Brian Grazer Won't Abandon His Wildly Impractical 'Dark Tower' Adaptation
Today in the show set: Ron Howard and Brian Grazer never say die, the Sex & the City prequel nobody asked for could be headed to the CW, and a fine piece of stunt-casting on next year's The Office is revealed.
The CW has "emerged as the leading candidate for The Carrie Diaries," a possible TV series based on author Candance Bushnell's new book about the high school years of Sex & the City protagonist Carrie Bradshaw, according to Deadline. Sex & the City creator Darren Star and showrunner Michael Patrick King won't be involved in the project. Neither will original Carrie Sarah Jessica Parker, whose rep told Access Hollywood that rumors she'd be serving as a producer are "completely false." [Deadline]
Ron Howard and Brian Grazer aren't giving up on their plans to make a trilogy of movies and spin-off TV series based on Stephen King's Dark Tower novels. Grazer tells the New York Post that the Imagine Entertainment duo is currently "trying to get outside financing to make it, and distribute it through a major [studio]." Grazer also said plans for the TV series aren't dead, with the producer suggesting it could air on "other networks or even Netflix." There's something admirable about Howard and Grazer refusing to just walk away from the beloved literary property after Universal pulled the plug on the project last month because of budget concerns, but from these comments, it sounds like Grazer's trying to convince people of the wisdom of investing hundreds of millions of dollars in three hard-R, post-apocalyptic supernatural westerns. That's a hard sell, even in a bull market. [Page Six]
NBC Dateline cancelled To Catch A Predator back in 2008, but the legal headaches from the program, in which subjects were lured to houses for intimate contact with underage boys and girls, only to discover Chris Hansen and usually a battery of local cops waiting to arrest them, remain. Today in Santa Rosa, 26-year-old Joseph Roisman was acquitted of charges of attempting to have sex with an online decoy posing as a 13-year-old girl. Of the 29 people prosecuted as a result of the 2006 sting, he's the only one to beat the charges. According to the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, Joseph's mother Deborah "vowed to sue NBC producers" after the verdict was handed down. In 2008, NBC resolved a $105 million lawsuit brought against the network by the widow of a man who killed himself after being featured on the show. [Santa Rosa Post Democrat]
Stephen Collins--whom the Internet recognizes mainly for his role on 7th Heaven, but was also in All the President's Men and was the original choice to play Ripley in Alien--will guest-star on the upcoming season of The Office as the father of Andy Bernard, the preppy, Cornell-educated, Stephen Collins-esque salesman played by Ed Helms. Dee Wallace (from E.T. and Cujo) will play Andy's mom. [EW]
Viola Davis is attracting Oscar buzz for her performance in The Help, and now she's reportedly "circling" a new half-hour HBO series. There's no title yet, but Boardwalk Empire writer Margaret Nagle is in talks to write the show, which is described as focusing "on the corruption of a city as seen through the eyes of the headmaster of an exclusive prep school who is angling for much bigger things." Presumably she'll have all the usual HBO protagonist demons. [The Hollywood Reporter]
