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J.J. Abrams has been an influential figure in the entertainment industry since his youth. Inspired by his prominent television producer father, Gerald W. Abrams, the young film buff was mentored by Steven Spielberg, and flexed his creative instincts as screenwriter of '90s hits like "Forever Young," "Regarding Henry," and "Armageddon."

In the late '90s and early '00s, Abrams dominated television by creating the highly popular shows "Felicity," "Alias," and "Lost." Combining complex storylines and narrative twists with large ensembles made up of memorable characters, Abrams likes to keep audiences on their toes. Through TV, he also tried his hand at directing for the first time,...

The post Every J.J. Abrams film ranked from worst to best appeared first on /Film.

Denis Villeneuve’s time-bending “Arrival,” Damien Chazelle’s musical love letter, “La La Land,” and Disney’s zeitgeist-grabbing “Zootopia” took editing honors in drama, comedy, and animation at the 67th Ace Eddie Awards Friday at the Beverly Hilton.

“O.J.: Made in America” (edited by Bret Granato, Maya Mumma & Ben Sozanski), meanwhile, won for best documentary. It’s considered the frontrunner for the Documentary Oscar.

TV winners included “Veep: Morning After” (edited by Steven Rasch, Ace) for Best Edited Half-Hour Series for Television, “This is Us:Pilot” (edited by David L. Bertman, Ace) for Best Edited One-Hour Series for Commercial television, “Game of Thrones: Battle of the Bastards”(edited by Tim Porter, Ace) for Best Edited One-Hour Series for Non-Commercial Television, “All The Way” (edited by Carol Littleton, Ace) for Best Edited Miniseries or Motion Picture for Television, and “Anthony Bourdain – Parts Unknown: Seneghal” (edited by Mustafa Bhagat) for...

Hollywood’s sound pros nominated Birdman and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes for three awards apiece as the Motion Picture Sound Editors unveiled nods for its 62nd Mpse Golden Reel Awards, honoring the best feature film, television, animation and computer entertainment work of the year.

“2014 was a fantastic year for sound,” said Mpse president Frank Morrone. “The advent of new distribution channels, streaming services and gaming platforms is creating additional opportunities for sound artists to practice their craft beyond the traditional venues of film and television. This year’s nominations reflect that change, spanning an amazing diversity of mediums and genres, all executed at the highest level of creativity. We are truly inspired and impressed by the work of our colleagues.”

This year’s Golden Reels will additionally honor Noah director Darren Aronofsky with the Mpse’s annual Filmmaker Award. Oscar winner Skip Lievsay, known for his work...

The History Channel has released a full trailer for their new four-hour Houdini miniseries. The show will follow the life of the legendary magician from his beginnings in desperate poverty to the worldwide fame that he gained. The series stars Adrien Brody, and it looks like it's going to be pretty damn good. 

Before David Blaine and David Copperfield, there was one man whose name was synonymous with being the master of illusion and escape - Harry Houdini. Houdini follows the man behind the magic as he finds fame, engages in espionage, battles spiritualists and encounters the greatest names of the era, from U.S. presidents to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Grigori Rasputin. The drama will chronicle the life of a man who can defy death through his stunts, his visions and his mastery of illusion.

Houdini stars Academy Award winner Adrien Brody (The Pianist) as the ace magician...

An Original Voice

“We didn’t get mad, we got smart,” HBO CEO Michael Fuchs said about hitting The Wall, looking back at HBO stalling in 1984 from the vantage of the early 1990s. Actually, a lot of the rank and file didn’t get mad or smart; we’d seen 125 of our friends and colleagues get shown the door when the company had suddenly flatlined after eight years of phenomenal growth, and what we got was scared.

But it’s to the credit of HBO’s execs that whatever anxieties they may have had, they showed no panic or even nervousness in public. Instead, they poured any concerns into energetically and immediately addressing the question of, “What do we do now?” The world we knew had changed and there was no going back to the Gold Rush days of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The company required a humongous...

Houdini has found his assistant. Evan Jones will play nerdy magician's assistant Jim in Lionsgate/A&E Studios' four-hour miniseries, The Hollywood Reporter has learned exclusively. Story: The 'Bible' Effect and the Resurrection of TV Miniseries Adrien Brody will star as the famous magician, who made the journey from underprivileged Yiddish immigrant to international legend, while Kristen Connolly will play his wife, Bess. Uli Edel is directing and Gerald W. Abrams and Andras Hamori will serve as executive producers. History greenlighted the project, which chronicles the life of a man who defied death through his stunts and his mastery of illusion, in mid-August.

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Mad Men producer Lionsgate is to expand its TV production business into the UK as part of a wider international push.

The company, which produces recent Netflix series Orange Is The New Black, Charlie Sheen’s Anger Management and country & western drama Nashville, is keen to grow its TV production business outside of the Us.

