Shirley MacLaine Joins Downton Abbey

Shirley MacLaine Shirley MacLaine has became a member of the cast of Downton Abbey, Variety reviews.The Oscar champion will have Martha Levinson, Lady Grantham's mother, within the third season, which starts filming the following month.Shirley MacLaine to get AFI Existence Achievement Award"My late grandfather [Ronald Neame] directed Shirley MacLaine in Gambit in 1966 so it's a delight for me personally that they is going to be joining us on Downton Abbey," producer Gareth Neame stated. "Julian [Fellowes] has written another brilliant character in Martha Levinson, who definitely are an excellent combatant for Maggie Smith's Dowager Countess and that we are excited at the possibilities of Shirley MacLaine playing her."The gig marks MacLaine's first regular TV series role since her dramedy series Shirley's World, which survived one season (1971-72).Season 2 of Downton Abbey is presently airing on PBS stateside. Season 3 will premiere on ITV within the U.K. in September.

ProSieben in deal for Warner films

Pan European broadcaster Pro-SiebenSat.1 Group has signed a multi-year license agreement with Warner Bros. Intl. Television Distribution for exclusive free TV rights to upcoming WB pics and library content for its German webs.Pact covers "Superman: Man of Steel," "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy and the first four pics in the "Harry Potter" franchise. WBITD will also supply ProSiebenSat.1 with new series. The deal also covers WB Germany productions shown in cinemas from 2013 on. Contact Bobbie Whiteman at bobbie.whiteman@variety.com

Octavia Spencer remembers women who inspired 'The Help'

FreemanSpencerFor Octavia Spencer, it seemed appropriate that her win for supporting actress for "The Help" would come on the eve of Martin King Luther Jr. Day.Spencer was eloquent backstage in paying tribute to the women who inspired the drama, set in Mississippi during the turbulent era of 1960's civil rights movement. She said the movie was an example of how film can help educate and enlighten."I knew that for people 40 or over, this movie would strike a chord or be too painful to visit," Spencer said. "People don't like to go to the painful part, but the only way to grow and heal is to acknowledge that pain."These women represent scores of people," she added. "How can we not pay homage to them?"Cecil B. DeMille honoree Morgan Freeman also spoke of the role that film plays in changing perceptions over time."One of the more effective avenues for learning American history is movies," Freeman said. "I would like to think that because of the trajectory of my career I might have had a little input in some of America's history and some of the changes that have taken place in Hollywood." Contact Andrew Stewart at andrew.stewart@variety.com

