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You can see it with the TV reboot of “Beverly Hills Cop” (our photo is of Eddie Murphy successor Brandon T. Jackson), but there are plenty of others, Nellie says. The somewhat ironic reaction to these early starts: some sought-after talent doesn’t want to settle in with a show before seeing what all their options may be leading into the annual pilot-season hiring frenzy.
Some people in Hollywood, it seems, prefer to play the field versus taking the sure thing. Who would have guessed?
Focus…focus…there! Frontrunners in this year’s Oscar races continue to come into focus with this morning’s release of the Screen Actors Guild award nominations, says Deadline Awards Columnist Pete Hammond.
Pete tabs “Lincoln,” “Les Miserables” and “Silver Linings Playbook” as guild favorites (each received four nominations) likely to succeed with Academy voters too. There were plenty of individual surprises, though many more among those left out than those included, given the large number of excellent performances worthy of recognition in several categories.
Importantly for Oscar watchers, the SAG nominations correlate highly (better than 85 percent in recent years) with the Academy’s actor nominees, Pete says.
This week is chock full of award nominations (the Golden Globes noms are released tomorrow; AFI and the Critics Choice Film Awards released theirs the past couple of days), just ahead of the start of voting by Motion Picture Academy members for Oscar nominations.
The announcement is a great excuse to ask, of this remarkable actor’s many remarkable roles, what’s your favorite of his? “Lawrence of Arabia?” “My Favorite Year?” “The Lion in Winter?” “Goodbye Mr. Chips?” My personal slightly obscure favorite, “The Stunt Man?”
Sunday’s Tony Awards featured such big winners as “Once” and “Death of a Salesman.” Now, Deadline’s Mike Fleming reports, comes the next potential Broadway hit: “Gilligan’s Island: The Musical,” based on the 1960s television show. Really.
Perhaps it’s not so far-fetched, though.
“Once,” after all, is based on a lovely Irish indie film that became an unlikely hit both on the screen and on music charts.
The massively successful “Spamalot” is, of course, based on a lunatic (and still loved if long-departed) British sketch comedy troupe, one Monty Python. We won’t even delve into some of the other unlikely inspirations for hit Broadway shows, especially in the musical/comedy realm.
So, why not Gilligan? But who should play the principals? I vote Kevin Kline for the Professor, and Brian Dennehy for the Captain. As Deadline Mike points out, the potential for stunt casting with prominent movie/TV stars is ripe for the show, which includes all seven original show characters “plus an alien.” And the casting for Ginger and Mary Ann could be a LOT of fun. Who would you put in these roles?
"Streetcar is no longer about the moment at all. There is no Blanche DuBois anywhere; south, north, east or west. We don’t have Blanche DuBois at the moment. But we have Willy Loman; everywhere we look we see Willy Loman. We are Willy Loman. We’re on Facebook; we need to be known; we’re selling all the time. I’m selling our show right now to you. There is stunning foresight in this that really made me want to do it."
Nichols, now 80, opens up about watching the original “A Streetcar Named Desire” right after it opened and being “poleaxed” by its intensity. But now, he says, what “Streetcar” had to offer in its time has faded, while “Salesman” has only become more relevant than ever in an era of personal brands and selling yourself as your No. 1 product.
Another great, in-depth interview by Mike. Great job!