Managing director of international television Peter Iacono told ScreenDaily’s sister publication Broadcast that the company would like to replicate the success Lionsgate UK has had in film.

It has produced Jason Statham’s crime thriller Blitz, Keith Lemon: The Film and Alan Rickman’s forthcoming directorial debut A Little Chaos, which is co-produced with BBC Films.

“If we can do this in film, why can’t we do it in TV? It’s a natural evolution,” he said.

The company is in talks with potential co-production partners for drama and comedy projects, and is in early stage discussions with broadcasters.

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13) Title Fights: The King of Pay-tv

In 1977, Jeff Bewkes was an affable 25-year-old Mba graduate out of Stanford, one of a number of similarly young grads in the trainee program of Citibank of New York, doing whatever bank trainees do in a nest of cubicles at Citibank’s training center in a drab Long Island City warehouse across the East River from the gleaming towers of Manhattan. One morning, Tony Wojick, a trainee in Bewkes’ Citibank accounting class, was talking about some movie he’d seen on TV the previous night.

That didn’t make sense to Bewkes; the movie Wojick was talking about hadn’t been in theaters that long ago. It was too soon for it to be on TV. “You saw it on the Monday Night Movie?” he asked Wojick, surprised one of the networks had gotten it for one of their movie slots so early.

“No,...

You know who would look good dressed up like a magician? Adrien Brody. The man has a certain quality to him that lends itself to the stage. And damn, does he look good in a tuxedo! Put a top hat on this guy, maybe a cape for good measure, and you could sell countless seats to a show. Of course, he’s not a real magician – for the record, I have no actual knowledge that Brody isn’t a practicing magician – but that doesn’t mean he can’t pretend to be one. He is, after all, an actor. The History Channel must have been thinking the same thing, because they’ve picked up Brody to play the star of its latest historical miniseries, Houdini.

The four-hour miniseries, from executive producers Gerald W. Abrams and Andras Hamori, will follow the life of Harry Houdini from his early life in poverty...

HBO’s Girls is going Instagram-wild in its new promo.

The following teaser for the acclaimed comedy’s upcoming Season 3 (bowing in 2014) is made up of an abundance of behind-the-scenes photos, seemingly pulled from the beloved iPhone app.

Press Play below for tons of little glimpses at Lena Dunham & Co. in action, then hit the comments with your snappy judgements.

Ready for more of today’s TV dish? Well…

• The Young and the Restless will pay tribute to late suds vet Jeanne Cooper’s Genoa City dame Katherine Chancellor with two alumni-packed episodes airing Sept. 3 and 4. Per TV Guide Magazine,...

Given its impeccable track record so far with megahits Hatfields & McCoys and The Bible, a miniseries greenlight at History is big news. The cable channel’s latest long-form project to go into production is Houdini, a four-hour miniseries about the famous magician. Oscar winner Adrien Brody, who had been attached to the mini since the development stage, will play the title character, joined by Kristen Connolly (House Of Cards) as Houdini’s wife Bess. The mini, from Lionsgate and A+E Studios, the recently launched A+E Networks in-house studio headed by Bob DeBitetto, will trace the arc of Houdini’s life from desperate poverty to worldwide fame. Filming is slated to begin this fall. “It’s not magic that History has established a strong track record with its high-quality historical dramas from quality auspices,” said History’s Evp and general manager Dirk Hoogstra. “We’re excited to build on that tremendous momentum with Houdini.

History is officially in business with Houdini. The cable network announced Monday that it has ordered a four-hour miniseries about the famed magician and his wife. Adrien Brody (The Pianist) will play Houdini in the Lionsgate/A&E Studios co-production, with House of Cards' Kristen Connolly playing his wife, Bess. Oscar nominee Uli Edel will direct the project, which hails from exec producers Gerald W. Abrams (Nuremberg, Modern Marvels) and Andras Hamori (Sunshine). Nicholas Meyer (The Seven-Per-Cent Solution) will pen the series, with Patrizia von Brandenstein (Amadeus) on board as production designer. Karl Walter Lindenlaub will serve as cinematographer.  The

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Greener Grass

The two leading recipes for success are

building a better mousetrap and finding a bigger loophole.

Edgar A. Shoaff

For the first few decades of broadcast television, the then three major networks held a near-monopoly on the national audience. More often than not, on any given night it was likely nine out of every ten people watching TV were watching one or another of ABC, CBS, NBC.

But even then, in that small sliver of the audience not watching the nets, there was evidence of a viewer appetite for an alternative to the often formula-dominated programming of the big broadcasters. Statistically, they didn’t amount to more than what would, years later, come to be referred to as a “niche” audience, and you’d be making a hell of an assumption saying they were looking elsewhere for their TV entertainment because they wanted something better. But it was...

