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The Voice vs. X Factor: Which Show is Going to be a Hit?

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The battle is on between two top rating reality singing shows as they start their new season. The Voice debuts today while the X Factor will premiere on Wednesday.

NBC is pitting these two popular TV shows against each other in a bid to increase viewership. And what can fans expect from the new season? New twists in the shows, as revealed by Mark Burnett, the executive producer.

For The Voice, the battle rounds among the singers will have a new format. In this new season, a coach is given the chance to steal a losing contestant who has been sent home. In addition, the losing contestant can choose to change his coach but only if more than one coach hits the red buzzer.
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Adrianne Palicki is NBC’s Wonder Woman

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As the only actress invited to audition for the part, it was reportedly hers to lose. But David E. Kelley’s instincts must have been spot-on, as he’s awarded actress Adrianne Palicki the lead in his new take on Wonder Woman for NBC.

Palicki is best known for her ongoing roles on Friday Night Lights and Fox’s recent Lone Star. But looking over her resume, it looks like she was always destined for a breakout genre role, with past credits including guest stints on Smallville, Supernatural, the genre-skewering comedy Robot Chicken, and even The WB’s aborted Aquaman pilot.

You can find out more about NBC’s new, L.A.-set Wonder Woman reboot here.

NBC’s ‘Grimm’ New Cop Show

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NBC is signing up for some very unconventional new shows these days. Shows like Ron Moore’s 17th Precinct, Steven Spielberg’s musical Smash, and David E. Kelley’s new take on Wonder Woman. They also have a period piece in the works called Poe, which features literary master Edgar Allan Poe as a detective in the 1840s.

Add to that list Grimm, yet another cop procedural with a twist. The dark fantasy police serial is set in a world where the many characters from Grimm’s Fairy Tales are real. (No word yet on whether they’re the cops or the criminals.) Grimm is the brainchild of Angel co-creator David Greenwalt and one of his Angel writing staff members, Jim Kouf.

NBC has committed to a pilot for Grimm, with more to come if the peacock’s executives like what they see.

Wonder Woman Lives at NBC

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Having barely just reported that David E. Kelley’s new take on Wonder Woman was dead in the water, today there’s news of a dramatic reversal. NBC, who was most interested in the project but couldn’t make any commitments due to executive shuffling, has settled its issues with the assignment of new studio head Bob Greenblatt.

One of Greenblatt’s first official acts was to give Wonder Woman a pilot order. Kelley’s interpretation of the character sounds as if it will root her in the real world rather than the supernatural one she inhabits in the comics. No mention is made in the synopsis of Kelley’s pilot script of Wonder Woman’s Amazonian warrior origins. Instead, Kelley has reinvented Diana Prince (as she’s known out of costume) as a nighttime vigilante crime fighter in Los Angeles. During the day, she’s “a successful corporate executive and modern woman.” (A lawyer, perhaps? That’s what Kelley’s known for, after all.)

What do you think of David E. Kelley’s new version of this iconic character? His script, which calls for a lavish, big-budget production, is getting positive buzz around Hollywood, so I’m hopeful that we might see something cool when Wonder Woman debuts.

NBC Snags Spielberg Musical

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Now that Glee has proven that there’s room on the small screen for musicals, it’s inevitable that more song-and-dance series will make their way to television screens. But I don’t think anyone expected Steven Spielberg to be behind the next one.

Spielberg has just sold a musical idea to NBC called Smash, which follows a group of characters as they put together a Broadway musical. Reportedly, new NBC honcho Robert Greenblatt first tried getting Smash on Showtime, where he formerly worked. But now NBC has greenlit the pilot, which was written by playwright Theresa Rebeck and is being produced by Broadway heavyweights Craig Zadan and Neil Meron of Hairspray, along with Spielberg and DreamWorks TV.

Unlike Glee, Smash will utilize original songs written for the show, from award-winning songwriters Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman.

Glee hit on such a unique formula: a situation that calls for music to believably enter the drama, witty/quirky high school characters, and fun remakes of established hit pop songs. I’m unconvinced that its success can be so easily replicated.