King praised horror writer
Jack Ketchum, a prize-winning horror and screenplay writer known for such fiction as The Box and the controversial Off Season, whom Stephen King once called likely the scariest of U.S. writers, has died. He was 71. Ketchum’s friend and webmaster Kevin Kovelant said Ketchum died Jan. 24, giving no other details. Jack Ketchum is the pen name for Dallas Mayr, who initially wrote as Jerzy Livingston.
“Very sorry to hear that an old friend of mine, Dallas Mayr, died,” King tweeted Wednesday. “Dallas and I went back to the 70s together.”
Ketchum, born Nov. 10, 1946 in New Jersey and an Emerson College graduate, worked as a short-order cook, actor, playwright and teacher and for a time was literary agent for Tropic of Cancer author Henry Miller.
Teletubbies actor found dead
The actor behind the Teletubbies’ Tinky Winky character froze to death, say family members and police.
The Daily Beast reports Simon Barnes, 52, collapsed on a Liverpool street and died of hypothermia. He was found dead at 7:30 a.m. the next morning, Jan. 17.
Merseyside Police confirmed details surrounding his death and said there were “no suspicious circumstances” found on the scene.
Barnes played Tinky Winky — the purple one — from 1998 to 2001, and said he felt like a “member of The Beatles”during his time on the children’s show.
New McGowan doc to air on E!
Actress/activist Rose McGowan chronicles her fight for social justice in a new documentary.
Cable channel E! will air the limited docu-series Citizen Rose, following McGowan, one of the initial accusers of disgraced mogul Harvey Weinstein, as she fights against sexual harassment and abuse in Hollywood.
The five-part series debuts with a two-hour special on Tues., Jan. 30, before returning with four more episodes this spring.
CBS revives Murphy Brown
Candice Bergen is returning to TV in a revival of Murphy Brown, the agenda-setting 1988-98 comedy. CBS said Wednesday it has ordered 13 episodes of the sitcom for its 2018-19 season. Diane English created the original series starring Bergen as a hard-nosed TV journalist. English will return as writer and executive producer. Bergen, 71, who won multiple Emmys for the original, will be an executive producer and will reprise her role.
Atwood trilogy eyed for TV series
Another series inspired by Canadian author Margaret Atwood is on the horizon. Anonymous Content and Paramount Television say they’ve acquired the rights to develop a series based on Atwood’s dystopian trilogy Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood and Madd-Addam. The trilogy features a small group of survivors reeling from a global pandemic.