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As the year (and the decade) draw to a close, there’s never been a better time to sit back and appreciate the multitude of gifts that television has bestowed upon us in 2019.

But for as wonderful as it’s been to behold the pleasures of Amazon Prime’s “Fleabag” and Netflix’s “Russian Doll” or bid fond farewell to HBO’s power pairing of “Game of Thrones” and “Veep,” all the gratitude that audiences have for the medium ultimately boils down to a single, regrettable sentiment: Thank goodness for too much TV.

In this week’s episode of IndieWire’s TV industry podcast “Millions of Screens,” TV Deputy Editor Ben Travers makes the case for fans of every stripe — even beleaguered Hollywood-types and burned-out entertainment journalists — to thank their lucky stars for the sheer breadth of content available at their fingertips.

Travers makes a good point. For as exhausting...

Things seem to be taking a turn for the worse in the consistently frosty relationship between Donald Trump's administration and the cable network he most despises, CNN. "It’s a lot uglier all of a sudden," a source close to the network told The Hollywood Reporter.

Sunday appeared to be a flashpoint in the relationship, as the White House took the unusual step of canceling national security advisor John Bolton's planned appearance on Jake Tapper's Sunday morning show, State of the Union.

Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders placed the blame on CNN chief White House correspondent Jim ...

Take Two‘s Rachel Bilson and Eddie Cibrian will be on the case two hours earlier: Starting with next Thursday’s episode, the ABC detective procedural will air at 8/7c.

The series — from Castle executive producers Andrew W. Marlowe and Terri Edda Miller — stars Cibrian as a lone-wolf private investigator who partners up with a fresh-out-of-rehab actress (Bilson).

Next week’s installment features a mini Castle reunion, with guest star Seamus Dever (aka Castle detective Kevin Ryan) as a distraught husband and father who turns to the P.I. duo to help stop a hitman from fulfilling a contract.

Ready...

SundanceTV and Sundance Now have picked up ten episodes of “State of the Union,” a comedy series starring Rosamund Pike and Chris O’Dowd, from “High Fidelity” team Stephen Frears and Nick Hornby. Pike and O’Dowd play a married couple in therapy; Each ten-minute episode takes place at their local pub during the moments before their next counseling session, filling in the gaps of what drew them together and what is pulling them apart.

“‘State of the Union’ is an unusual project, so it’s al the more gratifying that we have managed to attract talent of this magnitude,” Hornby said in a statement. The trio of heavy hitters have all worked with Hornby in various iterations; Frears directed “High Fidelity,” Pike had a comic turn in “An Education,” and O’Dowd leads the forthcoming “Juliet, Naked.” “I think they will make a tremendous team,” said Hornby.

“State of...

Sundance TV has greenlit “State of the Union,” a 10-part short-form series from “High Fidelity” author Nick Hornby about a couple in therapy.

Each installment will run to 10 minutes and star the couple, who meet in a pub immediately before their weekly marital therapy session. With each episode, what their lives were, what drew them together, and what has started to pull them apart is revealed.

Rosamund Pike (“Gone Girl”) plays Louise, and Chris O’Dowd (“Bridesmaids”) her husband, Tom. “Top of the Lake” producer See-Saw Films will make the show for Sundance and its streaming and on-demand service Sundance Now. Film and TV director Stephen Frears, fresh off the success of “A Very English Scandal,” is also on board. He will direct and executive produce.

“I first met Stephen when he directed ‘High Fidelity,’ Rosamund when she revealed her wonderful comic talent in ‘An Education,’ and Chris when he made the forthcoming ‘Juliet,...

Gone Girl star Rosamund Pike and Bridesmaids star Chris O’Dowd are set to star in a Stephen Frears-directed comedy series for SundanceTV.

The pair are to front the short-form comedy series State Of The Union, which will be a series of ten-by-ten minute episodes, which is produced by The King’s Speech producer See-Saw Films and is written by High Fidelity author Nick Hornby.

State of the Union follows Louise and Tom, played by Pike and O’Dowd, who meet in a pub immediately before their weekly marital therapy session. Each episode pieces together how their lives were, what drew them together and what has started to pull them apart.

