Beyoncé Really Does Run the World
Superstar of the highest order Beyoncé Knowles-Carter (or whatever it is) premiered her new HBO documentary Beyoncé: Life Is But a Dream on Saturday night and it did well. The broadcast earned the highest ratings for an HBO documentary in 10 years. So how many people watched it? Ten million? Fifteen million? I mean, it's a documentary starring Beyoncé, directed by Beyoncé! That's big stuff. So how many was it?? Uh, well, 1.8 million. Yeah. That's it. But, then again, it is a documentary on HBO. On a Saturday night. Not exactly the M*A*S*H finale or, y'know, a random episode of The Big Bang Theory. Relatively speaking, that's impressive and yet another feather in Beyoncé's heavily be-feathered cap. Is there anything this lady can't do? I heard she actually invented the Large Hadron Collider. She's been to space six times, that we know of. She was briefly the interim prime minister of Belgium. She hacked Burger King! Lady can do anything, including make successful documentaries. [Deadline]
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Christian Bale can also do anything. Save cities from crazed villains, stop bank robbing gangsters, murder Manhattanites with impunity. And now he's climbing Everest! In actor-time make-believe pretendland, of course. Bale is currently in talks to star in Everest, a based-on-a-true-story drama/thriller about the doomed 1996 Everest expedition that became the basis of Jon Krakauer's excellent Into Thin Air. This doesn't appear to be based on that book, but it is the same story essentially. Bale would play Rob Hall, the Kiwi climbing expert who ran an expedition company that was on the mountain that day. This sounds like an intriguing idea and all, but, man, won't that be kind of miserable to film? Stuck in the snow and ice for six weeks? No, thanks. Happy to see the movie, but don't envy Bale or anyone else involved. [The Hollywood Reporter]
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Oh, my. Keke Palmer, Lil Mama, and Step Up actress Drew Sidora have all been cast in VH1's upcoming TLC biopic. Yes, you read that right. Wait, no you didn't. It's not about the television network. Keke Palmer is not going to play Michelle Duggar, guys. It's about the band. You know, "Creep," "Waterfalls," "Hat 2 da Back"? They were a once great group that, of course, ended in tragedy. Well, I guess T-Boz and Chilli are still making music together to some extent, but without the dearly departed Left Eye, it just isn't the same. Anyway, Palmer will be playing Chilli, Sidora will be T-Boz, and Lil Mama, rapper as she is, will play Left Eye. This is pretty exciting, guys. Now if they could just write in a scene where the girls get in a fight with En Vogue, it would be perfect. Make it happen, folks. [Deadline]
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Battlestar Galactica sex robot Tricia Helfer has been cast in a new pilot. She's been hired to star in Killer Women, a show about Christine Vachon's friends. No, no, it's about the only woman in the Texas Rangers. Not the baseball team, the law enforcement group. Which sounds like it could be good for Helfer. You know, tough babe in a mean man's world, all that. The pilot will be directed by Casino Royale's Martin Campbell, so that's promising. And the script is being written by Hannah Shakespeare. Which, jesus, enough with the nepotism. First Lena Dunham and now Hannah Shakespeare. Oh, gee, I wonder how she got a writing gig. So unfair. [The Hollywood Reporter]
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Jason Clarke, the Zero Dark Thirty actor with the weird wild mane of hair, has been cast as the lead in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, the sequel to Rise of the Planet of the Apes. It's a prequel sequel! It will take place 15 years after the first film, and will be half about human beings trying to deal with all these damn apes, and half about the ape from the first one, Caesar, trying to rule his new ape kingdom. Or, well, I guess it's really more of an ape planet than just an ape kingdom. Whatever it is, Caesar's gotta figure out what to do with it. It seems that James Franco will not be in this one, which is too bad. I guess the apes ate him? Or he and Freida Pinto moved somewhere that didn't have apes? Or maybe they just got killed by that virus. The point is, there's no James Franco. Now there's Jason Clarke. And Caesar. Always Caesar. [The Hollywood Reporter]
