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Buzz News Roundup, 4/17

BuzzSugar — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:30:45 -0700

Elizabeth Banks and Leslie Mann will topline What Was I Thinking, a comedy that follows four female friends who take a hedonistic ski trip after one of the women gets dumped. - Zap2It
YouTube has a new special section for TV episodes and movies. - LA Times
Fox Searchlight has acquired screen rights to Jen Sacks's darkly humorous book Nice, which will be developed as a potential star vehicle for Reese Witherspoon. - Variety
Melanie Griffith will play Kimber's mom on Nip/Tuck. - TV Guide
Jennifer Jason Leigh will play Nancy's estranged sister on Weeds. - The Hollywood Reporter
Not surprisingly, The Amazing Race has been renewed. - TV.com
Thomas Dekker is reportedly in final negotiations to play the role of Jesse in director Samuel Bayer's A Nightmare on Elm Street. - ComingSoon
Fantasia Barrino and DJ AM both landed reality TV series. - The Hollywood Reporter
The Golden Girls will be remade - in Turkey! - Variety

Fame Remake Cast Shapes Up - And Includes Kherington!

BuzzSugar — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 10:37:16 -0700

The remake of the 1980 musical movie Fame is getting a cast together, and so far there are nine actors who think they're gonna live forever. Notable names among them: Thomas Dekker of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (and the guy who played Claire's possibly gay best friend on Heroes before leaving the show) and So You Think You Can Dance's Kherington Payne. The Hollywood Reporter has more details:

Much like in the Oscar-winning original, directed by Alan Parker, the story will track the failures and fortunes of super-ambitious young performers and their teachers as they navigate a school year at the prestigious High School for the Performing Arts in New York.

"In many ways, the idea of pursuing a career in dance or music or acting is much more palpable now," MGM chairman Mary Parent said. "Anyone with a page on a social networking site is instantly 'famous,' and anyone with a digital camera is a potential filmmaker. The negotiation between fame and real talent is much more immediate and something with which audiences are familiar, and there's a universal relatability to experiencing the trials and tribulations associated with pursuing one's dream, regardless of the arena."

So, this is that "unique opportunity" Kherington mentioned in LA last week! It seems like a smart move for her. And it's actually a pretty good point that a story like this will be interpreted in a very different way now in comparison to when the original hit theaters in 1980. Do you think this story is more relevant today? Or are we spent on shows and movies about talent competitions and trying to realize dreams of becoming a famous dancer/singer/designer/chef/pet groomer?

Kherington photo courtesy of Fox and source

TV Tonight: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

BuzzSugar — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 14:30:06 -0700

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which returns to start its second season tonight on Fox, is one of the more interesting stories of last TV season. The show premiered during the doldrums of the writers' strike, got a mixed critical reaction, and somehow by the end of the season became a buzzed-about show.

How? I'm not sure, but I think the show's innovative casting probably had something to do with it. I mean, Brian Austin Green as a badass? (Showrunner Josh Friedman told the very funny story behind that one back at Comic-Con, ending with him asking the onetime 90210 star "When did you get to be so hot?") This year's entry into the Annals of Improbable Casting is Garbage lead singer Shirley Manson, who's playing a technology company CEO.

But choosing interesting actors won't go too far if the story's not good, and Terminator: TSCC seems to be picking things up on that front as well: At the show's Comic-Con panel, producers announced that someone on the stage would die before the end of season two. The cast reacted with relative horror; it seemed they didn't even know which one of them was the goner. I guess that's one of those things we just have to watch and see.

After the jump, you can check out the trailer for the new season, which starts tonight at 8 p.m. EDT and PDT. Will you be watching? To talk about it, just read more.

Photo courtesy of Fox

Buzz News Roundup, 3/12

BuzzSugar — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 13:30:43 -0700

Two more have joined the cast of My Sister's Keeper: Jason Patric will play the girls' father and Thomas Dekker (formerly Zach on Heroes) will play "the older sister's boyfriend and a fellow cancer survivor," writes Hollywood Reporter.
Online video service Hulu is now open to the public, USA Today reports.
ComingSoon has the news that five more actors have joined the cast of the Shopaholic movie, including John Lithgow and Kristin Scott Thomas.
Since Janet Jackson has the flu, Mariah Carey will appear on this weekend's Saturday Night Live, the Associated Press reports.
Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz is writing an animated version of the Australian comedy Sit Down, Shut Up for Fox, writes Zap2It.
According to Billboard, Goldfrapp, Kate Nash and several others have joined the lineup for this year's Coachella festival.
The Gossip Girl Q&A from the upcoming Paley Festival will be webcast live on March 22, TV Guide reports.
Billboard reports that India.Arie will star in a Broadway show produced by Whoopi Goldberg.

