Upcoming CBC-TV season to focus on Canadian drama
CBC-TV has announced a redoubled focus on Canadian dramatic programming in its 2005-06 season.
Beginning this fall, the network plans to build on the past success of its "high impact drama" strategy by devoting the prime time slots on Sunday and Monday nights to Canadian dramatic specials and miniseries, CBC-TV announced in a media briefing on Thursday.
Long-awaited projects like The Tommy Douglas Story, the prequel to the 2002 Trudeau miniseries, Shania: A Life in Eight Albums and Waking Up Wally: The Walter Gretzky Story will come to air.
"Our number one goal is to increase viewing to our network," said Richard Stursberg, executive vice-president of CBC-TV. "The season ... is designed to bring to more Canadians more of the shows they want to see."
A major challenge is determining how to compete against top ranked U.S. shows like Desperate Housewives, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and ER, which air on other Canadian networks during prime time, said Slawko Klymkiw, executive director of network programming.
CBC-TV's strategy is to offer "more and better distinctively Canadian programming," Klymkiw said. "We have to know who we are and what we do best. We have to make ourselves heard over the noise of the marketplace."
Canadians have certain expectations of a public broadcaster, Klymkiw said, among them high quality Canadian drama, comedy and children's programming as well as top notch news and Canadian sports coverage. "And of course they expect Coronation Street. God help you if you don't give it to them," he said. The popular British series will be on five nights a week.
"We have to give them things they can't get anywhere else," he said. "We're opening up the floodgates on Canadian drama. We're putting it on the air when Canadians are watching TV – in prime time."
Popular shows like This is Wonderland and Rick Mercer's Report will return. Rick Mercer's comedy vehicle has dropped the "Monday" from its name because of a move to Tuesday evenings beginning this fall.
New additions will include Da Vinci's City Hall, which will follow the fictional Vancouver coroner-turned-mayor, and Brad Peyton's stop-motion animated comedy series What It's Like Being Alone.
The sports lineup includes coverage of the 2006 Torino Games in Turin, the Canadian Football League and the National Hockey League, if it returns. News programs are being revamped, with a pilot project that will restore local suppertime newscasts in St. John's, Montreal and Edmonton to a full hour, Stursberg said.
Further details about the season will be announced in early September.
Chase Scenes
''Sopranos'' premiere is set for March 2006. The nearly two-year wait for the sixth (and final?) season will end next spring!
Just under 2 million people watched last weekend's premiere of HBO's much-touted miniseries Empire Falls, so not many people saw the surprise appearance by Tony Soprano.
It was during the premiere that HBO began airing promos for the upcoming season of The Sopranos, which finally revealed the date when the show will return. Don't start baking the ziti just yet: It's March 2006, nearly two years after the last new episode aired in June 2004.
An HBO spokesperson confirmed to the New York Post that the Mob series would return next March, though she said the channel hadn't yet set a specific date during that month for the Season 6 premiere. The upcoming season is expected to be the show's last, though series creator David Chase hinted otherwise at a panel discussion last week at Syracuse University. ''It is possible,'' Chase said of a seventh season, though he insisted he still expected he'd be able to wrap up all the storylines in the sixth, which is still in production. ''It's just a question of whether the story works out creatively in six seasons, which I think it will. Then we probably shouldn't do a seventh.'' Of course, if there is a seventh season, fans will probably have to wait until sometime in 2008 to see it.
Wilder: "Wonka Remake Is All About Money"
Movie funnyman Gene Wilder has attacked Tim Burton's choice of Johnny Depp to play Willy Wonka in upcoming film Charlie And The Chocolate Factory as a money-making ploy.
Wilder, who played Wonka in the original 1971 film Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory, is suspicious of movie moguls' motives for remaking the Roald Dahl fantasy, and sees it as "pointless". He says, "It's all about money.
It's just some people sitting around thinking 'How can we make some more money?' Why else would you remake Willy Wonka? I don't see the point of going back and doing it all over again. I like Johnny Depp, and I appreciate that he has said on record that my shoes will be hard to fill. But I don't know how it will all turn out." Despite Wilder's reservations, Burton insists his film will be closer to the original Dahl novel, than Wilder's musical version.
"X3" Doesn't Mark Spot for Director
Another would-be X-Man has exited X3.
Just weeks before production was set to begin, British filmmaker Matthew Vaughn became the second helmer to drop directing duties on the third edition of the blockbuster superhero franchise.
Vaughn would have made his Hollywood directorial debut on the high-profile project after producing Guy Richie's low-budget British gangster flicks Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch before finally helming one of his own, the recently released Layer Cake.
Despite its career-making potential, Vaughn had a very good reason for leaving X3: The London-based filmmaker didn't want to be away from supermodel wife Claudia Schiffer and their two small children--two-year-old Casper and six-month-old Clementine--to spend the better part of year shacked up with mutants.
"As the shooting evolved, he realized he would have to move to Los Angeles and Vancouver for at least a year," 20th Century Fox said in a statement. "Not wishing to uproot his family for an extended period, Vaughn opted to depart the production.
"We understand Matthew's reasons for leaving, as nothing is more important than family."
Shooting is scheduled to begin next month. Hutch Parker, president of 20th Century Fox, tells Daily Variety that the movie still "right on schedule" to make its planned May 26, 2006 release.
But Parker had no immediate word on who would replace Vaughn.
This is the second major X3 directorial defection. Bryan Singer, who helmed the first two X-Men films, skipped out to take the reins of Warner Bros.' upcoming Superman Returns.
While Vaughn's out, there have been a couple of key additions to the X3 roster. Fraiser's Kelsey Grammer has been tapped to play Beast, the super-intelligent blue behemoth good guy, and Lock, Stock star Vinnie Jones is set to star as the evil, metal-clad Juggernaut.
Also making an appearance will be the winged Angel and Kitty Pryde, aka Shadowcat, who can pass through walls. That role is rumored to be going to Lost's Maggie Grace.
No word yet if Halle Berry will be back as Storm--especially after her abysmal showing in Catwoman--but the rest of the key players are all on board, including Ian McKellen (Magneto), Patrick Stewart (Professor X) and Hugh Jackman (Wolverine).