The studios and networks are asking their producers to save money on their shows.  ABC yesterday ordered a 2% across the board cut for all their prime time programming.  Other networks have ordered similar trims as the economy makes the advertising revenue iffier.

The alphabet network also trimmed their orders for two midseason replacement series indicating they have excess inventory for the second half of the current season.  Rather than the usual 13 episodes, Castle, with Nathan Fillion as a crime author, and The Unusuals have had their orders cut down to ten.  This follows Samantha Who?’s order being cut to 20 rather than the normal 22 episodes comprising a full season. They also canceled the midseason comedy Single With Parents over creative problems.

ABC is negotiating to sign actress Reiko Aylesworth (24) for a “major recurring role” on Lost, according to The Hollywood Reporter. If signed, she would portray Amy, described as a smart and successful professional woman with a love for the outdoors who is looking for the right man.” The role is envisioned as a four-episode assignment.

Amy Price-Francis (Californication) has also found a recurring role but on Fox’s 24. The six-episode story arc would have her playing a ruthless attorney working for Jonas Hodges (Jon Voight).

Director Sam Mendes chatted briefly with Empire Magazine about adapting Preacher for the screen.

He is a lot less far along than one would imagine based on his comments. “This is a typical Variety announcement,” Mendes told the British publication. “‘Mendes to direct Preacher’ – I wish! Basically they should have written, ‘Mendes in development with Preacher’. What I’m doing is, I’ve gotta find a script. I’ve just got to get it written.”

Mendes is drawn to the story of Jesse Custer, a Texas preacher who was given the Word of the Lord but seeks out the Creator who apparently has abandoned his post in Heaven. He’s accompanied by a former killer, Tulip, and Cassidy, an unrepentant vampire. The series ran over five years for Vertigo, written and drawn by the team of Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon. All the covers were painted by Glenn Fabry.

A feature film or television series has been in development for years and recently HBO dropped their plans which allowed Columbia to obtain the rights and sign the director of American Beauty.

“It’s brilliant, it’s an incredible twisted vision,” he said. “There’s so much of it you couldn’t possibly fit it all into one movie. It’s just about what you keep and what you leave out, and how you structure the story. But just to have that toy set again, being able to paint on a big canvas and to say ‘I am gonna do crazy crane shots and massive action sequences again because I want to,’ it’s exciting.”

It’s been a good election, you all deserve a reward:

And with that, let’s close some windows:

• Robert Grandt, a librarian at Brooklyn Technical High School, was fined $500 for violating ethics codes by recommending his daughter Eve’s Shakespeare’s Macbeth — The Manga Edition as the book of the month.

• This one’s for Amy: Seth Green talks about comics, movies, Robot Chicken, and The Freshmen. And amazingly, he doesn’t want to direct.

• And speaking of Freshmen: Freshman for Life brings us the 24-hour comic, Blotchmen.

• Fundamentalists shaken by election losses have taken to writing science fiction.

• Wendy Everett, inspiration for Daredevil.

• I complain when I have to retouch a few dozen pages for reprints. Rich Keene has done almost 12,000.

• A bit late on this one, but ComicMix alumni Rick Marshall interviews various comics writers about who their characters would vote for. Oddly, none of them voted for Stephen Colbert.

• And finally, there’s nothing more surreal than reading a blog and finding out you’ve been laid off from a company you co-own.

Sylvain White (Stomp the Yard) replaces Tim Story (Fantastic Four) as director on the Warner Bros. adaptation of Vertigo’s Losers.

He inherits a script from James Vanderbilt (Zodiac) as production responsibilities move from a Warner Bros./Legendary Pictures co-production to one managed by Joel Silver’s Dark Castle Entertainment. Production is expected to begin in early 2009 according to Variety.  No casting or release date have been announced.

The Losers lasted 32 issues from 2003-2006 and was written by Andy Diggle and illustrated by Jock.  The story told of “band of black ops commandos who are set up to be killed by their own government. They barely survive and set out to get even.” The title derives from a feature that ran in Our Fighting Forces from 1970-1985, mostly handled by writer Robert Kanigher and artists Russ Heath and John Severin although a memorable run was done by Jack Kirby.

White is also attached to the film version of Frank Miller’s first creator-owned property, Ronin, which DC Comics published in the early 1980s, and Castlevania, a live-action version of the popular video game. Vanderbilt also wrote an early draft of Spider-Man 4 before being replaced.
 

The New York Post (I know, I know) reports that Jon Peters, the producer of Superman Returns and the Michael Keaton Batman films, has been charged with multiple violations of his parole stemming from a drunk-driving plea. Peters pleaded no contest to DUI after dozing off on the 101 Freeway in Ventura on Feb. 11, 2006. The Ventura County district attorney’s office told Page Six Peters is due in court on Jan. 16 to answer charges he failed to complete an alcohol-education program, or report to his probation officer, or complete community service.

What’s more, rumor has it a document submitted by the four-times-divorced filmmaker is being examined for alleged forgery, as it shows he did a required 40 hours of community service when he had finished only four. A Hollywood producer fudging numbers? Shocking.

Jon Peters, you may recall, is the bozo who wanted Kevin Smith to write a Superman script where Superman would never fly or appear in costume, and put the Sandman movie into development hell. And of course, the mechanical spiders. Here’s Smith’s take on the guy…

Fox announced a dramatically restructured midseason lineup, radically different than the schedule they outlined over the summer. They have revived the Friday night science fiction dumping ground, placing Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse on that evening, beginning February 13, the beginning of a three-day weekend when viewership tends to drop anyway.

Other shifts sees House slip to Mondays, allowing the return of the American Idol juggernaut on Tuesdays, which makes for a marvelous lead-in to Fringe. Bones shifts from Wednesdays to Thursday pitting the series against Ugly Betty and Smallville.

The Friday night curse began with the genre-related The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. in 1993 and was following in subsequent years by MANTIS (1994), Strange Luck (1995), VR.5 (1995), Sliders (1996), Millennium (1996), The Visitor (1997), Harsh Realm (1999), Freakylinks (2000), Dark Angel (2000), The Lone Gunmen (2001), John Doe (2003), and Firefly (2003). (more…)