the industry

Anne Hathaway and Neil Patrick Harris Headed to Rio

Brazillionaires: Anne Hathaway and Neil Patrick Harris will lend their screechy and droll voices, respectively, to Rio, a 3-D animation flick set to be released in 2011. The film is about a bored macaw who flees the coop in Minnesota and takes off to the Olympic city of Rio de Janiero. Can’t wait to see NPH’s killer Carmen Miranda. [HR]

Better than Leno: You may not think of Don Cheadle as funny or think that Adam Carolla is funny, but NBC does! The network just snapped up comedy concepts from each of them and both will focus on blue-collar workers. Carolla will play a contractor left by his wife, while the project Cheadle will produce, developed with “Boondocks” creator Aaron McGruder, centers on brothers who start a security business. And you thought NBC just wanted to fill its schedule with a big un-funny chin. [Variety]

Master of Their Domain: Bravo is bringing back Top Chef Masters for a second season of boiling and baking and basting. The show started off slow in its first season, which the goateed Rick Bayless won, but finished as the highest-rated first-season competition series. No word on who will cook this time around, but the show will continue to lack a certain amount of legitimacy until it invites the Swedish Chef into the competition. [HR]

From Weird to Weirder: Scraggly haired General Hospital vet Sebastian Roche is joining the cast of Fringe as a soldier from another dimension who’s not exactly human but not exactly machine. His mission: to gather information in order to open a door back to the other dimension. Yeah, it sounds bizarre, but this guy has been in 294 episodes of General Hospital. He knows bizarre. [HR]

Behind Bars: Queer As Folk alum Peter Paige will move behind the camera to direct Sex Crime Panic, an independent drama from Funny Boy Films. The movie will recount the hysteria that resulted in perfectly sane gay men being institutionalized in insane asylums in the fifties. Paige said he hopes the movie turns out like Capote, Milk, and Girl, Interrupted. We hope there’s also just a bit of MSNBC’s Lockup: Raw. [HR]

Anne Hathaway and Neil Patrick Harris Headed to Rio