Two Men and Miley Cyrus?

Today in showbiz news: A rumor has Hannah Montana replacing Angus T. Jones on Two and a Half Men, Seth MacFarlane is bringing kids to the Oscars, and this Psycho sequel looks terrible.

There's a not-terribly-reliable rumor goin' around that Angus T. Jones, the half-man from Two and a Half Men, is going to be fired from that show because he did that religious testimonial video in which he called the show filth and urged people to stop watching it — and replaced with recent guest-star Miley Cyrus. Yeah, like she would be a cast member on that show instead of Angus T. Jones and then, in America, there would be a television program featuring Ashton Kutcher and Miley Cyrus, which is basically it. That's it for television, for the nation, for this crazy spinning blue marble. That's just about the most annoying TV show I can think of! But, who knows, maybe it won't happen. I mean, this is coming from something called "Celebuzz," so we should take it with a grain of salt, perhaps. But in some ways we hope they're right. Angus T. Jones seems like a jerk, and it would be hilarious to watch the world burn as Miley and Ashton have their first scene together and the coasts fall into the sea and great and terrible beasts rise up from fissures in the earth and a nuclear wind comes rushing down from the north pole. Bring it on, Ragnarök! We are ready. [Celebuzz]

Happy day for you, Anglophile nerds. The BBC has announced plans to make a miniseries out o the popular magicians-in-history tome Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. That's the one that's all historical and about the Napoleonic wars, so it really incorporates a lot of nerddom — fans of British people, fans of magic stuff, and fans of history. The holy triumvirate, that. This book was supposed to be turned into a movie a little while back, but those plans fell through, so in swoops BBC like the bird on the book's cover and now it's going to be told in six parts. Pretty exciting! Well, exciting if they break the bank on this one and don't go for, like, Torchwood-style cheapo effects on everything. Because that's not a great look. [Deadline]

Well this isn't going to end well. Remember how Seth MacFarlane is going to host the Oscars next year? Yeah, well, he is, and he'd like some of his fanbase to be there to support him. And who likes Seth MacFarlane? College kids. So the producers of the show have organized a contest wherein film students enter to win a chance to present at the Oscars. Yup. At least six of the squirmy little buggers will win, and then be flown to fabulous downtown Hollywood where they will be wined and dined at a Del Taco and then herded into a van and driven to the show and they will present probably like Best Sound Mixing or something and they will awkwardly meet a couple celebs backstage while being ushered out and take hurried pictures for their Facebooks and then they will get back in the van and sleep in their hotel room near the airport and then fly back to whatever college town dump they were plucked out of and life will resume as scheduled. That's all. Sounds like fun. [The Hollywood Reporter]

Speaking of small children, two tiny lads who are very used to scary things are going to be in another scary thing, together. The kid who plays Crazy Carl on The Walking Dead and the main boy from Super 8 will act together in a Stephen King movie called Mercy, about two brothers who go to live with their gam-gam and then find out that gam-gam is an old witch. So it should actually be called That Time Your Parents Put You on a Plane to Florida and You Had to Spend a Week There Because Your Parents Were Going on a Trip Without You and Your Grandma Made You Eat Weird Food the Whole Time and You Couldn't Watch TV. A terrifying tale. [The Hollywood Reporter]

Rapper 50 Cent is executive producing a pilot for the Starz channel, so how could that not be good? Because 50 Cent plus Starz equals dynamite. Oh, and it's about a nightclub owner, so I mean, really, just call up the Emmys and tell them we've got their show. Best Everything goes to Power, a Starz channel/50 Cent Productions original series. Get rich or eventually stop rapping and executive produce a show on the Starz channel, I guess. [Variety]

A&E has released the first two teaser trailers for its upcoming horror series Bates Motel, the Psycho prequel with the kid from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (the Burton version, not the original) as a young Norman Bates and Vera Farmiga as his mama. The whole thing sounds like a complete disaster — why do we need a sequel to Psycho? And how is that a TV series? Does Norman's mother die in every episode? Is it just long lingering shots of showers and taxidermied animals? This makes no sense — and the teasers don't do any convincing otherwise. I get that A&E wants a piece of that spooky-stuff pie that FX is munching on right now, but this ain't the way to do it. Bring back The X-Files or something. Make unlike Gus Van Sant and leave Psycho alone. [Entertainment Weekly]