Timothy Olyphant joins Damages
It was announced today that former Deadwood star Timothy Olyphant has joined the season two cast of FX’s Damages in a season-long arc. This marks Olyphant’s first credited TV cast role since the HBO drama went off the air over two years ago.
Olyphant, who will star with returning cast Glenn Close, Rose Byrne, and Tate Donovan, marks the second addition to the FX drama in just over a week. William Hurt joined the show last Monday.
Olyphant’s character will become involved in the life of Ellen Parsons (Byrne) as she deals with her fiancé David’s murder and the FBI case being mounted against her boss, Patty Hewes (Close). Hurt will play a new client of Hewes.
Season two of Damages went in to production in New York City yesterday and the show returns to FX in early 2009, likely after The Shield’s seventh and final season has concluded.
Looks like those Deadwood movies aren’t happening after all
Deadwood fans have been treated like yo-yos for the past several months. Some days we hear that the movies are a go and some days we hear that the movies are a no.
Take this as one of the “no” days.
And it comes from a pretty good source, Ian McShane himself. He’s interviewed by Ryan Stewart over at our sister blog Cinematical, where he reveals that a good friend of his called him last week and told him that the movies weren’t going to happen and that the production company is tearing down the sets. He also says that even if the movies were going to be made in the next year, he wouldn’t be able to do them because he’s too busy with his film schedule.
This is why God made DVDs. Now we’ll just have to be happy with the seasons we had, and if we want the further adventures of Swearingen and gang we’ll have to just do our own private puppet shows or maybe fan fiction.* David Milch has already moved on to another show for HBO, about cops.
* Just kidding. Please don’t write any fan fiction.
HBO to release Deadwood complete series DVD set
As if we didn’t need more proof that those two Deadwood movies are never, ever, ever, ever going to happen, HBO announced this week that a complete series DVD set is in the works for a late 2008 release.
TVShowsOnDVD picked up on the news while attending the 2008 Entertainment Merchant Association show. Above is the proposed box art for the collection - sort of like a big book that’ll hold all 36 episodes plus what’s sure to be plenty of bonus features.
To be honest though, I’m not too excited by this. Deadwood is easily one of my top-15 favorite shows of all time and, even though I quote it endlessly, the more I think about it, there’s not much replay value in it for me. I’ve seen every episode so many times and I know ’em all inside and out that I don’t have much need to buy the DVD set. I suppose it’s the same reason I’ve never bought any Seinfeld DVDs. Plus, the fact that the series isn’t “finished” still chaps my ass. What about everyone else though? Is this worth the money?
Sex and the City…and the iPod
HBO was right: It's not TV. If it were, it'd be a little cheaper.
The cable net has announced plans to make available its small-screen offerings on an even smaller screen as HBO programming finally makes its way to iTunes, albeit at a slightly higher premium.
Sex and the City, whose download debut not so coincidentally comes just in time for it to cash in on the film's buzz, will be available for the traditional $1.99 per episode fee, as will Flight of the Conchords and The Wire. But HBO has upped the ante for The Sopranos, Deadwood and Rome, charging their fans $2.99 an episode.
Guess not all shows are createdor pricedequal.
The shows debut online today, and in addition to HBO's bucking of Apple's otherwise uniform price policy, they will also break from tradition in terms of when the shows are made available for download to avoid undermining their pay cable service.
Unlike other broadcast and cable networks, HBO will not release individual episodes for iTunes download the day after they air. Their customers will have to wait until a given series' entire season is made available on DVD.