Shooting will commence later this summer in London with Hornby and Frears exec producing alongside Jamie Laurenson, Hakan Kousetta, Iain Canning, Emile Sherman. Kristin Jones, Evp of international programming for AMC and SundanceTV, is the executive in charge for SundanceTV,...

Short-form comedy series to be produced by See-Saw Films for SundanceTV.

Stephen Frears has been set to direct Rosamund Pike and Chris O’Dowd in State Of The Union, a short-form comedy series to be produced by See-Saw Films for SundanceTV.

Written by Nick Hornby, the series will start shooting this summer in London. Amy Jackson will produce for See-Saw with the company’s head of television Jamie Laurenson, COO of television Hakan Kousetta, Iain Canning, Emile Sherman and Hornby.

Stephen Frears will serve as executive producer and Kristin Jones, Evp of international programming for AMC and SundanceTV, is the executive in charge for SundanceTV.

Rosamund Pike and Chris O'Dowd are pairing up onscreen for an abbreviated new TV comedy. The two will star in State of the Union, a project from Nick Hornby that's targeting episodes around 10 minutes in length.

State of the Union, produced for See-Saw Films for SundanceTV, follows a couple (Pike and O'Dowd) and their weekly meetings in a bar before they head off to couples' therapy. Stephen Frears will direct all 10 episodes, with Hornby writing.

“I am so pleased to be working again with Stephen, Rosamund and Chris," said Hornby, the prolific novelist and screenwriter....

Walters appointed head of development for television.

London-based See-Saw Films have promoted Patrick Walters from development executive to head of development for television.

Walters will continue developing projects across See-Saw’s TV slate in the UK, Us and Australia, and see him move to an executive producer role on selected UK projects.

He will report to head of television Jamie Laurenson and COO of television Hakan Kousetta.

Walters, who joined See-Saw in 2014, has worked on Top Of The Lake: China Girl, The New Legends Of Monkey and upcoming limited series The North Water directed by Andrew Haigh.

Other upcoming See-Saw...

Updated, 12:47 Pm: The White House issued a statement today updating the status of chief economic adviser and former CNBC host Larry Kudlow. His heart attack was announced Monday in a tweet by President Donald Trump just before the North Korea summit began. “National Economic Council Director and Assistant to the President Larry Kudlow is expected to remain at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center as a standard precaution after experiencing what his doctors say was a very mild heart attack yesterday,” Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in the statement. “His doctors expect Larry will make a full and speedy recovery. We look forward to seeing him back at work soon. Larry and his wife Judy wanted to express heartfelt appreciation for all of the thoughts, prayers and well-wishes.

Previously, June 11: President Donald Trump, in transit to his historic summit with North Korean Dictator Kim Jong-un, tweeted that Larry Kudlow,...

CNN aficionados will this year get to see a lot more of Jake Tapper, and fewer of the commercials that normally interrupt him.

The Time Warner-owned cable-news network intends to cut back the number of commercial breaks and ads that run in the anchor’s two regular programs, “The Lead with Jake Tapper” on weekdays and “State of the Union” on Sundays, part of a growing effort by many media companies to explore new ways to weave advertising with content and still make money off the relationship.

“It’s a first step,” acknowledged Katrina Cukaj, executive vice president of portfolio sales and client partnerships for Turner Ad Sales, in an interview. CNN is part of Time Warner’s Turner unit, which also operates cable networks like TBS, TNT and Cartoon Network.

Turner has been testing the idea of cutting back on commercial interruptions in programming for several seasons. In...

Author: Zehra Phelan

The world and his wife seem to be teaming up with Disney in one form or another, and hot on the heels of the live-action Beauty and the Beast, which saw Ewan McGregor play the suave French candelabra Lumière, it has surfaced that McGregor is in talks to take the lead in their upcoming take on an adult Christopher Robin.

Related: Ewan McGregor – Our Kind of Traitor Interview

Christopher Robin was the child in the A.A. Milne Winnie the Pooh stories, however, Disney’s new venture will focus on Robin as an adult, a businessman focused on his work and success and who has lost his childlike sense of imagination. The young Robin was in fact inspired and named after Milne’s own son in the Winnie the Pooh books and poems which Disney also adapted on numerous occasions for the animation market.

Already on board Disney...

