DELAYED
Production on the fifth season of HBO’s The Sopranos could be pushed back as star James Gandolfini has inked a movie deal to star in the DreamWorks’ comedy Surviving Christmas with Ben Affleck. HBO is now looking at a January 2004 airdate at the earliest for the Mafia drama.
‘Married With Children’ cast to reunite
The Bundys, America’s raunchiest television family, will be at it again.
The cast of “Married… with Children” will reunite for a one-hour special to air on February 16, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
The show will air on the same night as the similarly dysfunctional “Simpson” family marks its 300th episode.
The often vulgar sitcom gained just as many attackers as devoted fans during its successful 11-year run on Fox, which ended in 1997.
Original cast members Ed O’Neill, Katey Sagal, Christina Applegate, and David Faustino will all be in tow when the special airs in its old Sunday 9 p.m. timeslot.
The Bundys’ distinctively crude antics will also be commemorated with a pair of “Most Outrageous Episodes” DVDs, the first of which will be released on February 4.
Men Vs. Women On CBS’ ‘Survivor’
Amid a glut of reality programs, Survivor: The Amazon has found a new wrinkle to keep viewers: a battle of the sexes pitting an all-male tribe against women.
TV’s top unscripted series, returning for a sixth season with a 90-minute premiere Feb. 13 on CBS (8 p.m. ET/PT), is waging its own kind of battle. Though it is still hugely popular and has more than 20 million viewers each week, Survivor’s age, lost novelty and new competition threaten to undermine fan interest.
“With all the stuff on the air this spring and probably next fall, we probably will have overdone it,” CBS Television president Leslie Moonves told TV critics Monday in Los Angeles.
“Everybody’s looking for that quick fix, and a lot of times these shows do give you that. Hopefully the cream will rise to the top, as it did with Survivor.”
Survivor producer Mark Burnett says he isn’t worried, although for the first time the usually secretive CBS screened 12 minutes of the premiere episode for critics a month before the premiere.
“We’re in another world compared to these other shows,” he says. “We have this core audience, and as long as we remain true to our dramatic arcs, we’ll be fine.”
So why the change? “It’s like any whodunit: If it’s too predictable, it’s not fair to the audience.”
The Amazon tribe split, Tambaqui (men) and Jaburu (women), forced producers to design a broader mix of challenges to avoid men getting an unfair advantage by using physical strength. Burnett said a similar adjustment occurred in the last Survivor, in Thailand, when older members were concentrated in one tribe.
The same-sex grouping presented its own challenges: At least initially, women couldn’t flaunt “string bikinis to show off” and gain advantage, host Jeff Probst says. And male egos threatened their tribe even as the women bonded.
“Keeping them separated, the sexual tension kept building,” Probst says. “When they met for challenges, it was like a mixer.”
The tribes include a deaf woman √≥ Christy Smith, an adventure guide from Colorado √≥ and the series’ first Asian man, Daniel Lue, an accountant in Houston. And the usual threatening elements await, including schools of piranha and crocodiles.
Wanna meet the new “castaways”?
BIG FAT WEDDING Series Gets a Launch Date
CBS will announce to day that MY BIG FAT GREEK LIFE, the series spun off of the hit movie MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING, will premiere on February 24 at 8:30 PM ET. However, beginning March 2, the show will take a Sunday slot at 8 PM ET; BECKER will move to 8:30 PM ET. Most of the cast from the film will be on board for the show.
SUPER BOWL SHOWDOWN
NBC plans to air a 20 minute Saturday Night Live special at the Super Bowl halftime mark. Guests have not been announced. SNL will air mid-way through a special 90 minute Fear Factor scheduled for that evening on the Peacock network.
Delaney ‘didn’t fit’ CBS’ plans
The sudden departure of Kim Delaney from CSI: Miami didn’t just disrupt the show; it fueled tabloid stories that David Caruso had pushed her out.
Absolutely not, executive producer Ann Donahue says. “He was good to her and she was good to him.
“We never had one conversation with him about Kim. In fact, when Kim’s time on the show ended, he didn’t know it had been done. The network made the call, and then they called us, and then we called David.”
Caruso says the feuding-stars story makes no sense. “Think about the magnitude of who Kim is and her track record, and then ask yourself, ‘Would David Caruso have the power to disrupt a show that was this important to CBS?’ A show that is this valuable to the various parties certainly wouldn’t give the power to David Caruso to play around with the format.”
So why was Delaney let go? “It was just a question of fit,” Donahue says. “She’s an Emmy winner. She’s a gorgeous woman. She’s a very good actress. But when you look at the film, it just didn’t fit. And I think it probably speaks to how quickly we pulled the show together.”
Delaney’s spokeswoman declined to comment.
Ving Rhames to play Kojak, baby
Who loves ya baby?
That’s what Ving Rhames will soon be saying, as star of a potential series of “Kojak” movies for cable’s USA Network.
Rhames has agreed to take the title role, Lt. Theo Kojak, in a re-envisioning of the classic police drama. The late Telly Savalas originated the lollipop-sucking crime fighter role in the TV series, which last aired on ABC in 1990 but spent the majority of its run on CBS, where it debuted in 1973.
“Ving is such a versatile actor, with a powerful presence and unique persona, so it seemed like a great marriage,” said Jeff Wachtel, USA Network’s executive VP of series and longform programming. “Telly Savalas is so closely identified with the role, we needed someone this unique and powerful.”
Rhames just completed a multi-episode arc of CBS drama “The District,” and stars in Barry Levinson’s upcoming DreamWorks film “Envy” as well as Ron Shelton’s “Dark Blue” for MGM.
He earned a Golden Globe Award for his portrayal of Don King in HBO’s “Don King: Only in America” and was widely recognized for his role in “Pulp Fiction.”
Wachtel said that deals with both a top writer and director are in the works for the project, which will start out as a two-hour TV movie, with an option to do a series of movies.
“What’s interesting about classic titles is they often attract unexpected fans,” Wachtel said, “including people who might not normally think about doing television.
“Most people have heard of ‘Kojak’ — so it’s a great brand that we can reinvent and bring something contemporary and special to, to take it to the next level,” Wachtel added.
SIX FEET Rises Again in March
HBO has marked March 2 as the premiere date for the third season of the award winning SIX FEET UNDER.
Kathy Bates (ABOUT SCHMIDT), Dan Attias (THE SOPRANOS), Michael Cuesta (L.I.E.), Michael Engler (SEX AND THE CITY), Rodrigo Garcia (THINGS YOU CAN TELL JUST BY LOOKING AT HER), Jeremy Podeswa (THE FIVE SENSES), and Nicole Holfocener (LOVELY AND AMAZING) will all be directing an episode this season.
NO MORE SEX
HBO announced yesterday that next year will be the sixth and final season of the cable net’s seductive urban comedy Sex and the City (unless the creators change their minds).
Twenty episodes will be shot this spring, with 12 of the half-hour episodes airing this summer and the final eight launching in January 2004.
Schroder Scrubs Up
Rick Schroder (SILVER SPOONS) has agreed to guest star in two February sweeps episode of NBC’s SCRUBS. Schroder will play Paul, a potential love interest for Elliot. However, she has a problem with him when she finds out he’s just a nurse and not a doctor. The two episoodes will air January 30 and February 6.