Former Today show star and CBS News anchor Katie Couric premiered her new talk show yesterday to high numbers. Elsewhere in showbiz news: Yet another remake is in the works that should not be in the works, Randy Jackson is back on Idol, and Joan Allen is just back in general.
Katie Couric, faded perk queen of the '90s turned embattled newswoman of the '00s, has decided to say hoof to all that and do her own thing. So, yesterday she debuted a new talk show called simply Katie, on which she can cover the topics she wants to cover, she's not so beholden to the stinkin' news or the shadowy cabal that runs NBC. Finally, freedom! Yesterday's show featured a cameo by Matt Lauer, Jessica Simpson talking about weight loss, and Sheryl Crow singing the show's theme song. So, umm... OK, not exactly revolutionary. But people were into it! Or they were at least into seeing what Katie's show looked like. Katie tied the record for highest-debuting daytime talk show in the last ten years, matching Rachael Ray, which posted the best numbers since Dr. Phil's debut. Yay for Katie! And for Katie. Let's hope she can maintain those numbers. Meanwhile on the other end of the spectrum, Ricki: The Ricki Lake Show, Ricki Lake's return to daytime talk, had the lowest numbers in the field, with Jeff Probst's ill-advised talker The Jeff Probst Show (seriously, who wants to watch that?) limping along in second-to-last. Well, what can you do. You mess with Katie, you get the horns. Well not horns, maybe, but certainly a little frown or something. [Deadline]
Oh hellll no. There are plans to remake All of Me, the wonderful, silly 1984 comedy about Lily Tomlin's soul taking over half of Steve Martin's body. It's a great, ridiculous old thing, the kind of movie they don't make anymore. Which is not to say they should remake the old one. They should just make more movies like it, not it, all over again. Remember Ghost Town? Probably not, it didn't do very well, but it was that Ricky Gervais romantic comedy that was cute and funny and about ghosts/spirits/whatever. And it was original. So just make more of those, not a new All of Me. To be fair, this isn't a new idea, a while back there was a remake with Queen Latifah that fell apart before cameras rolled, but this plan looks like it might be more concrete. Ugh. The worst thing? "[T]he plan is to have a guy’s soul enter the body of a woman." Because it's funnier when a man is like "Ooh look I got boobies yayy" than the other way around, I guess. Don't do this, Hollywood. Please don't do this? [The Hollywood Reporter]
It seems we eulogized Randy Jackson too soon! No, his body hasn't risen from the grave to stalk the farmlands scaring the cattle, he wasn't even dead to begin with. Rather, we all thought he wasn't going to be a judge on American Idol next season because, well, he wasn't gonna be, but now Fox has changed its mind and is finalizing a deal to have him back, alongside Mariah Carey, Nicki Minaj, and most likely Keith Urban. No terms of the deal have been released, but we'd imagine the contract reads something like, "Please oh please oh please oh please, oh god please please please, please don't fire me. Pleeease? Pleeeeease guys? Oh god, oh please oh please oh please. What am I going to do?? What am I gonna doooo?? You can't just throw me out with the trash, you can't do that to me, please oh please, oh god, guys, please please please. Please... I'll do things, I'll do anything you want [muffled sound, belt buckle is heard rattling] Anything, I swear, anything..." Those are the demands that Randy's people slid across the table in the meeting. [Deadline]
Well, some good news for Joan Allen. The two-time Oscar-nominee hasn't had the best go of it recently, she's barely in The Bourne Legacy and her show Luck was canceled because of horse deaths, but now she's just scored the lead in a movie. A Stephen King movie! Allen will play a wife who discovers her husband's "gruesome double life" in A Good Marriage, which King is adapting from his own short story. It's an indie production and the director is kind of an unknown, but still. Still, good for her. Anything to get her back in people's heads and into more prominent roles. Now, Joan, about that, uh, makeover... [The Hollywood Reporter]
Just days before the revitalized X Factor comes back armed with Britney Spears, ready to retry to invade the Russia that is the fall television season, reliable hit The Voice debuted last night to solid numbers. The spinny chair light show noise spectacular attracted 12 million voters, which is a bit lower than its last debut, but decent enough that NBC is probably still happy. Which means we'll likely have more of this show beyond this season. More of this garish, complicated, ridiculous show. Ain't life grand. [Entertainment Weekly]
Here is a trailer for Smashed, an indie drama about alcoholism that won its star Mary Elizabeth Winstead heaps of praise at Sundance. It also features Aaron Paul as her husband, Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally as coworkers, and recent Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer as an AA friend. It looks intense and sad and hopefully hopeful and it should be interesting to watch Winstead enter a new stage of her career. (Previously she's done a lot of horror, and things like Scott Pilgrim.) A nice, if maybe depressing, little movie like only the fall can bring. Looks good!
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