Playwright Jon Robin Baitz Shakes Off Failure

NY (AP) It was F. Scott Fitzgerald who famously wrote there are no second acts in American lives. It is Jon Robin Baitz who says that's utter baloney."There's nothing but second acts," the playwright says over coffee in the caf of a Greenwich Village hotel.He should know: Baitz was a well-regarded writer of such plays as "The Film Society" and the Pulitzer Prize finalist "A Fair Country" when he left NY for Hollywood in 2002 to create the TV show "Brothers & Sisters."But finding frustration at every turn, Baitz lasted only a few years before being fired and fleeing back East. He has re-emerged with the drama "Other Desert Cities," easily his best-reviewed play and the first of his original works to make it to Broadway."I always felt that there was something else to come," says Baitz. "I sort of wake up every day in a kind of weird state of gratitude. It feels like a war ended for me, actually."Baitz in person is soft-spoken and utterly charming, happy to talk about any topic with a dash of wit and plenty of wisdom. Over the course of an hour interview at the Jane Hotel in Manhattan, which he points out sheltered some surviving crewmembers of the Titanic, he references the last days of World War I, Elia Kazan, W.H. Auden, Allen Ginsberg and paintings by Eric Fischl, which inspired his play "The Paris Letter."Things are lately looking up for a man who admits that he's usually prepared for the worst. The young-looking 50-year-old is digging his roots deep into the city his apartment is being renovated and he has the first draft of a new play written. He's eager to concentrate on plays now."I think having gone through the experiences I did particularly with Hollywood it now seems churlish to do anything other than write plays for as long as I possibly can," he says. "I had to teach myself how to write for myself again.""Other Desert Cities" is about a dysfunctional, politically divided family wrestling with a deep secret in their past. The cast includes Stockard Channing and Stacy Keach, who have been with the show since it made its debut a year ago at Lincoln Center Theater. Former "Brothers & Sisters" star Rachel Griffiths and Judith Light of "Ugly Betty" have joined the Broadway show.Baitz often writes with actors in mind and did so this time as well. "You hear one or two people for parts in your head and then you have a sort of tiny, tiny team on the bench, waiting," he says. "All those people are in the play pretty much."One of them is Keach, who Baitz calls an actor with "majestic depths of dignity and sorrow." Keach returns the compliment, calling Baitz a cross between Noel Coward and Anton Chekhov. "The characters he writes are endlessly fascinating. Every performance is an adventure," says Keach, who also starred in Baitz's "Ten Unknowns," at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, in 2003.For Baitz, it's no coincidence that the latest play comes Phoenix-like from the ashes of his wretched TV experience. "It was fairly quickly evident that the level of ambition that I had for it had nothing to do with the situation on the ground," he says. "The level of subtext could be dwarfed by a paramecium."He left NY and his playwriting career following a series of unhappy events 9/11, the death of his father and the breakup of his relationship with director and actor Joe Mantello, who nevertheless directs "Other Desert Cities.""I think I was probably so avidly attempting to flee whatever pain there was, thinking I could do it by changing the scenery," Baitz says, ruefully. "You can never do it."He had high hopes to create a vivid, sad-funny drama about an American family but thinks "Bothers & Sister" probably should have landed at Showtime or HBO, and not in a Sunday night slot at ABC.Though the show had a great cast in Griffiths, Sally Field, Calista Flockhart and Rob Lowe, Baitz had to endure writing by committee and constantly pleasing executives less interested in quality than cash. "My ambitions for it were unrealistic and I think they have to be unrealistic."He began "preposterously non-confrontational" but emerged as probably too eager to fight for his show and was canned. "I'd like to think that it's a testament to my survivor instinct kicking in that I managed to get myself ejected," he says, laughing."I think because I felt so muted there, so shackled, it's one of the things that allowed me to write a play about a politically divided family, which is sort of one of the things I tried to do there."Baitz was born in Los Angeles but lived for years in Brazil and South Africa when his father was posted abroad for the Carnation evaporated milk company. His experience in apartheid-era South Africa taught him how evil governments could be and that anyone can assimilate into a nasty system if they are comfortable.He says "Other Desert Cities," which takes its name from a California highway sign outside Palm Springs, is about complicity and how as people mature they must accommodate many truths. "It's maybe the clearest expression of my constant theme, which is, 'You have no idea what you believe in until you're tested,'" he says.He points to the example of Kazan, the brilliant director who was reviled by many for naming names during the Hollywood blacklist era. "That's what I live with every day," he says. "I'm certain I would name names."Baitz writes all the time and keeps a list of evolving ideas in a little notebook. "Eventually, they fight like weasels in a pit and one idea is slightly triumphant, though deeply bruised and battered. Then I think about it and think about it some more," he says."Eventually, I'll start writing words."Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. By Mark Kennedy January 11, 2012 Jon Robin Baltz PHOTO CREDIT Craig Schwartz NY (AP) It was F. Scott Fitzgerald who famously wrote there are no second acts in American lives. It is Jon Robin Baitz who says that's utter baloney."There's nothing but second acts," the playwright says over coffee in the caf of a Greenwich Village hotel.He should know: Baitz was a well-regarded writer of such plays as "The Film Society" and the Pulitzer Prize finalist "A Fair Country" when he left NY for Hollywood in 2002 to create the TV show "Brothers & Sisters."But finding frustration at every turn, Baitz lasted only a few years before being fired and fleeing back East. He has re-emerged with the drama "Other Desert Cities," easily his best-reviewed play and the first of his original works to make it to Broadway."I always felt that there was something else to come," says Baitz. "I sort of wake up every day in a kind of weird state of gratitude. It feels like a war ended for me, actually."Baitz in person is soft-spoken and utterly charming, happy to talk about any topic with a dash of wit and plenty of wisdom. Over the course of an hour interview at the Jane Hotel in Manhattan, which he points out sheltered some surviving crewmembers of the Titanic, he references the last days of World War I, Elia Kazan, W.H. Auden, Allen Ginsberg and paintings by Eric Fischl, which inspired his play "The Paris Letter."Things are lately looking up for a man who admits that he's usually prepared for the worst. The young-looking 50-year-old is digging his roots deep into the city his apartment is being renovated and he has the first draft of a new play written. He's eager to concentrate on plays now."I think having gone through the experiences I did particularly with Hollywood it now seems churlish to do anything other than write plays for as long as I possibly can," he says. "I had to teach myself how to write for myself again.""Other Desert Cities" is about a dysfunctional, politically divided family wrestling with a deep secret in their past. The cast includes Stockard Channing and Stacy Keach, who have been with the show since it made its debut a year ago at Lincoln Center Theater. Former "Brothers & Sisters" star Rachel Griffiths and Judith Light of "Ugly Betty" have joined the Broadway show.Baitz often writes with actors in mind and did so this time as well. "You hear one or two people for parts in your head and then you have a sort of tiny, tiny team on the bench, waiting," he says. "All those people are in the play pretty much."One of them is Keach, who Baitz calls an actor with "majestic depths of dignity and sorrow." Keach returns the compliment, calling Baitz a cross between Noel Coward and Anton Chekhov. "The characters he writes are endlessly fascinating. Every performance is an adventure," says Keach, who also starred in Baitz's "Ten Unknowns," at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, in 2003.For Baitz, it's no coincidence that the latest play comes Phoenix-like from the ashes of his wretched TV experience. "It was fairly quickly evident that the level of ambition that I had for it had nothing to do with the situation on the ground," he says. "The level of subtext could be dwarfed by a paramecium."He left NY and his playwriting career following a series of unhappy events 9/11, the death of his father and the breakup of his relationship with director and actor Joe Mantello, who nevertheless directs "Other Desert Cities.""I think I was probably so avidly attempting to flee whatever pain there was, thinking I could do it by changing the scenery," Baitz says, ruefully. "You can never do it."He had high hopes to create a vivid, sad-funny drama about an American family but thinks "Bothers & Sister" probably should have landed at Showtime or HBO, and not in a Sunday night slot at ABC.Though the show had a great cast in Griffiths, Sally Field, Calista Flockhart and Rob Lowe, Baitz had to endure writing by committee and constantly pleasing executives less interested in quality than cash. "My ambitions for it were unrealistic and I think they have to be unrealistic."He began "preposterously non-confrontational" but emerged as probably too eager to fight for his show and was canned. "I'd like to think that it's a testament to my survivor instinct kicking in that I managed to get myself ejected," he says, laughing."I think because I felt so muted there, so shackled, it's one of the things that allowed me to write a play about a politically divided family, which is sort of one of the things I tried to do there."Baitz was born in Los Angeles but lived for years in Brazil and South Africa when his father was posted abroad for the Carnation evaporated milk company. His experience in apartheid-era South Africa taught him how evil governments could be and that anyone can assimilate into a nasty system if they are comfortable.He says "Other Desert Cities," which takes its name from a California highway sign outside Palm Springs, is about complicity and how as people mature they must accommodate many truths. "It's maybe the clearest expression of my constant theme, which is, 'You have no idea what you believe in until you're tested,'" he says.He points to the example of Kazan, the brilliant director who was reviled by many for naming names during the Hollywood blacklist era. "That's what I live with every day," he says. "I'm certain I would name names."Baitz writes all the time and keeps a list of evolving ideas in a little notebook. "Eventually, they fight like weasels in a pit and one idea is slightly triumphant, though deeply bruised and battered. Then I think about it and think about it some more," he says."Eventually, I'll start writing words."Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

