Studio Briefs & Project Development Briefs – Feb 23, 2015

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23 Feb 2015

Studiobriefs03

We will be providing briefs of what comes out of the studios or independent project development on a daily basis and summarizing them in daily posts.   These will be a quick way to attempt to keep everyone updated on movement of projects.   This post is updated throughout the day.  So check back for the latest updates.

 

NON-SPECIFIC (NOT SPECIFIC TO A GIVEN ENTITY)

 

ABC/DISNEY/AMC FAMILY/LIFETIME

 

AMC NETWORKS/AMC ENTERTAINMENT/A&E

  • A&E’s Executive Vice President & General Manager, David McKillop has stepped down, moving into producing, will be replaced by Lifetime General Manager Rob Sharenow who will take on overseeing the sibling cable network.     In Sharenow’s new role as Exec VP and GM of both networks, he will oversee all content creation, brand development and marketing for both groups.  He will report direct to Paul Buccieri, A&E and Lifetime President, for all related business and he will report to A&E Networks CEO Nancy Dubuc for all matters regarding Lifetime. “After 10 years of tremendous growth — we have a renewed focus on re-establishing A&E as a top tier brand,” Buccieri said in a statement Monday. “Rob is the ideal candidate for the job. Before his tenure at Lifetime, Rob was instrumental in the success of A&E for nearly a decade. He was a key member of A&E’s leadership team that developed some of the network’s biggest hit franchises. Under Rob’s leadership at Lifetime, the brand is undergoing a revitalization with a record number of Emmy nominations and returning series. Rob is a great leader with the right balance of creative acumen and strategic vision, essential for today’s changing landscape.”

 

CBS/CW/CBSFILMS/SHOWTIME

  • Joint CBS Corp. and Lionsgate co-venture TVGN re-branded as Pop, has promoted Brad Schwartz as President of Pop from his previous President of Entertainment and Media position.  Mike Mahon, former TV Guide President, left in 2013 and his position had been split into two with Schwartz overseeing programming and David Wisnia as President of Business Operations.  With Sisnia announcing and exiting his position on Friday, the roles have been merged into a single accountability under the President title which Schwartz now carries.  “Brad’s leadership of TVGN’s successful transition to and rebranding as Pop reflects his clear strategic vision for the network as well as his strong programming skills and business acumen,” said CBS President and CEO Leslie Moonves and Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer. “We’re pleased to expand his mandate to include oversight of the integrated creative and business operations of the network as Pop continues to build its brand, develop new programming and maintain its growth trajectory.”
  • CBS News puts Bill O’Reilly Requested Report on its Web Site – Bill O’Reilly enlisted CBS News and the New York Times: “I got calls in to Dan Rather, I got calls into all the CBS brass at the time,” O’Reilly told Howard Kurtz on Mediabuzz. “I’m going to get the video – CBS I think is going to give it to us tomorrow so the people can see for themselves. They can see it. I want everybody to read the New York Times article [about the incident] by [Richard J] Meislin.”  Here is the video from CBS:

  • Also related to the above:  Deadline:  Bill O’Reilly:  “I Want To Stop This Now,” After airing CBS News Footage On The Factor
  •  CBS’s Supergirl has just added Emmy-winning Calista Flockhart to their cast, joining other castmates Melissa Benoist (Kara,Supergirl), Mechad Brooks (Jimmy Olsen) and Laura Benati (Kara’s mother).  Flockhart will play Cat Grant, self-made media magnate and founder of CatCo.   Starting her career as a reporter, Cat built her company into a global powerhouse.   Kara (Benoist) is Superman’s cousin, works as Cat’s assistant.  Supergirl is penned by Greg Berlanti and Ali Adler for Berlanti Productions banner at Warner Bros. Television.  Sarah Schechter, also of Berlanti Productions, will Executive Produce.  Supergirl follows Kara, Superman’s Cousin, also born on the planet of Krypton and escaped amid its destruction.  Kara is also fostered by a family, The Denvers, who taught her to be careful with her extraordinary powers (which she also shares with her cousin).   Kara, at 24, meets an unexpected disaaster, forcing her to use her powers in public.   She begins helping people of her city and they soon notice and give her a new moniker – Supergirl.

