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Nickelodeon deal with Netflix induces a wave of nostalgia. The Boys celebrates wrap of filming on season 2 by releasing a short on social media. Disney+ hits 10 million subscribers, Ricky Gervais to host Golden Globes for the fifth time, and more of the week’s top TV news.
(Photo by Nickelodeon)
In an effort to make sure Disney+ doesn’t take away its kiddie viewership, Netflix has signed a multi-year deal with Nickelodeon that will find the companies partnering on new animated movies and series featuring characters from the Nickelodeon universe.
A SpongeBob SquarePants spin-off? A Rugrats revival? A return to Retroville with Jimmy Neutron? Netflix nor Nickelodeon are offering up any specifics about which Nick characters will be featured in the new projects, though in a statement, Nick’s VP of original animation, Melissa Cobb, said, “Nickelodeon has generated scores of characters that kids love, and we look forward to telling wholly original stories that re-imagine and expand on the worlds they inhabit.”
(Photo by Paramount Pictures/Everett Collection)
Meanwhile, big-screen sequels haven’t done so well in theaters recently – Terminator: Dark Fate, Shaft, Men in Black: International, for examples – so Paramount’s taking another route with its upcoming Beverly Hills Cop sequel: the studio has licensed the rights to make a follow-up film to Netflix.
Eddie Murphy will return to play Alex Foley, the Detroit cop who took his baddie-thwarting skills to the tony California city in two very successful (and one flop, Beverly Hills Cop 3) action-comedy films. The 1984 movie that kicked off the franchise was that year’s highest-grossing film, earned Oscar and Golden Globe nominations, and cemented Murphy as an international movie star.
The new movie also boosts Murphy’s presence on Netflix, where his current project, the biopic My Name Is Dolemite, has earned great reviews for his portrayal of filmmaker-actor-singer-comedian Rudy Ray Moore, and where he’s making a comeback to stand-up comedy in a 2020 special that will be followed by a comedy tour.
Season 2 of #TheBoysTV has officially wrapped! To celebrate, showrunner Eric Kripke's shared a new short film featuring a terrifying young Homelander.pic.twitter.com/8wtCEmsX13
— Rotten Tomatoes (@RottenTomatoes) November 16, 2019
(Photo by 20th Century Fox/Everett Collection)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer star Sarah Michelle Gellar has a good chance of ending up on the Fox network: the actress has not one, but two book adaptation series in development at Fox, including one produced by Ellen DeGeneres.
Sometimes I Lie, a thriller based on the Alice Feeney novel, is about a woman named Amber (Gellar) who’s in a coma. She’s trapped in her body with no memory of how she got there, but she knows it probably has something to do with the people closest to her: a husband who doesn’t love her, a sister with big secrets, and an ex who still wants to be in her life. The series time jumps between Amber’s present, recent past, and her childhood, as she tries to figure out how she ended up in the coma. The actress will produce the series with Robin Swicord, the screenwriter of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, who will also write the Sometimes I Lie script, and DeGeneres’ A Very Good Production company.
Earlier this year, Fox gave a script commitment for Other People’s Houses, a dramedy based on the Abbi Waxman novel of the same name. The show follows a group of people in Los Angeles’ Larchmont Village area, largely through their social media interactions, and is said to have much in common with Big Little Lies and Catastrophe. Gellar would play one of the two women in the group of nine neighbors. (THR)
(Photo by FX)
The streaming wars are only going to get worse … for our wallets. Add another reason to keep up that Hulu subscription, as, come next March, the streamer will add original, and legacy, series from FX to its lineup. That means the complete run of essential bingewatch material like The Americans, Sons of Anarchy, Justified, The Shield, Archer, Fargo, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, American Crime Story, American Horror Story, Atlanta, and Rescue Me.
Current FX series will also stream on Hulu after their FX airings, and new FX series that will debut on Hulu (known officially as “FX on Hulu”) in 2020 include the tech thriller Devs, created by Oscar-nominated Ex Machina screenwriter Alex Garland; the limited series Mrs. America, about the movement to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, with an all-star cast that includes Cate Blanchett, Sarah Paulson, Margo Martindale, Uzo Aduba, Rose Byrne, Elizabeth Banks, and Tracey Ullman; A Teacher, a limited series about the relationship between a female high school teacher (Kate Mara) and her underage student; and The Old Man, a drama starring Jeff Bridges as a retired CIA officer who’s pulled back into the spy game when someone tries to assassinate him.
(Photo by CBS)
With nearly every bit of video content ever created soon to be hosted on a streaming service – at least, it feels that way – those grand DVD box sets that used to be a fixture of the holiday gift-giving season are much fewer and farther between. But occasionally there’s still a gem to be found, like with the new The Big Bang Theory: The Complete Series on Blu-ray, which is housed inside a colorful book with a pop-up center.
