Showtime and Netflix Fight for the New 'Arrested Development' Episodes
Today in film and television: Netflix and Showtime are the early leaders to be the Bluth family's new home, Moneyball is no match for a heartwarming dolphin, and Kevin Kline joins Charlie Kaufman's appropriately strange sounding new movie.
At The New Yorker Festival yesterday, Arrested Development creator Mitchell Hurwitz said that he's planning to bring the Bluth family back to television with a nine-or-ten episode "miniseason," which would serve as a prologue for the long-gestating movie version of the show. But it's still unclear where these new episodes would air. Deadline and Vulture are both reporting that 20th Century Fox TV, which co-produced the original show with Imagine TV, has already had talks with Netflix and Showtime about carrying the new episodes. Both would seem like logical fits: Netflix is currently gobbling up content, while Showtime president David Nevins was an executive at Imagine TV during Arrested Development's original run. And then there's Fox: they cancelled the series five years ago and haven't commented on the stories about the new episodes, but with the new episodes tied so closely to the film, which is being produced by Fox Searchlight, they still could choose to keep the property in-house in the name of corporate synergy. [Deadline and Vulture]
Kurt Russell is "in talks" to play the plantation-owning bad guy in Quentin Tarantino's spaghetti western Django Unchained. Kevin Costner was originally cast in the role, but he dropped out last week. The movie, which is already hustling to meet its Christmas 2012 release date, got another piece of bad news over the weekend when it was revealed that co-star Christoph Waltz dislocated his pelvis while training with a horse for his role. Waltz is sticking with the project, his representatives say. [Entertainment Weekly]
Last week's sterling conclusion to the baseball season wasn't enough to propel Moneyball into the top spot at the weekend box office. Instead, it finished in second place with $12.5 million in receipts, behind the $14.5 million posted by the animatronic dolphin tale Dolphin Tale. Last week, the film was beat out the reissue of The Lion King for the top spot. [The Los Angeles Times]
Kevin Kline has joined the cast of Charlie Kaufman's Frank or Francis, his directorial follow-up to Synecdoche, New York. Kline will be playing two roles in the film, about an online movie critic (Jack Black) who won't stop bashing a director, played by Steve Carrell. It's also a musical, and features Nicolas Cage (who played two roles in the Kaufmnn-scripted adaptation) as a movie star known as "The Emcee." We'd expect nothing less from Kaufman. [Variety via First Showing]
