Clooney and Margulies set for ER reunion

George Clooney, Juliana Margulies, and Noah Wyle return to ER

Stars In The House is a YouTube series that brings together panel chats with the stars of now-defunct shows. They’ll be hosting an ER chat that will bring together a huge number of stars from the 15 season run of the series. It’ll include:

Anthony Edwards, George Clooney, Juliana Margulies, Noah Wyle, Laura Innes, Alex Kingston, Goran Visnjic, Paul McCrane, Ming-Na Wen, Laura Cerón, Yvette Freeman, Conni Marie Brazelton, and CCH Pounder.

The reunion special is very much leaning on the earlier cast of the series run, so it’s disappointing not to see Eriq La Salle or Sherry Stringfield.

The special will stream Thursday, April 22 and will raise money for global clean water non-profit Waterkeeper Alliance.

Read: Deadline

The hunt for Ambersons in Brazil

One of the all-time great films is Orson Welles’ The Magnificant Ambersons. But could that film have been greater if it had stuck to Welles’ original vision for the film and not been butchered by the studio? We’ll never know as there are no known copies of the film left.

(But we do know that the studio cut 43 minutes from the film and gave it a new ending.)

Film enthusiasts have long theorised that there may still be one remaining film print. Welles had been in Brazil when the studios sent him a print of his movie. What happened to that print?

Turner Classic Movies is partnering with Joshua Grossberg on a new documentary The Search for the Lost Print: The Making of Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons. The film will take Grossberg to Brazil where he goes looking for the holy grail of film prints. It is hoped that the print may have just fallen into the hands of a collector who has it in their own private library.

The doco will air next year to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the film.

“We know it’s a long shot but if these guys are able to find Orson Welles’ version of the film it would be one of the greatest discoveries in the history of cinema,” said Charlie Tabesh, ‎SVP Programming and Content Strategy at TCM. “It’s too important not to try.”

Source: Deadline

The Nevers launches big

New Joss Whedon show The Nevers broke a record for HBO Max. With 1.4 million streaming the first episode, it is the biggest launch for a new HBO show on the streaming platform - bigger than Lovecraft Country, bigger than the Hugh Grant/Nicole Kidman starrer The Undoing.

Despite the high profile shellacking Whedon has received from the industry and fan press for reported behind the scenes acts of bastardry, there’s clearly still a huge audience that is perfectly happy to turn up for his work. It goes to show that regular audiences are less interested in the behind the scenes issues than people think.

My own thoughts on the first episode: It’s kinda fun, even if the first episode feels like it’s more about the promise of what the show can be rather than actually giving it to us. It’s very comic book-y and is probably the best thing Whedon has done to date. It’s just a shame that he’s been dumped from the show so early into its run. It would be interesting to watch him find his way into a show like this with the budgets that an HBO can offer.

Source: Deadline

How The Nevers Weathered COVID Delays and Joss Whedon's Departure | Den of Geek

TeeVee Snacks

Lisey’s Story, the Stephen King Apple TV+ series starring Julianne Moore and Clive Owen, will debut on June 4. Read: TV Line
Apple TV+ now has a button on Roku remote controls. Read: The Verge
Natalie Portman will star in the HBO adaptation of the book The Days of Abandonment. Read: THR
YouTube will be the new home for Google Play movie and TV purchases. Read: The Verge
Kevin Smith is selling his next film Killroy as an NFT and is launching a Crypto Studio. Maybe he could be better spending his time making his movies better? Dude has made one good movie in 20 years. Read: Deadline
David Beckham is making a doco series for Disney+ called Save Our Squad. Read: Deadline
A second season of Aussie LGBTQI comedy Metro Sexual has been greenlit. Also, a tree fell in a forrest, reportedly. Source: C21
Hank Azaria has apologised to every single Indian person for voicing Apu. Not personally, mind you. Read: Variety
Superstore’s Lauren Ash has signed a deal with NBCUniversal to write and star in her own pilot. Read: Deadline
Amazon are launching a The Boys podcast. Read: Variety
The Madripoor tourism website has been launched. I hear it’s nice this time of the year. Visit: Madripoor
Danish pubcaster DR1 and Australian pubcaster SBS have commissioned local versions of the Shine TV adult education series The Write Offs. In Australia it’ll be renamed Lost for Words.
The new Star Trek series Strange New Worlds (a pre-Kirk series following the adventures of the crew of the starship… Enterprise) is going to look and feel a bit unique compared to the other Trek shows on the air: The series will be old school with purely episodic adventures. Read: THR

Trailer Park

Zack Snyder’s Army of The Dead debuts on Netflix May 14. This actually looks… good?

Chadwick Boseman: Portrait of an Artist debuts April 17 on Netflix. It will only be available for 30 days.

Viola Davis, Denzel Washington, Spike Lee, Phylicia Rashad and more invite us into a conversation to explore Chadwick Boseman's extraordinary commitment to his craft in an intimate look at the Oscar(R)-nominated actor's artistry, and the acting process which informed his transformative performances.