SSN ORIGINALS
TV Development for 9/1/15: Jerry Bruckheimer TV Producing ‘Talk Nerdy to Me’, New Cuba Series, ‘Galaxy Quest’ Voyages to Amazon
As Pilot Season heats up, more and more projects start to move forward, including new stuff from Shondaland, an adaptation of a popular telenovela, an off shoot of NBC’s popular American Ninja Warrior series, and an Eric Kripke-Shawn Ryan team up, among others. Click on the link to read more. (SSN)
OTHER HEADLINES
Big Viewing News: Amazon Prime One-Ups Netflix by Offering Offline Playback
The sales and online viewing giant has taken a step to one-up Netflix by doing something the latter streaming service said they would never do: offline playback will now be available to Prime subscribers so they can download their favorite show or movie before they hop on a plane or hit the road. In addition to dropping “Instant” from the service’s name, Amazon moves away from being purely a streaming library. (SF)
The Academy Has Found Its Producers For This Year’s Show: David Hill and Reginald Hudlin To Oversee 88th Oscars
Producer Hill and writer-producer-director Hudlin take over for Neil Meron and Craig Zadan, who ran the show for each of the last three years. Hill recently left his post as an executive VP at Fox to hang out his own producing shingle, while Hudlin earned a 2012 Oscar nod for producing Django Unchained. The Oscars will appear live on ABC on February 28th, 2016. (DH)
BFI London Releases the Full Program For This Year’s Film Festival
A total of 238 fiction and documentary features, including 16 world premieres, eight international premieres, 40 European premieres and 11 archive films (including 5 restoration world premieres) will play across London. The Festival opens with the European premiere of Sarah Gavron’s Suffragette, and closes with the European premiere of Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs. (EMP)
Jason Bourne Has Himself a Brand New Villain, as Vincent Cassel Signs To Play the Baddie In ‘Bourne 5’
Matt Damon makes his return to the series after sitting out The Bourne Legacy, and will star alongside Alicia Vikander, Tommy Lee Jones and Julia Stiles. Paul Greengrass is back to direct and co-pen the script with Christopher Rouse. Frank Marshall again produces the action-thriller alongside Jeffrey Weiner for Captivate Entertainment. Plot details are unknown at this time, though sources say Cassel will play an assassin tracking Bourne. (VAR)
Josh Gad Gives Two Thumbs Up To ‘Russ & Roger’, Signs To Play Roger Ebert In True Life Tale
The film, described as a debaucherous comedy centering on two outsiders who defied the Hollywood establishment and made one of the first X-rated films ever released by a major movie studio, having the party of a lifetime in the process, already has Will Ferrell on board to play Russ Meyer. The movie follows the making of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, which was co-written by the film critic and the exploitation king. (THR)
How Shows Like ‘Will & Grace’ And ‘Black-ish’ Can Change Your Brain
Psychologists say it’s not uncommon to think of fictional characters as your friends. They call these attachments parasitical relationships, and a growing body of research suggests there may be more to these connections than we realize. It turns out that as we grow emotionally attached to characters who are part of a minority group, our prejudices tend to recede. (NPR)
As We Gear Up For the Fall Festivals, 10 Things They Could Tell Us About Awards Season
The Venice Film Festival kicks off this week with the world premiere of Everest and that’s as good as a starting gun: Awards season is here. Over the next six weeks, Venice, Telluride, Toronto and New York (which has established itself as the full-on fourth member of the fall festival Oscar influencers) will offer the first look at dozens of films that may or may not factor into this year’s race. (IW)
Trailer Buzz, Part 1: ‘The Danish Girl’
Universal Pictures and Focus Features have released the first trailer for the upcoming drama, based on a true story, starring Eddie Redmayne, Alicia Vikander, Ben Whishaw, Amber Heard, and Matthias Schoenaerts, and directed by Tom Hooper. It hits theaters November 27th. (TP)
Trailer Buzz, Part 2: ‘Macbeth’
The Weinstein Company has released the first U.S. trailer for the latest adaptation of the Shakespeare play. Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard star, along with Sean Harris, Paddy Considine, David Thewlis, Jack Reynor, and Elizabeth Debicki. (COL)