News Roundup: Movies!

Maybe.

Happy Monday, good readers.  We’ve got some movie news for you today, but first it seems Glee has found a whole new way to cash in: The folks at Oxygen are planning a ten-episode competition reality show, whose winner gets a guest spot on the show next season. (Ryan Murphy is musing he might be cast as a boyfriend for Mercedes, too.) Okay, leave it to Glee to find a way to make money off even their casting process. I guess they saw ABC was nosing in on their old model of hawking their cast’s song covers, and asked themselves what else they could monetize.

Sorry, couldn’t resist. I actually don’t think there’s anything wrong with what they’re doing in and of itself — in fact, it’s probably good for shows to explore new ways of getting money and publicity, since the old commercial model doesn’t translate too well into our new era of online viewing and DVR. (And it probably never worked as well as people told themselves it did, but that’s another matter.) The trouble comes if it starts affecting your creative decisions in making the actual show. What we’ve seen of Glee this year hasn’t exactly silenced worries on that count.