Is AMC trying to kill “The Walking Dead” on purpose?
On Sunday total viewership crossed a magic line and dropped below 3 million to 2.927 million viewers. The key demo dropped to .92, as in 920,000 or less than a million.
This means that in three episodes they’ve lost almost 600,000 fans. And they’ve lost a million in the age group of 18-49.
They’re walking, and they’re dead.
This is a lower rating than a daytime soap opera, and begs the question: is anyone in charge?
Hello, hello, hello?
Starting Thursday at noon you’ll be able to buy tickets to “The Book of Mormon” on Broadway for just fifty clams. That’s because Scott Rudin, who was having trouble selling seats anyway, has a PT Barnum plan to save his five shows.
Rudin’s shows will sell empty seats from March 12- 29th for just that much to The Book of Mormon, How to Kill a Mockingbird, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Lehman Trilogy, and West Side Story.
Why? He’s got to. Michael Riedel said on WOR Radio this morning that he spoke to Rudin, who said his casts were playing to half-filled houses. That’s how many cancellations there have been since the CoronaVirus sent panic through the population. Riedel assumes, and I do, too that you get a refund if you cancel. Let me know if that’s not the case at showbiz411@gmail.com
“Book of Mormon” was already ailing after 11 years. Mockingbird had slowed down tremendously since Ed Harris took over for Jeff Daniels. “The Lehman Trilogy” was already lower priced.
The sale only goes through March 29th. But Rudin may have to extend that, especially in the case of “Mormon.” Here’s their availability for April 3rd. It’s like this most nights:
The family of Roscoe Born, who starred on many soap operas, often as a convincing villain, says he died from suicide on March 3rd. He was 69. I remember him as Joe Novak, a good guy gangster (sort of Michael Corleone) on “Ryan’s Hope.” “Soprano’s” star Dominic Chianese played a mob enemy. Later, he had a long, recurring run on “One Life to Live” as Mitch Laurence, the head of a cult. He was nominated for a daytime Emmy in 1990 for work another soap, “Santa Barbara.”
His family posted to Facebook:
“It is with heavy hearts that we confirm the death of our father and brother Roscoe Born. The gleaming charisma and creativity that shone through his onscreen performances, fueled his robust songwriting repertoire, and charmed all those around him were matched by a darkness in his life. Roscoe has long struggled with bipolar disorder, a shadow that he succumbed to when he took his own life on Tuesday March 3, 2020.
“We are grateful for the outpouring of kind words and memories. We only wish that Roscoe could have seen how much people still carry his daytime villains in their hearts. May his death remind us of the importance of opening up conversations around mental illness. May those who need help seek it. May those who seek help receive it. And may it serve them.”
Please: If you’re thinking about suicide, are worried about a friend or loved one, or would like emotional support, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline’s toll-free number: 1-800-273-TALK (8255)
Madonna is free at last!
She’s cancelled the last two dates of her Paris run on “Madame X,” thus bringing this long international nightmare to an end. She got to blame the sad ending on the coronavirus, which struck in the nick of time!
On her website: “Following official notification from the Office of the Police this morning prohibiting all events with an audience attendance of over 1000, Live Nation regrets to announce the final two Madame X performances previously re-scheduled to 10-March and 11-March are forced to be cancelled.”
Madame X doesn’t end with a bang, but a whimper. Since the tour began last September in Brooklyn, Madonna has cancelled show after show, claiming intense pain and injury. I don’t doubt a bit of it. She’s 61, and she turned out to be human. That’s a lot to deal with.
But Madonna made the show rigorous, and also insisted on performing it after 10:30 at night instead of 8pm, like a regular musical. That’s what “Madame X” was, in fact, a musical with no real book, A revue. But it’s done. Soon we’ll hear numbers– record breaking this and that– but it hasn’t been easy.
As for the “Madame X” album, it was released last June 14th, and it was pretty much of a dud. To date, it’s sold 125,000 copies (paid downloads, CDs) and another 40,000 in streaming. Most of the copies sold were bundled with concert tickets, so that’s not good if the total concert tickets sold was 165,000.
Madonna is a fighter, and a survivor. She keeps trying new things. Some work, some don’t. But she’s hanging tough. She doesn’t have to: she’s loaded. She could just bed young men all year and adopt a lot of kids. But I’ll bet she’s back with a new project soon enough. First things first: knee replacement!
One two, cha cha cha.
I hate to say it, but I knew it.
Yesterday’s guesstimates for weekend numbers on “Onward” and “The Way Back” were inflated to make things look better than they were.
