Today in show business news: NBC is cleaning house while CBS is adding more clutter, including a Robin Williams/Sarah Michelle Gellar show. Yes, you read that right.
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More cancellation news from the Peacock as the network gets ready to present its new schedule to advertisers at next week's upfront presentation in New York. Yesterday it was Whitney and 1600 Penn, today it's Matthew Perry's freshman sitcom Go On and Brian Williams's weekly news magazine Rock Center. They are really cleaning house as they do yet another yearly overhaul, hoping that this is the one that works. This leaves The New Normal as the only freshman comedy to survive the 2012-2013 season. Yikes! Not a good year for NBC. But when is it a good year for NBC? I mean they have The Voice and that's a hit, but that's kind of it. Ah well. Better luck next year. [Deadline; Deadline]
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Also happening at NBC, Parker Posey is leaving the just-picked-up show The Family Guide. No reason's been given for why Parker left the show, but my fun theory is that she only did the pilot to pocket a little quick cash, never thinking it would make it to series, and then when it did she was like "Ohh, oops, no, sorry, I don't want to." Or maybe she was fired. Let's hope it was the first reason though, right? [Deadline]
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Here's a bit of positive news from the network. They've picked up a spin-off series of the semi-successful show Fire Hunks. This new one is called Police Hunks, and is set in Chicago, just like Fire Hunks. So that's 100 percent more hunks on NBC! Can't argue with hunks. [Entertainment Weekly]
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Meanwhile at CBS, four new sitcoms have been picked up. There's Anna Faris's show with Chuck Lorre, Mom, about a newly sober woman living in Napa Valley. (Bad choice, lady.) There's Will Arnett's thing The Millers, about divorce and wacky parents, ugh. There's a show called We Are Men, which doesn't even merit description. And then there's Crazy Ones, a workplace father/daughter comedy starring Robin Williams and Sarah Michelle Gellar. Yes. Robin Williams and Sarah Michelle Gellar are going to be on a CBS workplace father/daughter sitcom in the year 2013. The mind reels. The network also gave Josh Holloway a show, a drama/thriller called Intelligence about a guy with a magic computer brain. And they ordered another drama/thriller called Hostages, starring Toni Collette and Dylan McDermott Mulroney. Toni Collette, Robin Williams, Anna Faris, and Sarah Michelle Gellar are all going to be on the same broadcast network in 2013. What is this weird world we live in? [Entertainment Weekly; Entertainment Weekly]
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TNT has canceled Southland I'm afraid. But that's OK. It had a good run. Dumped by NBC, rescued by TNT, and critically beloved for five seasons. That's about all any show can ask for. A second chance, some praise, and some time. Well done, Southland! We'll see you on DVD. [The Hollywood Reporter]
Neil Patrick Harris has just joined the cast of Seth MacFarlane's next movie, the Western comedy called A Million Ways to Die in the West. No word on what character he's playing, but people are guessing that this means there will be some singing in the movie. Which is sort of a given since MacFarlane, Amanda Seyfried, and Sarah Silverman are involved. Good god. This movie is going to be insufferable isn't it? I mean more insufferable than it was already going to be. Ugh. [Vulture]
Here is the first trailer for the film adaptation of Tracy Letts's brilliant, Pulitzer-winning play August: Osage County. Now, rather than get upset about how the tone is all wrong and Julia Roberts is miscast and if they turn this into some awful treacly family drama I will be very upset, I'm just going to give the movie the benefit of the doubt and say that this is just a trailer, it's just for marketing, they're not going to get into all the play's weirdnesses and darknesses in an ad. That's how I'm going to approach this. Calmly. OK? OK.