Celebrities

Football player Victor Cruz, the wide receiver who helped who the New York Giants win the Super Bowl this year, is reportedly shopping a book.

Cruz is represented by IMG Worldwide. The New York Post has more: “Scott Waxman at the Waxman Literary Agency is handling the book proposal in conjunction with IMG. ‘He’s meeting with publishers next week,’ said an IMG insider. Waxman did not return calls.”

Cruz was one of the star players of the season who helped the team get to and win the championship.

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Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.

Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, the creators and stars of the IFC’s Portlandia, are writing a travel guide to the television show that is due out this fall.

Portlandia: A Guide for Visitors will look like any other guidebook with walling tours of the city and information about landmarks and residents, but it will do so from the show’s comical perspective.

Grand Central Publishing, a division of Hachette Book Group, will publish the book in November. Grand Central executive editor Ben Greenberg acquired the title. He stated:  “Fred Armisen, Carrie Brownstein, Bill Oakley and Jon Krisel have created such a unique, surreal world in Portlandia, and the book will allow fans to explore that world even further.”

Sunday Super Bowl commercials will include a movie trailer for The Hunger Games, a film based on a book about a much more dangerous sport. We’ve embedded the new video above–what do you think?

The new trailer gives a glimpse at more actors in the film based on the bestselling novel by Suzanne Collins.

Here’s some excellent commentary from io9: “it provides a stark reminder that the Super Bowl would be 100% more interesting if the game involved Lenny Kravitz, Donald Sutherland, and archery. Most importantly, we catch a glimpse of Katniss evading death during the Games. Looking good, Stanley Tucci!”

Reading Rainbow host LeVar Burton assumed control over the Reading Rainbow Twitter feed last night, preparing for the launch of an upcoming Reading Rainbow App.

Here’s more from the release: “The Twitter handle @ReadingRainbow was taken and held by someone not using it and not connected with the show. Yesterday evening, Burton tweeted to the account in hopes of obtaining the famous Twitter handle to promote a new Reading Rainbow App he is developing with his company RRKIDZ. He tweeted just after 7 PM PST last night, and less than 2 hours later had the account in his hands! It just goes to show the power of Reading Rainbow and LeVar Burton!”

If you want more details about Burton’s new project, visit the RRKidz site and sign up for updates.

Movie star Debbie Reynolds has inked a deal to publish a tell-all memoir with HarperCollins. Publication is set for 2013.

Unsinkable will be her second book with the publisher, following 1988′s Debbie: My Life. Trident Media Group CEO Dan Strone negotiated the deal with senior vice president Lynn Grady. Executive editor Jennifer Brehl will edit.

Here’s more from the release: “At the end of her 1988 autobiography, Debbie: My Life (Morrow), Debbie Reynolds talks about finally finding love with her third husband, calling him ‘brave, loyal and loving.’ Her marriage seemed like a great success until she discovered that her husband had his mistress stashed at the Stardust just down the street from Debbie’s own newly opened Las Vegas hotel. She then learned that he’d embezzled all the proceeds from her business, in addition to many other betrayals. When she confronted him, she barely escaped with her life. For the third time, Debbie would suffer a divorce that left her emotionally and financially bankrupt.” (image via)

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The film adaptation of Katheryn Stockett‘s The Help took three awards at the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards last night, including Best Ensemble Cast.

Follow this link for the full list of winners. Lead actress Viola Davis and supporting actress Octavia Spencer (both pictured, via) also won SAG Awards for their roles as Aibileen Clark and Minny Jackson. Spencer recently received the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress.

Both Davis and Spencer have been nominated for Academy Awards. The Envelope had this quote from Spencer: “I love taking men home. I would be lying if I didn’t say to you I would love to win an Oscar. But we have a group of brilliantly talented actresses, and it’s not a foregone conclusion that because I’ve won these [awards] then I’ll win [the Oscar].” (Via The L.A. Times)

Actor Tom Isbell has landed a seven-figure book deal at HarperCollins’ children’s division for a young adult fantasy trilogy.

The first book is entitled The Hatchery. Literary agent Victoria Sanders negotiated the deal with acquiring editors Alyson Day and Phoebe Yeh. A tentative publication date has been set for 2013.

Isbell has starred in movies alongside Robert De Niro, Ed Harris and Harrison Ford. He has also written children’s plays; he is currently adapting Rodman Philbrick‘s Newberry Honor-winning book, The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg (to be produced by Theatre for Young Audiences at the Kennedy Center in the fall of 2012).

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The Colbert Report host Stephen Colbert interviewed Where the Wild Things Are author Maurice Sendak this week. Follow these links to watch part one and part two of the interview.

According to Shelf Awareness, Colbert “turned [to Sendak] for advice on becoming a celebrity children’s author, pitched his sequel idea for Where the Wild Things Are 2: Still Wildin’ (featuring action star Vin Diesel) and generally let the wild rumpus begin.”

During the interview, some of the “rumpus” that emerged included Sendak’s opinion on the current state of children’s literature; he finds it “abysmal” and thinks that “most books for children are very bad.”

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Over at MTV News, sixteen upcoming movies were pitted against one another to determine the winner of the “MTV Movie Brawl 2012.” In the final round, almost four million votes were cast and Cosmopolis (a Don DeLillo adaptation starring Twilight actor Robert Pattinson) emerged victorious over The Hunger Games (starring Oscar-nominated actress Jennifer Lawrence).

In an interview with MTV, director David Cronenberg explained how he first learned about the brawl: “Cosmopolis, while I think in terms of what it is as cinema is pretty hefty, but in terms of budget and promotion, it’s an underdog compared to something like the Dark Knight franchise. I really didn’t think we would have much of a chance. That really got my attention.”

In the video embedded above, MTV caught up with Cosmopolis actor Paul Giamatti to get his reaction on the movie’s win. Several of the Movie Brawl film are literary adaptations including John Carter, The Avengers, Snow White & the Huntsman, The Hobbitand The Dark Knight Rises.

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Thriller novelist Harlan Coben will team up with filmmaker Lawrence Kasdan to script and produce an adaptation of Coben’s soon-to-be published novel, Stay Close.

Kasdan will also direct this project. The book is slated for release on March 20th. According to Deadline, the script should be finished around the same time as the book’s publication date.

Here’s more from the release: “In Stay Close, a past crime returns to devastate the lives of a photojournalist, a suburban mother with a hidden past, and a homicide detective obsessed with a series of unsolveddisappearances. The Hitchcockian thriller plunges all three into a dark world of sex, secrets and shocking violence.”

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