Around the Tubes: 3/16/2018

I have gotten a plethora of cool press releases have been flooding my inbox recently that you may find interesting. This post will include blurbs on Little Fires Everywhere, Leaving Earth: Or How to Colonize a Planet, Paul Simon, Snoop Dogg Presents The Joker’s Wild, Drop the Mic, Defining Hope, and Kidding

- After a competitive bidding war that ignited Hollywood, Hulu has obtained the rights to develop Little Fires Everywhere, the highly-anticipated limited series from Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington, based on Celeste Ng’s 2017 bestseller, as a Hulu Original Series. The project will be produced by Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine, Washington’s Simpson Street and ABC Signature Studios, and will join Hulu’s award-winning slate of original programming. Witherspoon and Washington will also star as leads in the series. Liz Tigelaar (“Life Unexpected,” “Casual”) will write and serve as showrunner and executive producer.

- In what may be Stephen Hawking’s last major television project, Smithsonian Channel explores his controversial position that the survival of the species depends on inhabiting another planet. Planet Earth has been home to humankind for more than 200,000 years, but with a population of 7.3 billion and counting and limited resources, some scientists believe it might not support human life forever. Stephen Hawking, one of the world’s most prominent scientists, believed that humans must have an interstellar escape plan in place within the next 100 years. He asserted that this is the only way to safeguard the future of the human species from the next mass extinction – by leaving Earth and making a new home on another planet. The program visits an exo-planet observatory in the heart of the Atacama Desert, reveals a plasma-powered rocket engine that could revolutionize space travel, explores the giant greenhouses of Biosphere 2 and showcases NASA’s own “robot army.” Hawking, top scientists, technologists and engineers around the globe investigate whether humans really do have what it takes to colonize another planet. Leaving Earth: Or How to Colonize a Planet airs Sunday, March 25 at 8:00.

- Legendary songwriter, recording artist and performer Paul Simon has announced the final leg of Homeward Bound – The Farewell Tour, culminating with four shows in the New York City area: the Prudential Center on September 15 in Newark, NJ (the city where Simon was born), and two nights at Madison Square Garden on September 20 and 21, with an additional concert to be announced soon. As previously announced, Simon and his band will embark on the artist’s final tour May 16 in Vancouver, bringing to the stage a stunning, career-spanning repertoire of timeless hits and classic songs. Tickets for the third and final leg of Paul Simon’s Homeward Bound – The Farewell Tour will go on public sale beginning Friday, March 16 @ 9am ET. Go to PaulSimon.com for ticketing information as it becomes available.

- An hour-long block of comedy, competition and hip-hop returns to TBS on Sunday, April 15 with the hit unscripted series Snoop Dogg Presents The Joker’s Wild at 10:00 and Drop the Mic at 10:30. The network renewed both series after they quickly emerged as the top two new unscripted cable comedies in 2017, reaching an average of 2.7M viewers per episode across TBS’s linear, VOD, and digital platforms, and earning over 250 million social and YouTube views to date.

- The ground-breaking new documentary feature film Defining Hope (www.hope.film) from director Carolyn Jones (The American Nurse) follows eight patients with life-threatening illness, and the nurses who guide them to make critical choices along the way as they face death, embrace hope, and ultimately redefine what makes life worth living. “Defining Hope is a documentary that has evolved over the course of my career,” says director Carolyn Jones. “It’s a journey with nurses and their patients that speaks to the universality of death and leads us to a place of knowledge and power as we recognize that we have agency over the way that we die. To know what we want at the end of life, we have to figure out what makes life worth living.” Produced by Carolyn Jones Productions, the award-winning team behind The American Nurse Project, Defining Hope is presented and distributed nationally by American Public Television (APT), and is slated for release nationwide on public television stations beginning April 1, 2018 (check local listings).

- Showtime has announced that Justin Kirk (WEEDS) has been cast in a recurring role in the upcoming Showtime half-hour comedy Kidding. Kirk joins Golden Globe® winner Jim Carrey, along with Oscar®, Emmy® and Golden Globe nominee Catherine Keener (Get Out), Oscar, Emmy and Golden Globe nominee Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon) and Judy Greer (Married). Kirk will play Peter, the new boyfriend of Jill (Greer) who is Jeff’s (Carrey) estranged wife.