Sure, late January is a little late for New Year predictions, but with school only just starting and this being my first column of the year, now seems perfect for a few highly-educated predictions that you may never have seen coming. So, in order of shock value, here’s what to expect — says me?
“Seinfeld” will return: Laugh all you want, but my best guess has the fearsome foursome back on the boob tube making us laugh (together, not in their own productions) by year’s end.
At the very least, a reunion special seems inevitable, but a season-long encore may be in the best interest for each to recover some long-lost hype. The failures of Michael Richards and Jason Alexander — neither having lasted an entire season on his own — are well-documented, but the demise of Julia Louis-Dreyfus might occur in the blink-of-an-eye. Reports have her upcoming show, “Watching Ellie,” costing NBC upwards of $1.5 million an episode — enough to elicit second-guessing after one bad ratings week.
Further supporting such a reunion is Jerry Seinfeld’s weakening resolve. While he initially claimed “Seinfeld” was kaput for good, Jerry has recently expressed interest in getting the gang together for a few laughs. On top of this, NBC is reportedly willing to do anything to keep the “Friends” cast together, to the tune of over $1 million an episode, each. If this fails and “ER” continues to slip, NBC might be left pleading for a “Seinfeld” unretirement.
Jerry Bruckheimer will make a 9/11 movie: ?If he beats Steven Spielberg to it, that is. Shameless, yes, but with TV movies reportedly in the plans for every network, it’s inevitable that someone will want to make a screen version and put their stamp on our generation’s Pearl Harbor. Watch for HBO’s inside look at Rudy Giuliani’s week from hell in the near future, but undoubtedly 9/11 will make it to the big screens, or at least be green-lit by some money-starving studio, by year’s end.
The TRL generation will prove its doubters wrong: Just as the supposedly “real” heavyweights are failing, album-after-album, the new crop of artists — the one we’ve dubbed the TRL generation — is starting to show stamina. Three year’s ago, who would have guessed that Britney Spears would still be bigger than Madonna and every other one of her childhood influences? Not me. They’ve taken quite a lickin’, but I’ll be damned if they don’t keep on tickin’.
Robin Williams will be cool again: Yes, that Robin Williams. After committing the most public act of career suicide in the history of Hollywood, it seems Williams has seen the light and now even makes fun of the Robin Williams of three years ago.
That was the Robin Williams of “Patch Adams,” “Flubber,” “Bicentennial Man” and so many other boring puke-fests that we all wanted him outcast from clogging our theaters with “heartfelt” gentlemen pics. I think we all hold him somewhat responsible for the wave of sentimental crap that followed, even in his absence (“Pay it Forward” seemed tailored to his style), but we’ll forget all that by year’s end.
First there’s “One Hour Photo” — one of the most provocative and talked about films of this year’s Sundance Film Festival — where he plays a photo developer obsessed with the family whose pictures he handles. Following are his bad guy turn alongside Al Pacino in Christopher Nolan’s “Insomnia,” and “Death to Smoochie” where he plays a rival children’s show host (think Barney the Dinosaur) to Edward Norton.
Not since Anne Heche went from sexy waif to lesbian sweetheart to insane psycho have we seen such a third incarnation of a career.