'Law & Order', 'Veronica Mars' on the Bubble

Tuesday, May 08, 2007 -

The network upfronts where the fall schedule is announced and advertisers purchase the commercial time that comes with it is going down next week, and there are a lot of nervous people waiting to find out if their favorite shows are going to be renewed or not.

NBC's Law & Order and The CW's Veronica Mars are two shows being talked about that may not make it another season, though the possibility of the former finding a new first-run home on TNT has been raised by Nellie Andreeva of The Hollywood Reporter.

Could a refactored version of Mars be in the works? TV Guides Michael Ausiello seems to think so.

Now I'm not certain how cable channels handle their schedules but I don't think they do upfronts at the same time the networks do. I know FX just renewed Dirt and The Riches and NBC has picked up another season of 30 Rock, much to Alec Baldwin's dismay.

I'll keep the theme going here and toss in news that ABC and CBS split the top spot for Monday during May sweeps. This is interesting because I noted in my feature Top 5 Shows That Won't Be Around in 2 Years that if Heroes slips in the ratings, it'll suffer the same fate of Lost, and already there is some bad news in that this is precisely what cost NBC on Monday.

The Peacock controlled Mondays for much of the season, but ABC's "Dancing With the Stars" has supplanted NBC's "Deal or No Deal" as the night's top reality show, while CBS' "CSI: Miami" -- for one week anyway -- overtook NBC's "Heroes" as the top drama among young adults.

Not good news for NBC.

A bit of good news for Drive fans, the last 2 produced but unaired episodes will be broadcast on July 4th.
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End will be opening a few hours earlier than previous scheduled, to May 24th.
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Battlestar Galactica's maestro Bear McCreary is scoring a new feature.
Firstshowing has a poster from Christian Bale's new flick, Rescue Dawn.
Bryan Singer's next project will be a World War II flick staring Tom Cruise.
Here's a new clip from Transformers, this years biggest bust in the making.
Cable giant Comcast wants same-day pay-per-view rights to theatrical films. The price: lots.
The Director of Fantastic Four 2 wants to turn the mediocre set into a franchise. Good luck.
AICN's Moriarty visited the editing room of Pirates 3.
The Writers Guild of America is still struggling with diversity in Hollywood.