Despite its potentially dry subject matter, Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” is creeping towards $200 million domestic box office, while Netflix’s “House of Cards” is just about the most talked about television show right now, which suggests that political dramas are in vogue. What better to give a shiny new big screen remake to than Frank Capra’s 1948 film “State of the Union,” in which Spencer Tracy’s industrialist ran for President, backed by Angela Lansbury’s wealthy newspaper magnate. 65 years after Frank Capra adapted Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Identity Films and Flat Penny Films are developing a new feature version of the iconic movie. They’re currently seeking writers for the new project, which we imagine will be a modernized retelling – because, let’s face it, it’s not going to be that hard to draw parallels between the politics and media influence of seven...

From Fred and Ginger to Jennifer and Ashton, romantic comedies used to be one of the safest bets in Hollywood. But it seems that rom is just not into com any more

Is it the end for the romcom? You can imagine the celebrity mag headlines: "Romcom's relationship on the rocks?" "Com: I'm just not that into Rom" "Rom: Com doesn't make me laugh any more."

After all, who says romance and comedy go together like a horse and carriage? It seems to be a chiselled Hollywood commandment that the two shall be forever conjoined in cinematic matrimony, but perhaps it's time they went their separate ways. Sure, they got off to a great start: in those early years it was all fun and games and sparkling repartee, but recently they haven't quite looked the happy couple; the spark just hasn't been there.

They've been stuck in the same repetitive formula: boy meets girl,...

In a talk soon to grab several million views on Ted.com, cognitive scientist Deb Roy Wednesday shared a remarkable experiment that hearkens back to an earlier era of science using brand-new technology. From the day he and his wife brought their son home five years ago, the family's every movement and word was captured and tracked with a series of fisheye lenses in every room in their house. The purpose was to understand how we learn language, in context, through the words we hear.

[video_twistage 2]

A combination of new software and human transcription called Blitzscribe allowed them to parse 200 terabytes of data to capture the emergence and refinement of specific words in Roy’s son’s vocabulary. (Luckily, the boy was an early talker.) In one 40-second clip, you can hear how “gaga” turned into “water” over the course of six months. In a video clip, below, you can hear...

3D has swept through the film-making community like Christianity in medieval times. Jesus H. Christ, even St. Martin Scorsese has converted and will direct his next movie – The Invention of Hugo Cabret – using the technology.

If 3D is the new religion then James Cameron is definitely the Pope. However one director who hasn’t been tempted yet by the Devil – okay, 3D cameras – is Christopher Nolan.

The world and his wife want to know why didn’t shoot his latest thriller, Inception, and he told Heat Vision Blog:

“We did tests on Inception to look at the post conversion process, and they worked very well. It’s quite easy to do, in fact. But it takes a little time, and we didn’t have the time to do it to the standard that I would have been happy.”

Those who think Batman 3 will be dressed to thrill in 3D might be disappointed.

It’s nice to take a look at the economic side of things every once in a while. The world and his wife know that MGM is in a real tight spot and need rescuing pronto. And it looks like the knight in shining dollar-sign armour is Time Warner, who according to Studio Briefing, are preparing a $1.5 billion dollar buy out based on news from Bloomberg News. However MGM have said, via their spokesperson dude, that they won’t be accepting anything below $2 billion.

Time Warner do have more than a vested interest in MGM – they already own part of MGM’s movie archives and want the rest. The home entertainment market and re-release titles is worth billions in revenue alone. Having a whole archive of material could be, no, is the real treasure trove. The business world is a murky place and since the rise of conglomerates – it’s...

It was announced at the start of the year Penelope Cruz was joining up with her Nine director, Rob Marshall, for some adventures on the high seas (and St. Ives) in Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides (that’ll be the St. Ives part). News emerged today via MTV that Cruz will be shivering many timbers as Blackbeard’s daughter. So yeah, she’s a love interest for Captain Jack. Jerry Bruckheimer confirmed as much:

“She brings a lot of humor to it.”

Before going on to announce there’s:

“A little romance between Captain Jack and the character that Penelope plays.”

And who will be playing Blackbeard himself? Well, that would be ace British actor and former Lovejoy star, Ian McShane. But wait, there’s more! Vague rumours are drifting close…like a phantom sea mist…could Geoffrey Rush’s character, Barbossa, be returning for more cutlass action?...