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News, announcements and other observations from across the entertainment industry

Dana Gould and Dave Grohl make rock band pilot for FX

This year’s pilot pickup announcements haven’t added many surprising new names to the mix of folks who peddle a new show every year. But this is interesting news: Dana Gould has Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl signed on as an executive producer for a comedy for FX starring Gould as the frontman for a dysfunctional band “on the verge of mega-stardom“. For those unfamiliar with him, Gould is a longtime standup and Simpsons writer who Patton Oswalt credits as “the founder of alternative comedy”. Grohl has been in music all his life, playing in the DC punk scene before becoming the drummer of Nirvana. If picked up, it sounds like a perfect addition to FX’s impeccable comedy slate, including Louie, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia and Archer.

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Bond 50 brings all of 007 to Blu-ray

An interesting bit of news from CES this week is that the entire James Bond franchise–a total of 22 films, from Dr. No to Quantum of Solace–will make its way to high-def this year in a collection dubbed “Bond 50″ to celebrate 50 years of her majesty’s best secret agent on the silver screen. No release date has been specified but look for the set in stores around the time the next installment, Skyfall, hits theaters later this year.

I took a new interest in the Bond series last year (largely due to the fantastic discussion on The Talk Show), and while I really prefer most of the later entries, it’s good to know that every film will now be available on Blu-ray for die-hard fans. And considering the spotty selection over the last few years, one can only hope that MGM will eventually make each film available separately for those looking to round out their collections.

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Frank Darabont reveals his original Walking Dead season 2 opener

The ongoing second season of The Walking Dead is unquestionably better than the first, if a little unambitious. One of the biggest mysteries in recent TV history is why AMC canned the big name behind their biggest hit ever and what exactly he wanted to do that rubbed them the wrong way. A recent email exchange between Ain’t It Cool News and Frank Darabont himself may shed a little light on that, as he laid out his plans for a sweeping season opener with almost no participation from the already huge ensemble cast. It’s a pretty great idea, but it sounds really expensive, and it’s pretty obvious that executives already jittery about their big hit being off the air for nearly a year would want to hop right back in with the characters the audience already identifies with.

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Tim Burton continues to be lazy, decides to make a new Pinocchio

Tim Burton is probably the only household name director in America besides Steven Spielberg, and is at the height of his commercial powers after making two of the biggest blockbusters of all time with his spins on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Alice in Wonderland. He’s also light years away from the exciting, iconoclastic genius who turned out classic after classic in the late 80′s and early 90′s like Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, Beetlejuice and Ed Wood. As soon as he got the clout to make whatever he wanted, Burton turned his attention almost exclusively to phoning in his uninspired riffing on his favorite stories, from Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman to Planet of the Apes. Whenever he breaks out of the box — as with the uncompromising musical Sweeney Todd or the lovely Southern fairy tale Big Fish — he reminds us why we fell in love with him in the first place. Sadly, he’s continuing his and our time with his next project:

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Burton wants to make a retelling of PINOCCHIO with Warner Brothers (not at Disney, interestingly enough), and Robert Downey Jr. would play Gepetto, the lovable inventor who wants a son so badly that he makes a puppet that comes to life.  This new tale would be from the perspective of Gepetto and his adventures trying to find his lost wooden marionette.

Expect lots of cartoonish goth imagery and Danny Elfman-scored “la la la”-ing. Yawn.

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Live-action Akira lacks funds, goes on hold

Today Warner Brothers put a stop to its big-budget adaptation of the anime classic citing, among other things, too much budget.

Collet-Serra already had halved the budget from the incarnation that Albert Hughes was going to direct. He now is working on a budget in the $90 million range. But with only Garrett Hedlund (Tron: Legacy) signed on to star, and Kristen Stewart, Ken Watanabe and Helena Bonham Carter in various stages of dealmaking, the studio feels that the price tag is still too high for a sci-fi project with that level of star wattage. The goal, says an insider, is to bring the budget down to between $60 million and $70 million. However, another source close to the production says the script, rather than the budget, has skidded the production. The project, this person says, will remain in the $90 million range.

It’s all probably with good reason, since the last time the WB invested mightily in bringing a classic anime title to the big screen–2008′s Speed Racer–the masses didn’t turn out like they’d hoped. Even in today’s market, $90 million still seems like a lot of money, and obviously the studio is having some confidence issues.

While I like to think this is just a matter of studio execs acting responsibly (can any of those actors can carry a film of that size, much less one based on a nerdy, mature property like Akira?) it’s probably more of an exercise in common sense, considering the declining appeal of anime as a whole over the last several years–all of which is fine with me, of course. I like Akira just the way it is.

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