Goodbye, 'Extreme Makeover'
ABC cancels their feel-good reality show, Jane Fonda takes a TV role, and Russell Brand wants to talk to you.
.The Call Sheet sifts through the day's glut of Hollywood news to find the stories even non-industry types care about. Today: ABC cancels their feel-good reality show, Jane Fonda takes a TV role, and Russell Brand wants to talk to you.
Ty Pennington will soon have bullhorned his last. ABC has decided to end their show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition after this season, its ninth. The frequently problem-plagued show often felt like one big ad for Sears, forcing poor people who couldn't even pay their new property taxes to thank the company for giving them all the new stuff while Pennington screamed at them through a megaphone. Yes, yes, ABC was doing a nice thing by giving people new and better homes, but all the showiness and forced emotion never sat quite right with us. So, adios, Extreme Makeover. Next time we Move! That! Bus! it will reveal the great glimmering heaven where reality shows go for the rest of eternity. And by great glimmering heaven we mean a break room at a Sears somewhere. [THR]
Very interesting. Beloved conservative Jane Fonda has signed on to play a recurring role on Aaron Sorkin's upcoming and much ballyhooed cable news drama More As This Story Develops. She'll play the CEO of the network's parent company, so sort of a lady Rupert Murdoch or something. That should be interesting! This is quite a cast that Mr. Sorkin is assembling, so hopes are ratcheting up even higher now. And with someone as non-controversial as Jane Fonda -- seriously, is anyone ever mad at Jane Fonda? -- he's sure to succeed. Jane Fonda, America's sweetheart, is headed to television! [Deadline]
Uh oh, you know who else is headed to television? Russell Brand. Yes, the flopsy topsy British comedian is working out a deal with FX to host a new unscripted late night type show, complete with live studio audience and topical jokes and whatnot. So basically Russell Brand is doing FX's version of The Tonight Show. Doesn't that sound great? Can't you not wait? Russell Brand! Telling news jokes! Every weeknight! Well, OK, that's an exaggeration. Right now the deal is only for six half-hour episodes, but you know how these things work. Pretty soon he'll be like little Andy Cohen, babbling away at us from Sunday to Thursday. And every night his guest will be Katy Perry, and every night she'll sing a new song, and every night we'll curl up into a little ball, tighter and tighter, hoping that one day we'll wink into another dimension where none of this is real. [THR]
Here is a first poster for Ridley Scott's upcoming, and also much-ballyhooed, sci-fi drama Prometheus, which is supposedly very loosely tied to Scott's Alien, but not in any kind of direct prequel way or anything. Noomi Rapace stars alongside Michael Fassbender and, on the poster at least, Charlize Theron gets an "and Charlize Theron" credit, so hers might be some kind of smaller special role. Intriguing! We are really very intrigued about this. Ridley Scott knows how to make a good sci-fi movie and anything this secretive has to be about something, so we're definitely curious. But a warning: If we see one, even one, blue person hair-raping a dragon, we are walking out immediately. That's a promise, Mr. Scott. [EW]
CMT of all networks has greenlit a reality show for 90210 actress Jennie Garth. It's about her moving to a farm with her family and trying to do that whole life instead of Hollywood. Probably she won't be like farming farming, but y'know, there won't be a PinkBerry. Sounds daunting! And a little sad? Like, is she really moving, or she moving for the reality show? It's unclear, but we sadly suspect it's the latter. CMT also bought a show about someone moving to Hollywood, namely someone named Melissa Rycroft who was on Dancing With the Bachelors or some such program. Basically "Melissa Rycroft" is something that ABC made to be on their reality shows and now it wants to be an actress so it has fled its Geppetto-like creators and moved to California. Good luck, thing! [Deadline]
Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace have agreed to star in Brian De Palma's remake of the recent French sex thriller Love Crime, which starred Kristin Scott Thomas and Ludivine Sangier. The story is about a business executive who is involved in some sort of murder and then sets out to get revenge on her young protege. So wait, who's playing the older lady and who's the protege? Aren't those two basically the same age? Also, Brian De Palma has not made a good movie in a long time (and even then, were they even that good? What do people talk about, Blow Out? That was 30 years ago!), so we hope these gals know what they're doing. Good luck, ladies. [IndieWIRE]
Finally, as a way to pleasantly say goodbye after this long day, we have the news that Nicholas Sparks says that The Notebook is going to be turned into a musical. Oh terrific! That's just what we needed. A Nicholas Sparks story set to song. Perfect. And after that we'll adapt an Applebee's commercial into a musical (the one with the football team probably?) and then we'll just start looking at Hallmark cards and making them musicals. Once you open the door to Nicholas Sparks, you can't close it again, is what we're saying. It's almost like the Hellmouth in that way. Except you can sorta close the Hellmouth. By blowing it up. We're not saying anyone should blow up Nicholas Sparks, we're just saying... Well, we're saying at least it's The Notebook and not A Walk to Remember. (Though, Mandy Moore can sing and does need a job!) [CBS]