Chappelle Show official thread

Started by prophet, February 20, 2004, 03:34:57 PM

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MacGuffin

Par pushes on with DVD plans for 'Chappelle'

The third season of Comedy Central's hit "Chappelle's Show" might be postponed indefinitely, but Paramount Home Entertainment is proceeding with plans to release the complete second season on DVD on May 24 -- a week before Season 3 was supposed to debut on TV.

Initially, "Chappelle's Show Season Two: Uncensored" (about $37) had been slated for release last February, the originally scheduled date for the Season 3 premiere. But when Comedy Central announced the show was running behind schedule, May dates were set for both the DVD and the new season of the top-rated sketch comedy series starring comedian Dave Chappelle.

The buzz around Chappelle's supposed flight to South Africa to check into a mental-health clinic -- reported by Entertainment Weekly but subsequently denied by Chappelle, who said that he's staying with friends in Durban -- could spur DVD sales of the Season 2 set to record heights, industry observers say.

"Chappelle's Show Season One" has sold about 2.8 million copies since its February 2004 release and is the top-selling TV DVD package of all time, Paramount claims.

Paramount has done so well with Chappelle and several other high-profile releases -- including "Blue Collar Comedy Tour Rides Again," which has sold more than 2.5 million DVDs since its release last December -- that the studio is upping its commitment to the comedy genre.

Domestic home entertainment president Meagan Burrows said that the studio is "in the process of developing a new comedy label," with several releases already in the pipeline, including a third "Blue Collar Comedy Tour" DVD.

Paramount also has inked a multiyear, "first look" worldwide agreement with Parallel Entertainment Pictures, producers of the "Blue Collar Comedy Tour Rides Again" DVD, for six DVD premieres, a feature film and a new DVD starring Larry the Cable Guy.

In addition, Paramount is working with Comedy Central to release performances by up-and-coming stand-up acts, Burrows said.

"Chappelle's Show Season Two: Uncensored" includes such extras as an additional standup routine from Chappelle, more than an hour of bloopers and deleted scenes, two unaired Charlie Murphy stories and several audio commentaries from Chappelle and series co-creator Neal Brennan.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

MacGuffin

Chappelle raises bar of TV-DVD

Underscoring the growing clout of the TV-DVD category, "Chappelle's Show: Season 2 Uncensored" chalked up first-day sales of nearly 500,000 copies, setting a new TV-DVD sales record, according to Paramount Home Entertainment.

Within a week of its May 24 release, sales of the hefty three-disc, $37 package topped 1.2 million units, Paramount said, while sales of the first-season set, out for more than a year, spiked past the 3 million-unit mark.

That's 200,000 units more than the sales tally in early May, when Comedy Central announced Season 3 of Dave Chappelle's highly rated sketch comedy show would be postponed indefinitely and the comedian fled to South Africa, where rumors circulated that he had checked himself into a mental health facility.

The controversy made headlines worldwide and put Chappelle on the cover of Time and other magazines.

Paramount maintains the first-day sales total makes "Chappelle's Show: Season 2 Uncensored" the fastest-selling TV DVD release ever.

Thomas F. Lesinski, president of worldwide home entertainment for Paramount Pictures, said the title is "poised to reach the 2 million-unit mark within the next 30 days."

"Dave Chappelle has set a new standard for comedy, and this DVD, which we worked closely with Comedy Central on, has now set the standard for TV-DVD," Lesinski said.

Sales were strong across all demographics, Lesinski said, with particularly high numbers among the lucrative 18-34 male demographic. Accordingly, Paramount tapped "Chappelle" to be one of its first UMD releases for the Sony PlayStation Portable.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

MacGuffin

Chappelle to meet with Comedy reps
Source: Los Angeles Times
 
Dave Chappelle may be ready to return to Comedy Central after secretly stealing away last month to South Africa and forcing the channel to postpone the planned May 31 debut of the comedian's popular program.

Before jumping into the driver's seat of a black Lexus at the Four Seasons hotel in Los Angeles on Friday morning, Chappelle said he would be discussing the prospects at a meeting next week with representatives of the channel.

"Chappelle's Show" is the highest-rated program on Comedy Central after "South Park." Since Chappelle's disappearance, copies of the program's DVD have flown off the shelf, prompting questions in some quarters about whether his departure was actually an orchestrated sales stunt. He has since characterized it as a "spiritual retreat."

