NEW SERIES ANNOUNCEMENTS
“Varsity Blues” Revival in the Works at Quibi
Quibi, the streaming app from Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman, has put in development Varsity Blues, a modern take on the 1999 movie, with the film’s original producers Mike Tollin and Tova Laiter attached. The project comes from Tollin and Peter Guber’s MSM and Paramount Television.
Written by Tripper Clancy, “Varsity Blues”will follow a high school football team in West Canaan, Texas, and their abusive coach. James Van Der Beek (“Dawson’s Creek”) played Jonathan Moxon in the 1999 film, who faced challenges dealing with his coach and his football-obsessed dad.
Plans are for Quibi to launch in spring, 2020. Cable net CMT had spearheaded a “Varsity Blues” reboot in 2016, but never moved forward.
PBS Announces Six-Part “South By Somewhere”
Celebrity chef, author and restaurateur Vivian Howard, who previously hosted “A Chef’s Life,” will return to PBS in also culinary-themed “South By Somewhere.” The new six-part series is described as a culinary tour, exploring dishes that are uniting cultures and creating new traditions across the American South.
The logline: In “Somewhere in Time,” premiering on PBS in Winter/Spring 2020, Vivian travels the changing South in search of the dishes that connect us all — dumplings, hand pies, porridge and more — but which are expressed in delightfully different ways across cultures. Along the way, she meets new friends and teachers, and as she says, discovers “how breaking bread and sharing a meal can create a comfortable place to have meaningful, memorable conversations.”
With each episode, Vivian finds that although we’re different, our appetites are very much the same.
“South By Somewhere” is produced for PBS by Markay Media, a Durham, N.C.-based television and documentary film company owned by award-winning filmmaker Cynthia Hill. |