Newsgasm: Pilots News

FX heads for a sex change

With series like Rescue Me and The Shield, FX has gained a rep as a network with, well, balls. Not for long. The network has just has greenlit a pilot for a new series from the creator of Nip/Tuck-- about a man who realizes he's a transsexual and goes for a sex change.

4 oz. is the first series under Ryan Murphy's $15 million deal Fox. He'll direct the pilot and executive produce along with Brad Pitt.

Now comes the fun part: casting the role of a married father of two sons who decides he's a woman (suggetsion: Michael Chiklis will be free when The Shield wraps).

The series has undergone one big change of it s own since we told you about it last year...

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Posted by CattyFan at 6:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

CBS mixes CSI, Amazing Race, Indiana Jones...

With his CSI franchise going strong, The Amazing Race around for at least another season, and his National Treasure sequel coming to theatres for Christmas, movie trashmeister-- and respected television producer-- Jerry Bruckheimer has put everything into a blender and come up with a new series for CBS.

The Bruck is teaming up with the creators of Showtime's Sleeper Cell on a pilot for a one-hour adventure drama about a a globetrotting team of freelance treasure hunters, led by an ex-Navy SEAL turned archaeologist.

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Posted by Tabloid Baby at 7:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Comedy Central: Chocolate subs for Chappelle

David Alan Grier, one veteran of In Living Color who'd show up for a reunion show, is getting his shot to match Jon Stewart and Dave Chappelle simultaneously with David Alan Grier's Chocolate News, an "urban" topical laff fest that leads Comedy Central's batch of pilots for the 2007-2008 season.

And the actor-turned-comic who's surviving a gig on Thank God You're Here but should lay off the appearances on Adam Carolla's radio show is only part of a multicultural stew that the CC execs are throwing against the wall to see what sticks.

Like, countering David Alan the Comedy Guy with Larry The Cable Guy...

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Posted by Tabloid Baby at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Jamie Kennedy gets bionic pilot

As NBC gears up for its remake of The Bionic Woman, Fox is giving Jamie Kennedy a pilot in which the acquired taste teams with TV's original Bionic Man, Lee Majors. Kennedy stars in Me & Lee? (question mark included), as a guy with chronic back pain who undergoes "bionic" back surgery in a secret lab in the basement of Majors' Beverly Hills mansion.

Lee Majors plays himself. The premise is that the old actor built the lab after he became obsessed with bionics when his show The Six Million Dollar Man went off the air. Sheesh. Imagine that pitch meeting. We know Fox'sreputation for coming up with take-offs and extreme versions of shows from other networks, but this time it sounds like they're throwing money away on an extended MAD TV sketch. We can only guess that Kennedy must have some video of the execs from his days on the hidden-camera Jamie Kennedy Experiment.

And is it a coincidence that the Bionic Woman is named Jaime Sommers?

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Posted by Tabloid Baby at 8:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ant & Dec are the next big stars? Wanna bet?

The networks and their production factories have made a mint importing game and reality shows from Europe, so why bother looking through headshots of washed-up comedians to host them? Despite the performances of Denise van Outen as Billy Bush's gurning, face-pulling second banana on Grease: You're The One That I Want, Éamonn Holmes' cancellation after a single episode on Fox, the prospect of the unlikeable though one-legged Heather Mills tomorrow night on Dancing with The Stars, and Craig Ferguson, ABC is importing a pair of tiny British TV stars to host the pilot of their much-heralded variety-gambling-game show hybrid, Wanna Bet-- the rip-off of the hit German series, Wetten Dass....

Ant & Dec, seen in the above clip punking their countryman Simon Cowell in an inside joke on the last round of American Idol auditions (they hosted the original UK version of the show, Pop Idol, but we don't think Paula and Randy got the joke), are a peculiarly British taste, like Robbie Williams, David Beckham or Pete Doherty... which is why you've probably never heard of them and why if they stick it out they'll wind up divorced and in rehab.