Disney said “Onward” made $40 million. As it turns out, the Pixar film made just $39.1 million. That’s big difference. Disney was trying to avoid headlines about “worst Pixar showing since 2015.” But that’s what it was. Now they wait for “Mulan” on March 27th.
That extra $900,000 that didn’t happen– those were children whose parents didn’t want to risk exposure to illness. It had nothing to do with the movie’s relative qualities.
Also: Warners wanted “The Way Back” to be at $8.5 million. It was really $8.1 million. It was still Ben Affleck’s worst showing in two decades. And it was another disaster for Warner’s marketing films to adults. That makes “The Way Back” the 12th or 13th in a row over the last year and few months.
And that, folks, is entertainment.
EXCLUSIVE It was only last November that Donald Trump handed out Medals of Arts and Humanities to an eclectic crowd that included his movie star pal Jon Voight, musician Allison Krauss, and ad man turned thriller writer James Patterson.
Now, less than six months later, Trump is going to hand out more awards on March 20th. Invitations have gone out for a 2pm ceremony at the White House on March 20th. It’s unclear who the recipients will be this time.
All I know is that everyone has been sworn to secrecy.
Just recently, Trump plopped an award on radio host Rush Limbaugh, purveyor of hate, because he announced he had Stage 4 lung cancer.
Trump has already given awards to many of his financial backers including the wife of Republican fundraiser Sheldon Adelson.
There aren’t many people in the arts who will accept an award from Trump, who doesn’t come to the Kennedy Center Honors because he’s boycotted by most of the recipients. There are joke candidates like Ted Nugent and Scott Baio. D List actor Antonio Sabato Jr. just announced he can’t get work because he’s a Trump supporter. But I’m told we’ll see actor Gary Sinise, an arch conservative and an Oscar nominee from “Forest Gump.” Whoever gets it, they will be unqualified, that’s for sure. Should be interesting!
I don’t know much about what goes on at “Grey’s Anatomy.” But I’m continually impressed with star Ellen Pompeo’s ability to move on when another actor is fired or leaves in a contract dispute. She’s a survivor, that’s for sure. In an Instagram post she has no tears for Justin Chambers, a co-worker for 15 years. She doesn’t even refer to Chambers by name, just his character, Alex Karev, as if Karev were the real person. It’s very touching in a Hollywood way. Is there any Emmy for this? Patrick Dempsey, Eric Dane, Katherine Heigl would all like to present it. This really is a Shonda!
PS She must be getting tips in diplomacy from “cousin” Mike Pompeo!
Where was Pete Davidson tonight on “Saturday Night Live”? Absent. Completely missing in action.
Davidson was in the opening credits but clearly not on the show tonight. He wasn’t even on stage at the end.
It’s just about 10 days since Davidson gave an interview in which he slagged off the cast and said he was probably leaving the show.
Oddly, last week– right after the interview– he turned up in bunch of sketches on the show hosted by John Mulaney. But Mulaney and Davidson are pals, so that might have had something do with it.
Davidson’s absence is glaring because he has a movie debuting next week on Hulu called “Big Time Adolescence.” He also has a feature film coming in June.
But Pete’s time at “SNL” may be at an end. In the interview with Charlamagne Tha God he said he’s ready to quit the show because he believes his cast mates think he’s “f–king dumb … I don’t know … if I’m the joke or I’m in on the joke.”
Now the joke may be on him.
Otherwise “SNL” was pretty good tonight. Musical guest The Weeknd was excellent. Guest host Daniel Craig parodied himself as James Bond losing it in a casino, also very funny. But the best part of the show was the cold opening with Kate McKinnon as Laura Ingraham and as Elizabeth Warren. The latter Senator appeared as herself.
Please welcome Sen. Elizabeth Warren to The Ingraham Angle. #SNL pic.twitter.com/bqjR7bGZH4
— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) March 8, 2020
EXCLUSIVE The New York Times, New York Magazine, Vanity Fair, even the Hartford Courant– not one of them has written an actual story about Jennifer Farber Dulos, missing and presumed dead since last May. Her husband, Fotis Dulos, is presumed to have killed her up in really ritzy New Canaan, Connecticut. But he’s recently committed suicide while in custody. The Connecticut police list Jennifer as missing and have not been able to solve the case, locate her body, anything.
Jennifer’s five children, say all the media, are living with Jennifer’s mother, Gloria, in New York in her Fifth Avenue apartment. But who is Gloria Farber? Recently, Gloria filed papers to get child support from Fotos Dulos’s estate. But the estate of her dead son in law was revealed to be worth less than $300. He owed millions, including to Gloria’s late husband.The Farber-Dulos house is for sale for $2.9 million.
