By: Amanda Anderson-Niles
Social media has been buzzing about FOX’s new show “Empire” because it stars fan favorite Taraji P. Henson and Terrence Howard.
The show is based around a successful music mogul who has a nasty fallout with his wife and sons.
Both actors have been in full promotional mode seeing as the show premieres tonight on FOX at 9pm, and they landed the latest cover of The Hollywood Reporter:
Here’s an excerpt from the issue:
This is not just another highly touted TV show. When Empire premieres Jan. 7, following the launch of American Idol’s 14th season, the country will catch its first glimpse of Newman and Walden’s plan for turning around the beleaguered broadcaster. The longtime partners — who for 15 years have churned out critically acclaimed network hits, including 24, Glee and Modern Family, as heads of studio behemoth 20th Century Fox Television — were given oversight of the Fox Broadcasting Co. in late July, and effectively anointed the saviors of the network. Though it was their predecessor, Kevin Reilly, who ordered Empire, which sources peg at roughly $3.5 million an episode after tax breaks, it was produced by their studio, and it’s representative of the bigger, bolder and, ideally, more populist direction in which they’d like to take the network.
“We don’t aspire to be a cable network,” Newman told me during a recent visit to Empire’s bustling Chicago set, making clear that he and Walden don’t harbor the same cable envy that Reilly often copped to having in the job. In place of niche comedies (The Mindy Project) and dramas that could have been pitched to FX or AMC (Rake), Walden, 50, and Newman, 60, along with their newly installed entertainment president, David Madden, are eager not only to lure top producers such as Ryan Murphy (American Horror Story) and Howard Gordon (Homeland) back to broadcast but also to replicate the audacious bets that earned them an enviable mix of accolades and mass viewership at the studio. Early efforts include an Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? reboot from Mark Burnett and a wholly original horror comedy from Murphy, along with sweeping genre plays, House-style procedurals, feel-good reality shows and family comedies in the Modern Family vein still in development. “We’re not looking to do smaller, dark programming,” adds Newman. “We’re looking to have big, broad commercial hits.”
I’m mad this comes on 30 minutes before Black-ish. I don’t want to have to choose. If it’s an hour long I will just have to DVR it and watch it later.
It’s one hour. I have the same problem because I watch Modern Family and Blackish. So I will catch Empire on demand.
That’s the plan for me too. I’m also going to stay away from Twitter and Facebook so no one will spoil it for me.
Taraji is so fine.
I’m watching. For everyone who is still supporting Black-ish, watching something via DVR is also helpful and counted in ratings. So you can support both shows. Watch one live and watch the other on DVR.
Thank you for clarifying that.
This is why I f-cks with y’all so hard.
Why are they putting this new black show against Modern Family and Black-Ish? Do they want it to fail?
Watching now. It’s good so far.
Watched it and enjoyed it for the most part. There were a few scenes that elicited an eye-roll or two, but Taraji shined, which is all I wanted. Reading the excerpt above makes me a little uncomfortable, though. I was already suspicious of Fox as a network and reading that this show is part of a turnaround effort makes me doubly so. There’s a history of networks using black shows and audiences to build high ratings only to later dropkick them when no longer needed. Was a decent premiere, though. For now, I guess that’s all that matters. Congrats to everyone who made it happen!