Notizie

Animal Planet’s classic hit Meerkat Manor is getting the animated treatment from Warner Bros. Pictures Animation.

In early development, the feature will be produced by Seth Green and Tracy Falco via the duo’s The Green Room production banner, the studio announced Tuesday.

The original producer of the show, Caroline Hawkins and Clare Birks of Oxford Scientific, will executive produce.

Airing on Warners-owned Animal Planet from 2005 to 2008, the show centered on the exploits of a family of meerkats dubbed The Whiskers living in South Africa’s Kalahari Desert. The show became a worldwide hit, garnering Emmy nominations and at one point was Animal Planet’s most watched show.

Warners plans to produce the feature using photoreal animation, in what it dubbed “in the spirit of Happy Feet,” the 2006 animated feature co-directed by George Miller that centered on penguins.

“It’s 20 years since we experimented with a wildlife soap opera in a London basement,...

Exclusive: Warner Bros. Pictures Animation is heading to the Discovery vault to adapt their Animal Planet series, Meerkat Manor, into a feature animated movie. Think Happy Feet. That George Miller hatched franchise which centered around tap-dancing penguins raked in over a half billion at the global box office.

Warner Bros. Discovery’s Animal Planet first aired Meerkat Manor in 2005, with the series becoming the network’s highest rated show over its four seasons. The Emmy-nominated series reached 204 million households in more than 160 countries on the Animal Planet platform alone.

The Animal Planet docuseries followed the Whiskers, a family of meerkats, as they struggled to survive in South Africa’s Kalahari Desert. Similar to Happy Feet, Warner Bros. Pictures Animation will use photoreal animation to capture the Whiskers for their feature film debut.

The Meerkat Manor movie will be produced by Seth Green and Tracy Falco of The Green Room. Pic...

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With nearly 500 scripted shows now airing across broadcast, cable and streaming, it’s easy to forget that a favorite comedy is returning, or that the new “prestige drama” you anticipated is about to debut. So consider this our reminder to set your DVR, order a Season Pass, pop a fresh Memorex into the Vcr… however it is you roll.

More from TVLineNoah Wyle: Joining Leverage Crew After Being One of Dean Devlin's Librarians Was Like Forming a...

Move over, Hallmark!

The next big romance of the summer comes from someplace else.

Meerkat Manor: Rise of the Dynasty premieres on BBC America, and in our exclusive, you'll be wondering: Can Love Find a Way?

Meerkat Manor: Rise of the Dynasty is a continuation of the widely-beloved Meerkat Manor series.

Meerkat Mania swept the world when it premiered in 2005 with tales of love, family, and devasting losses as the meerkats of the manor lived their best lives for the world to see.

There was laughter, tears, and a lot more heartbreak than we imagined because their mighty little spirits suck you right into their world.

Well, they're back!

Maybe not the same meerkats we fell in love with, but an entirely new group to cherish.

On the series premiere, "New Beginnings," Swift, the matriarch of the Whiskers, welcomes her latest litter while new leader, Flint Lockwood, struggles for childcare.

Animal Planet’s cute “docu-soap” hit from about a decade back, Meerkat Manor, is being packaged with reversioned footage from the first two seasons and a new narrator for two 90-minute specials debuting on sister network Discovery Family Channel in June. Meerkat Manor: The Monarchy Begins, and Meerkat Manor: The Monarchy Under Attack will air June 2 and 9, respectively. As you can tell from the photo above, the repackaging is inspired by Downton Abbey, as new narrator Rupert Graves explains the drama in the “Whiskers Mob” of meerkats that became viewer favorites (hopefully the post-Edwardian garb will not be CGIed onto the real meerkats). … Continue reading →

The post “Meerkat Manor” returning (sort of) appeared first on Channel Guide Magazine.

News

HBO is developing a show with 12 Years a Slave director Steve McQueen according to Deadline. It’s described as “Six Degrees of Separation meets Shame” and hopes to get the pilot filmed before McQueen begins his next movie.

In unsurprising news, TV’s most-watched program The Walking Dead has been renewed for a fifth season.

More Glenn in season five!

American Horror Story: Murder House alum, Morris Chestnut has joined the cast of TNT’s spy pilot Legends.

Oh, how embarrassing. Maybe The View‘s producers should check if a guest’s reputation survived an appearance on The Daily Show before calling them an expert.

TVLine has the early pix of Rachel Maddow‘s Simpsons counterpart in this week’s episode as Kent Brockman‘s former co-host.

In further Simpsons news, TMZ says that while Mrs. Krabapple will be written off, it won’t happen anytime soon since the...