The Wasteland:

Television is a gold goose that lays scrambled eggs;

and it is futile and probably fatal to beat it for not laying caviar.

Lee Loevinger

When people argue over the quality of television programming, both sides — it’s addictive crap v. underappreciated populist art — seem to forget one of the essentials about commercial TV. By definition, it is not a public service. It is not commercial TV’s job to enlighten, inform, educate, elevate, inspire, or offer insight. Frankly, it’s not even commercial TV’s job to entertain. Bottom line: its purpose is simply to deliver as many sets of eyes to advertisers as possible. As it happens, it tends to do this by offering various forms of entertainment, and occasionally by offering content that does enlighten, inform, etc., but a cynic would make the point that if TV could do the same job televising fish aimlessly swimming around an aquarium,...

The Numbers Racket:

Do not put your faith in what statistics say

until you have carefully considered what they do not say.

William W. Watt

The nets don’t just pull a price out of their respective hats for their advertising time. Advertisers are paying for viewers’ attention. They want to know if they’re getting their money’s worth and the only way to do that is to know how many people are watching. This need has always been so imperative that as early as 1949, just one year after the third network — ABC — went on the air, and even before any of the nets had begun coast-to-coast operations, a regular ratings system was in effect.

Rating broadcast programs did not start with TV. Broadcast programmers had been doing that kind of thing back in the radio days for the same reasons: so that sponsors would know who was watching what,...

Harry Houdini Biopic

Adrien Brody is attached to star in a potential period miniseries based on the life of master illusionist Harry Houdini for the History Channel.

Brody would play the magician in what would be his first scripted TV appearance since the 1990s. Gerald W. Abrams will executive produce.[Source: The Live Feed]

Dexter

Yvonne Strahovski ("Chuck") will reprise her role of serial killer florist Hannah McKay in a multiple-episode arc in the upcoming eighth season of Showtime's "Dexter".

In the seventh-season finale, Hannah was seen escaping from the hospital and leaving a black orchid on Dexter's doorstep. [Source: The Live Feed]

Jane Got A Gun

Noah Emmerich (FX's "The Americans") has scored the final major lead role in Gavin O’Connor's western "Jane Got A Gun".

Emmerich will play the outlaw husband of Natalie Portman's Jane. Knowing that his gang will come to kill her husband, Jane hires her ex-lover (Joel Edgerton) to stop them.

Fresh off the huge success of their massively viewed adaptations The Bible and Hatfields & McCoys, History is currently working on a miniseries project tentatively called Houdini, with Adrien Brody (The Pianist) signed on to play the famous magician and performer. Gerald Abrams (Modern Marvels), father of the beloved J.J. Abrams, is on board to produce the series. Although not much has been announced about the show, EW says it will depict Houdini’s rags-to-riches story as a magic man and stunt performer at the turn of the 20th century. Houdini’s release date is still Tba. Hit the jump for more. Brody has done very well in film, and I am excited to see him make the transition to television to play the role of the legendary Houdini. Brody will also be featured in director Wes Anderson’s next film Grand Budapest Hotel, which has a stacked, Anderson-esque cast that includes Bill Murray,...

History Channel is lining up its next miniseries. The A&E Networks-owned cabler is developing a potential miniseries based on the life of master illusionist Harry Houdini, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed. As first reported by EW, Adrien Brody is attached to star in the period project centering on Houdini's life and his rise to fame. Gerald W. Abrams(Nuremberg, Modern Marvels) will executive produce the project for History. Photos: Jesus in Film and TV Brody, who earned a best actor Oscar nomination for his role in 2002's The Pianist, would play the magician and mark his first scripted TV appearance

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And for History’s next miniseries trick…

The network is developing a multi-hour project on the life of Harry Houdini with Adrien Brody attached to star.

The deal just closed and details are scarce. We can tell you that History is developing a miniseries project (working title: Houdini) that traces the arc of the turn-of-the-20th-century master magician’s life from desperate poverty to worldwide fame.

The project is a co-production with History and veteran TV producer (and J.J. Abrams’ father) Gerald W. Abrams (Modern Marvels, 44 Minutes: The North Hollywood Shoot-Out). Brody (King Kong, The Pianist) is attached to star...

And for History’s next miniseries trick…

The network is developing a multi-hour project on the life of Harry Houdini with Adrian Brody attached to star.

The deal just closed and details are scarce. We can tell you that History is developing a miniseries project (working title: Houdini) that traces the arc of the turn-of-the-20th-century master magician’s life from desperate poverty to worldwide fame.

Veteran TV producer (and J.J. Abrams’ father) Gerald W. Abrams (Modern Marvels, 44 Minutes: The North Hollywood Shoot-Out) is attached as an executive producer. Brody (King Kong, The Pianist) is attached to star in what...

