Hollywood Babble On & On #947: Boob Tube Bits...

Today 3 short pieces about TV....

1. BEVERLY HILLS COP: THE SERIES?

Eddie Murphy, the future of his fat paychecks and lavish entourage related perks in jeopardy, is working with experienced TV writer/producer Shawn Ryan to pitch a TV series sequel to his 80s action comedy Beverly Hills Cop.

Now Murphy's not leaping into the weekly TV grind. Instead the lead will be the son of Axel Foley, the titular cop, who leaves his native Detroit to take a full time job as a detective with the Beverly Hills Police Department. Murphy himself will only do occasional guest appearances as Axel.

Shawn Ryan is a good TV writer with a good record with police procedurals, and I thought his show The Chicago Code was unfairly cancelled, so this show might have a chance to at least be entertaining and get the taste of Beverly Hills Cop 3 out of the audience's collective mouth.

Will it sell, I can't say.

But if it doesn't have Judge Reinhold as the Beverly Hills PD Lieutenant, it will be doomed.

DOOMED I SAY!

DOOMED!

Where has he been lately?

2. ABC RAISES THE S.H.I.E.L.D.

ABC has given the green-light for Joss Whedon to co-write and possibly direct a pilot for a TV spin-off of his mega-hit The Avengers, centering on the secret agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.*

For those who don't follow comics, SHIELD is the American intelligence service of the Marvel Universe, and is run by Nick Fury, who is played in the movies by Samuel L. Jackson. So expect lots of spy-fi action, that might involve super-villains, but not any that might appear in the next Avengers related movie.

Now if Whedon directs the pilot, and it goes to series, he could be looking at a sweet, long-term payday. That's because the director of a pilot gets a check for every episode that airs, and then gets rerun for as long as the show appears on screens, even if they never direct another episode, because they set the look and style of the show. It's all gravy.

I find it interesting that they're going for SHIELD, a more direct connection to The Avengers, when I thought a cheaper TV version of Daredevil was a good fit for Whedon's style.

*Don't ask me what the acronym stands for, Marvel has a couple of different versions.

3. ANGER MANAGEMENT GETS A MEGA-ORDER

Charlie Sheen's comeback vehicle Anger Management got an extremely rare 90 episode back order from the FX Channel.

That means that FX has to pay the producers and stars of the show for 90 more episodes, if they want to or not.

This type of situation doesn't happen very often. Most channels order at most 22-25 episodes a season.  However, once in a while a show that has a deal, either for syndication or a cable channel, has to produce a minimum 65-100 episodes necessary for what the producers hope is a healthy life in reruns.

The first time I heard of a show doing this was a Canadian revival of the Addams Family. They shot 65 episodes in about a year and a half to fulfill their commitments. This model was repeated with shows from the Tyler Perry machine that ran on TBS. They sold the pilot, shot 100 episodes as quickly as possible, and moved on.

Now being the star of a multi-camera sitcom is normally one of the cushiest gigs in Hollywood. The workload is light, with two table reads, one day of filming, a week. Then you have several months off until you start filming the new season.

That might change if they try to cram all 90 episodes in as fast as possible, which could burn out their star.

So, what's the over-under before Charlie has another meltdown?

I suspect somewhere around episode 60.

What do you think?