Hit Roseanne spinoff talks heat up at ABC
Netflix orders Parton series
LOS ANGELES, June 5, (RTRS): Talks between ABC and “Roseanne” producers on a possible spinoff of the canceled multicamera comedy are building momentum.
Sources tell Variety that the network is increasingly interested in finding a way to continue the series without controversial star Roseanne Barr, whose racist tweet last week triggered the sudden cancellation of the show. The network and producers late last week scheduled a meeting to discuss spinoff possibilities. Talks between ABC and exec producers, including Tom Werner, stretched through the weekend and are now ongoing.
Several significant obstacles, however, remain to potentially prevent a version of the series from continuing without Barr. “Roseanne” is based on a character created by Barr, who could argue that she therefore has an ownership stake in any iteration that includes other characters created for the series, such as Sara Gilbert’s Darlene Conner, around whom much spinoff speculation has centered. Any situation in which Barr would stand to gain financially from a new series is considered unpalatable to ABC and producers.
ABC announced on Tuesday morning that it had canceled “Roseanne” just hours after the star apologized for a racist tweet directed at Valerie Jarrett, a former aide to President Barack Obama. Barr subsequently apologized for the tweet, later blaming it on her consumption of the sleeping drug Ambien. But since the show’s cancellation, she has lashed out at fellow stars and producers, including Gilbert.
“Roseanne” finished the 2017-18 television season as the No. 1 show in the advertisercoveted 18-49 demo, according to Nielsen live-plus-same-day numbers. Barr was featured prominently last month at the network’s joint upfront presentation with cable channel Freeform, where she introduced Disney-ABC Television Group president Ben Sherwood. The comic and the exec embraced in an onstage hug, with Barr joking that Sherwood was “the guy responsible for most of my tweets.”
In a statement last Tuesday, ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey said, “Roseanne’s Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant, and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show.”
Freeform is sending “The Fosters” off in style — the series is wrapping its run with a three-night “special event,” centered on Brandon’s (David Lambert) destination wedding. But those three hours, which start airing on June 4, will also serve to launch the upcoming spinoff.
“These three had to kind of have a standalone feel to them,” executive producer and showrunner Joanna Johnson tells Variety. “That’s why the event of a wedding really helped — to give us a real beginning, middle, and an end — rather than just three meandering or serialized episodes. We felt strongly that these three had to have something that structured them as a piece.”
Jumped
The season 5 finale, which aired back in March, jumped forward in time to show all of the Adams-Fosters kids graduating from high school. But Johnson says she came up with the idea before she learned that the series wasn’t coming back for a sixth season.
“We would do them either in college or post-college because I think parenting adult children, I’ve heard, is sometimes even more challenging than younger children because bigger people, bigger problems,” she says. “And that would give us freedom to tell adult stories,” she says.
Johnson says the network initially wasn’t supportive of that idea, but when they decided the show would not continue on, they changed their minds — with one additional request for “The Fosters” team: “wanted the audience to know, ‘Hey, there’s more story coming, we’re not done,’” Johnson says. So Brandon announced his engagement — kicking off the upcoming series wrapper.
While Johnson says “there were financial reasons” behind “The Fosters” ending this year (the network declined to comment), she notes that it was Freeform who pushed to “have the show go out with something special” before launching the spinoff.
“After watching this family grow and evolve over the last five seasons, we ultimately decided it was time to see the kids grow up and send them out into adulthood to face new challenges,” Karey Burke, Freeform executive vice president of programming and development, tells Variety. “We knew that by following Mariana and Callie to Los Angeles we could continue to build on ‘The Fosters’s’ legacy, all while focusing on that pivotal moment in a young adult’s life when they’re trying to find their place in the world.”
The final three episodes of “The Fosters” start as the family prepares to travel to Turks & Caicos for Brandon’s wedding. And while Johnson admits her writers’ room was a little nervous because they “didn’t want to do ‘The Brady Bunch’ goes to Hawaii,” they found a way to make it feel like the show they had been doing for five years. “The show starts at home and comes back home at the end of the three-night event,” Johnson reveals.
And just because the characters are older does not mean they have things all figured out. Callie (Maia Mitchell) has mixed feelings about seeing her foster brother and ex-boyfriend ready to settle down, for example.
“When your first love is getting married, it brings a lot of feelings back,” Johnson says. “And the question is, ‘Is there any reason they’re not living together? Is there any reason they were meant to be but they couldn’t find their way back together?’ I don’t know that they should, but I think it’s a question that a lot of our fans are curious about.”
But the Callie-Brandon relationship won’t drive the final three hours. “Every character has a conundrum or is at a crossroads,” Johnson says. For some it is the question of old relationships, but for others it is a wider ranging question of “What am I going to do with my life?”