An academic study found that watching The Biggest Loser actually makes viewers hate fat people. For the study, conducted by people in the department of psychology at Bowling Green State University and published in the journal Obesity earlier this year, 59 college students watched either the NBC weight loss show or Meerkat Manor, and their attitudes toward obese people were compared to those from before the experiment. Here's how the abstract describes the conclusions:"Participants in...

Tonight, Discovery’s 24th annual Shark Week continues with Chief Shark Officer Andy Samberg hosting Shark City, which takes a Meerkat Manor approach to introducing viewers to the individual personalities found in a group of Caribbean reef sharks who enjoy communal living and have been named by the folks at Stuart’s Cove. (Sample: Big Momma). Samberg shot wraparounds for the hour at multiple locations with sharks. “The pitch was that I would get to fly to the Bahamas and literally swim with sharks, and I was thinking there’s no way I would ever have the balls to do that on my own,...

When you consider that the title sounds like the caffeinated fever dream of a particularly excitable eight-year-old, it’s perhaps not that surprising that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has had so many incarnations: Gritty monochromatic independent comic book, beloved ’80s cartoon, mega-grossing feature-film trilogy, an endless assortment of action figures, fondly-remembered videogames, a second animated series that ran for several years in the 2000s, and a big-screen animated reboot.

Next year, Nickelodeon will relaunch Turtles as a new animated series, and EW can report exclusively that Sean Astin (Lord of the Rings’ Sam, The Goonies’ Mikey, and Rudy’s Rudy) will be voicing red-masked Raphael.

Danger has come to the Discovery Channel, but not in its production.

A gunman who's suspected to be James Lee is holding at least one person hostage at the Discovery Channel networks headquarters in Silver Springs, MD on Wednesday (Sept. 1), according to news reports.

[Update: CNN reports that the suspect has been shot by snipers and is in custody. The hostages have been released safely.]

Lee, who has protested against Discovery before, has issued his list of demands, the first of which is below:

1. The Discovery Channel and it's affiliate channels Must have daily television programs at prime time slots based on Daniel Quinn's "My Ishmael" pages 207-212 where solutions to save the planet would be done in the same way as the Industrial Revolution was done, by people building on each other's inventive ideas. Focus must be given on how people can live Without giving birth to more filthy human children since those new additions continue pollution and are pollution. A game show format contest would be in order.

You've heard the rumors, you've seen the promos. You've wondered if this day would ever arrive. Well, the wait is over. It's with a special mix of delight and dread that I bring you: The Strap-On Episode. I'm so glad I went to college.

As you can imagine, the topic of sex toys sits differently with each of the girls. Gentle Jill is so embarrassed, she's almost speechless. She'd probably also prefer that her adventureous darling, Nikki, stop bragging about their Little Drawer of Fun. Tracy says her first visit to a sex shop was a sensory overload: "I didn't know where to look; I didn't know what to do." That's how I felt the last time I went to the circus.

Predictably, Whitney can explain anal beads to anyone who wants that sort of information. Rose says that "Strapping it on, f---ing the girl, doing all the work; that's...

In all my years watching reality TV, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a moment as real and as achingly beautiful as ailing Phil Harris kissing his hand and putting it to his son Josh’s face, then Josh leaning down to kiss his father’s forehead. That conversation is something that will stick forever with the record 8.5 million viewers who saw it. You want to know why fans have been sobbing through the episodes leading up to Phil’s death — it’s because as much as we thought we related to men who do a job...

It’s the episode we’ve all been dreading but won’t be able to turn away from: Tonight, Capt. Phil Harris passes away on Deadliest Catch. Son Josh Harris and friend Johnathan Hillstrand stopped by The Tonight Show Monday and shared a few memories of the beloved skipper. Josh remembered the day his father, who was always in a hurry, rushed home because he had so many things to do. “Meerkat Manor comes on, on Discovery… Life stops,” he said. “And then follows Escape to Chimp Eden. And he’s like, the first thing, ‘Look at the nuts on that monkey.

New York -- Six originals, including a new animated "G.I. Joe" series, game show "Family Game Night" and a series from kids horror master R.L. Stine, as well as "Fraggle Rock" and the U.S. premiere of "Strawberry Shortcake" will be on the programming schedule of children's network The Hub when it launches in October.

Margaret Loesch, president and CEO of the joint venture between Discovery Communications and toy giant Hasbro, made the announcement, which also included seven U.S. premieres, on Monday.

The channel also detailed its previously mentioned programming blocks. They consist of a pre-school (ages 2-5) block from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., a 1 p.m.-6 p.m. Kids Afternoon/Kids Prime block (ages 6-12) and "Family Prime Access" (6 p.m-7 p.m.) and Family Prime (7 p.m.-11 p.m.).

"I'm delighted with the caliber of programming -- which includes some beloved and popular brands...

