PRODUCTION & DEVELOPMENT
Nigel Thatch, who portrayed Malcolm X in Selma, will reprise the role in Godfather of Harlem, Epix’s straight to series drama starring and executive produced by Forest Whitaker. Show hails from Narcos co-creators Chris Brancato and Paul Eckstein, and ABC Signature Studios.
CBS is developing Far Rockaway from writer David Wilcox (Bull), Alex Kurtzman’s Secret Hideout (Star Trek: Discovery) and CBS TV Studios, where the project is based. It’s based on the Spanish format Estov Vivo, owned by Imagina/Media, and centers on a workaholic NYPD detective, who is killed in the line of duty but gets to return to earth in the body of another cop to bring his killer to justice.
Vice landed six-part magic series Dirty Tricks (wt) from Viacom’s Channel 5 for its digital station 5Star, reports Deadline. Show will be fronted by social media’s Ryan Tricks.
Ted Melfi and Kimberly Quinn’s production company Goldenlight FiIms inked a two-year, first-look deal with Alcon Television Group. As per the agreement, the pair will direct, write, supervise and produce original projects for TV as well as digital.
Netflix issued a 20-episode order for family comedy No Good Nick, starring Melissa Joan Hart and Sean Astin. Hart and Astin star as a hyper-competitive career mom and dorky “fun dad,” who welcome 13-year-Nick (short for Nicole) into their family before realizing she’s a street-smart con artist with an agenda. The streamer also greenlit a second season of Sacred Games. The gritty Indian crime drama, based on Vikram Chandra’s best-selling novel, is described as a tale of betrayal, crime, passion set in Mumbai’s underbelly.
ABC greenlit Everything’s Under Control from writers Megan Gailey (Conan) and Aaron Burdette (Man Seeking Woman) and producer Jamie Tarses. Drama focuses on a working class midwestern family who are barely keeping it together, when their grandmother gets Alzheimer’s.
ITV commissioned Parachute Murder Plot (wt) from Optomen, the All3Meda-owned indie. True crime doc explores the case of a British Army sergeant Emile Cilliers, who was found guilty of attempting to murder his wife Victoria by tampering with her parachute, days after trying to kill her via a gas leak at home.
Disney Channel ordered a third season of DuckTales ahead of its second season premiere on Saturday, October 20. The show reached nearly 100 million views on social media and digital platforms in its first season.
Top 10 Weekend Domestic Box Office Estimates: September 21-23, 2018
The House with a Clock in Its Walls (Universal) $26.9 million, opening weekend
A Simple Favor (Lionsgate) $10.4 million (week 2), cume revenue $32.6 million
The Nun (Warner Bros.) $10.2 million (week 3), cume revenue $100.9 million
The Predator (Fox) $8.7 million (week 2), cume revenue $40.4million
Crazy Rich Asians (Warner Bros.) $6.5 million (week 6), cume revenue $159.4 million
White Boy Rick (Studio 8) $5.0 million (week 2), cume revenue $17.4 million
Peppermint (STX) $3.7 million (week 3), cume revenue $30.3 million
Fahrenheit 11/9 (Briarcliff) $3.1 million, opening weekend
The Meg (Warner Bros.) $2.4 million (week 6), cume revenue $140.5 million
Searching (SGem) $2.2 million (week 5), cume revenue $23.1 million
NEW & RETURNING SERIES
Ina Garten returns to Food Network for a third season of Barefoot Contessa: Cook Like a Pro on Sunday, October 21 at 12:30p. The show’s new season features special guests including Jennifer Garner and Nigella Lawson for a Thanksgiving celebration in primetime on Saturday, November 17 at 8p.
Season 3 of Mysteries of the Abandoned debuts Tuesday, October 2 at 9p on Science Channel, offering stories behind some of the world’s most amazing engineering marvels.
COMING UP
HDNET movies celebrates Stanley Kubrick with a trio of classics. Dr. Strangelove, Full Metal Jacket and A Clockwork Orange air on Thursday, October 18 starting at 7:15p.
