This week in TV news, Kit Harington shares his annoyance over rude fans. Plus Netflix leaks House of Cards, James Franco joins Hulu, CBS casts Laverne Cox, and the people fight for The Simpsons!
After Unitel, the network that broadcasts The Simpsons in Bolivia, moved the show’s time slot, an estimated 2,000 fans took to the streets to protest the programming change-up. The protesters marched in the cities of La Paz, Santa Cruz and Cochabamba — many in Homer and Bart Simpsons masks — braving heavy rains to demand their favorite show return back to its regularly scheduled time. The voices of the people were heard, and Unitel, which had been running a 45-minute block of The Simpsons, upped the show to two hours a day. Who says you can’t make a difference?
Oscar-nominated actor James Franco (127 Hours) is set to star in the upcoming Hulu Original series 11/22/63, adapted from Stephen King’s 2011 bestselling novel of the same name. Billed as a limited-run, nine-hour series, 11/22/63 is a thriller about a high school English teacher named Jake Epping (Franco) who travels back in time to prevent the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Over the course of the series, Epping finds his mission threatened by Lee Harvey Oswald, while also falling in love within a past that proves itself not so easy to change. Franco and King will serve as executive producers, as will J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot Prods. The deal marks the first original series collaboration between Hulu and Warner Bros. TV. See the original announcement from September here.
Laverne Cox, who pays Sophia Burset on Orange Is the New Black, was cast in the CBS legal procedural pilot Doubt. Cox’s character is Cameron Wirth, an Ivy-educated transgender attorney, described as “competitive as she is compassionate. She’s fierce, funny and the fact that she’s experienced injustice first hand makes her fight all the harder for her clients.” In the pilot, Wirth falls for a client who may or may not be involved in a crime. No word on if this means a furlough for Sophia!
For about 30 minutes on Wednesday, House of Cards fans had accidental access to 10 of the 13 episodes of season three, which is not scheduled to premiere for two more weeks. “Due to a technical glitch, some Frank Underwood fans got a sneak peak,” a rep told TheWrap. “He’ll be back on Netflix on Feb. 27.” In the meantime, Twitter was all a-frenzy for the half hour, with people tweeting that they were leaving work early to watch the show, and that House of Cards had “Beyonced” its fans (referring to Beyonce’s surprise album in 2013). Though Netflix promptly removed the 10 episodes that leaked early, users with the show already up on their screens are able to watch them — so long as they don’t refresh their screens — which means there are already plenty of season three spoilers out there. Just another Washington conspiracy?
Kit Harington, who plays Jon Snow on Game of Thrones, wants everyone to lay off George RR Martin. While speaking at a press event to promote the season four DVD of HBO’s epic series, Harington was asked if he feels “under pressure” from the rabid Thrones fan base. “The only thing I get pissed off about is that, as far as George RR Martin goes, there’s a lot of fan pressure on him — a lot of nasty, manipulative, quite vicious fan pressure that’s aimed towards him, about his health, and about when he is producing the next book. I get quite angry about that.” Martin, whose last book, A Dance With Dragons, was published in 2011, is currently writing the sixth installment of the “Song of Fire and Ice” series, The Winds of Winter. Fans have been outspoken about their frustration with the long wait, even expressing concerns that Martin might die before the book is finished. Harington said, “It’s unhealthy, and symptomatic of many problems we have at the moment, in terms of people sitting behind a screen and firing arrows, which I think is an ugly side of our society.” David Benioff and Dan Weiss, showrunners of Game of Thrones, are believed to be the only people besides Martin who know future plans for the series.
