Guillermo del Toro announced today on the OneRing.net — the official Middle Earth sounding board — that he’s stepped out of the directing assignment on the two film versions of JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit, though he will continue to collaborate as a writer. I would have bet that Peter Jackson would be the one to step…

After three cancelled broadcast series found new homes in the past two years – Scrubs moved from NBC to ABC, Medium from NBC to CBS and Southland from NBC to TNT – things looked hopeful that we may see multiple migrations this year with three major veteran series in play: NBC's Law & Order and CBS' Ghost Whisperer and…

MONDAY AM WRITETHRU: SATURDAY 7 AM: Stats show that 90% of the audience was women. New Line/Warner Bros says Sex and the City 2 ended Friday #1 despite horrible reviews with a big domestic box office of $13 million (-9% from Thursday’s total) for a cume already of $27.2M. That’s an estimated 4-day Memorial Weekend…

You know those deals that seem too good to be true? A few days ago, a number of people received an email with an offer for product placement on ABC’s upcoming reality series The Bachelor Pad, a spinoff from The Bachelor franchise. It read as follows: NEW ABC TV SHOW – AMAZING BRANDING OPPORTUNITY FOR YOU THIS IS AN…

He died today reportedly surrounded by friends and family at his modern art-filled Venice home in Los Angeles. He had been fighting prostate cancer since 2009. He was 74. Dennis Hopper was a Hollywood original from the start, memorable despite average looks in small roles in Rebel Without A Cause and Giant while still…

After the networks tout their new shows to advertisers during upfront week in pursuit of ad dollars, it's the TV studios' turn to plug their new series to international buyers in an effort to recoup the deficits on their newly picked-up shows through international sales. The so-called LA Screenings week, which wrapped…

EXCLUSIVE: Wes Bentley, David Harbour and Leland Orser have joined the cast of HBO's comedy pilot Tilda, from Bill Condon. The project stars Diane Keaton as Tilda, a powerful female online Hollywood journalist with a no-holds-barred style. And no, her last name is not Finke, it’s Watski. Bentley will play Tilda's…

EXCLUSIVE: Christopher Titus is back at Fox with a new comedy project loosely based on his life. Titus' eponymous sitcom ran on Fox for three seasons before being abruptly cancelled in 2002. In the show, which Titus co-created with Jack Kenny and Brian Hargrove, he starred as a version of himself surrounded by his…

EXCLUSIVE: In a last dash pre-holiday deal, Legendary Pictures has closed a high-six figure preemptive acquisition of Pacific Rim, a science fiction film that will be written by Travis Beacham. Beacham was the original writer of Clash of the Titans, the 3D remake which has grossed $475 million worldwide for Legendary…

When Alice in Wonderland this week became only the sixth film to cross the $1 billion gross mark, it certainly bolstered Johnny Depp’s case for being the biggest movie star in the world. He’s the only guy who has reached the $1 billion mark with two films. The other, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, is the…

The Inbetweeners are coming to the U.S. via MTV. After a heated bidding for the rights to the British high school comedy series, I hear MTV is close to giving a pilot commitment to the project, from Aaron Kaplan's Kapital Entertainment. Iain Morris and Damon Beesley, creators of the original series which runs on…

Fox ruled the first night of the off-season with the premiere of So You Think You Can Dance, while ABC's FlashForward and NBC's 100 Questions made quiter exit/debut, respectively. The two-hour season 7 opener of Dance averaged a 3.0 rating/10 share among adults 18-49 and 8.2 million viewers overall. That was up 11% in…