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Seinfeld Actors Found a New Home at HBO
It seems that the first crew “Seinfeld” has found a new home at HBO. While Larry David is starring in a premium cable channel, “Curb Your Enthusiasm” in the last seven seasons, Julia Louis-Dreyfus is in talks to bring in another comedy network.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, the concert of a new potential Dreyfus’ is called “Veep,” series, which follows a woman becomes vice president and realizes that she might be over her head. Show will be written by comedian and satirist Armando Iannucci.
Although all of the former “Seinfeld” actors have acted in the difference between projects, because they got a final set of bow, it appears that Dreyfus has experienced the most success. The actress was nominated for five Emmy Awards for his latest comedy,” The New Adventures of Old Christine,” taking home the statue in 2006.
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HBO Sports President – Get the Mainstream Sport Fan Back
HBO Sports president Ross Greenburg Pledging to “enter the mainstream sports fan back to the” boxing.
In a discussion with Funhouse, Greenburg is pleased to update on upcoming events and HBO boxing fans to wonder on the beginning of a rebirth for the sport.
Greenburg pointed to a flurry of future HBO events that point out both boxing’s rising popularity and that his company is prepared to take benefit of the developments.
“I think that the fall line-up is kind of a statement that we’re back, and that we’re ready,” he said. “We gave everyone a little bit of a break at the beginning of the football season, and through the World Series. But I think that we’re gearing up and that it’s the rebirth of boxing in a way,” said Greenburg. “We really want to get the mainstream sports fan back.”
Some upcoming HBO cards include the November 13 mega-fight between Manny Pacquiao and Antonio Margarito, which will be on pay-per-view, and a November 27 contest between Juan Manuel Marquez and Michael Katsidis.
Greenburg assumed the role of liaison when negotiations for a fight between Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather peaked, but unofficially resigned from the position when it was clear no fight would be made. Nevertheless he remains hopeful of Pacquiao-Mayweather in 2011, a fight that would likely break all-time records in terms of profits.
On the opportunity of Pacquiao-Mayweather in 2011, Greenburg said: “I think that a lot of things need to fall into place for that fight to happen. First and primary, Manny Pacquiao has to live on Nov. 13 against a hard, big man in Antonio Margarito. And then, Floyd Mayweather has to fresh up his personal life and the issues and whatever is going on in Las Vegas and then gets back to the business of boxing.”
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The Pacific is on DVD and Blu-ray
The Pacific is one of the most likely home entertainments releases of the Year come on the perfect holiday time. The primers day and launching date of the first DVD and Blu-ray is November 2, 2010.
The six-disc DVD and Blu-ray of “The Pacific” include all of the acclaimed 10-part mini-series, with lots of exciting bonus material for the suggested retail price of $ 79.99 and $99.98 respectively.
Hailed by critics nationwide as “brilliant” (Entertainment Weekly), “universally excellent” (Los Angeles Times), and “magnificent; a bloody masterpiece” (TV Guide), The Pacific is a Playtone and DreamWorks production executive produced by Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg and Gary Goetzman, the team behind the Emmy Award-winning and Golden Globe-winning 2001 HBO miniseries Band of Brothers, the best selling TV on DVD of all time. Hanks and Goetzman also executive produced the HBO miniseries John Adams, which won a record-breaking 13 Emmys in 2008.
The Pacific tracks the real-life journeys of three U.S. Marines – Robert Leckie (James Badge Dale, The Departed), Eugene Sledge (Joe Mazzello, The Sensation of Sight) and John Basilone (Jon Seda, Close to Home) – across the vast canvas of the Pacific theater during World War II. The miniseries follows these men and their fellow Marines from their first battle with the Japanese on Guadalcanal, through the rain forests of Cape Gloucester and the strongholds of Peleliu, across the bloody sands of Iwo Jima, through the horror of Okinawa, and finally to their triumphant but uneasy return home after V-J Day.
The Pacific on DVD is overflowing with exclusive and informative content that will further enrich the audience’s understanding of the war. The viewer will learn more about the events of the Pacific theater and the real Marines depicted in the miniseries, and will have access to a more in-depth look at the making of this epic event. Features include:
“Historical Backgrounds” – the five-minute prologues that set the stage for each episode and additional historical footage narrated by Tom Hanks.