 

DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION (AOL, AMAZON, HULU, NETFLIX, YAHOO)

 

 

DISCOVERY COMMUNICATIONS (DISCOVERY CHANNEL)

 

 

DREAMWORKS

 

 

DREAMWORKS ANIMATION

 

 

FOX ENTERTAINMENT GROUP/FOX SEARCHLIGHT

  • FX’s American Horror Story actor Ben Woolf, age 34,  died from a head injury he sustained last week while crossing a street and being struck in the head by a car mirror.   He was transported immediately to a nearby hospital in critical condition. “We have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of love and support from all over the world for our beloved Ben,” his family said in a statement. “He touched so many hearts in his 34 years. His memory will live on within each of us and within his work.”  Woolf played Meep in American Horror Story:  Freak Show.  Our thoughts and prayers are with his family.  May he Rest in Peace.
  • Universal Television’s Charlie Grandy has penned and will executive produce with Peter Traugott and Rachel Kaplan a new single-camera 30-minute sitcom, 48 Hours Til Monday has cast Rob Riggle and Jane Curtain.   48 Hours Til Monday is about a man’s desperate struggle to not let every weekend go by completely to hell.   Riggle (the man) will play the husband, Charlie Bishop described as an energetic, overly committed, yet blindly confident father of three kids who is happily married to wife Kelly.  At work all week, Charlie relies on weekends to reconnect with his family and be a hands-on father, something he lacked growing up.  Curtain plays Louise McGill, Riggle’s mother-in-law who is a disdainfully ironic, fun, cigarette-smoking mother who lives with her daughter Kelly (still to be cast) and her husband Charlie (Riggle) along with her own husband Doug (uncast so far).  Forced to babysit, Louise has no problem leaving her three grandchildren alone while she and her husband Doug walk to the mini-Mart.

 

MGM, ORION, UNITED ARTISTS

 

NBC/UNIVERSAL STUDIOS/USA NETWORK

  • Trio John Davis, John Fox and John Rogers-produced Endgame, a joint Davis Entertainment and Sony TV project, has cast Wesley Snipes in a co-starring role opposite Philip Winchester in their NBC  drama pilot. Damon Gupton is also cast in the thriller.   Set In the high-roller, high-stakes Las Vegas, Endgame is about a former intelligence officer, Alex (Winchester) who becomes a security expert and is drawn into a mysterious conspiracy that forces him to complete a series of heroic challenges in order to save innocent lives.   Snipes plays a character named Johnson, an unflappable, analytical and mysterious Pit Boss for the Game who keeps an eye on the big picture, but is also capable of cleaning up a mess when things spiral too far out of control.  Gupton plays Cal Brown, Alex’s friend and a Las Vegas Police Detective.
  • NBC’s new spin-off Chicago-Med has just added Oliver Platt to co-star in the series, joining S. Epatha Merkerson, Yaya Da Costa and Laurie Holden.   Platt will play the head of psychiatry, Dr. Daniel Charles.   Written by Dick Wolf, the spin off will launch introduce the Chicago Med characters on Episode 19 of Chicago Fire.  Universal TV along with Wolf Films’ Wolf, Matt Olmstead, Derek Haas and Michael Brandt are producing the series.
  • THR Exclusive:  NBC Re-Upping Entertainment President Jennifer Salke

 

LIONSGATE

 

 

SONY/TRISTAR/COLUMBIA

 

TIME WARNER/WARNER BROS./HBO/ TURNER/TNT/TBS

  • HBO Films and Better Call Saul‘s co-creator and EP, Peter Gould is in early stages of developing a telepic for HBO based on the Guy Lawson non-fiction book .  The hedge fund fraud is the center of the story behind the project.   Gould will write and direct the telepic as well as executive produce.
  • Marissa Tormei is developing a project based on Gloria Steinem in HBO new mini-series, Ms being topline/executive produced by Tormei, and Kathy Najamy and executive produced by George Clooney, Grant Heslove and Bruce Cohen.  Tormei will star in the series as the journalist and social-activist Steinem.   The miniseries will look at the creation in 1971 of Ms Magazine through the eyes of co-creator Steinem (Tormei) and the second co-creator Bella Abzug (Najamy), whose lives changed with the early days of the Women’s Movement.   Gloria Steinem will serve as a consultant to the project.

 

 

VIACOM/COMEDY CENTRAL/PARAMOUNT

 

INDIE

  • Oliver Stone’s Snowden just added Nicholas Cage to the cast which also includes Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Edward Snowden), Shailene Woodley (Snowden’s girlfriend), Melissa Leo, Zachary Quinto, Tom Wilkinson, Rhys Ifans, Joely Richardson and Timothy Olyphant.   The thriller is produced by Stone and his long-time producing partner, Moritz Borman of Pathe Films who have distribution rights for France and Benelux.  Wild Bunch is handling international sales for other territories and Open Road Films and Endgame Entertainment are partnering for US release.   Other producers are Eric Kopeloff and Philip Schulz-Deyle.   Based on Luke Harding’s book , it journals his move from Hawaii to Hong Kong, where NSA documents were handed over to Glenn Greenwald, and Anatoly Kucherena’s Time of the Octopus, story about his time waiting for the government in Moscow to grant his assylum.  Kucherena was whistleblower Snowden’s Russian lawyer.  The film is slated to release December 25.
Posted in: ABC, AMC, CBS, Film, FOX, NBC, Televsion ⋅ Tagged: abctag, , , , foxtag, nbctag,

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