All 12 seasons of the Emmy-winning CBS comedy, which aired its season finale in May, are included on 25 discs, with almost 12 hours of bonus material, a whole disc of new featurettes, interviews with the cast and producers, and scoop on the show’s many guest stars, the evolution of the characters (Penny was originally a much more disturbed character named Katie), and a 24-minute reel of the gang’s funniest moments from every season. There’s also a 32-page book, full of behind-the-scenes photos, and the whole collection is enclosed in a hardcover red book that opens into a piece of pop-up artwork of all seven main Big Bang Theory characters. It’s worth making a little room for on your media shelf.
TBBT, by the way, will begin streaming next year on HBO Max.
(Photo by Disney+)
The Disney+ launch didn’t go off without a glitch or thousands, but offering movie and TV fans thousands of hours of content for less than the cost of a movie ticket is working out pretty well for the newest streaming service so far; in just one day, Disney+ signed up 10 million subscribers.
How many of those got the subscription for free, and how many of the ones who signed up for a free trial will stick around are questions left unanswered, but classic films like Lion King and the Marvel movies and new original series like The Mandalorian and High School Musical: The Musical: The Series have gotten Disney+ one-sixth of the way to its 2024 goal of 60 million worldwide subscribers.
The service is also making headlines this week as viewers discover “outdated cultural depictions” warnings for some of the movies, including The Aristocats and Lady and the Tramp, both of which include Siamese cats that talk or sing in stereotypical Asian voices.
We get our first look at Jordan Peele’s #LovecraftCountry in #HBO’s new 2020 teaser. pic.twitter.com/R6VB7w4j9y
— Rotten Tomatoes (@RottenTomatoes) November 16, 2019
Ricky Gervais will return as host of the Golden Globes on Jan. 5, his fifth time hosting the awards, which sets a new record. Gervais, a three-time Golden Globe winner himself, said, “Once again, they’ve made me an offer I can’t refuse. But this is the very last time I’m doing this, which could make for a fun evening.” His irreverent, sometimes controversial hosting style will lead an NBC telecast that will include Tom Hanks receiving the Cecil B. deMille Award, and possibly a competitive statue for his performance as Mister Rogers in the upcoming A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood movie.
Grammy winner Ciara will host the American Music Awards on Nov. 24 on ABC, while Grammy winner Alicia Keys will return as host of CBS’s Grammy Awards telecast on Jan. 26, 2020.
Icons Carol Burnett, Norman Lear, Bob Newhart, Carl Reiner, and Lily Tomlin will be celebrated at The Paley Honors: A Special Tribute to Television’s Comedy Legends, an evening spotlighting “television comedy’s unique ability to remind us of our shared humanity through the power of laughter.” The Nov. 21 event takes place at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills.
Robert De Niro will receive the SAG Lifetime Achievement Award during the Jan. 19 TBS and TNT telecast of the Screen Actors Guild Awards.
RELATED: Stay up to date on awards season with Rotten Tomatoes’ Awards Tour
The Walking Dead star Christian Serratos, who plays new mama Rosita on the AMC drama, will star as superstar singer Selena Quintanilla in Netflix’s upcoming Selena: The Series, about the late singer’s rise to become one of the most successful Latin artists of all time. Desperate Housewives alum Ricardo Chavira will play Selena’s father Abraham, a musician who encouraged all his children to work hard and pursue their dreams of forging careers in the music industry.
Impeachment: American Crime Story has cast British actor Clive Owen as Bill Clinton. Beanie Feldstein will star as Monica Lewinsky, Sarah Paulson will play Linda Tripp, and Annaleigh Ashford will appear as Paula Jones. Season 3 of the American Crime Story anthology series is based on Jeffrey Toobin’s book “A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down a President” and is due to premiere on September 27, 2020. (Variety)
Comedian and actress Jade Catta-Preta (Californication) will host E!’s reboot of The Soup, the pop culture commentary series that will return to the network early next year to poke fun at everything from reality TV to viral videos.
Emmy and Tony winner Courtney B. Vance will play Aretha Franklin’s father in Genius: Aretha, season 3 of the National Geographic series produced by Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. As was previously announced, Franklin will be played by Broadway star Cynthia Erivo (The Color Purple).
Anna Deavere Smith, Jeff Perry, Terry Kinney, Anders Holm, and Arian Moayed have joined the cast of Shonda Rimes’ upcoming Netflix limited series Inventing Anna, which tells the true story of Anna Delvey, the infamous heiress who conned New York City’s society set.
