Rapunzel Lives: Mandy Moore and Zachary Levi will lend their vocal talents to Disney’s 3-D animated musical adaptation of Rapunzel. Moore will play the title character, kidnapped as an infant from her parents’ castle; Levi will voice the dashing bandit who helps her escape and evade her captor. Sounds like not the worst thing ever, so we only have one request: Can Moore please find a way to get her man, Ryan Adams, a part, too? [HR]
Text TV: Fox has picked up a multi-camera, coming-of-age project, to be written by Steve Holland and produced under Happy Madison, based on TextsFromLastNight.com. Says Holland: “The show is about twenty-somethings in that post-college, pre-the-rest-of-their-lives limbo trying to figure out what to do, and texting is a large part of that.†Man, does that Steve Holland know young people! [HR]
Selling Stuff: Bryan Singer and Bryan Fuller are producing a one-hour comedy for NBC adapted from Augusten Burroughs’s novel SelleVision, which takes place behind the scenes at a home-shopping cable channel. Mark Bozek, the former CEO of the Home Shopping Network, is also involved. You know what they should just air, weekly, instead? The Magic Bullet infomercial. That thing is a goddamn masterpiece. [HR]
Barry on the Big Screen: Michael Stipe’s Single Cell and Tom Hanks’s Playtone production companies are teaming up for a romantic comedy inspired by the music of Mr. Barry Manilow. Details don’t seem to be nailed down yet, but the project as currently conceived will have a similar structure to Love Actually, only with a bunch of Manilow fans in Vegas to see the man headline Mandalay Bay. Brilliant? Terrifying? You decide. [Variety]
Leave It to Beaver: Anton Yelchin has signed on for The Beaver, the dark comedy starring Mel Gibson as a depressed man who begins talking through a beaver hand puppet. Jodie Foster, who is directing, also stars as Gibson’s character’s wife; Yelchin will play the couple’s kid, who pushes Foster to get a divorce. And hopefully the next bit of casting news about The Beaver will make this sound funny again. [Variety]
Sanctified: Not content with just hating on Avatar? Apparently James Cameron has another project in the works, Sanctum, with new 3-D technology for the Internet to eventually bash anonymously. The $30 million Cameron-produced project is based on co-screenwriter Andrew Wight’s near-death experience leading a diving expedition into a system of underwater caves, then having to scramble for a way out once the entrance collapsed. Ah, duh, back door. [Variety]