Theater goes dark for Ebert, Roeper

chicagotribune.com

Theater goes dark for Ebert, Roeper

Phil Rosenthal

Media

July 22, 2008

The curtain has come down on "At the Movies With Ebert & Roeper." The aisle may vanish too.

Chicago Sun-Times movie critic Roger Ebert and columnist Richard Roeper are cutting ties with the TV franchise that Disney-ABC Domestic Television has syndicated nationally for 22 years. Each cited major changes they say Disney plans to make to the movie-review program that for three decades has forced filmmakers and studio executives on both coasts and beyond to pay heed to judgments of their work in Chicago, the heart of flyover country.

Industry sources said that Disney is contemplating a shift to more of a Hollywood focus, even though the program would continue to be taped in Chicago, where the production enjoys a tax credit from the state of Illinois. With the start of the show's 2008-09 season less than five weeks away, "At the Movies" staffers were awaiting word from Roni Selig, a senior vice president with Disney's Buena Vista Productions, on just how many of the talked-about potential changes, including possible elimination of the show's familiar "across the aisle" theater set, will be realized. Disney had no comment Monday as details were being finalized. Selig did not return a call to her New York office.

(snip)

Chicago Tribune movie critic Michael Phillips has been the most recent replacement for Ebert, who has been absent from the program for two years because of health issues that have robbed him of his voice. Phillips has a multiyear contract with Disney, but his future with "At the Movies" is in limbo... Roeper, who rejected a Disney renewal, reportedly has several years left on his contract with the Sun-Times and is appearing regularly on Starz cable, introducing documentaries on moviemaking. He has a book out, "Debunked!: Conspiracy Theories, Urban Legends, and Evil Plots of the 21st Century." Because of his Disney contract, Roeper cannot sign a deal for any new program until after his final program airs the weekend of Aug. 16 on Chicago's WLS-Ch. 7.

(snip)

Siskel and Ebert began reviewing movies in tandem in 1975 on Chicago PBS outlet WTTW-Ch. 11, which eventually took their program national. The pair jumped to commercial TV through Chicago Tribune parent Tribune Co.'s TV syndication wing in 1982, switching to Disney in 1986. The duo engaged viewers talking about films—both big and small, domestic and international—in a sophisticated way through their obvious passion for movies and debate. Siskel died in 1999 and was replaced by Roeper.

"Gene and I felt the formula was simplicity itself: Two film critics, sitting across the aisle from each other in a movie balcony, debating the new films of the week," Ebert said. "Few shows have been on the air so long and remained so popular. We made television history."


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As well as getting good movie reviews, half the fun was tuning in to watch Roger and Gene tweak each other and sometimes piss each other off to no end. It was tame with the new guy.

Roeper is a complete idiot and I can't stand him. I rarely agree with his picks.

My husband and I have watched this show since its earliest days...

We have always loved it...

We watched Siskel and Ebert grow and mature and become great movie critics...

We cried when Siskel died...

We have trusted this show the way we have trusted no others!

*sigh*

The only constant is change...

and a clever reviewer, he's also a self professed liberal....read his latest reviews on Batman and Mamma Mia! - total brilliance, with humor to die for...a great pulitzer prize winning writer... http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/

To get a Pulitzer if I am not mistaken. Roger Ebert is a gem among snipers.

and, I think, it was Ebert who added "and this is not because I am a liberal.."

He really went after those assholes who revealed the end of "Million Dollars Baby" just because they did not like the so-called message. Ebert said that whether this was how the fate of the main subjects was right or wrong was not relevant. Only the movie powerful ending.

I often like to read a movie review after I have seen it, so I know what they are talking about, and Ebert's used to be the first that I would go.

This past weekend we saw "Tell no One" and his review was great.