in order to prove to one teen it's possible to go from street kid to superstar. "There was a time I didn't think I'd live to see 25," Washington reveals to TV Guide. Judge Glenda Hatchett (who frequently uses her show as a venue to save at-risk youth) and Washington staged an intervention to turn around the life of Hakeem White, a 16-year-old North Carolinian with a record of crime that already includes gun possession, selling drugs and slashing his own brother with a knife. Washington told White something he had never told anyone other than his wife: "I was young and dumb.... And one day I popped off my mouth to the wrong person and got shot." (He still has the bullet hole in his right hip.) Why did Washington risk his reputation to teach a lesson to a young man he had never met? "[Hakeem] needed to see that...
To mark the 40th anniversary of Star Trek's TV debut, John Nogawski, President of CBS Paramount Domestic Television, and visual-effects producers Dave Rossi and Michael Okuda held a Wednesday conference call with reporters. The hot topic, of course, was the digital remastering of, and CGI enhancements being made to, the original series (as first reported here at TVGuide.com). The highlights, in brief:• CGI tweaks are being made to both the full- and syndicated-length versions of all 79 episodes, and in both standard and 16:9 formats.• Ranging in number from 15 to 70 per episode, the CGI enhancements at most amount to "maybe a minute and a half" in screen time.• There will be no plot modifications made along the way, akin to E.T. replacing rifles with walkie-talkies.• The original original series will continue airing on G4 and TV Land for "a year or two," until remastering/CGI work is completed on all 79 episodes. The enhanced episodes start airing Sept. 16 on ove...