By Lisa de Moraes
Friday, July 11, 2008
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif., July 10
Another "Sex and the City" movie is in the works and even though they have small audiences, "In Treatment" and "Tell Me You Love Me" are back for another season because, among other things, they're cost-effective, HBO's two top programming executives said Thursday at Summer TV Press Tour 2008.
Oh, and "Deadwood"? Still dead.
HBO parent Warner Bros. and New Line have "enormous interest" in doing another "Sex and the City" film, according to HBO Programming Group President Michael Lombardo, who said the studio is "trying with our help to put that together."
He told the critics that "everybody associated with it was really heartened by the enthusiasm from the fans and by the new fans to the show."
Asked whether success of the "Sex" flick increases the likelihood of a "Sopranos" flick, HBO Co-President Richard Plepler said, "Whatever David [Chase] wants to do is totally up to David. . . . We'd be delighted."
"Curb Your Enthusiasm" will be back. For sure. Hopefully. Almost certainly, the execs said:
Larry David "has said he's coming back," Lombardo explained. "We have a deal for him to come back for another season. . . . He hasn't started shooting, but yeah, we're counting on it."
That said, the execs don't know what the next season of "Curb" will be about. "Clearly he has an idea," Lombardo said. "When he's ready to commit a hundred percent, we'll have that conversation."
The 100-day writers' strike affected HBO "significantly," Lombardo said, explaining that the network had planned to offer a new season of "Entourage" and the start of Alan Ball's vampire series, "True Blood" in the summer. "We got pushed back . . . four months on everything," he said.
Critics wanted to know why HBO did not renew its profanity spew-athon period piece "Deadwood" and -- God help us -- "John From Cincinnati" but did renew both the watch-a-shrink-talk-to- patients drama "In Treatment" and the see-troubled-couples- attempt-to-have-sex -- a lot -- drama "Tell Me You Love Me." You can see their point.
"John From Cincinnati" wasn't "embraced by viewers, in terms of the number of people watching the show," Lombardo said -- odd, given the network steadfastly insists it does not care about ratings.
"It wasn't embraced by the press," Lombardo said, which immediately endeared him to the critics, given that the broadcast networks are universally utterly dismissive of the media and the role they play in a show's success or failure. He said the decision to pull the plug was "mutual" between HBO suits and creator David Milch.
The decision to put "Deadwood" (also created by Milch) out of its misery, on the other hand, was "much more contentious," Lombardo said.
At which point Plepler jumped in and said that in the best of all possible worlds, the writer has finished telling his or her story "and when he or she is done -- we're done."
Played well in the room.
But then Lombardo added, "The more expensive the show is, the harder it is to justify bringing it back another year."
"Ewww, commerce," the critics said with their eyes.
And the odds of that "Deadwood" movie that had been considered are now "slim to none," the execs said, what with Milch working on a new drama for HBO called "Last of the Ninth," about New York cops in the '70s.
" 'In Treatment' absolutely delivered for us on what the producers said they were going to deliver," Lombardo said of that show's return. "We also felt the show was great as it went along and they absolutely had more stories to tell." He acknowledged it was "an enormous undertaking" to watch the series's first run, five nights a week for nine weeks. "People who did tune in really loved that show," he said. "It got decent press and is an enormously cost-effective show," he added.
"Ick, commerce," critics said with their eyes.
Likewise, "Love Me" got "mixed reviews" and a core audience that was "absolutely devoted" to it and was "another cost-effective show," Lombardo said.
"Yuck, commerce," critics said with their eyes. Critics are devoted to HBO and don't like to hear its execs talking things like "cost-effective" and "ratings."
But the guys redeemed themselves when Lombardo said it's "heartening to get a big audience, but one thing we do believe at HBO, it is a mistake to be swinging for home runs. We would love for our shows to engage as many people as possible, but if they don't and they are done well and engage a sizable group that's unbelievably loyal, that's fine."
Still, one critic noted, a lot of HBO's series have been "somber" of late. Plepler and Lombardo, who came to their current positions during a slo-mo sloughing of execs at the network, agreed, but promised that was about to change.
To that end, they've given Sarah Jessica Parker's production company the thumbs-up to make a pilot for an adaptation of the non-somber "Washingtonienne" novel. It's from former congressional staff assistant Jessica Cutler and was based on her blog of that same name, in which she detailed her interesting life in D.C., including an exhausting array of sexual encounters, some with government suits, some for cash because "how can anybody live on $25K/year?"
Can't wait.
* * *
Speaking of not somber, at HBO's Q&A session for its new series "True Blood," based on Charlaine Harris's popular Sookie Stackhouse novels about a perky mind-reading waitress and her vampire patron and his vampire pals, the pay-cable net's new entertainment division president, Sue Naegle, was asked if HBO execs hesitated to pick up the series because of the Scary Sci-Fi People who would plague them when the show inevitably ended its run, sooner or later.
Actually, the question was more along the lines of "Do execs ever hesitate scheduling a show like this one, knowing once they've made that commitment they're in for a world of hurt?"
"I spent a long time as an agent, setting up and selling shows," said Naegle, a talent agent before joining HBO. That was followed by much blah-blahing about a TV project's success being "execution-driven," superior to someone else's vampire series, yak, yak, yak.
The critic took another whack at the question: "I'm saying if you schedule a show like this, you can never cancel it without problems."
"Oh -- is this a question about crazy fans? I love them!" Naegle said. "I hope this show gets that kind of rise out of people, as long as they don't send a bunch of coffins to my office."
Nope, she has no idea what she's in for.
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