SNL News - Will Forte leaves SNL

MacGruber has survived his last explosion.

Will Forte is keeping up the "Saturday Night Live" tradition of late-August departures by not coming back to the series for Season 36.

The New York Times reports that multiple sources say Forte won't be coming back and that the parting was amicable -- though at Forte's request. He wants to devote more time to other projects.

Hopefully those other projects will bring him more success than "MacGruber," the hilarious but certifiable bomb adaptation of one of his many "SNL" characters.

And there've been so many... the Falconer, Clancy T Bachleratt, absent-minded ESPN Classic commentator Greg Stink and, most recently, the monotone lothario Hamilton, whose inappropriate speeches at weddings, funerals and Q&As made for some of last season's funnier sketches.

UPDATE: NBC referred Zap2it to Forte's personal publicist who confirmed the news, saying, "After eight great seasons, Will has made the decision to move on from SNL to pursue new opportunities. He is eternally grateful to Lorne and all of the incredible people he worked with over the years."

So what do you think -- a good or bad move for Forte? And, most importantly, how much will you miss him?

From:
http://blog.zap2it.com/frominsidethebox/2010/08/saturday-night-live-will-forte-not-returning-next-season.html
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Thanks to TheKinkySurgeon for the scoop!

Okay, so I'm actually more surprised that this came at Will's request. Lorne will need to clean house soon (the average stay is approaching 8 years instead of 4-6), but he does need to line up new performers.

So Lorne is probably happy about this, because he has one less tough decision about who to ask to leave.

My personal opinion is that Will won't be terribly missed. He is a great straight man, MacGuber is amazingly and consistently funny on SNL, and his songs are hilarious (and I love his dancing coach), but his humor is usually too weird. He's bombed in two movies now that he's starred in.

So is this a good move for Will? Hard to say. He was great and valuable on SNL, but it's better to leave voluntarily for your career than to get kicked off. He picked a great time to go. So really it's just a question of what he has in mind and if it will succeed. If it's another movie... probably not.

We told you so! Oh, and I have to leave you a "We told you so!" I wasn't sure that it would come from Will Forte (versus from Lorne and SNL), but over here we predicted that Will would depart soon...

7/30/10 - Our cast change picks
2/29/08 - Is Will Forte next to leave SNL?


What do you think? Will you miss him? Is this a good move for him?

Enjoy!

Andy Samberg in September's V Magazine

Enjoy!

Space Chimps 2 coming direct to DVD

"Space Chimps 2: Zartog Strikes Back" is coming the 5th of October, 2010 (DVD premiere).



This is interesting, because the first one didn't perform in the US as well as they hoped, and so the sequel has been released in theaters in other countries, but in the US it's going straight to DVD.

Here are the international releases...

UK - 28 May 2010
Israel - 22 July 2010
Kazakhstan - 5 August 2010 (3-D version)
Russia - 5 August 2010 (3-D version)
USA - 5 October 2010 (DVD premiere)
Netherlands - 16 December 2010

Wikipedia still thinks Andy Samberg is going to be in the DVD release, but it doesn't have the news that Space Chimps 2 is coming to DVD for the US.

The director of Space Chimps 2 is John H. Williams. This is his directorial debut (sad that he's debuting on DVD in the US). He produced all four Shrek movies. Using that momentum, he started Vanguard Animation (not a huge leap, considering he was already running Vanguard Films), so that means he also produced Valiant, Happily Never After (but he let the DVD sequel go to the studio execs, which is why it has no name actors and why it's so horrible), Space Chimps, and now Space Chimps 2. Their next project is Emo Boy, based on a comic book. More on Emo Boy: http://comics.wikia.com/wiki/Emo_Boy

Enjoy!

Andy Samberg presents an Emmy to Neil Patrick Harris

Andy and Seth come on at 0:27



So unfortunately we miss the joke that Andy and Seth must obviously deliver before presenting, but still. It's also interesting that Neil Partick Harris was nominated for and lost 5 Emmys before the event, but at this event, he won 2 separate Emmys, becoming a multi-Emmy winner.

Bonus video on Neil's wins:



Andy has had 3 Emmy nominations and 1 win.

Enjoy!

Was Andy Samberg onto Mark Wahlberg?

It was fun when we were all discovering Wahlberg's latent sense of humor, watching him pop up as a supporting character in Huckabees or The Departed with crack comic timing, or even parody himself on SNL as a good-humored response to Andy Samberg's brilliant Mark Wahlberg Talks To Animals. But Samberg was onto something in that skit that we all chose to ignore.

We laugh with Wahlberg when he's playing off his trademark intensity, but we laugh at him when he doesn't realize he's still being way too intense to be funny. The way he talks to the chicken? That's how he talks to everyone in the scene with him in all of his comedies, and it's been funny this whole time because we never put up with it for longer than a minute-long bit in a scene.

Read the full review of The Other Guys:
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Rant-Mark-Wahlberg-Is-Not-That-Funny-And-We-Need-To-Stop-Telling-Him-He-Is-20013.html

Basically, the author's point is that Mark is too hard to endure when you get a full movie of his intensity and speech patterns in a comedy. And essentially Andy Samberg was onto that when highlighting Mark's intensity in the SNL spoof.

Enjoy!