Evidently, premium cable channels aren't immune to the cancellation bug, either. Though most news about shows getting pink slips after their first seasons comes courtesy of major networks like NBC and FOX, HBO decided yesterday that it will not be moving forward with second seasons of two of its latest half-hour comedies: Family Tree and Hello Ladies.
By this point, every critic has had a chance to complain about the glut of blockbusters due to hit theaters in 2015, but this coming summer will also see the arrival of some pretty huge properties, most notably in science-fiction. To point out a few of the biggest contenders for box-office glory, we're expecting comic-book sequel X-Men: Days of Future Past, a revitalized Transformers installment, the Wachowski's planet-traversing epic Jupiter Ascending, Marvel's intergalactic caper Guardians of the Galaxy and, of course, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, a hotly-anticipated follow-up to the surprisingly thrilling 2011 reboot Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
After spending almost 20 years in development hell, a Hollywood adaptation of Lois Lowry's controversial, dystopian classic The Giver is finally on its way to theaters, thanks to the dedication of actor Jeff Bridges, who fought alone for many years to turn the book into a movie before Harvey Weinstein agreed to board the project in 2012.
With Batman vs. Superman now pushed off until 2016, Warner Bros. is betting on Atonement director Joe Wright's gritty Peter Pan reimagining, simply titled Pan, to make big bucks at the 2015 summer box office. The studio is understandably keen to assemble the fantasy film's cast so that cameras can get rolling sooner rather than later, and it looks like Wright has just committed to an actor for one of Pan's lead roles as Garrett Hedlund has been officially offered the part of Captain Hook.
Jose Padilha's eagerly anticipated RoboCop, a big-budgeted remake of the Paul Verhoeven sci-fi classic, has already seen its fair share of awesome advertisements in the build-up to its February release date, from the sleek first poster to a stirring war propaganda piece that we ranked among the best posters of last year, but the film's latest advertisement may be its coolest yet.
It's really, really hard to reboot a classic. Whether we're talking about movies or television, very few remakes are able to capture the essence of what made their namesakes such hits, and only once in a blue moon are they able to introduce something new and interesting. If you look back over the past few years, many reboots have been launched by major networks, but only a handful have stuck around past a few episodes. We've seen failed remakes of Knight Rider, Prime Suspect, Melrose Place, V and Charlie's Angels, to name a few of many. So, maybe NBC is making the right choice by nipping one upcoming reboot in the bud; the network recently announced that it will not be moving forward with a reimagining of the classic series Murder, She Wrote.
Hell hath no fury like an android scorned in Vice, a low-budgeted sci-fi thriller from Lone Survivor producer Emmet/Furla/Oasis Films. In the film's quasi-utopian future, people are encouraged to carry out their most vicious and sadistic desires within the confines of luxurious resorts, where they are supplied with as many humanlike androids to brutalize in however many ways they see fit.
After picking up the rights way back in 2011, DreamWorks Animation is finally moving forward with a feature adaptation of Dav Pilkey's children's book series Captain Underpants. An initial voice-cast for the project was announced on Tuesday, with many talented comedians in the line-up.
Watching Cate Blanchett play Blue Jasmine's title character, a former socialite spiraling into a full-blown mental breakdown after the unmasking and subsequent suicide of her Bernie Madoff-esque husband, I found myself questioning whether I had ever hated a character more.
With all the recent hubbub surrounding Avengers: Age of Ultron casting and the Batman vs. Superman movie's shifting release date, news about another extremely high-profile sequel - Star Wars: Episode VII - has been unusually slow over the past few weeks. Although we haven't heard much about the film lately, that certainly doesn't mean that director J.J. Abrams and others from Walt Disney Pictures, Lucasfilm and Bad Robot Productions aren't hard at work in pre-production.
