Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
STARS ON SCREEN
From film to TV: Is film legend Robert De Niro (“The Irishman,” 2019) coming soon to TV? According to Variety, signs point to yes.
The trades paper first broke the news that the two-time Oscar winner is attached to star in “Zero Day,” a Netflix limited series from “Narcos” showrunner Eric Newman and NBC News president Noah Oppenheim.
Newman, who is also an executive producer of “The Watcher” and “True Story,” has an overall deal at Netflix, and he’ll reportedly work with Oppenheim to pen the script based on the story they wrote with Michael Schmidt. Oppenheim, who has helmed NBC News since 2017, previously wrote screenplays for “The Maze Runner” (2014), “Jackie” (2016) and “The Divergent Series: Allegiant” (2016). On “Zero Day,” he will also be credited as an executive producer, as will De Niro and Jonathan Glickman of Panoramic Media.
Netflix declined to comment on De Niro’s involvement, although it seldom comments on projects that are in development. And details are rather scarce at this time: we know the limited series will be a political thriller and De Niro would play the part of a former U.S. president.
If “Zero Day” gets the formal go-ahead, the project would provide De Niro with his first TV role as the lead and series regular. The “series regular” part is key, because it’s not De Niro’s first foray into television. While his acting resume largely consists of film roles, he scored an Emmy nomination in 2017 for his role in the HBO movie “The Wizard of Lies,” in which he played Bernie Madoff, and another in 2019 as a producer of “When They See Us.”
He’s also no stranger to the political thriller genre, or to a fictional White House. Fans will recall De Niro playing a close adviser to the scandal-plagued president in “Wag the Dog” (1997). In “Zero Day,” De Niro will get to play the role of commander-in-chief, albeit one who is no longer in office.
Keeping it in the family: “Lopez vs. Lopez” has had its inaugural run on NBC extended.
The network recently ordered nine additional episodes of the freshman sitcom starring George Lopez (“The George Lopez Show”) and his real-life daughter, Mayan (“Mr. Troop Mom,” 2009). That brings the total number of Season 1 episodes to 22, which tends to be the standard for series airing on broadcast networks.
“Lopez vs. Lopez” is, according to ABC, “the story of a working-class old-school Latino (George Lopez) who moves in with his modern Gen Z daughter (Mayan Lopez) as they rebuild their dysfunctional relationship one argument at a time. It’s old vs. new, father vs. daughter, Lopez vs. Lopez.”
It airs on Fridays, a day when shows don’t typically pull in huge numbers in terms of viewership. Initial airings of “Lopez vs. Lopez” on NBC averaged about 2.28 million viewers, but in the four weeks since its Nov. 4 premiere, the pilot episode alone has drawn 7.6 million viewers across all platforms. And that’s good news for both NBC (and streamer Peacock) and the series, which was one of just two pilot comedies to be picked up to series by NBC.
“Lopez vs. Lopez” hails from creator/showrunner Debby Wolfe (“The Conners”), who was inspired to create the show after seeing Mayan’s post about her family’s post-divorce dynamics on TikTok. “She was revealing the sordid details of her parents’ divorce … and twerking the entire time!” Wolfe recalled in an interview with Variety. “I was immediately like, ‘This is a show.’ This Gen Z Latina, unafraid to call out her boomer father for bad parenting. Raw and hilarious.”
FTX endgame: Amazon is partnering with the Russo Brothers — a.k.a. “Avengers: Endgame” (2019) directors Joe and Anthony Russo — on a new limited series that will delve into the world of cryptocurrency.
Envisioned as an eight-episode limited series, the TV project hails from its production company, AGBO, and will examine the FTX scandal that saw one of the most well-known cryptocurrency exchanges implode and more than $2 billion in funds seemingly vanish.
“This is one of the most brazen frauds ever committed,” the Russo brothers said in a statement. “It crosses many sectors — celebrity, politics, academia, tech, criminality, sex, drugs and the future of modern finance. At the centre of it all sits an extremely mysterious figure with complex and potentially dangerous motivations. We want to understand why.”
“Hunters” creator David Weil will write the pilot and serve as an executive producer on this project, which marks his third Amazon series to date. He previously teamed up with the Russos on rewrites for the upcoming “Citadel” spy thriller starring Richard Madden (“Game of Thrones”) and Priyanka Chopra (“Quantico”).