And although only Mitchell and Cierra Ramirez, who plays Mariana, are signed on to the spinoff, the other characters may not get their answers by the end of the three-night event.
“The vibe we wanted to cultivate onscreen as well as offscreen was that we’re not saying goodbye to this family — they’re still out there and they’re still thriving. We’re going to check in with them and so it’s not over,” Johnson says.
While not serving to directly set up the spinoff, the three-night event will set up the new dynamics now that the kids are grown, out of the house, and starting lives of their own.
Actions
“We think the consequences of their actions at this age are more grave than when you’re younger, so we do feel it opens up,” Johnson says. “Even with basic stuff — you can go to a bar and do the things that grownups do and it’s not an issue of ‘Oh we don’t want to promote drinking at that age.’”
What is of the utmost importance to Johnson and her team, though, is bringing the sensibility of the show the audience has known for so many years into its final episodes and beyond.
Dolly Parton has found a new way to make a living.
The famed country performer is working on an eight-episode anthology series for Netflix based on her music, the streamer announced on Monday. Parton will serve as singer and songwriter for the show, as well as executive produce and co-star.
“As a songwriter, I have always enjoyed telling stories through my music,” Parton said in a statement. “I am thrilled to be bringing some of my favorite songs to life with Netflix. We hope our show will inspire and entertain families and folks of all generations, and I want to thank the good folks at Netflix and Warner Bros. TV for their incredible support.”
Rumors of the singer’s new series swirled over the weekend when Lily Tomlin mentioned Parton’s show during a Netflix For Your Consideration panel for “Grace & Frankie.” When asked if Parton would appear with Tomlin and Jane Fonda on “Grace & Frankie” Season 5 for a “9 to 5” reunion, Tomlin said she might be too busy with her own project.
Parton signed a similar agreement in 2015 with NBC for a series of TV movies based on her songs and her life, which led to “Coat Of Many Colors” and “Christmas of Many Colors: Circle of Love.” The Netflix project will be produced by Parton’s Dixie Pixie Productions and Sam Haskell’s Magnolia Hill Entertainment in association with Warner Bros Television.
A premiere date has not been announced.
Discovery has inked a long-term international deal for PGA golf rights and will launch a PGA Tour-branded OTT service. The agreement for TV and digital rights to PGA Tour events in all territories outside the US runs for 12 years, and comes after the company made a major statement of intent in live sports with a deal for Olympics rights in Europe between 2018-2024.
The PGA Tour deal is worth $2 billion. The cost of the rights will escalate as more territories are added. Discovery will pay $50 million per year in 2019 and 2020, $100 million in 2021 and then costs ramp up through 2030. A further $20-30 million will be sunk into marketing over the first three years of the deal. Discovery plans to offer coverage of the golf tour, which runs for most of the year, on its traditional services, as well as via OTT.
The US-based company fully owns the Eurosport sports network, which traditionally specialized in second-tier sports such as skiing and cycling but has ramped up ambitions under Discovery’s ownership, notably with the landmark $1.44 billion Olympics deal. As well as the linear service, there is an on-demand and streaming service, Eurosport Player, which was central to its Winter Olympics coverage.
As with the Olympics, Discovery will sublicense the PGA golf rights in some territories.
Former DirecTV and NBA executive Alex Kaplan, who joined the company last year, will oversee the PGA Tour coverage for Discovery. The deal excludes the US, where the tour runs on CBS and NBC.
CBS has announced that model Ashley Graham, singer-songwriter Jewel and WWE chief brand officer Stephanie McMahon will appear on this season of “Undercover Boss: Celebrity Edition,” with episodes for all three airing in June. Other celebrities going undercover at average jobs this season include Olympic gymnast Gabby Douglas, “Frozen” star Idina Menzel, YouTuber Bethany Mota and former NFL player Deion Sanders.
Meanwhile, “Greenleaf” returns on OWN for a two-night third season premiere on Aug 28 and Aug 29 at 10 pm ET/PT. The megachurch drama will feature guest stars Beau Bridges, Patti LaBelle and Iyanla Vanzant this season, joining the cast of Oprah Winfrey, Lynn Whitfield, Keith David and Merle Dandridge.
The CW has set premiere dates for two of its new summer series. “The Outpost,” starring Jessica Greene, Jake Stormoen and Imogen Waterhouse will premiere its first season on July 10 at 9 pm ET/PT. Legal drama “Burden of Truth,” with Kristin Kreuk will now debut on the new date of July 25 at 8 pm ET/PT.
In another development, “So You Think You Can Dance,” now in its 15th season, is back Monday, and features a dance-off between a contestant and tWitch. Variety has obtained an exclusive first look at the moment, which you can see below. In the clip, competitor Eddie Hoyt performs a tap routine for judges Nigel Lythgoe, Mary Murphy, Vanessa Hudgens and tWitch, leading the latter to join him on stage for a dance battle.