A few weeks ago the Internet was set ablaze with a fan theory that might have explained Sandy and Danny’s flying-car exit in the movie musical. Many fans speculated that Sandy actually was dead, or in a coma, after Danny’s attempt to save her life at the beach (cue “Summer Nights“) proved futile, and the show itself…

NBC paved the way for the big-production live musicals on TV with The Sound of Music, Peter Pan and The Wiz!, but it was Fox’s Grease, directed by Hamilton‘s Thomas Kail, that earned the genre Emmy recognition.

The Paramount TV-produced Grease: Live tonight won four Emmy Awards, including the top category it was…

UPDATED with all winners, 7:12 PM: Netflix’s docuseries Making a Murderer and Fox’s live musical event Grease Live each scored four trophies to lead the second of two Creative Arts Emmy Award ceremonies. A&E’s Cartel Land scooped three statuettes and HBO’s Last Week Tonight and Adult Swim’s wrapped series Childrens Hos…

Dedicating their lives to the pursuit of every iteration of the musical—from Broadway, to film and TV—Neil Meron and Craig Zadan have successfully reinvigorated a cultural phenomenon that has laid dormant for many years, in the form of the live TV musical. With the unquestionable validation of their 2013 test run—as…

The Americans finally made the cut in the top Drama Series categories. Critical favorite Mr. Robot did too, bringing USA Network to the party in a significant way for a change. Black-ish and Master Of None broke into the Comedy Series contest as well. But other than that in the Emmy Awards’ top two categories, things…

The Emmy race continued in earnest this week as ballots went out and studios continued ramping up the For Your Consideration events, but perhaps none was bigger than the blowout carnival Paramount set up on its lot Wednesday evening. It followed a one hour and fifteen-minute standing room only conversation I moderated …

WME has signed actress, dancer and singer Julianne Hough. She is coming off a starring role as Sandy in Fox’s highly rated and well-received special Grease: Live. She rose to fame as a professional dancer on ABC’s Dancing With The Stars where she was a two-time champion and served as a judge for the past two seasons.

H…

Palm Sunday this year saw Fox go full in with the semi-live The Passion musical featuring a 20-foot glowing cross being carried through the streets of New Orleans. For that effort, and facing a full schedule from its Big 4 rivals plus The Walking Dead on cable, the two-hour Big Easy-based The Passion scored a 4.3/7 in…

EXCLUSIVE: If Marc Platt is fretting over the long-shot odds of Bridge Of Spies winning the top Oscar, you wouldn’t know it from the tone of his voice during a phone conversation on Super Bowl Sunday. We were doing a postmortem on last week’s successful presentation of Grease Live, which he produced for Paramount and…

UPDATE, 8:27 AM: The Sound Of Music Live! still reigns supreme through the ratings hills by its fingertips but Grease Live has got some hydromatic fuel of its own and isn't far behind – at all. With a 4.3/13 rating among adults 18-49 and 12.18 million viewers in unadjusted preliminary ratings, last night's Fox's live…

I suppose you could say they had me at the umbrellas. Over two years in the planning and threatened by heavy rains all day, Fox’s sprawling presentation of Grease Live went forward Sunday evening with nary a hitch and one last-minute change in the out-of-doors opening number that paid tribute to the greatest movie…

EXCLUSIVE: Success rewards some artists with an opportunity to shoot the moon, take a risk, do something completely unexpected. Direct Grease Live for example.

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