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Television wins new respect from movie elite at Cannes festival

By Belinda Goldsmith CANNES (Reuters) - Actors and directors gathered for the world's leading movie showcase in Cannes this week said television was increasingly luring top talent and should no longer be seen as artistically inferior to the big screen. TV series like "The Wire," "Homeland", "Mad Men," "The Sopranos" and "Game of Thrones", which have won critical and commercial success, were cited for breaking down the division between movies and TV, giving audiences innovative viewing. ...

Fox executive Darnell to leave TV network after ratings slump
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Longtime Fox television executive Mike Darnell, who helped shepherd "American Idol" to the top of U.S. TV ratings, will leave the network, Fox said on Friday, after the network lost its lead among the younger audience most appealing to advertisers. Darnell, 51, the network's president of alternative entertainment, oversaw some of Fox's most popular shows - including talent contest "The X Factor," animated series "Family Guy" and reality cooking shows "Hell's Kitchen" and "Kitchen Nightmares. ...

Studios drool over sci-fi drama but will Spielberg take it to TV?

By Lucas Shaw NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) - Mickey Fisher, an unknown and unsigned writer until recently, has film studios drooling over his script "Extant" for weeks. There's just one twist: it's not a film script. Fisher wrote "Extant" as a TV pilot. It's a one-hour sci-fi drama about John and Molly Watts and their son, a human-like robot named Ethan. Molly, the space-traveling wife, is also pregnant with a baby that is part human and part alien. The family intrigue deepens in subsequent episodes. Multiple agencies sought to sign the writer after reading the script, and WME won out. ...

Steven Soderbergh is looking to direct Clive Owen in Cinemax series

By Greg Gilman LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - So much for taking it easy after directing "Behind the Candelabra" for HBO. Stephen Soderbergh is in talks to team up with Clive Owen on a 10-episode period medical drama for Cinemax, an HBO spokeswoman told TheWrap. "The Knick" is set in downtown New York at the beginning of the 20th century and focuses on the groundbreaking medical staff at Knickerbocker Hospital, where the boundaries of medicine are being pushed in a time of astonishingly high mortality rates and zero antibiotics. ...

FX sets premiere date for 'The Bridge'
By Greg Gilman LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - FX's border-cop drama "The Bridge" will premiere on July 10, the cable network said on Thursday. After its debut, the new 13-episode series will continue to air on Wednesdays during the 10 p.m. timeslot. Oscar-nominee Demián Bichir ("A Better Life") and Diane Kruger ("National Treasure") star as two detectives, one from each side of the U.S.-Mexican border, trying to solve serial murders. ...