Gloria, however, does not need child support to raise her five grandkids.
Indeed, Gloria Farber, 80 years old, is living in an apartment on Fifth Avenue in the East 70s appraised at around $7 million. She also owns a comparable estate in Pound Ridge, New York that’s of architectural significance. So hold on just a minute.
In the old days, those journals I mentioned would have been all over the Dulos-Farber story. For some reason, it remains untold.
When Jennifer’s father, Hilliard Farber, died in 2017 at age 83, he was a very rich man. In 2008 he’d sold the Wall Street firm he founded, Hilliard Farber & Co. Inc., a voice brokerage company, “which was known for its reputation and industry expertise,” according to Wikipedia, to TradeWeb for undisclosed sum in the millions. A published SEC report figured the firm was worth $10 million in 2009.
According to his obituary: “He started his career at the Chase Manhattan Bank and quickly rose to be their youngest Senior Vice President, heading their bond trading desk. While at the bank, he was invited to serve as a Brookings Fellow in Washington, DC in 1964.” He left Chase in 1974 under the cloud of a scandal, and started his own company in 1975.
The Farbers were no slouches in society. It didn’t hurt that Gloria’s brother, Arthur, was married to designer Liz Claiborne, with whom he created a fashion empire beginning in 1957. Liz Claiborne died in 2007, Arthur Ortenberg in 2014. The lack of media attention about the Farbers is most unusual, too, since Arthur Ortenberg’s girlfriend after Claiborne died was Cathy Horyn, the long time fashion editor of the New York Times.
With her husband, brother, and now daughter gone, Gloria Farber has been left to deal with the unthinkable on her own. (She has another daughter, Melissa.) But she’s up to the challenge. According to Hilliard Farber’s obit, the couple were longtime benefactors of St. Ann`s School in Brooklyn Heights, where Hilliard served on the board for 31 years. The St. Ann’s Lower School building,opened in 2003, is named in his and Gloria’s honor. The Farbers also supported CARING at Columbia, a program to assist at risk children. At the time of Hilliard’s death, Gloria served as chairperson.
So the five Dulos children — Petros, Theodore, Christiane, Constantine, and Cleopatra Noelle — have lost their parents in the worst possible ways, but they are insulated from the very grim realities of real life. Gloria Farber lives in a massive aerie at 980 Fifth Avenue. With spectacular views of the city and Central Park, Farber’s home is said to be worth north of $7.5 million. The apartment above sold most recently for $6.1 million. Three floors above went for $8.1 million.
Out of the apartment, the Farbers also ran a 501 c(3) called the Gloria and Hilliard Family Foundation. In the year ending June 2016, before Hilliard died, total assets were listed at just over $1 million. That was down from $1.3 million in 2014.
The Fifth Avenue spread is not the only Farber home. More suited to five rambunctious children would be their Pound Ridge estate. From reading lists it looks like Gloria put it up for sale after Hilliard’s death, but it’s off the market now. They bought the property in 1998 for just under $3 million. It’s a modern lakefront home that looks pretty spectacular from the videos on YouTube. (See below.)
Fotis Dulos must have thought a dead wife would cancel his loans to his in-laws, and reap him a whole new life with his girlfriend. It didn’t work out that way. But at least the kids can concentrate on grief for their mother. They will never have to worry about having a roof– or roofs– over their heads.
Got any info on the Farbers? Email me at showbiz411@gmail.com. Until Jennifer Farber Dulos is found, and the mystery of her death is solved, her tragic story remains an unfinished saga.
SUNDAY AM UPDATE: Disney says “Onward” made exactly $40 million. At least that’s the number for now. They had to avoid that $39 million!
SATURDAY AM: It’s Onward and downward for Disney and Pixar this weekend.
“Onward,” which has great reviews, is heading to a Pixar low number thanks to the Virus Panic.
“Onward” made just $12 million yesterday. If it can’t break $39 million, “Onward” will be the lowest Pixar opening weekend since “The Good Dinosaur” in 2015. If it does even less than $45 million, we’ll go all the way back to 1998 and “A Bug’s Life.”
It’s not the movie, of course. Ordinarily, theaters would be full this afternoon and tomorrow with grade school kids and crying babies. Disney would be raking it in. But panic about the virus may be keeping audiences out of theaters — in a big way.
If that’s the case, Disney may have to re-think launching their live action “Mulan,” coming on March 27th. They’ve already postponed its release in China.