J.J. Abrams is reportedly set to direct the new Star Wars, but who is this super force in Hollywood? Here are five facts about the acclaimed 46-year-old movie man:

5. Though he's most known for his sci-fi shows and films, Abrams started out co-creating the television series Felicity (1998–2002), starring Keri Russell. He also composed the music for the opening credits.

4. Other TV shows Abrams has had his hands in include: Alias (2001–2006), Lost (2004–2010), Fringe (2008–2013), Undercovers (2010), Person of Interest (2011–present), Alcatraz (2012) and Revolution (2012–present).

3. Abrams first job in the biz was reportedly when he was 16 when he wrote the music for Don Dohler's film Nightbeast.

2. Abrams got into the family business. He is the son of television producer Gerald W. Abrams and executive producer Carol Abrams. His sister is screenwriter Tracy Rosen.

1. He founded the production company Bad Robot that produces many of his TV shows.

Do you think Abrams is the right man for the Star Wars job?...

Hallmark Channel is taking "Fairfield Road," greenlighting production of an original movie starring Jesse Metcalfe.

The film, which has begun production in Toronto for a 2010 premiere, centers on Noah McManus (Metcalfe), who is about to start his dream job as a legislative director for a U.S. senator and to propose to his girlfriend. But his entire world changes in one day when his new boss resigns amid controversy and Noah realizes that his girlfriend had been cheating on him.

Devastated, he drives to the Cape Cod town where he had intended to propose, falls for a bookstore owner and becomes involved in the town's heated local election.

David Weaver ("Charlie and Me") is directing "Fairfield" from a script by Tracy Rosen ("Daniel's Daughter").

The film is being produced by Cypress Point Prods. and Qvf Prods., with Gerald W. Abrams and Susan Murdoch exec producing.

Metcalfe rose to prominence as...

Welcome back to our EW University course on TV Auteurs -- a look at some of the people who have had a major role in shaping the medium over the last 50 years. Today, Prof. Dan Snierson offers his overview of the work of J.J. Abrams. If you had to sum up J.J. Abrams neatly in just one word, it would be ... kinda hard to do. He’s a cross-genre, multi-medium hyphenate who flies a geek flag of many colors. (The boy who grew up on The Twilight Zone, Mission Impossible, Get Smart, James Bond, and Star Wars has crafted a TV resume that boasts credits as diverse as Felicity and Fringe; his movie credits range from Regarding Henry to Cloverfield.) His projects tend to be smart, layered, splashy, angsty, laced with mystery and/or mythology -- plus they just might contain an It Girl in the making (see: Keri Russell,...

Hallmark Channel said Thursday that it is ramping up its original movie production, inking development and/or production deals with such producers as Gerald W. Abrams, Orly Adelson and Dan Wigutow.

The network announced during its portion of the Television Critics Assn. summer press tour at the Beverly Hilton that its 2008 lineup will include 30 original movies, the largest-ever development slate of original telefilms in network history. The first movie of the new slate, When You Listen, executive produced by Abrams and starring Tom Bosley, is in preproduction for a premiere date of 9 p.m. Jan. 5.

"This makes us the largest single producer of quality movies ... of any cable network in the industry," said Henry Schleiff, president and CEO of Crown Media Holdings, owner and operator of Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movie Channel.

Schleiff added that the movies are budgeted at more than $2 million each.

Hallmark's original movies perform well for the network, including such recent titles as Avenging Angel and You've Got a Friend and such mystery franchises as Murder 101 and Jane Doe.

Listen, meanwhile, centers on a young girl's beloved grandfather who suffers a heart attack, only to use the would-be tragedy to help repair all the broken hearts around him.

ESPN has greenlighted an original film about the life of boxing champion Jack Johnson. Expected to air sometime next year, the untitled biopic will be executive produced by Gerald Abrams (Nuremberg) of Cypress Point Prods. and written by Paris Qualles (The Tuskegee Airmen). Johnson became the first black boxing champion when he won the heavyweight title in 1908. His presence inflamed racial tensions in the United States throughout his seven-year title reign and the rest of his turbulent life.

Writer-producers Larry David, David E. Kelley and David Milch are among the nominees for the 2003 Honors Awards of the Caucus for Television Producers, Writers & Directors. In the producing category, David of HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm is joined by Gerry Abrams, the It's All Relative duo of Craig Zadan and Neil Meron and the former team of Six Feet Under producers Robert Greenblatt, now Showtime entertainment president, and David Janollari. In addition to Kelley and Milch, the writing field includes Bill Blinn, James L. Brooks, Allan Burns, while director nominees are Robert Butler, Dan Curtis, Rod Holcomb and Jay Sandrich. The winners will be made public Jan. 16.