Entertainment

The fallout from the Writers Guild strike continues around Texas, and the news isn't all bad.As we reported earlier, Fox's Prison Break is making a break from Dallas to Los Angeles for its next season because writers had time during the three-month strike to come up with a whole new angle on the story that required the change in locale.

But the strike also appears to have given NBC time to come up with a financially palatable way to save Central Texas-shot Friday Night Lights, keeping the show on for a third year.

While NBC officials are declining to comment citing ongoing negotiations, Bob Hudgins, head of the Texas Film Commission, says he was told a rumored deal with satellite provider DirecTV will happen, and the series should begin series prep in June for a July start.

Rumors of the deal first arose last week on the Web site Dead linehollywooddaily.com.

Most likely the deal would be similar to one NBC struck with DirecTV last year that brought the soap opera Passions to the satellite provider's The 101, a channel that provides original programming. Whether the show would continue to appear on NBC, as well, is uncertain but likely.

Lights has had a rough year, never pulling in more than 7.5 million viewers a week and ranking a dismal 53 among viewers ages 18-49. But it remained one of the most-recorded-to-DVR shows on television and is known to attract more affluent "upscale" audiences with incomes of more than $100,000 a year.

Show fans have done their part to advocate a third season by flooding NBC with more than 6,000 miniature footballs.

The strike also gave ace Texas screenwriter and SMU film grad Tim McCanlies (Secondhand Lions) time to put together The Two Bobs, a low-budget film he will direct in the Austin area in April based on his script about two gaming-industry legends whose new video game is stolen just as they've completed it.

Mr. McCanlies, talking on a writers strike panel during the South by Southwest film festival this week, said it will have a tone similar to that of The Big Lebowski.

Mr. McCanlies said the strike, which centered on what share writers should get of revenue from the Internet release of film and television content, was compounded because Internet usage is tracked more easily than viewership elsewhere.

"There wasn't the ability to steal on the Internet," he said in reference to long-held concerns that studios may pad expenses to reduce revenue paid to writers.

"They think of us writers as rabble rousers," he said of studio executives.

While the deal ending the strike will aid many writers, others, including those writing for reality and animated programs, were left out. Mr. McCanlies, who wrote the script for the animated The Iron Giant, gets no residual payments from it because his contract is through the separate cartoonists union.

Bonus footage: Southwest Assemblies of God University might sound like an unlikely player in the North Texas film scene, but the school's new communication arts program is aiming for just that with a Waxahachie shoot this May of Breaking News, the story of a newscaster who has an It's a Wonderful Life experience involving stories he's previously covered as a reporter. The script is from student Timothy Roberts, and many more students will work on the film. ... Entries are being sought for the Thin Line Film Festival, which focuses on documentaries. The fest is scheduled for Sept. 24-28 in Denton. More info is at Thinlinefilmfest.com.

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