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Crusoe Casting
The Hollywood Reporter‘s telling everyone, so it’s safe for me to say that we have our leads. Crusoe will be played by Montana-born, LAMDA-trained British citizen Philip Winchester. Susannah Crusoe is played by Anna Walton, fresh from Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy 2. Yeah, I know that in The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Defoe doesn’t…
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Dumping Miss Daisy
I saw the first Pushing Daisies when it was leaked pre-air in 2007. I thought it made a great mini-movie but couldn’t see the long-running series potential in it. Series tend to follow formula and spread their invention, and this did neither. The second episode surprised and convinced me. It was the second episode that…
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Friday Night Crusoe
Forwarded to me by Avrum Jacobson: At its first of several upfront presentations to advertisers today at 30 Rockefeller Center in New York, NBC outlined its 2008-2009 season based on a 52-week schedule. The network will introduce the 52-week lineup this fall with a slate of new original programs and continually add other new originals…
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The Brimstone Boys
More from The Hollywood Reporter on developments in the US version of Eleventh Hour. I have to tell you, the trade press is where most of my information is coming from. Any direct involvement I might have had in the production was precluded by the exclusivity clause in my Crusoe deal, made within a couple…
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Anthony Minghella
I turned on the radio for the lunchtime news a few minutes ago, and was dismayed to hear the announcement of the death of Anthony Minghella at the age of 54. I swore out loud, and scared the dog. Anthony and I were fellow students in Hull University’s Drama Department, back in the mid-seventies. I’m…
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Life Line
Did you see this? I wouldn’t be surprised if the answer was no. It seems to have become one of the best-kept secrets of my career. It was a two-parter for BBC1, two hours long, and starred Ray Stevenson (Titus Pullo in Rome), Joanne Whalley (Edge of Darkness, The Singing Detective, Scandal, and many a…
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Crusoe
A couple of weeks ago I blogged about a new gig that promised to keep me busy through the summer, but I was coy about naming it because it was far from certain. And I’ve avoided mentioning it since because my deal was being worked out and my ‘take’ had yet to win the approval…
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Writer Killers
There’s no actual list yet, but perhaps there ought to be. Wherever screenwriters gather and swap stories there are always certain directors whose names are passed around with an attached health warning. The writer killers. They rarely complete a project with the writer who began it. Many of the projects they join don’t get completed…
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Eleventh Hour USA
From The Hollywood Reporter: British actor Rufus Sewell is set as the lead in Jerry Bruckheimer’s new CBS drama project “Eleventh Hour.” The project, based on the British limited sci-fi series, centers on Jacob Hood (Sewell), a special science adviser to the government who, with his feisty female bodyguard in tow, saves people from the…
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The Midwich Cuckoos
A few years back, before the project was stalled by litigation, I started to develop ideas for a contemporary TV adaptation of John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos for producer Marc Samuelson. At that time Marc’s company had a long-term option on all the Wyndham material that still lay within the Estate’s control. My take on…
Hauling Like A Brooligan
Stephen Gallagher
