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A reboot of “The Wonder Years” has landed a pilot production commitment at ABC. The new half-hour comedy series would focus on how a black middle class family in Montgomery, Alabama in the turbulent late 1960’s made sure it was The Wonder Years for them too. That puts the new show in the same time period as the original series, which was set between 1968 and 1973. A mini writer’s room for the show will be opened once ABC approves a pilot script. Saladin K. Patterson will write and executive produce. Lee Daniels and Marc Velez will executive produce via...

Daniels opened up to Vulture -- in a new interview published Tuesday -- after he was asked about how Smollett alleged he'd been the victim of a hate crime, a claim Chicago cops later refuted, accusing the "Empire" actor of staging the entire episode to get a pay raise and to drum up publicity for his career. Smollett has maintained his innocence, strongly denying the accusations. . . . "I’m beyond embarrassed," the 59-year-old director and producer, who initially publicly supported Smollett, told the outlet. "I think that when it happened, I had a flash of me running from bullies....

“Jussie [Smollett] will NOT be returning to ‘Empire,'” series co-creator Lee Daniels said Tuesday. Daniels was responding to a Variety report in which multiple production sources said that “Empire’s” writing staff was breaking ideas for the show’s sixth and final season with the expectation that Smollett would appear in the back half of the 18-episode season. This is the first public acknowledgment that Smollett will not return for the final season of the Fox drama series. He was written out of the final episodes of the show’s fifth season following severe backlash stemming from accusations the actor and musician faked...

Empire creator Lee Daniels is finally backing off his defense of the boy-who-cried-MAGA, Jussie Smollett, and has admitted the “frustration” he and his colleagues have felt since the hate-hoaxer’s criminal charges. Took you long enough, man. At the time he said, “Jussie you are my son. You didn’t deserve, nor anybody deserve to have a noose put around your neck, to have bleach thrown on you, to be called ‘die f—–, n—–,’ or whatever they said to you.” He then admonished the country for being so open to racism, as if Smollett’s “assault” was just part of the social fabric....

Jussie Smollett might have gotten the idea to stage his own attack after Lee Daniels talked about his cousin getting assaulted because he's gay ... at least that's what some members of the "Empire" cast think. Sources close to the "Empire" production tell TMZ ... some cast members think Jussie's gears started grinding in his head days after Lee posted a video on Instagram on January 10 calling out homophobia. In that same post, the "Empire" creator captioned it, "This past week my cousin was beat up for being gay and I am sick of hearing these stories." Our sources...

Some of Smollett's cast mates are 'f*****g furious' and want him to quit or be fired They say he does not deserve a place on the show after allegedly lying to the world Others are standing by him and believe his claim that he is innocent Gabby Sidibe, one of Smollett's closest friends, deleted her supportive Instagram post on Thursday night A day earlier, she had written: 'I know him, I believe him, I stand with him' Prosecutors say they have a mountain of evidence which proves it was a hoax Smollett's legal team has condemned their handling of the...

One day after Jussie Smollett was arrested on multiple felony charges for the alleged racist and homophobic attack of last month, the producers of Empire have cut the actor from the rest of the show’s fifth season “The events of the past few weeks have been incredibly emotional for all of us,” said EPs Lee Daniels, Danny Strong, Brett Mahoney, Brian Grazer, Sanaa Hamri, Francie Calfo and Dennis Hammer this morning. “Jussie has been an important member of our Empire family for the past five years and we care about him deeply,” the producers added. “While these allegations are very...

Left-wing Hollywood wasted no time in politicizing and blaming President Donald Trump and his supporters for an alleged hate crime attack on Empire actor Jussie Smollett — an encounter that police now reportedly believe to have been staged. CNN’s Shimon Prokupecz reported Saturday, “Chicago Police believe Jussie Smollett paid two men to orchestrate the assault. The sources tell CNN that the two men are now cooperating fully with law enforcement."Left-wing Hollywood, of course, used the alleged attack to cast blame on President Trump and the United States in general. Empire co-creator Lee Daniels said, “We have to love each other...

2 Broke Girls co-creator Whitney Cummings has teamed with Empire co-creator Lee Daniels for a timely half-hour comedy, which is in development at Amazon. The untitled project, co-created by Cummings and Daniels and starring Cummings, hails from Fox 21 TV Studios and Amazon Studios. Co-written by Cummings and Daniels, the comedy revolves around the staff of the Ombudsman’s office at a college that navigates PC culture and the #metoo climate. The lead character, played by Cummings, must reconcile the dissonance between different generations of feminism, and the struggle to reconcile our primal desires, and socially constructed identities with current ethical...

Lee Daniels didn’t hold back during an interview with CNN’s Piers Morgan, saying that he believed President Obama’s term in office has revealed America’s “true colors” and it is still a racist and “angry” country. Daniels wasn’t directing the comment toward all Americans, but he certainly had a point. Morgan is known for asking the tough questions and when he pushed the director of “The Butler” to speak up on racism in America since Obama was elected, the interview took a powerful turn. “I think that people are angry that he’s president and I think that they are showing their...

Conservative PR guru and Reagan biographer Craig Shirley has an excellent piece over at Breitbart in which he explains why it is utterly detestable that anti-American leftist Jane Fonda was cast as Nancy Reagan in the new Hollywood film Lee Daniels´ The Butler, and not, it´s not just her infamous pose with North Vietnamese anti-aircraft guns. Fonda, Shirley notes, sought to slam the door on Vietnamese "boat people" who were fleeing the brutal Communist regime, while other Americans across the political spectrum -- Shirley commends leftie folk singer Joan Baez for her advocacy of the boat people -- stood up

Lee Daniels, director of "Lee Daniels' The Butler," can't seem to keep his charges of racism straight. I always thought that a sure sign of racism was how much rural whites love to see black people "perform." But now Daniels is claiming that he had to stock his latest film with white actors out of the fear that, unless he did, rural whites would not want to see a film starring only black people: The new movie “The Butler” has a unique political feature: Portrayals of five U.S. presidents. (Robin Williams plays Dwight Eisenhower, James Marsden portrays John F. Kennedy,...