Two Showbiz Items

Disney has announced that its Pixar division will produce "Toy Story 4." It sounds like a bad idea because TS3 did such a beautiful job of wrapping up the tale of Andy's toys. Then again, TS3 didn't sound like such a good idea when it was first announced. What I didn't know (until my colleague Colin Jeffery told me) is that Disney has been producing Toy Story shorts over the last couple of years that show up on DVDs or before other Disney movies in theaters. The release date on TS4 won't be until 2017, which makes me think they'd better get Don Rickles into the studio soon to record the voice tracks for the hockey puck -- he's already 88-and-a-half years old!

After last year's live broadcast of "The Sound Of Music" starring Carrie Underwood, and the upcoming "Peter Pan" starring Alison Williams, NBC is developing a live TV production of "A Few Good Men." Hard to believe it's been 22 years since Rob Reiner's movie version, starring Jack Nicholson, Tom Cruise, Demi Moore, Kevin Pollak, Kevin Bacon, etc. There's no word on who will star in it, but remember that Aaron Sorkin wrote it as a stage play first. My wife and I saw it in its pre-Broadway run at the Kennedy Center, with Tom Hulce in the lead role and, I think, Edward Winter (best known as Col. Flagg on TV's "M*A*S*H") as Col. Jessep. It was a very impressive production, as I'm sure the live TV version can be, even without the Hollywood star power of the movie.

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