An unnamed source -- I know people, motherfuckers -- has said that Warner Brothers and Weed Road Pictures is planning on adapting the British nature documentary "Meerkat Manor" to the big screen under the production helmage of my new archnemesis, Akiva Goldsman.

However, they're planning on turning it into an animated feature. The logline: "A Pixar version of West Side Story meets The Sopranos."

So apparently, it's going to be four hours long, with awesome stuff happening the first hour, nothing of real note for the last three, and the finale is going to piss people off. Oh, and a meerkat's gonna get poisoned. And then, there's gonna be lots of meerkats dancing to the sultry tones of Ke$ha.

"Meerkat Manor" is basically footage of meerkats with overdubbing by actors. So this sounds like it's going to be one giant version of that Farce of the Penguins piece of...

With a lot of animal oriented shows it's hard to tell one season from the next. Meerkat Manor? You might be able to distinguish one or two of the little guys, but chances are if the cast changes between two seasons (one gets eaten by a hippo, etc.) would you ever know it? Oddly, it's not much easier with Dog Whisperer. Find someone who can tell you what season a random episode is from (by some method other than sheer fanaticism after having watched each episode 10 times over) and you have found someone so intimate with Cesar Millan they can tell you his age year by year. The fourth season of Dog Whisperer is exactly the same as those that came before it save for the amount of gray in Millan's hair and goatee. Though even that might not be a safe indicator thanks to makeup artists.

That said, this...

Channing Tatum's favorite actors may be Jackie Gleason and Paul Newman, but I think he's definitely channeling a little James Dean in his newest cover shoot for the February issue of Details, which hits stands January 19th.

Fan's can check out Chan in all his gorgeousness in the photos and video from the Details photo shoot on today's post in the CTU Photo Gallery, but you should keep reading if you want to get all the juicy details about Chan's life in his latest interview...

I got my first look at Chan's new cover and photos for Details at the 'Dear John' press junket this weekend when Chan's publicist came into his suite to show it to him for the first time. As all of us in the room were complimenting Chan on the hot new shoot, I got to hear the set injury story you're about to read...

I've heard about some serious but ultimately nonfatal movie injuries in my day, including Sylvester Stallone having to spend nine days in a hospital after filming his Rocky IV fight with Dolph Lundgren because the pericardial sac around his heart was swelling. This one tops that. While shooting the epic battle film The Eagle of the Ninth in the Scottish Highlands last October, Channing Tatum burnt his penis. Why is this making news now? Because he recounts his ordeal in a current Details cover story titled Channing Tatum is Proud of His Package. Playing a soldier of Rome's Ninth Legion,...

Ever since I noticed a curious lack of Zachary Levi in the trailers for Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, I've wanted to know what he does in the movie. What are they trying to hide? After seeing it last weekend (at a theater without ticket machines, so I had to actually speak the movie's title to a human) mystery solved. Here, a brief look: • After Dave (Jason Lee) becomes hospital-bound in France following an accident at a Chipmunks charity concert, the boys are shipped back to the States to stay with Dave's Aunt Jackie (Kathryn Joosten). Only Jackie's grandson...

If you're anything like me (and my girlfriend), you love meerkats. In case you don't, let me ask how you can resist the adorable little critters, their huge eyes and their constantly wet nose? No need to answer. If you like meerkats, you're probably already familiar with Meerkat Manor, the long-running documentary / reality narrated by Bill Nighly (or Sean Astin / Stockard Channing if you live in the Us). The shows' stars like Flower, Mozart or Zaphod are so "famous" that they have their own imdb pages with enraged fans posting on Flower's message board about the need for a more detailed biography or at least putting in Flower's date of death on her resumé. Today you can read an interview with Brollyman, who gives his first interview here about doing Meerkat Manor in addition to some other animal reality programs such as Lemur Island and Lemur Street.

Could...

Even against the NBA Finals, the boys of Entourage got game. The HBO comedy series opened its third season with its biggest audience ever on Sunday at 10 p.m., reaching 2.7 million despite male-skewing competition on ABC from Game 2 of the NBA Finals. That's a big improvement over Entourage's second season premiere last year, which opened to just 1.6 million. The second season average was 1.9 million. Not as lucky at 10:30 p.m. was new comedy Lucky Louie, which dropped nearly half of the Entourage lead-in, grabbing 1.5 million. At 11 p.m., another new series, Dane Cook's Tourgasm, held onto 1.1 million. But HBO got better news from the third season premiere of Deadwood at 9 p.m., which returned with 2.4 million. That's down from last season's premiere haul of 2.8 million, but on par with the show's second-season average. Elsewhere in cable, Discovery Channel netted 2.3 million at 9 p.m. with its two-horu special: Krakatoa: Volcano of Destruction. Animal Planet perked up at 8 p.m. with the Meerkat Manor, which drew more households than any series premiere in its history.