IN THE SPOTLIGHT
NBC: ‘Downton Abbey’ movie production to start in 2018
SINGAPORE » A “Downton Abbey” movie is in the works, with production likely to begin in 2018, an NBCUniversal executive said Wednesday.
Michael Edelstein, president at NBCUniversal International Studios, said it hopes to assemble 20 cast members from the popular TV series. “There’s a movie in the works. It’s been in the works for some time,” Edelstein said in Singapore at a redcarpet event for “Downton Abbey: The Exhibition,” which features costumes, locations and never-beforeseen footage from the TV show. The exhibition opened in the city-state last week and ends July 31.
“We are working on getting the script right and then we’ve got to figure out how to get the (cast) together. Because as you know, people go on and do other things. But we’re hopeful to make a movie sometime next year,” Edelstein said.
Cast members at the exhibition said they were not aware of the movie. “Oh, well, you’ve got confirmation before us. We have no idea if that’s happening,” said Sophie McShera, who played assistant cook Daisy Mason. “But we would all love to be part of the film if it was to happen, for sure.”
Laura Carmichael, who played Lady Edith Crawley in the series, quipped: “Well, tell my agent, because we’re still waiting to know. We’re hoping that will happen soon.”
“Downton Abbey,” which concluded in 2015, portrays the lives of the aristocratic Crawley family in England and their servants amid the backdrop of such historical events as the sinking of the Titanic and World War I. It has become one of the most popular TV shows in the world, airing in at least 150 countries.
Does ‘Gong Show’ still work in a world rife with amateurs?
ABC, which has a lazy habit of exhuming old game shows, brings “The Gong Show” back tonight essentially unaltered — it’s a dank and shticky amateur talent show with the admittedly clever stunt-casting of actor Mike Myers as host Tommy Maitland, a past-his-prime British comedian who speaks only in double en-tawdries. Celebrity judges (in the premiere episode they are Zach Galifianakis, Ken Jeong and the show’s executive producer, Will Arnett) are tasked with striking a giant gong whenever one of the acts becomes too unbearable.
In this age of so many fawning competition shows, constant celebrity worship and acquiescence to an amateur presidency borne of reality television, who will actually bang the gong? A woman stuffs a live tarantula in her mouth. A dancing couple spits wet, chewed-up lumps of banana back and forth. Where is the moral courage to stand tall and end it?
The celebs sit in rapt admiration, doling out inflated scores, and you realize once more how far we’ve fallen, numbed to mediocrity in all its forms, cowed by the tyranny of the dilettante, resisting in thought but not deed, forever wo —
(Sound of gong banging)