Sales of the DVD of "Chappelle's Show: Season 2 Uncensored" have topped 1.2 million since being released May 24.

Chappelle, 31, arrived in Los Angeles earlier this week and stunned audiences at two popular comedy clubs Wednesday night when he took to the stage to deliver impromptu stand-up routines.

A Comedy Central spokesman called the notion of a stunt "nonsense" and said he was unaware of any meeting scheduled for next week. "We've been anticipating hearing from Dave and expect to shortly," he said.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

MacGuffin

Chappelle Still a Question Mark

More than two months after Dave Chappelle disappeared on an impromptu South African spiritual retreat, Comedy Central still has no idea when the top-rated Chappelle's Show will return to the air.

The third season of the sketch-comedy series was scheduled to debut on May 31, but production on the show was shut down early that month after Chappelle vanished.

Chappelle surfaced weeks later in South Africa, where he did an interview with Newsweek in which he denied rumors that he had succumbed to either mental illness or drug abuse, but admitted that he was stressed out and unhappy with the creative direction of his show.

In late May, Chappelle turned up in his hometown of Yellow Springs, Ohio, before heading back to Los Angeles in early June and performing a series of surprise standup routines in area comedy clubs.

A few days after returning to Los Angeles, Chappelle met with Comedy Central President Doug Herzog in a hotel lobby to talk business.

Speaking to the Hollywood Reporter Thursday after unveiling his upcoming programming slate to TV critics, Herzog said that he told Chappelle the network was looking forward to welcoming him back, but that the comedian said he needed more time.

"The ball's in Dave's court," Herzog said. "If you see him, tell him to phone home."

Under the terms of the $50 million contract Chappelle signed last summer, he's supposedly locked into a production deal with the network through 2006, including a third and fourth season of Chappelle's Show.

Herzog said earlier that he does not expect the show to return to the air this year.

Despite losing the network's top show, Herzog said Comedy Central's ratings were actually up a bit--but not as high as they would be with Chappelle's irreverent humor on board.

"We didn't go backward without him, which was a great fear," Herzog told the Reporter. "It's no question that [the ratings] would be much better with Dave Chappelle."

Since no new episodes of Chappelle's Show have aired since 2004, the series was absent from this year's Emmy nominations. However, Chappelle picked up an Emmy bid for his Showtime special Dave Chappelle: For What It's Worth, which was nominated in the Best Variety Special category.

Meanwhile, in the absence of Chappelle's Show, DVDs of the series' first and second seasons have been flying off the shelves as fans get their fix the only way they can.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

MacGuffin

What?! "Chappelle Show" Kaput?

Fans who were hoping that Dave Chappelle would soon return to work are not going to want to read this.

Charlie Murphy, a writer and actor on the funnyman's top-rated Chappelle's Show, dropped a bombshell to the New York Post Wednesday, saying that, to his knowledge, the hit Comedy Central series has officially run its course.

"I don't think Dave is going to do it anymore," Murphy told the Post. "We shot about eight shows for the third season, and they're hilarious. They'll be released on DVD, I'm sure. But that's it."

Murphy, the older brother of comic actor     Eddie Murphy, has emerged out of his sibling's shadow thanks to his dual roles as both a writer and performer on Chappelle's Show. Viewers know him best in one skit, Charlie Murphy's True Hollywood Stories, in which he played himself relating real-life tales of hanging out with his more famous brother and whooping funk "Superfreak" Rick James' ass.

The segment caught fire thanks to Chappelle, who played James and turned "I'm Rick James, bitch!" into an instantly popular catchphrase, launching Chappelle's Show into the ratings stratosphere.

Season three of Chappelle's Show was supposed to premiere May 31, but production ground to a halt last April after Chappelle disappeared on an impromptu South African "spiritual retreat".

According to Murphy, all was "fun, very normal" during shooting. One new skit they did for the new season was one of the funniest bits they ever came up with.

"It was hilarious," Murphy recalled to the Post. "I was Frankenstein, Dave was the Wolfman, Donnell [Rawlings] was the Mummy. We were living together and experiencing problems, because we're monsters. But I thought it was because I was black that all these things were happening, not because I was Frankenstein."

All for naught apparently.

Chappelle's abrupt absence led wild press speculation as to why he went MIA.

Newsweek was the first to take a stab, reporting that friends blamed a combination of too much partying, overwhelming pressure to make good on his $50 million contract and creative sparring with Comedy Central executives led to the meltdown.