The Truly Amazing Wife: Parker Posey and Amy Sedaris Returning For Star-Studded Sweeps Episode

Parker Posey, Amy Sedaris Parker Posey and Amy Sedaris, who play Eli Gold's ex-wife and work rival, correspondingly, will return to The Truly Amazing Wife in the special sweeps episode that will restore the majority of the legal drama's finest guest stars, TVGuide.com has confirmed. Rita Wilson, Edward Herrmann, The Big C's John Benjamin Hickey, Renee Elise Goldsberry and Jack Contractor will all reprise their roles inside the same hour, as first reported by Entertainment Weekly. The Truly Amazing Wife exclusive: Court is within session for Denis O'Hare Denis O'Hare, whose return was formerly reported by TVGuide.com, may even return to the bench as Judge Abernathy because episode, set to air Feb. 19. Frequent Glee guest star Jonathan Groff may even appear. Inside the episode, Lockhart & Gardner lead a category action suit against a credit card applicatoin company that permit the Syrian government "disappear" U.S. people. The Truly Amazing Wife airs Sundays at 9/8c on CBS.

Killer Chiller fare

Documentary "The American Scream" is among the numerous original projects set to premiere this year on NBCUniversal horror net Chiller. NBCUniversal horror net Chiller spent last year focused on beefing up its viewership base and promoting its move into original telepics. Now, the cabler is doubling down on original programming, with the filmmakers behind the 2009 docu "Best Worst Movie" prepping a new feature titled "The American Scream" to debut this year. In "Scream," documentarians Meyer Shwarzstein and Lindsay Stephenson follow haunted-house enthusiasts, in much the same way that "Worst Movie" explored the evolution of 1990 monster movie "Troll 2" from a critically maligned flop to a cult favorite. Just like sister net Syfy caters to science fiction and fantasy aficionados, Chiller aims to tap into different veins of horror fandom with its new slate. Author cred is a big deal at the net: Michael Laimo's novel "Dead Souls," about a teen who inherits his crazy preacher father's mysterious house, will get a telepic adaptation alongside the previously announced "Brian Keene's Ghoul." Meanwhile, horror hyphenate Larry Fessenden is developing a suspense horror pic dubbed "Beneath," set in a leaky, oarless boat floating in the middle of a lake with a monster in it. None of the scripted films have airdates. "American Scream" is set for October. Chiller is also booking new specials -- AEP Media's "Real Fear: The Truth Behind the Movies" features Katrina Weidmanan, who appeared on "Paranormal State" on A&E. The show looks into the true stories that inspired horror flicks including "Silent Hill," "The Amityville Horror," "The Mothman Prophecies" and "Poltergeist." The second series is "Can You Survive a Horror Movie?," from Savannah Media, which answers pressing questions about subjects including the actual speed of a zombie invasion and exactly how long a person can survive being buried alive. Contact Sam Thielman at sam.thielman@variety.com

Glees Jonathan Groff Lands Guest Spot on The Good Wife

Jonathan Groff Glee's Jonathan Groff will guest-star on an episode of The Good Wife, TVLine reports. Groff will appear on an episode scheduled to air during sweeps in February. He'll take on the role of Jimmy, the brother of a woman who goes missing while protesting in Syria. In the episode, Groff will head to court in an attempt to sue a software company. Glee Scoop: Jonathan Groff returns as Jesse St. JamesThe actor will also return to Glee later this season as the new coach of Vocal Adrenaline.The Good Wife airs on Sundays at 9/8c on CBS.

Sword master Bob Anderson dies aged 89

Bob Anderson, the sword-master who done Alien, The Master In The Rings as well as the Princess Bride, has died aged 89.He died on 1 The month of the month of january, according to a disagreement with the British Academy of Fencing (via BBC News).Brit Anderson was an Olympic fencer before he moved to the movies. He began his film career concentrating on stunts, before becoming sometimes known beneath the undeniably awesome job title of Sword Master.Among the highlights on his filmography are Craig Lyndon, Highlander, The Princess Bride, The Master In The Rings trilogy as well as the Pirates In The Caribbean: The Curse In The Black Jewel.Anderson donned the legendary black helmet to see Darth Vader inside the lightsaber duels from the Wild Bunch and Return In The Jedi.Healing For Healing For Peter Jackson introduced the tributes via his Facebook page: "I used to be thrilled when Bob Anderson made the decision to honestly board The Master In The Rings as our sword-master."Really, it needed a while with this to sink because I'd get moving concentrating on the same guy who had aided create numerous cinema's finest fight sequences - in the Exorcist for the Princess Bride. Bob will be a brilliant swordsman together with a gifted teacher I'll remember him just like a wonderfully patient guy, possessed from the terrific sense of humour."Anderson is managed to get by his wife and three children.

China bows three dimensional TV service

BEIJING -- China, the earth's greatest TV market, marked the brand new Year having a trial run of their first three dimensional TV service, that will go wide for that Lunar Year on Jan. 23. The service, known as China three dimensional TV Trial Funnel, is collectively operated by pubcaster Closed-circuit television and native Tv producers in Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Shenzhen. Programming will initially concentrate on carrying out arts, cartoons, movies and sports. Additionally, it promises programming in the London Summer time Olympic games, which run This summer 27 to August. 12. It broadcasts daily from 10.30 a.m. to night time. The service could provide possibilities for overseas content companies because, while China's TV industry has broadened significantly recently, still it needs overseas content to fill the agendas. The entire revenue from the country's radio and television industry was 210 billion yuan ($33 billion) this year, up 26% from the year before, based on research website sarft.internet, operated through the effective Condition Administration of Radio, Film and tv. Tight limitations on content causes it to be a hard sell to navigate however. "The launch from the three dimensional trial funnel is really a significant part of the introduction of China's television," SARFT mind Cai Fuchao told the Xinhua news agency. Contact the range newsroom at news@variety.com

China bows 3D TV service

BEIJING -- China, the world's biggest TV market, marked the New Year with a trial run of its first 3D TV service, which will go wide for the Lunar New Year on Jan. 23. The service, called China 3D TV Trial Channel, is jointly operated by pubcaster CCTV and local TV stations in Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Shenzhen. Programming will initially focus on performing arts, cartoons, movies and sports. It also promises programming from the London Summer Olympics, which run July 27 to Aug. 12. It broadcasts daily from 10.30 a.m. to midnight. The service could provide opportunities for overseas content providers because, while China's TV industry has expanded dramatically in recent years, it still needs overseas content to fill the schedules. The total revenue of the country's radio and TV industry was 210 billion yuan ($33 billion) in 2010, up 26% from a year before, according to research website sarft.net, operated by the powerful State Administration of Radio, Film and Television. Tight restrictions on content makes it a difficult market to navigate however. "The launch of the 3D trial channel is a significant step in the development of China's television," SARFT head Cai Fuchao told the Xinhua news agency. Contact the Variety newsroom at news@variety.com