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WRITING/DIRECTING
After Alec Berg and Mike Judge finished the first season of their HBO comedy
Silicon Valley, the showrunners made a decision to take on even more work for the current year: they’d alternate writing and directing episodes, rather than hiring guest directors. Because the lines between TV directing and writing continue to blur, Berg and Judge aren’t the only showrunners moving seamlessly between the two.
(VAR)
The kind of gumption that Gilligan has is the kind of gumption that wins you the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series two years in a row, as AMC’s
Breaking Bad did in 2013 and 2014. It’s also the kind of mojo that conjures up a series like
Better Call Saul from one of
Bad’s most magnetic characters without missing a step, putting you in the running once again.
(AL)
Which is just one story related from 17 of TV's top comedy and drama helmers — whose duties ranged from shooting an entire episode with iPhones to hugging (and crying) it out with crewmembers — as they explain how they pulled off logistical miracles and creative triumphs to make some of the season's most unforgettable (and, in one case, history-making) television.
(THR)
You really can't blame a comedy showrunner — on whose shoulders a show's successes and failures squarely sit — for being totally exhausted. A sextet of Emmy-contending showrunnners reveal their most panicked moments on set, why making a movie can help you sell a TV show, why they no longer loathe network notes and what they'll do the day their hit shows are done for good. Says one (obviously): "Sleep!"
(HRTV)
SSN ORIGINALS
She has put her passion for helping writers, producers and executives break in, stay in, and move up in the entertainment industry to good use as Director of the Writers Guild of America’s Showrunner Training Program, the CBS Diversity Writers Mentoring Program and the Humanities New Voices program. Now, she has written the book
Hollywood Game Plan, which is excerpted here.
(SSN)
Among the other projects that started up in the last week are Gore Verbinski’s new flick, Jay Baruchel’s directorial debut, James Schamus’
Indignation and Mario Van Peebles’ film about the U.S.S. Indianaplois, while Ang Lee wraps
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk and Nate Parker finishes
The Birth of a Nation. There are other projects as well, so click the link to get all the info.
(SSN)
OTHER HEADLINES
For over two decades she’s produced movies such as
Edward Scissorhands,
Ed Wood and the recent
Mad Mad: Fury Road and now
she will make her directorial debut with
Unforgettable, a female-centric thriller. With a script written by Christina Hodson and David Leslie Johnson, the story sees a woman struggling to start a new life with a new husband and his daughter but finds herself tormented by the man’s manipulative and mentally unstable ex-wife.
(THR)
The great director’s original screenplay written in 1956 and
is being developed as a feature trilogy with Marc Forster attached to direct and produce the first in the series. He will also produce the subsequent features.
The Downslope is said to be “a sweeping, historical action-drama” that Kubrick penned following the release of his allegorical war film
Fear and Desire, and prior to directing his seminal WW I period piece,
Paths of Glory. (DH)
Online streaming service is in negotiations with Sony Pictures TV to pick up the busted CBS drama pilot that has high-profile auspices in co-writers and exec producers Cranston and David Shore. The plan is to put the pilot on its Amazon Prime Instant Video platform where it will be showcased for Amazon’s typical crowd-sourcing development process of inviting viewers to weigh on its merits as a potential series.
(VAR)
Paramount has released the newest look at the highly anticipated fifth installment of the popular franchise. Starring Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Ving Rhames, Jeremy Renner, Sean Harris,Simon McBurney, and Alec Baldwin, and co-written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, the film opens July 31st.
(COL)
