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Exclusive: How’s this for an IP play?

Alloy Entertainment is partnering with singer-songwriter Rupert Holmes on a feature adaptation of his classic 1979 tune, “Escape (The Piña Colada Song).”

While the film’s official logline is under wraps, the project will be a romantic comedy produced by Alloy’s President and Chief Creative Officer, Leslie Morgenstein, and EVP Film, Elysa Koplovitz Dutton. Holmes will serve as executive producer. The team is out now to potential writers for the project.

Released as part of Holmes’ fifth solo album, Partners in Crime, “Escape” focuses on a singles ad placed by a woman in search of a relationship, and the man who finds the ad in the paper. The song’s famous lyrics include: “If you like piña coladas, and getting caught in the rain, if you’re not into yoga, if you have half a brain, if you like making love at midnight,...

Malachy McCourt, the Irish-American actor, raconteur and author best known to TV audiences for his long-running role as Kevin the bartender on ABC’s soap Ryan’s Hope, died today in Manhattan after battling a heart condition and cancer. He was 92.

His death was announced by his wife Diana McCourt to The New York Times.

The brother of Pulitzer Prize-winning Angela’s Ashes memoirist Frank McCourt, Malachy McCourt left an indelible mark on New York City’s Irish American community. As the owner of the quintessential 1950s Irish pub Malachy’s on Third Avenue in Manhattan – McCourt would often call it the city’s first singles bar, since he welcomed unaccompanied women to the establishment – the Brooklyn native became one of the city’s great story-tellers, regaling patrons from longshoremen to the actor Richard Harris with blarney, rugby talk and biographical anecdotes.

His way with words would hold him in good stead...

There has been a lot of buzz regarding AMC's upcoming series Mad Men, which will take place at a Manhattan ad agency in the 1960s. Though not much else is known about it yet, the project comes from Matthew Weiner (The Sopranos), which seems to set a high bar. It has been reported today that Thomas Jane (The Punisher) is in talks to star as the male lead for the series, a character named "Don Draper." Though Weiner has said he's looking for an unknown to play the part (while AMC prefers a film star), Jane is overdue for the opportunity to lead a series, and Mad Men might be a great fit. (Jane has done a few period pieces before, including Boogie Nights). Mad Men would mark AMC's first foray into original scripted programming since The Lot, a lamentable comedy which ran for two seasons (that nobody watched), and Remember WENN,...

The cyborg historians of the future will claim that 2013 was the year that television stopped being television. Not because there weren’t great TV shows. In fact, there was a greater diversity of good shows than ever before, on broadcast and cable and beyond. But I do mean “beyond”: This was the first year when some of the best TV shows weren’t properly on TV.

Netflix launched big with House of Cards and Orange is the New Black and the mosiac reboot of Arrested Development. (Adorably, they’re still producing Lilyhammer, the Remember WENN of this particular revolution.

Los Angeles --There are worse fates than spending a decade with "Mad Men," even if it only adds up to five years in real time. AMC's series stands as an example of TV at its most creative and challenging, and it enters its second season by setting us down in 1962. That's two years after we first met the men and women of the Sterling Cooper advertising agency, and their storylines only stand to get richer and more complex.

Season two premieres on July 27; expect an avalanche of reviews closer to that date. But on Wednesday morning, the cast and "Mad Men" creator Matthew Weiner were content to bask in critical love, a rare perfume in these parts due to dissipate sharply over the next two weeks.

And if we're being completely honest, that sweet scent of popularity could die out completely if the series takes a wrong turn in its sophomore season.