Huge TV news to start the week with: CBS is moving forward with a TV follow-up to Silence of The Lambs. Set in 1993, the show will take a deep dive into the untold personal story of Clarice Starling (played by Jodie Foster in the film) as she returns to the field to pursue serial murderers and sexual predators while navigating the high stakes political world of Washington, D.C.
Clarice will be run by writers and executive producers Alex Kurtzman and Jenny Lumet.
Source: Variety
Tina Fey and Amy Poehler will again host the Golden Globes. Keeping it fresh.
Source: Dark Horizons
In more interesting Amy Poehler news, her reality competition show with Nick Offermans Making It has been renewed for a third season.
Source: Deadline
Seth MacFarlane has signed a deal with NBC Universal, leaving behind his longtime home of 20th Century Fox TV. The deal is believed to be for five years and worth a cool $200 million.
The question I have is what will now happen to vanity project The Orville. It has a passionate fan base, but not a huge viewership. It does okay in the ratings, but its real value was in keeping MacFarlane happy. Now there isn’t a strong reason to keep the show.
Source: Deadline
Just quietly… I have never seen a Chucky movie. But, I’m enthused that Don Mancini, who penned the film franchise and directed three of its installments, will write an adaptation of the movies with a brand new Chucky TV series coming to TV.
Mancini will serve as showrunner and direct the first episode. Nick Antosca (Channel Zero, The Act) will be a producer.
The premise:
a town is thrown into chaos after a vintage Chucky doll rears its head at a yard sale. Soon enough, a string of horrifying murders threatens to expose the town’s dark secrets, while enemies and allies from Chucky’s past attempt to expose the truth. In addition, an untold origin story will explain how an ordinary child transformed into a monster.
American Crime Story: Impeachment has been delayed until 2021, avoiding the US Presidential election.
In August, Landgraf had defended the pre-election premiere date and said he was certain results wouldn't be affected, after online critics, including New York magazine writer Mark Harris, had tweeted that airing the series during the final six weeks of the upcoming U.S. presidential election was "an abysmal idea" and that "there is nothing that Trump would like more than to turn the homestretch of 2020 into a revisitation of the Clintons."
Source: THR
Have you noticed how weird the Internet has gotten? For years if people didn’t like a movie, fans would just rip into it on a regular basis, mention that it ‘sucked balls’ or something similar, and then talk about how movie ticket prices are too high. But now every movie not only has passionate arguments that cut to the very core of their belief systems (“WHAT! YOU DIDN’T LOVE ANT-MAN?????”) and also has grassy-knoll level conspiracies mapped out about where a movie went wrong and the studio interference that destroyed what would have been an artistic triumph. Oh, and that’s usually followed by a campaign to see the directors cut released - regardless of whether it exists or not.
BuzzFeed has an interesting look at how and why fandom has shifted.
The misinformation and anger inside the Star Wars fandom is what happens after decades of corporatization and anonymous decentralized networking. It is a glimpse of a future in which anxieties over the motives of the megacorporations that drive our culture — down to our very mythologies — set off conflicts between warring information tribes who inhabit their own artificial narratives. What began with small but vocal insurgent online communities like 4chan or the alt-right has now come for the mainstream.
Read more: Buzzfeed
Thunder Cats are back!
And finally…
For the last few weeks I have had this tab open on my computer. I finally read it and it’s an incredibly interesting look at the efforts to preserve 200+ backdrops used in movies.
There is no more iconic Hollywood image than the backdrop. Backdrops, or backings, are the enormous paintings that make the movie and television industries possible by stretching the confines of a studio set into endless possibility. With a good backdrop, western plains can stretch to the horizon, snowy peaks of mountains create the suspense of dizzying heights, jungles bloom, skyscrapers loom and cities wink through apartment windows. Sets cradle the action; actors, writers and directors create characters and drama; but backdrops build worlds.
Source: LA Times
