WIRE Buzz: Confederate dead at HBO; BoJack reflects in final trailer; Debbie Gibson for Lucifer musical episode

Well, it’s official. Confederate, the controversial series pitched to HBO by Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, has officially been axed. HBO president Casey Bloys confirmed to TVLine that the proposed hourlong drama envisioning an alternate history wherein the southern states successfully seceded from the U.S. thereby making slavery still legal in the present day will not be moving forward. 

The series was still officially good to go as of February of last year, but was then shelved indefinitely as of August, after Benioff and Weiss signed an overall deal with Netflix and was on board to develop a new Star Wars trilogy. But even with the Star Wars project now no longer on the table, Confederate is still a no go.  

The series was met with skepticism and disdain as soon as it was announced in the summer of 2017, with many critics suggesting that a show created by two white guys treating modern-day slavery as a fantasy or alternate history was…tone-deaf, to say the least. 

All told, it’s probably for the best. D&D have enough on their plate as it is without focusing their efforts on a show for which very few people were clamoring. 

“I felt like a Xerox of a Xerox of a person.”

“But, not anymore…?”

Our time among the sad and broken anthropomorphic animals and humans in Hollywoo is almost at an end. As BoJack Horseman approaches the end of its run, Netflix has released the final trailer for the second half of the show’s sixth and final season, which shows an older (and wiser?) former TV star (and now professor) BoJack as he looks back on his life. 

Check it out:

See how it all ends, as Netflix airs the show’s final eight episodes January 31.

And finally, once more with feeling! Debbie Gibson is going to try to shake the devil’s love. Entertainment Weekly confirmed the singer of “Shake Your Love” and “Electric Youth” and actress will appear in the upcoming musical episode of Lucifer.  

In the musical episode, “Bloody Celestial Karaoke Jam,” Gibson will play Shelly Bitner, a controlling helicopter mother who won’t let her teenage son JJ have any say in his own future. And yes, she will be singing in the episode. 

Lucifer showrunner Ildy Modrovich previously told EW that the show’s creators “wanted to have a real grounded story reason why they’re singing and dancing, and not just, ‘Oh, this is going to be the one where everybody sings and dance,” before adding: “It’s going to be just such a bucket list thing for me.”

Lucifer (both the show and its star) will once again break some hearts and kill some baddies when he and his series return to Netflix for the first half of its final season this year.