“Making The Pacific” – go behind the scenes and take an inside look at the making of this epic, 10-part miniseries.
“Profiles of The Pacific” – delve into the lives of the real Marines featured in The Pacific. Get a personal perspective on their families, their war experience and their lives after the war in these intimate portraits.
“Anatomy of The Pacific War” – explores the historical influences and civilizes perceptions that led to the cruel violence in the Pacific theater of World War II.
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George Lucas’s New Star Wars Movies
George Lucas is supposedly scheming future Star Wars movies at his top-secret Skywalker Ranch, reports IESB, who claims this could be more than just a rumor.
IESB is reporting that fans can expect the new trilogy after the entire saga is released in 3D which is expected to be complete around 2015 or 2016. Their source also claims the movies will not be prequels, but sequels. It’s not for certain if they will be the long awaited Episodes 7, 8 and 9 but could instead be Episodes 10, 11 and 12.
Wired chimed in with a quote from Lucasfilm spokesman Josh Kushins:
“This is, of course, is completely false,” Lucasfilm spokesman Josh Kushins wrote to Wired. “George Lucas has plenty of projects to keep him busy right now – including plenty of Star Wars projects – but there are no new Star Wars feature films planned.”
New films or not, the live action Star Wars television series is currently in development, already has over 50 scripts ready to go and plenty of pre-production time and money spent on artwork and storyboards. Once that show goes into production, Lucasfilm hopes to be able to produce at least 100 episodes since that is the threshold for syndication in the United States.
Only time will tell about the reality of a new trilogy, but we got to ask, does the idea of a new Star Wars trilogy get you excited?
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Johnny Sheffield – Tarzan Boy Dies at 79
At the age of 79, The character boy “Johnny Sheffied” in the 1930s and ‘40s Tarzan Movies, died on this Friday at his home.
His wife Patty told to the Los Angeles Times that he had a heart attack several hours after when he fell off a ladder while pruning a palm tree.
Mr. Sheffield beat out more than 300 youngsters for the role of Boy in the 1939 movie “Tarzan Finds a Son!” and went on to co-star with Johnny Weissmuller in seven more Tarzan films.
He later played another jungle boy, Bomba, in a dozen low-budget movies but quit the business after the last one 1955. He went on to earn a business degree at the University of California, Los Angeles, and worked for various companies and in contracting and real estate.
Mr. Sheffield was born on April 11, 1931, in Pasadena, Calif. His father, Reginald Sheffield, was an actor.
The Los Angeles Times reported, Besides his wife, Mr. Johnny Sheffield is survived by two sons, Patrick and a daughter “Stewart”, a brother ” Regina” and a grandson ” William”.
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Big Ambitions Move To Small Screen
Critics have been decrying the inventive decline of Hollywood pretty much since D.W. Griffith left the scene. “It’s just that the most sophisticated stuff is showing up on TV screens”, Edward Jay Epstein says.
Epstein tells NPR’s Guy Raz,”We’ve had a role reversal”. “Now, people go to television, especially pay television and premiere cable television, to watch their favorite programs like Mad Men and Boardwalk Empire and Damages. And they go to movies to see comic books: Spiderman, Batman, Superman and Avatar.”
Epstein wrote the book The Hollywood Economist: the Hidden Financial Reality behind the Movies. He says the dichotomy in Hollywood these days is a product of fundamentally different business realities between the big and small screens.
“The movie business is basically driven by marketing departments that have only one audience that they can guarantee to turn out on Friday and Saturday nights,” he says. “And that audience is teenagers and youth.
“Television, on the other hand, especially pay television, runs on a completely different business model. They have to stop people from canceling their subscriptions. So they have to reach the head of the household, who pays the bills. … So they have basically put more and more money into original programming to keep the adult audience paying the bill.”
The fundamental mission of a network like HBO — which pioneered original dramas on cable with The Sopranos, The Wire and now Boardwalk Empire — isn’t to make “art” or even to build viewer numbers.
“According to the top HBO executive ” Epstein says, “that they would rather have a program that had very low viewership but highest critical acclaim, especially in The New York Times and elite media, because when people read those kind of stories about The Sopranos or The Wire, their reaction is, ‘We cannot give this up!’ “
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HBO Movies – Al Pacino to portray Phil Spector
Actor Al Pacino will depict record producer Phil Spector in a film presently being written by writer/director David Mamet for HBO Films.
