Just as the original Adam Sandler is about to disgrace himself (and his drag alter ego) on the big screen in “Jack and Jill,” his back catalog is being successfully mined for television: A series adaptation of Sandler’s 2003 film “Anger Management” is coming to FX, with Charlie Sheen in the lead.
Sheen and showrunner Bruce Helford (“The Drew Carey Show”) had shopped the show for a couple of weeks before finding it a home at FX, which will pair it with reruns of “Two and a Half Men” (which the network already airs, in syndication), starting next summer. According to the Hollywood Reporter, even though its initial run will be a conservative ten episodes, “[i]f those test run episodes reach a certain size viewership, another 90 will be ordered, as has been done with [Tyler] Perry’s House of Payne and Meet the Browns at TBS.” That number seems…alarmingly high.
How closely the show’s plot will parallel that of the film is yet unknown, but given Sheen’s “colorful” behavior over the past several months, American TV viewers may be primed to see him playing a character challenged, by unconventional therapy, to work on his issues with rage.
That Sheen and his team have successfully landed him a new berth on television shows that Sheen is keeping his own negative, self-destructive impulses in check. After a summer marked by unsettling TV interviews, even more unsettling webcasts, and a live stage tour generally judged to be aimless and terrible, come fall, Sheen was following the stations of the comeback cross. He appeared on “The Tonight Show” to demonstrate all the signs of intensive media coaching. He submitted to a Comedy Central Roast. He spoke graciously of his former “Two and a Half Men” co-stars on stage at the Emmys. Sheen did what seemed impossible back in the days of the “tiger blood” rants: He made himself appear employable. (No one even talks about his history with domestic assault anymore…though we probably should.)
Anyway, Sheen will soon be back on weekly television — and this time, he’ll be able to say curses of a slightly edgier class than those he got away with on “Two and a Half Men.” If the TV vets attached to the show think Sheen’s a good risk, then his Vatican assassin warlock days are probably behind him
Courtesy of Yahoo.com
