Jason Segel to Steal a Whole Lot of Maple Syrup
Today in showbiz news: The Canadian maple syrup heist gets the movie treatment, FX renews The Bridge, and Lifetime cancels Army Wives.
.Today in showbiz news: The Canadian maple syrup heist gets the movie treatment, FX renews The Bridge, and Lifetime cancels Army Wives.
Sony has just bought a comedy starring Jason Segel about last year's heist of over $20 million in maple syrup in Canada. It'll be a comedy, directed by Identity Thief's Seth Gordon, even though this was a really serious crime. Because you just can't make a movie about a Canadian syrup heist and not have it be funny. You can't. Many have tried, and they have all failed. It's gotta be a comedy. Well, OK, Deadline says the movie will have "dramatic overtones," but it's still definitely a comedy. I mean, Bridesmaids had dramatic overtones, but you wouldn't call that anything but a comedy. So it's a syrup heist comedy, the one we've all been anticipating since this crazy story broke. [Deadline]
FX has renewed the border town mystery series The Bridge for a second season. The show gets consistently strong ratings, up near The Americans territory, and has done well overseas too. That said, you don't really hear people talking about this show much, do you? It's not one of the buzzed-about shows, it's just sort of... on. But, FX doesn't care so much about that as it does about numbers, and the numbers are good, so Diane Kruger, Demian Bichir, and the rest of the gang get to keep their jobs for another year. Felicidades to them all. [The Hollywood Reporter]
The lord giveth at FX and taketh away at Lifetime. That network has canceled its series Army Wives after seven seasons. The network tried to give the show a boost late in its run, adding Brooke Shields and Ashanti to the cast, but it still struggled. Which is bizarre. As anyone knows, if something's kinda sluggish or not working for some reason, you usually just have to add Brooke Shields and Ashanti and voila. Mind you that's Brooke Shields and Ashanti. Not Brooke Shields or Ashanti. It needs to be both of them for the magic to work. But it didn't work this time. Maybe because they also added someone named Torrey DeVitto? You can't add a third! This isn't Charmed. It has to be Brooke Shields and Ashanti and only them. Jeez, it's like people don't know anything anymore. Oh well. Too late now. [Deadline]
Emily Mortimer, who's already on HBO with The Newsroom, has successfully sold another show to the network, a comedy called Doll & Em. Mortimer will star in the six-episode series, which was commissioned by a British production company, as a British star in Hollywood who hires her best friend as her assistant while she's shooting a movie. So it's about British people in Hollywood, just like Episodes. Is this the first time that HBO has kinda copied Showtime? Maybe! You've made it, Showtime! [The Hollywood Reporter]
Gerard Butler might play the Egyptian god Set in an upcoming movie called Gods of Egypt. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau from Game of Thrones will play Horus, the god who's mad at Set for killing his dad, Osiris. So they'll beef off (that's what happens when big burly gods fight, they beef off) and probably Horus will win. Because Set sounds like the villain? Unless Osiris was bad, so it was good that Set killed him. It's unclear. Depends on your denomination of ancient Egyptian religion, I guess. I certainly wouldn't know, as I'm wholly devoted to my beloved Mithras. [Deadline]