door #1, 2, or 3?

unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re aware that nbc is ousting conan o’brien from his ‘tonight show’ spot to give it up for their golden child, jay leno. they only gave him 3 months! 3 months to prove himself is frankly not a fair enough shot. but, nbc doesn’t care.

what they should care about is that they are in a bit of a pickle with conan’s contract. by trying to move the time of his show to after jay’s time slot, nbc is in breach of its agreement. which means, conan’s got a decision to make. according to tmz and their sources, he has three options:

1) get outta the biz & collect some checks… some BIG checks. if conan quits, nbc would have to pay him the value of his contract, up to $80 million bucks over the next 4 years.

2) check out the view from other networks’ late-night lineups. fox? abc? i’m sure they’ll all come a-callin’. but if conan were to make a deal with a competing show, nbc would still have to pay him! let’s say fox paid him $10 mil/year. nbc would then have to ante up the reamining $10 mil to equal his original nbc contract. sounds good to me, mr. o’brien!

3) orrrr, he could once again come second to jay leno and take the shortened 12:35-1:05am time slot.

so, what’ll it be, sir?

i pity the remake

the_a-team_logo

ahh crap. way to ruin a classic! the 80′s tv show, ‘the a-team’ is going to be hittin’ theaters. and with some big names, to boot! bradley cooper, liam neeson & jessica biel just to name a few. after months of speculation (and years of re-writes), 20th century fox has begun filming the remake. the team is up and running in vancouver, with joe carnahan directing (‘smokin’ aces’). is it just me, or has hollywood run out of ideas? i mean, really. i have a feeling this adventure into the world of remakes will not fare too well. regardless, the movie pops out in june of 2010.

bradley cooper hit up the tonight show with conan o’brien last week to promote his box office flop ‘all about steve.’ of course conan went on rumor control and probed cooper for some scoop on his next project, ‘the a-team’ movie. bradley will reprise the role of face, ufc fighter rampage jackson will take on ba baracus, sharlto copely (‘district 9′) will play murdoch and liam neeson will be hannibal. and where does jessica biel fit into all of this? well, she’ll be some eye candy for the men. apparently biel will play the ex-girlfriend of face, who is also an army general. hmmm.

to end this post, i’ll quote some fans who commented on the article about the upcoming film: “the a-team? more like the straight to dvd team.” i think this fan may have it right. what do you think?

the tonight show, conan style

sir conan has officially taken the reigns from 17-year late night king jay leno. and after much hype, he pulled off a smooth transition. although there were some setbacks: o’brien’s new show suffered a few painful reviews. new york post tv critic linda stasi criticized the rotation of “sketch upon sketch” that were at times “painfully unfunny.”

apparently the viewers didn’t quite agree! conan’s tonight show premiered to the highest overnight draw for ‘the tonight show ‘ since 2005. while we won’t know what the exact viewer count was until next week, we do know that he opened with a 7.1 rating/17 share. pretty decent!

conan should be ready, though, for people to pick apart his first year. while monday’s hefty ratings were celebrated, tuesday’s ran with a 30% viewer drop-off. critics of course are already hounding the funny man for the variance in ratings. it’s been two days, people! lay off ‘em. me thinks he’ll do just fine.

goodbye, but not really

the legendary jay leno finished his 17-year reign on late-night this past friday. jay wrapped up his tenure by welcoming conan o’brien, who is slated to take his coveted spot. but if you ask me, it was all kind of a weird situation. because jay’s still gonna be on your tube! just a bit earlier. so we couldn’t really feel the goodbye sadness.

in any case, the show was everything we’ve come to expect from jay. great banter, funny jaywalking montages & a great musical guest – james taylor. at the end of the hour, with jay about to say his goodbyes, he spoke a bit about the legacy he & his show will leave behind. it was pretty neat, actually. gave me goosebumps! watch the clip above to see jay talk about the 68 kids that were born to the staff of the tonight show over the course of the show’s run.