CBS Renews Everything

Today in show business news: CBS has announced the return of fourteen shows, NBC wants more hunks, and Bravo is trying to figure it out.

Today in show business news: CBS has announced the return of fourteen shows, NBC wants more hunks, and Bravo is trying to figure it out.

CBS, America's most-watched broadcast network/de facto caregiver to millions of old people, announced today that it has renewed fourteen of its television programs today. The list is: The Good Wife, The Mentalist, Hawaii Five-0, NCIS: Los Angeles, Blue Bloods, Elementary, Person of Interest, 2 Broke Girls, Mike & Molly, The Amazing Race, Survivor, Undercover Boss, 60 Minutes and 48 Hours. So that's a lot of shows! And they're all programs that do pretty well. Do you watch any of them? I find myself surprised to say that I watch two of them. Well, OK, I watched the first few episodes of Elementary too, but then I got sick of how Lucy Liu's entire job is being told to leave rooms. That's all she does. She's a professional told to leave roomser. That got annoying. So yeah, just two. Oh, well, hm, I suppose I do, like, have a "season pass" or whatever for, um... NCIS, but! I only watch it with a friend because we like to make fun of it because it is so bad. It's not like I like it or anything. Come on. So that doesn't count. Meaning it's just The Good Wife and Survivor for me. And hell I'm really behind on Survivor. Hm, and The Good Wife too. Maybe I don't watch anything on CBS? Oh well. Somebody clearly does. [Entertainment Weekly]

Uh oh. Two of Hollywood's most... let's just go with "sometimes not always that likable" actresses, Anne Hathaway and Chloe Grace Moretz, are in negotiations to star in a movie together. Yes, the two of them, in the same movie, at the same time. That's pretty intense! The movie is called Laggies and is at least directed by Lynn Shelton, who made the wonderful Your Sister's Sister last year. So there's hope, sorta. The movie is about a late-twentysomething woman who's in a state of arrested development, so when her boyfriend proposes she wigs out and goes and hides out with her 16-year-old friend. So it's really very much about the two of them. Yikes. Anne Hathaway talking like a teen with Chloe Grace Moretz. That's a lot of movie. Sam Rockwell is joining the cast for an unspecified part while Mark Webber is in talks to play Hathaway's boyfriend. Good luck to them. [Deadline]

Kate Mara, who recently made a Netflix-sized splash in House of Cards, has landed a roll in a big movie. She's just signed on to join the cast of Transcendence, the directorial debut of cinematographer Wally Pfister, alongside Johnny Depp, Rebecca Hall, and Paul Bettany. We don't know much about the movie yet, but supposedly it involves a computer that becomes self-aware. So that's exciting news for Kate Mara! She'd been kinda languishing there for a few years after making an initial big entrance in things like Brokeback Mountain. But then American Horror Story and House of Cards came along and now she's back in the A-list movies. Amazing how far she's come. From granddaughter and niece of two different owners of the New York Giants to working actress. Truly incredible. (I actually do like her, but her grandfather was the owner of the Giants and now it's her uncle. It's worth noting.) [The Hollywood Reporter]

Get ready for more hunks! Desperate for any kind of viewership, NBC is mulling the idea of creating a spin-off of its show Fire Hunks Chicago Fire, its modestly rated drama about Chicago hunks who fight fires. The spin-off would be about hunks who solve crimes, so it would be police hunks. Will Police Hunks work? It's hard to say. Hunks are pretty in these days, lots of people are talking all about hunks lately, but is two hunk-based shows set in the same town in the same general job field too much? There's only one way to find out. Well, I guess two ways, if you count going to a suburban shopping mall and asking various women and gay men how many Chicago public safety hunks they're willing to be subjected to every week. If the polling is high, then they'll know. If not, same. So they could put the show on air, question unasked, or they could go the mall route. It's up to you, NBC. And it really is. What have they got to lose either way? Except the millions of dollars it would cost to produce the Police Hunks pilot. So, actually, compared to how much the shopping mall trip would cost, it might not make sense to just go and make the show. But who am I, a network executive? I don't understand the television business. Though, to be fair, neither does NBC. [Deadline]

Bravo is trying to figure out how the scripted television business works, and they've just learned how to pass on a show. They've decided not to move forward with their pilot for The Joneses, a show based on the David Duchovny/Demi Moore movie about a fake family that's assembled to stealth market products to their neighbors. It could have been a cute concept for a show, but I guess Bravo wasn't digging it. So, oh well, onto the next. The next might be Witch Hunt, described as "an epic supernatural drama set in a reimagined New York City that follows a single mother, desperate for a job, who gets hired at a leading cosmetics company only to discover that the entire company is a front for a coven of witches." Wow! Bravo is really going for the gusto. Ugly Betty meets The Client List meets 666 Park Avenue. Only one of those shows is still on the air, but that's OK. That doesn't matter. And it may sound a little... completely off for Bravo as we know it, but I guess that's the point. All their Housewives franchises are getting long in the tooth, as is Top Chef. They lost Project Runway, Shahs of Sunset can't be that big of a hit. They need a change, is the point. And scripted television is big cable business these days. Reality was great and all, but scripted is the future. I guess that means that Watch What Happens Live! will eventually become more like Talking Dead. Which might sound like a bad idea, but then again there's this. And with that we're back to NBC being in trouble. Poor NBC! Maybe its cousin company Bravo can help rescue it somehow. Bravo knows a thing or two about hunks! Chicago Bronnie, anyone? [Deadline]