Source and source

First Look: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

BuzzSugar — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 12:32:31 -0800

I've never been much of a Terminator person, so I was a little surprised when I first heard about Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the Fox series that picks up the Terminator story at the end of Terminator 2. The show focuses on Sarah Connor - played by Linda Hamilton in the movie and Lena Headey in the TV series - as she tries to keep her son (Thomas Dekker) safe from the ever-shifting army of cyborgs bent on taking his life.

Fox clearly has high hopes for the series, pairing it with 24 in January and promoting it with the Terminator name (it was originally just called The Sarah Connor Chronicles; Terminator was added later). The thing is, I'm wondering if any people who aren't already hooked into the Terminator franchise - like me - will be interested in watching. Then again, the three movies together made more than $390 million in U.S. theaters, so that might be all the audience Fox needs. Are you curious to check out this show? To watch a trailer and another clip, just read more

Photo and videos courtesy of Fox

"Sarah Connor Chronicles" Revises Scenes on Account of Virginia Tech

BuzzSugar — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 16:13:24 -0700

The new Fox drama based on the Terminator movies will be re-shooting certain scenes that include campus violence out of sensitivity to the tragic April shootings at Virginia Tech. In "The Sarah Connor Chronicles," Connor tries to protect her 15-year-old son (played by Thomas Dekker who played the "totally not-gay" gay friend to Claire on "Heroes") who "may be destined to save mankind from technology gone amok."

The scenes were written and shot before the mass shooting in April, Fox entertainment chairman Peter Liguori told reporters at the TCA press tour. At that time, Liguori said, executive producer Josh Friedman had explained to Fox executives that the scene would depict the one place - a school setting - where even the woman charged with saving the world would have no control over what happened to her own child. As Friedman told reporters:

I certainly didn't write it for some sort of shock effect or anything like that. ... And for all of us parents, I think it's a very scary world. And for her particularly, it's a very scary world, maybe more so than for the rest of us, but not in a quantum leap, necessarily.

But after the shooting, there was a recognition from all sides that the scenes would have to be changed, Liguori said. Friedman and director David Nutter said the re-shot scenes will be sensitive to people's concerns, but they declined to describe the new sequence in detail.

The show's not scheduled to premiere until mid-season, and it's interesting that scenes not airing for another five months would be considered too soon for American audiences - especially given the sometimes controversial "24" plots Fox airs.

Photo courtesy of Fox

Big Gay Controversy for "Heroes"

BuzzSugar — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 15:31:36 -0700

In Claire's story line on "Heroes," her friend Zach has faded into the background along with the rest of her old life in Texas. Zach's absence might have eventually happened regardless, but a tension-filled snafu between actor Thomas Dekker's manager and the writers of "Heroes" certainly sped up his departure from the story.

According to "Heroes" writer Bryan Fuller, Zach was originally supposed to be a gay character, but when Dekker's manager caught wind of this, she believed it would ruin Dekker's chances at an upcoming audition if he played a gay character on TV. To see what else Fuller had to say about the issue, read more

In the interview with Popgurls.com, Fuller continues:

We were definitely going down a route of making [Zach] the gay character and having him have a big role in [Claire's] life and sort of teaching her to come out about her ability and embrace herself and actually using the coming out metaphor and the gay metaphor in that instance as a fun piece of storytelling.

I was very upset by it – I was not happy about it at all ... we didn't want to get hung up on the fact that one actor's management felt that it was a career killer for him to play a homosexual which, as a gay man, I found incredibly insulting.

We had episodes planned for him to be in, and she pulled him from the show altogether. So that's why he sort of disappeared.

Since characters get killed off or otherwise pushed aside (ahem, Mrs. Bennet) on the show with some frequency, it didn't strike me as particularly weird that Zach had disappeared, but the behind-the-scenes truth proves pretty shocking. It's surprising that this kind of attitude still prevails in Hollywood when it seems like these are the roles managers would jump at to "really stretch" their actors. It's a shame that this one manager's hangups so negatively affected the "Heroes" team, but maybe this just opens up the opportunity to write in a new gay character ... with superpowers.

Photo courtesy of NBC