But Chappelle later said such suggestions were half-baked.

"I'm not crazy, I'm not smoking crack. I'm definitely stressed out," he told Time magazine in his only comments on the matter.

The comedian added that it was only now beginning to dawn on him just how much of a pop culture sensation Chappelle's Show had become, and the trip was necessary to clear his head and mull the show's creative future.

In late May, Chappelle eventually surfaced in his hometown of Yellow Springs, Ohio, before heading back to Los Angeles in early June and performing a series of surprise standup routines in area comedy clubs.

In another interview with TV Guide, however, Murphy indicated that Chappelle decided to pull the plug because he wanted to work on the new stand-up material for a big show he'd like to take out on the road later this year.

"I'm disappointed it ended the way it did, but I'm not angry with anybody," he said. "Chappelle's Show was like the Tupac of TV shows. It came out, it got everybody's attention, it was a bright shining star, but it burned out and for some strange reason, it burned out quick."

But as far as network president, Doug Herzog, has previously stated, the door is wide open for the entertainer's return.

"The ball's in Dave's court," Herzog told the Hollywood Reporter recently. "If you see him, tell him to phone home."

The loss of its top show has turned out not to have done much damage. Comedy Central ratings are actually up a bit this season, though Herzog acknowledged they'd be higher with Chappelle's irreverent humor aboard.

In any case, until they get an official confirmation from Chappelle as to what his plans are, fans will just have to be satisfied with the release of the first two seasons of Chappelle's Show on DVD, both of which have been selling like hotcakes and snagged the title for the fastest-selling DVD of a TV series ever.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

Ravi



Fernando

More Chappelle's Show Coming in 2006
Source: Variety December 5, 2005

Variety says that Dave Chappelle is coming back to Comedy Central -- sort of. The network revealed Sunday that it will air previously-recorded sketches from the comedian as part of what is being billed as season three.

The sketches will be shown first on Comedy Central's online broadband network, Motherload, and later broadcast on the cable network. The broadcast will take place sometime in 2006.

Chappelle has been on an open-ended hiatus for about ten months, with taping of the third season of his Chappelle's Show suspended indefinitely. Sources close to the series were recently quoted that they did not believe he would ever return to the program.

Chappelle signed a two-year deal with Comedy Central shortly before he decided to suspend taping.

Link: http://www.comingsoon.net/news/topnews.php?id=12239

squints

"The myth by no means finds its adequate objectification in the spoken word. The structure of the scenes and the visible imagery reveal a deeper wisdom than the poet himself is able to put into words and concepts" – Friedrich Nietzsche

pete

"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton

squints

#85
Its not new... :yabbse-sad: they shouldn't use the word "premiere" when promoting a show when its not really a premiere...
"The myth by no means finds its adequate objectification in the spoken word. The structure of the scenes and the visible imagery reveal a deeper wisdom than the poet himself is able to put into words and concepts" – Friedrich Nietzsche

Pubrick

Quote from: squints on January 15, 2006, 08:09:21 PM
Its not new... :yabbse-sad: they shouldn't use the word "premiere" when promoting a show when its not really a premiere...
networks do that all the time if it's the frist time the show or special has been shown on that particular network.
under the paving stones.

pete

so was it "for what it's worth" or "killing them softly" or the San Fran one?  WHICH ONE?
also, not to be all sensitive and stuff, but it really irks me that this thread is still called "funny ass nigga".  Now that prophet is gone, can someone please modified the title to something slightly less hip-white-guy?
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton

squints

Quote from: pete on January 18, 2006, 07:03:45 PM
so was it "for what it's worth" or "killing them softly" or the San Fran one?  WHICH ONE?
also, not to be all sensitive and stuff, but it really irks me that this thread is still called "funny ass nigga".  Now that prophet is gone, can someone please modified the title to something slightly less hip-white-guy?

it was an HBO comedy special from 1997 that's never been on comedy central but i did remember seeing a long long while ago on HBO..
"The myth by no means finds its adequate objectification in the spoken word. The structure of the scenes and the visible imagery reveal a deeper wisdom than the poet himself is able to put into words and concepts" – Friedrich Nietzsche

pete

was that the one where he was like "I'll come whenever I want to, when I come, I'm right on time" that one?  He was talking about gay guys in san fran?
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton