Alec Baldwin Goes Bust On Broadway
Today in show business news: Alec Baldwin's latest Broadway play is closing early, Steve Carell returns to The Office, Winona Ryder is making a comeback, and The Newsroom goes back in time again.
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After all that drama with Shia LaBeouf abruptly leaving the production and sending out weird emails and tweets and what not, Alec Baldwin's Broadway play Orphans is ending its run six weeks early due to poor sales. Yup, it'll close on May 19 instead of the planned June 30, having run 27 preview and 37 regular performances. Who knows why the audiences didn't show up, but you have to wonder if maybe the LaBeouf factor would have helped the production. It kinda seemed like Baldwin had chased LaBeouf off, as he's done to cast members in the past, so he might have shot himself in the foot. Whatever the reason, it's always too bad to hear that people are out of a job earlier than they planned to be. Not necessarily the actors, but the crew and everyone. Oh well, they'll get a hit next time. And hopefully one with a slightly less, y'know, unsteady cast. [Playbill]
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TV Line is reporting that Steve Carell will appear in the series finale of The Office on May 16, though NBC has been denying that he will for some time now. If true, it's probably not going to be some big guest starring role, though. He'll likely just pop up briefly in a little cameo. Maybe on Skype or something or a pre-taped message? That'd be my guess anyway. Either that or he walks by in the background. So, yeah, that's happening and then there is no more The Office. Will you be sad? Hopefully not. It's time. It's more than time. It was time two seasons ago. Possibly even before then. [TV Line]
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The whole drunken arrestgate scandal doesn't seem to be slowing Reese Witherspoon's career any. Maybe it's even helping it! Last week she entered talks to star in a sci-fi romance with Keanu Reeves and now she might be reteaming with James Mangold, the guy who directed her to an Oscar in Walk the Line. She's close to signing on for the based-on-a-true-story child services drama Three Little Words. In it, Witherspoon would play a volunteer trying to help a teenage girl get out of the child welfare system in Florida. That arduous process involves having the girl's birth mother (who might be played by Amanda Seyfried) agree to giving up her parental rights. Yes, Amanda Seyfried might play the mother of a teenager. But other than that, this all makes sense. Most importantly it seems like a good, serious role for Witherspoon, who appears to be trying to do a little career reinvention in the style of her Mud costar Matthew McConaughey. And I hope it works! You know, get Reese back to the good old Election and Pleasantville days, so hopefully never has to do another This Means War again. Because I'm not sure the world can handle another one of those. [The Hollywood Reporter]
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Keira Knightley is in talks to replace Anne Hathaway in Lynn Shelton's next movie Laggies. Hathaway had to drop out because of her schedule with Interstellar, Christopher Nolan's next big movie, and so Knightley swoops in to play "a young woman who reacts to her boyfriend’s marriage proposal by pretending to go on a business retreat while she actually hunkers down with a new 16-year old friend." That 16-year-old will be played by Chloe Moretz. So, yeah, we almost had a movie with Anne Hathaway and Chloe Moretz in it, at the same time. But now that's not happening, which means we narrowly averted a potentially world-ending catastrophe. Thank you, Christopher Nolan, for realizing the potential danger and sending Anne Hathaway to space. It was the only way to stop it. And Knightley ought to fare interestingly in the role. I mean, she's not exactly known for her comedy, but she has done a little in the past, mostly in Pirates of the Caribbean. This indie Lynn Shelton movie will be slightly different than that, but it's all still acting, isn't it? It is. Now we just need some director to send Chloe Moretz on a deep sea exploration mission or something and we might have a nice little movie on our hands. [Entertainment Weekly]
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The BBC is going to make two sequels to the David Hare political drama Page Eight, and they're lining up quite the cast. Both leading man Bill Nighy and Joseph Fiennes will return for Turks and Caicos and Salting the Battlefield, and they will be joined by Christopher Walken, Winona Ryder, and Helena Bonham Carter, among others. That's good news for all involved, but hey it's mostly good news for Winona Ryder, right?? Lady's on a comeback! She got good reviews for The Iceman, she's got a Jason Statham/James Franco thriller coming up, and now there's this. Good for her! Perhaps Winona has finally been freed. After all those years, all those T-shirts, we may have finally done it, guys. We may have gotten our girl back. [Deadline]
Uh oh. Here's a new promo for everyone's favorite hate-watch, HBO's The Newsroom. Yes, Aaron Sorkin's cable news drama returns next month, so it's time to start teasing the new season. And boy are we teased. Sorkin mentions Occupy Wall Street, which ought to be hilarious, and a season-long arc that gives the show a little more structure than last season. Which is intriguing. Plus Sorkin says we'll watch Alison Pill's character's life crumble to pieces, so hey, that ought to be vaguely troubling in a gender politics kind of a way. All told, this is a promising first look at the exciting new season. Not promising in an actually good way. In a bad way. Which is also the good way. You know?
