Movies Daily by Zach Cannon

With upfronts just around the corner, Hollywood is abuzz with TV news. Like American Gladiators and Knight Rider before it, Beverly Hills 90210 is returning to the tube on The CW this fall. It’s rumored that ABC finally greenlit Life On Mars, the remake of the BBC shows of the same name about a cop unstuck in time. The network also picked up a new Mike Judge (Beavis and Butthead, King of the Hill) animated series, as well as renewed Eli Stone for a second season.

FOX recently announced they were bringing back some of the Arrested Development crew (likely so they can cancel them again). AD’s creator, Mitch Hurwitz, is at the head of an animated show about a high-school faculty called Sit Down, Shut Up, while Michael Bluth himself, Jason Bateman, directed the also-picked-up pilot for The Inn, which was created by AD scribe Abraham Higginbotham. J.J. Abrams, of Alias and Lost fame, and his Bad Robot team will produce the sci-fi drama Fringe for FOX as well. It’s Abrams first series off ABC since Felicity.

Probably the biggest, if not entirely new news out of Burbank comes from NBC, which is expected to announce that Jimmy Fallon will officially take over for Conan O’Brien when O’Brien moves to L.A. next year to host The Tonight Show. The network seems to think that Fallon has proven himself for the job, but really, he’s a so-so comic filling in for another comic long past his prime. With Craig Ferguson slowly overtaking Conan in the ratings and Leno still on top of his time slot, things aren’t looking good for NBC’s late-night lineup.

NBC is in a catch-22 because if they keep Leno for The Tonight Show, they’d owe Conan $40 million. If they let him go, word is that Leno might follow in Dan Rather’s footsteps and head to cable or satellite, or he might jump over to ABC, push Jimmy Kimmel back an hour and compete directly with Conan. It’s just another problem Ben Silverman will have to fix quickly if he wants to get off to a good start as the head of NBC.

Somewhat transitioning to movies, IGN.com scored an exclusive trailer for The X-Files: I Want to Believe, which is short on plot, but will probably pique some of that cult interest that made the show such a huge success. Also from the TV world, Alvin and the Chipmunks will be returning to cinemas in 2010 with a sequel to last year’s family hit.

Kevin Smith’s new comedy Zack and Miri Make a Porno is apparently complete and will get its first test screening tomorrow. The trailer should hit the ‘net this week.

Steven Spielberg announced today that he will produce his Tintin and Abraham Lincoln movies back-to-back starting this fall. Spielberg fans will remember he’s done this before when he released Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List and War of the World’s and Munich in the same years after shooting them consecutively.

Finally, it seems not only is Robert Downey Jr. an Iron Man, he’s also a money machine. His superhero flick topped the box office and raked in $50 million this weekend, not only nearly outgrossing the second, third, fourth and fifth movies combined, but it had less than a 50% drop off from last weekend. That’s not only big business for Downey and Co., but for Marvel as well. Iron Man was their freshman effort as an independent studio and it’s proving to be golden.

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