Justified alums Kaitlyn Dever and Jonathan Tucker will star in the first episode of Hulu’s upcoming horror anthology series Monsterland.
Grey’s Anatomy alum T.R. Knight has joined the cast of The Flight Attendant, the upcoming HBO Max thriller starring The Big Bang Theory’s Kaley Cuoco, who’s also an executive producer on the project. Cuoco plays the titular character, Cassie, who wakes up in bed with a dead guy and has no memory of how she got there. Knight plays Davey, Cassie’s older brother, whose memories of their childhood are very different than his sister’s.
Emma Coronel Aispuro, the wife of convicted drug lord El Chapo, is joining the cast of the VH1 reality series Cartel Crew for season 2. The show follows the lives of a group of people whose family members are involved in the drug world. Aispuro has been married to El Chapo, whose real name is Joaquin Guzman, since 2007. (Daily Mail)
Kristen Bell will return as the narrator of the Gossip Girl reboot on HBO Max. The upcoming series will take place eight years after the original series ended and follow a new group of New York City private school teens.
(Photo by HBO)
Comedian Jeff Garlin, star of The Goldbergs and a star and executive producer on Curb Your Enthusiasm, shared some details on the Larry David comedy’s upcoming 10th season, which he says will premiere on Jan. 19 on HBO. The season features Vince Vaughn in a multi-episode arc, Garlin told The Daily Beast, and he’s not portraying himself.
Mary-Louise Parker will star in and serve as executive producer on a Weeds sequel that will pick up with the Botwins a decade after the events of the original series, now that the family business is legal. The original series aired on Showtime from 2005-12, but is now in development at Starz. (Variety)
D.L. Hughley will star in the one-hour “comedic documentary” How Not to Get Shot and Other Advice from White People, based on his bestselling book of the same name. The comedian will also serve as executive producer on the special, which will see him explore the state of race in America.
All cast members of NBC’s only daytime soap opera, Days of Our Lives, were released from their contracts this week, as DOOL will wrap production at the end of November with enough episodes banked to air through summer 2020. The 55-year-old soap, which features daytime superstar Deidre Hall, is the longest-running entertainment program in NBC history. According to TV Line, the show has not yet been cancelled, but cast members will have to negotiate new contracts with Corday Productions for Days to continue. The soap, one of only four daytime dramas on the air, is the lowest rated of the four, averaging two million viewers a day.
Zoe Saldana will star in a Netflix limited series adaptation of From Scratch, Eureka star Tembi Locke’s bestselling memoir about the unexpected death of her husband and raising their daughter on her own while dealing with her grief. Saldana and Reese Witherspoon are executive producers on the project.
Is a Friends reunion finally happening? Yeah, maybe, kind of. THR reports the cast may get back together for an unscripted reunion special to help launch HBO Max, but the gathering sounds less exciting than that photo of the cast’s recent lunch that Jennifer Aniston posted to launch her Instagram account.
Apple TV+ has ordered a new workplace thriller from director and executive producer Ben Stiller. Severance will star Adam Scott as an employee trying to bounce back from a rough past while at his new job with Lumen Industries, a company “looking to take work-life balance to a new level.”
CBS’s just-announced midseason lineup will include the 15th, and final, season of Criminal Minds – a show we’re always slightly surprised to learn is still on the air – which premieres Jan. 8. Also new on the CBS schedule: yet another Dick Wolf drama, FBI Most Wanted, with Nip/Tuck star Julian McMahon as a veteran FBI agent tracking the worst of the bureau’s most wanted. Keisha Castle-Hughes (Game of Thrones) and Kellan Lutz (Twilight saga) also star.
The series finale of The Good Place – on NBC on Jan. 30 – will include an hour-long episode, followed by an aftershow with the cast, hosted by Seth Meyers.
Season 2 of the adaptation of Caroline Kepnes’ stalker thriller You will premiere on Netflix on Dec. 26, after moving from Lifetime to the streaming service. Penn Badgley returns as Joe, the charming, but deadly bookstore owner who may be moving from New York to Los Angeles in the sophomore season.
Doctor Who staffs up: BBC America has announced three new writers – Nina Metivier (co-creator of The A List), Maxine Alderton (Emmerdale), and Charlene James (A Discovery of Witches) – and four new directors – Nida Manzoor (Enterprise), Emma Sullivan (Call the Midwife), Jamie Magnus Stone (The Last Dragon Slayer) and Lee Haven Jones (Vera) – for the upcoming season of Doctor Who, which will premiere in early 2020. The season will be the second for Thirteenth Doctor Jodie Whittaker. The series also recently teased something coming November 23:
