Warner Bros. pushes 'Gangster Squad' to 2013

The July 20 shooting spree at a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colo., seems ultimately to have had a relatively modest impact on the release of the superhero blockbuster, at least in terms of its box-office performance. But it has thrown a major wrench into Warner Bros.’ plans for another

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New NBC sitcoms: Pitting 'broad' comedy against 'sophisticated' comedy is the wrong approach

Robert Greenblatt, chairman of NBC Entertainment, said to the country’s critics at the Television Critics Association’s press tour In Los Angeles that while he respects sitcoms on his network such as Community, 30 Rock,and Parks and Recreation — shows that are, as he said, “sophisticated” ones that “critics love,” his plan for the fall involves “broadening the audience.” The idea that the way to reach a broad audience is by going less sophisticated is an odd one, and one that suggests a problem NBC might have for its sitcom development in the near future.
Look at some of the most broadly popular sitcoms of all time. Would you say that Friends or Cheers or All in the Family were not sophisticated? Of course not. What Greenblatt seems to mean in his formulation is that “broadening” is actually a process of programming shows that are less personal visions of the world by their creators, and more big, easily grasped concepts packaged as big-laff heart-warmers. At least, that’s the impression I get from seeing the pilots of the shows on NBC’s fall schedule, including Animal Practice, Men With Babies, Go On, and The New Normal.
I’m not saying these are bad shows — I want to write more nuanced reviews of them when they premiere, pointing out their good as well as their poor elements — but they do represent a shift away from NBC’s admirable support over the past few years for its non-blockbuster, award-winning Thursday-night sitcoms. The new shows can be easily tagged — Men With Babies (the title tells you all you need to know about a half-hour devoted to dads wrestling with little kids); Animal Practice is already lodged in your brain as “the one co-starring a monkey in a lab coat” — in a way that you can’t so easily summarize, say, Parks and Recreation or Community.

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Peter Jackson in talks about possibly turning 'The Hobbit' into a trilogy

Earlier this month, director Peter Jackson teased the crowd at Comic-Con with the news that he was interested in shooting additional material beyond his planned two-part adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy epic The Hobbit. “There’s other parts of the story that we’d like to tell that we haven’t been able to tell yet,” he said. But as to the question of whether that extra footage could potentially translate into an actual third Hobbit film, Jackson wouldn’t go that far. “It’s very premature,” he said. “The discussions are pretty early.”

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