Al Pacino won an Emmy Award for his portrayal of Dr. Jack Kevorkian in HBO’s You Don’t Know Jack, about the physician convicted for assisted suicide. Pacino’s agent said, “He just saw a very motivating character to play, and he likes the receptivity of Barry [Levinson] and David [Mamet],” reported by the New York Times.
Oscar-winning director Barry Levinson (Rain Man, Diner and Bugsy) will produce the film. He also produced and directed the film Jack.
It was also announced yesterday that HBO will adapt the bestselling Wall Street exposé book Too Big to Fail, about the 2008 financial crisis, with an all-star cast.
On this HBO Movies Paul Giamatti will play US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Billy Crudup will appear as Timothy Geithner, US Secretary of the Treasury. The line-up also includes Tony Shalhoub, William Hurt, James Woods, Ed Asner, Cynthia Nixon and Curtis Hanson will direct.
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Al Pacino Take on Phil Spector in HBO Movie
Al Pacino, it’s not relatively a monster movie, but it has some of the same elements of monster movies like: an outsize character, plenty of metaphor for mankind’s destruction, a mysterious death and lots of excessively teased hair.
HBO Films has decided to begin Phil Spector, the bewigged record producer who created the “wall of sound” in the 1960s but is now serving a prison sentence of 19 years to life for murder. Starring will be Al Pacino.
David Mamet will write and direct the film, which HBO cautioned is in the very early stages of development (it’s still untitled). Barry Levinson, who won an Oscar for directing “Rain Man,” will serve as executive producer.
Mr. Spector, 70, was convicted of second-degree murder last year; prosecutors successfully argued that the record producer shot Lana Clarkson, a struggling actress, in the foyer of his mansion in 2003. Mr. Spector’s lawyers as recently as March were still arguing in court for his release.
It was an ugly end to a celebrated career. Starting in the late 1950s, Mr. Spector produced a stream of pop megahits, including “Be My Baby,” “Da Doo Ron Ron” and “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling.” He completed and mixed the unfinished tapes for the final Beatles album, “Let It Be.”
Mr. Pacino, also 70, has an imposing stare that bears more than a passing similarity to Mr. Spector’s favorite facial expression. But what exactly interested the Oscar-winning actor in the role?
John L. Burnham, an agent at International Creative Management who represents Mr. Al Pacino, Mr. Mamet and Mr. Levinson, said that “He just saw a very interesting character to play, and he likes the sensibility of David and Barry,”
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HBO Country Club Comedy Series with Kevin Bacon
HBO is mounting a new comedy series set at a country club, with actor Kevin Bacon producing and considering a starring role.
This HBO untitled series will be based on a 1995 novel “The Member-Guest,” by Clint McCown about a burned-out golf pro dealing with a small-town country club’s members while eying a pro golf comeback.
The series is being written by “Hot Tub Time Machine” director Steve Pink, who also wrote the John Cusack films “Grosse Point Blank” and “High Fidelity.”
Bacon has never play a lead role in a television series before, but he previously starred in the HBO original movie “Taking Chance,” an Iraq war drama. Kevin Bacon makes a guest appearance on an upcoming episode of the cable network’s comedy series “Bored to Death”.
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Danny Woodhead Featured Significantly in Patriots’ Second-Half Surge
When “Hard Knocks” comes on HBO, Danny Woodhead had an important role, as he quickly became one of the much loving players of Jets coach Rex Ryan’s. , Danny Woodhead survived the final cuts when New York’s original 53-man roster was set but he was released later that week, and viewers who grew to like the diminutive back out of Chadron State wondered where he might end up.
Well, they can wonder no more — Danny Woodhead has found a home in New England with the Patriots. The 5-foot-9, 195-pound all-purpose player became the Patriots’ featured back in the second half of Monday night’s 41-14 New England win at Sun Life Stadium. He finished with eight carries for 36 yards, just one week after scoring on a key TD run against the Bills.
Danny Woodhead also caught an 11-yard touchdown pass from Tom Brady on Monday, which allowed New England to regain a 27-14 lead after Miami had cut it to 20-14. Perhaps Ryan is going to regret letting the little guy go.
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