ADVERTISING
A+E Networks announced significant incremental revenue from five partnerships backed by conversion guarantees in the 2018 upfront. In addition, Ethan Heftman was tapped to run the Precision and Performance teams. “Following up on our promise last Spring, we have seen terrific momentum around our Precision and Performance offerings in the 2018 Upfront,” said Peter Olsen, EVO of Ad Sales. “We have always been confident in the ability of TV advertising to drive business outcomes, and by ramping up the unit we are excited to offer even more outcome-based guarantees to marketers in the coming year.” For details, go to the Cynopsis Upfronts Portal.
CASTING
Mira Sorvino will guest star in Sony Crackle’s StartUp…. Billy Eichner announced on social media that he’ll being doing a guest voice role on FOX’s The Simpsons set to air in November… Amazon Prime Video biopic series Maradona: Blessed Dream added Nicolas Goldschmidt (Farsantes), Nazareno Casero (Stories of a Clan) and Juan Palomino (Turth Consequence) to its cast… Josh Segarra (Arrow), Michael-Leon Wooley (The Princess and the Frog), Katerina Tannenbaum (Sweetbitter), and Tia Carrere (Wayne’s World) joined the cast of upcoming Netflix comedy, AJ and the Queen.
On the recurring front, Laurie Holden (The Americans) nabbed a role on new FOX legal drama Proven Innocent… Kearran Giovanni (Major Crimes) will appear in Season 2 of The CW’s Black Lightning… Kerry O’Malley (Those Who Kill) landed a role on TNT’s futuristic thriller Snowpiercer… and Rob Benedict (Supernatural) was tapped for a part on Amazon’s Bosch.
DIGITAL DATA
YouTube is seeing growth – in television. Neal Mohan, Chief Product Officer for YouTube, told broadcasters at a European TV conference that while 70% of YouTube’s consumption is happening on mobile, more than 180 million hours are watched on television sets every day with a 45% year-over-year growth in the European Union alone. New digital pay TV platforms continue to grow, even against traditional pay TV platforms, and many have both types of services to sell consumers.
One takeaway from Freewheel’s Q2 Video Monetization Report, “Premium Video: Delivering Value Across the Marketing Funnel”: premium video ad views on the big screen surpassed 50% in total for the first time as TV’s digitalization accelerates. 2Q18, the majority (57%) of premium, digital video ad views were delivered to the TV screen versus other digital devices, highlighting the increase of OTT and STB VOD advertising. 14% of total ad views in Q2 were placed programmatically, reports FreeWheel, an increase of 58% year-over-year, and live ad views grew 90% year-over-year and now constitute 33% of the U.S. market.
Netflix debuts A User’s Guide to Cheating Death on Friday, September 28. Docu-series explores mass marketed health trends – like laser fillers, detoxing, holistic medicine and stem cell research – challenging how much of it actually works and if any of it is harmful.
There’s a British invasion headed to U.S. morning television. On Monday, September 24, Good Morning Britain, hosted by Piers Morgan, debuts on SVOD service BritBox. And the service debuted This Morning: This Week on Sunday, a weekly compilation of the best segments from Britain’s top, longest running morning show.
Bloomberg’s added a new feature, an AI-powered news feed called The Bulletin. Using technology developed in house, the feature showcases the top three stories culled from Bloomberg’s network of 2700 journalist and analysts.
Nickelodeon launched Loud House Ultimate Treehouse, a new global app inspired by the animated series The Loud House. The free-to-play app lets kids help Lincoln Loud build the ultimate treehouse. It’s available at the App Store, Google Play and Amazon App Stores.
GOING GLOBAL
Scorpion TV sold children’s wildlife travel series Siyaya: Come Wild With Us to National Geographic Channels for its Middle East and African feeds.
IPCN and Zig Zag Productions are coproducing The Writing’s on the Wall for China’s newly launched digital Channel R. Short-form street series offers a tour of London’s radical graffiti culture centered around the theme of female empowerment.
SPI struck a deal with RAI, the biggest public channel broadcaster in Italy, that will offer access to opera Carmen on their FunBox UHD world channel and TV app in 4K resolution. The Rome Opera House introduced their opera performance to RAI in 2018 aiming at reaching a wider audience.
