On an otherwise quiet start to the week, there’s a big shift underway on Australian TV with The Voice moving networks from Nine to Seven. Apparently the $40 million price tag for the show was seen as too high.
My question: With broadcast audiences declining and the ad-market in a pretty dire place right now due to COVID, how can broadcast networks keep paying such large amounts of money on these event shiny floor competition shows? Ultimately, these should be a relatively low-cost style of TV. Shouldn’t networks aim for more Have You Been Paying Attention’s and fewer The Voice’s?
Source: TV Tonight
TV shows return to work
There are tentative return dates for production of some major CBS series.
NCIS: New Orleans - September 21
The Unicorn - October 12
The Neighborhood - September 16.
Bull - September 25
Magnum P.I. - September 14
Source: Deadline
The X-Files returns in the worst way possible
There’s a new X-Files series in the works. This one will be an animated comedy show. The X-Files: Albuquerque won’t be about Mulder & Scully, but the series (which is still in development) will be about an office full of misfit agents who investigate X-Files cases too wacky, ridiculous or downright dopey for Mulder and Scully to bother with.
Rightio.
Source: TV Line
Real-life spite store
One of the victims of the pandemic was the planned real-life Latte Larry’s pop-up store. Curb Your Enthusiasm showrunner Jeff Schaffer:
“We were gonna have a spite pop-up store in March. We were going to do a Latte Larry’s. It was going to be in West Hollywood,” Schaffer said. “In February, everyone was getting it together, and as we got closer to the beginning of March, our set designers were like, ‘We can’t find any Purell to put on the tables.'” (One of the signatures of the Latte Larry experience was a bottle of hand sanitizer at every table, along with the “no defecation” rule.)
Source: Indiewire
At the box office
- The New Mutants opened in US cinemas (which opened widely for the first time in months) this weekend with a $7 million take. Bill & Ted Face The Music brought in $1.06 million, but the film was also released direct to digital where it was at the top of the charts. It is not yet known what the film made from those at-home sales. Source: Variety
- Tenet, meanwhile, made $53 million in its first weekend of a proper release internationally. It opens in the US next weekend. Keep in mind that the next big blockbuster film is in October, which means Tenet should keep making sizable box office for the coming weeks. It isn’t reliant on the opening weekend, as was the case in the before times. Source: TheWrap
Find out what they did in the Shadows
Fans of the series What We Do In The Shadows might want to check out this great interview with producers Paul Simms and Stefani Robinson. The two discuss the challenges of getting the series back into production amid COVID.
Paul Simms:
We also worry about guest actors. If Mark Hamill [who played a one-episode role in season two] had had to come two weeks early and sit in the hotel room for two weeks, I’m not sure if he would have been so accommodating about doing it. Are we not going to be able to bring in guest cast? So basically, our answer to all those questions is we have no idea.
Source: Vox
Black Panther goes ad-free
The Disney-owned US ABC network are airing the Disney-owned Marvel Black Panther movie ad-free in memory of its star Chadwick Boseman. It will be followed by an ABC News special about the actor who died over the weekend at age 43.
Source: The Verge
What’s next?
