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Jeffrey M. Hayes, a longtime producer whose executive tenure at Paramount Pictures Network Television saw him overseeing the development of series including MacGyver and Star Trek: The Next Generation, died March 9 in Los Angeles from an illness unrelated to Covid-19. He was 68.

His death was announced by Michelle Orsi of Three.Sixty Marketing & Communications.

Hayes’s career in producing, writing and directing began at Aaron Spelling Productions, where his projects included Vega$ and T.J. Hooker. From there, Hayes became Executive VP of Paramount Pictures Network Television.

In the late 1980s, Hayes moved to Australia’s Gold Coast to help build a production operation that would span over 25 years and produce over 300 hours of US/International television. As President of Village Roadshow Pictures Television he executive produced Sahara, In Pursuit of Honor, the remake of the television series Mission Impossible and The Thorn Birds – The Missing Years with The Wolper Organization.

It’s no mystery to the cast of The Thorn Birds why the 1983 miniseries was — and remains — the second-highest-rated miniseries ever (after Roots). "The attraction of doing, or thinking of doing, something forbidden appealed to the audience," Piper Laurie, who played Anne Mueller, tells Closer. "It was powerful!" The 10-hour drama, based on Colleen McCullough’s best-selling novel, followed a half-century in the life of the Cleary family in Australia: sheep rancher and matriarch Mary (Barbara Stanwyck), her lust for conflicted priest Ralph De Bricassart (Richard Chamberlain), and his forbidden love for Mary’s niece Meggie (Rachel Ward). With its family drama, scorching love scenes, and sprawling scale, The Thorn Birds "really was a watercooler show," Sydney Penny, who played young Meggie, tells Closer. "I didn’t appreciate how big it was at the time until I was watching the Emmys and I saw all these people I knew who were nominated.

Dinosaurs. Kids on bikes. Aliens. And a little bit of pure madness thrown in for good measure. What's not to love about My Pet Dinosaur? This is almost like Stranger Things and Jurassic Park got together and had a big smiling baby. And it's pure nostalgia magic all the way, if you're into those kinds of things.

Uncork'd Entertainment is proud to release the new trailer for My Pet Dinosaur, a Spielbergian-esque family film that premieres On Demand in October. This fantasy comedy adventure comes from Emmy winner Matt Drummond, and it's described as a cross between E.T and Monster's Inc.

My Pet Dinosaur fixes on the unlikely friendship between a boy and a dinosaur. The cast includes Jordan Dulieu, Annabel Wolfe, Christopher Gabardi (The Thorn Birds: The Missing Years) and Tiriel Mora (Farscape). It featuring state-of-the-art visual effects, which bring this heart-warming tale of friendship and the beautiful Australian countryside to life.

David Stevens, the screenwriter who shared an Oscar nomination for the landmark 1980 Australian historical drama Breaker Morant, has died. He was 77.

Stevens died Tuesday of cancer in hospice in Whangarei, New Zealand, his partner, Loren Boothby, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Stevens also adapted his play The Sum of Us into a 1994 Australian Film Institute-winning movie starring Russell Crowe and Jack Thompson and directed the five-hour 1981 romantic miniseries A Town Like Alice, featuring Helen Morse and Bryan Brown.

Stevens wrote the 1996 telefilm The Thorn Birds: The Missing Years and received an Emmy nomination for his writing on the 1988 miniseries Merlin, starring ...

David Stevens, the screenwriter who shared an Oscar nomination for the landmark 1980 Australian historical drama Breaker Morant, has died. He was 77.

Stevens died Tuesday of cancer in hospice in Whangarei, New Zealand, his partner, Loren Boothby, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Stevens also adapted his play The Sum of Us into a 1994 Australian Film Institute-winning movie starring Russell Crowe and Jack Thompson and directed the five-hour 1981 romantic miniseries A Town Like Alice, featuring Helen Morse and Bryan Brown.

Stevens wrote the 1996 telefilm The Thorn Birds: The Missing Years and received an Emmy nomination for his writing on the 1988 miniseries Merlin, starring ...

Its always an absolute pleasure to wake up to a cheeky email from our good friends in La-la-Land about a new movie they would like us to check out. Today was no different when we received a trailer for My Pet Dinosaur. Accompanying the trailer were phrases like “Spielbergian” or “E.T meets Pixar” says the Hollywood Reporter, and well I am totally going to check that trailer out. And you can too below:

When a boy finds the remnants of a failed military experiment his troubled town is plunged further into chaos as he accidentally makes a new friend.

I think My Pet Dinosaur looks great and definitely has a ton of potential to be a great 2017 family film not to be missed. There is a hugely endearing quality to the trailer that does instantly draw comparisons to movies like E.T, 2016s Pete’s Dragon or dare I...

Author Colleen McCullough, whose 1977 internationally best-selling romantic novel The Thorn Birds was the Fifty Shades of Grey of its time, died Thursday afternoon in a hospital in her native Australia, reports the Sydney Morning Herald. She was 77. McCullough had suffered a series of small strokes, according the paper, which also said her eyesight had failed due to macular degeneration and she was restricted to a wheelchair. She lived on the isolated Norfolk Island in the Pacific with her husband of nearly 32 years, Ric Robinson, who survives her. According to a People profile in 200O, McCullough was born in Wellington, New South Wales,...