Cameron Crowe's New Show Sounds Like a Total Disaster
Major rewrites, a scrapped pilot, and a lead actress presumably fired: What on earth is going on on the set of Cameron Crowe’s new show, Roadies? According to Deadline, nothing good.
Originally conceived as a Showtime comedy about the “day-to-day life of a successful rock tour as seen through the eyes of the crew members who help get the show on the road,” Crowe’s first foray into television is now reportedly falling apart.
Showtime gave Crowe—who’s writing, directing and executive producing—a pilot order last June. Christina Hendricks and Luke Wilson signed on as leads in December, and things looked good. At the time, co-producer J.J. Abrams praised the script, calling it “funnier and sweeter and wilder than I had ever imagined.”
Cut to a year later, and it’s all falling to shit. The resulting pilot was apparently so untenable that Crowe is in the process of completely rewriting Hendricks’s character. According to Deadline, she’s leaving the show entirely, and at least part of the pilot, if not all, will presumably be reshot.
Deadline has learned that the female lead role of Shelli, played by Christina Hendricks in Showtime’s Roadies pilot, written, directed and executive produced by Cameron Crowe, is being completely revamped and will be recast. The decision to re-conceive the character was made after the pilot was shot, and Crowe is currently in the process of re-writing, according to industry sources close to the production. The source emphasized that it was a creative decision to revamp the character and the parting was amicable
It hasn’t been an easy year for Crowe, whose film Aloha bombed, both in terms of the box office but also in terms of common sense. Not that the writing wasn’t already already on the wall—Sony executives tore the film apart in a series of hilariously eviscerating leaked emails.
“I’m never starting a movie again when the script is ridiculous and we al [sic] know it I don’t care how much I love the director and the actors it never not even once works,” then-Sony president Amy Pascal wrote last November.
Wise, if not spell-checked, words.
