After the success of Smallville and the warm reception Arrow has gotten thus far, it isn’t a shock to see the DC Universe expanded in the second season of Arrow. This season, Arrow will add Barry Allen to the cast of characters and though he is referred to as Barry Allen and not the Flash, it looks as though his powers will emerge before the end of the season.

Grant Gustin of Glee fame will be tapped for the 8th, 9th and 20th episode of season two of Arrow. Episode 20 specifically with focus on Barry’s origin story which may be a back door attempt at testing the interest in a Flash spinoff series.

One thing of interest, first pointed out by IGN.com, is a 23 year old being slated as a police forensic investigator. Shy of being someone who skipped a few years of school, getting a Masters in Forensic Science and then being passed around to other cities for investigations probably isn’t the most realistic of situations. Although, the same could be said about someone hit by lightening which allows them to tap into the Speed Force.

Once a little-known subculture of the collegiate world, with rites and names as arcane as any secret society (Whiffenpoofs, anyone?), a capella is enjoying a bright moment in the spotlight, thanks in large part to the popularity of Glee and reality TV competitions like The Sing-Off. And now in Pitch Perfect, it has made it to the romantic comedy big time, starring Anna Kendrick, best known for her Oscar-nominated portrayal of the uptight young executive opposite George Clooney in Up In The Air. Here she’s still sulky, playing Becca, a mildly goth college freshman who yearns to leave college and pursue a career in music production.

Based on a nonfiction book by GQ editor Mickey Rapkin about the competitive collegiate a capella scene, the messy screenplay by Kay Cannon (Emmy-nominated 30 Rock writer/producer) suffers flat notes, sour chords and predictable harmonies, but thanks to a tight cast and fresh, energetic performances, delivers an enjoyable concert experience just the same.

Even if you’re a fan of Apple or the iPhone and iPad, that doesn’t mean everyone is. In fact, Google’s Android OS is also very popular and powers many devices people use every day.

One thing that’s been a bit lacking on the Android front is the amount of movie and TV content available from Google’s Play store. Well, thanks to a deal Google just finalized with 20th Century Fox, that’s about to get a lot better.

That’s right, Google Play will start selling and/or renting 600 titles from 20th Century Fox including Family Guy, Glee, Modern Family, Black Swan, X-Men and Ice Age. In addition, to help get the deal started off on the right virtual foot, Google Play will offer Ridley Scottt’s Prometheus 3 weeks ahead of its Blu-ray, DVD and video-on-demand release. In other words, today.

The rest of the content will be releasing during the coming weeks. Pretty cool. It’s always nice to have alternatives, especially if you’re already invested in the Android ecosystem as many are.

Fox announced the renewal of three more of their series for next season.  The three series are freshman comedy New Girl, musical comedy Glee and family comedy Raising Hope.

These renewals mean a second season for New Girl, a third season for Raising Hope, and that Glee will get a fourth season. The three comedies join recently renewed Fox drama Bones.

“Over the past season, New Girl has become the hottest new appointment series for young adults; Raising Hope has established itself as one of the smartest and most unique offbeat comedies on television; and Glee has continued its success as a genre-defying, global cultural phenomenon,” said Fox’s entertainment president Kevin Reilly. “All three of these comedies add a fresh and distinctive flavor to our Tuesday nights, and I’m really happy to bring them back to our air next season.”

The Screen Actors Guild annually awards excellence in screen acting, and has quickly become one of the more prestigious year end awards. The SAG awards are usually a solid indicator for Oscar glory in the acting categories, so seeing a few these names on this nominations list is a little surprising.

Chief among the unexpected nominees is the cast of Bridesmaids and Jonah Hill for Moneyball. Well deserved nominations, but certainly a tad shocking considering the strong year for acting all around. On the more expected front Modern Family takes in five acting nominations in just three categories.

I also appreciate that the awards honor stunt workers as well, this allows the Screen Actors Guild to broaden the scope of films they salute, and shines a light on a very important aspect of film making. The awards will be handed out Sunday, January 29th.

The full list of nominees after the jump:

There is only one thing that George Lucas doesn’t want to make a dime off of, only one thing he wants to see disappear and never brought up again. That would be the horrible, no good, very bad Star Wars Holiday Special which details Chewbacca’s attempt to get home to his family on life day. While we wont get a chance to see the special officially released anytime soon, Chewie is getting back into the holiday spirit.

The cast of Glee welcomed the wookie on set to film his appearance on next week’s Christmas themed episode. One of the series’ stars Matthew Morrison, who is also directing the episode, recently revealed on the Jimmy Kimmel show that the episode will be paying homage to the previously mentioned Star Wars Holiday Special and the Judy Garland Christmas Specials too.

“We called up George Lucas and he gave us Chewbacca. There is only one guy who can officially be Chewbaccca, and he lives in Northern California and they flew him in,” Morrison said. “We had Chewbacca for the day, and it was just great, and we were all taking pictures with him. This is a guy who has been doing it for 12 years.”

When AMC’s The Walking Dead hit it big last year, we knew that TV studios and management companies would be capitalizing on the trend and pushing as many of their horror TV projects they have to the top of the greenlight list. The true test, however, is whether any of those shows would turn out to be decent.

Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story has proven that fact with only a handful of episodes, and FX has taken notice as well. The cable network has just announced a second season for the show. THR has the official word from the network.

“It’s one thing to have the ambition and guts to reinvent a genre in a way that makes it captivatingly fresh for a broad audience — it’s something else entirely to have the craft to back that ambition up,” said FX president and GM Jon Landgraf. “Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk have hit the trifecta withNip/Tuck, Glee and now American Horror Story, which will be scaring FX’s viewers to death for many years to come.”

There’s nothing wrong with collecting action figures or sporting the classic “I’m Bart Simpson, who the hell are you?” T-shirt when you’re well into your 30s, right? Of course not. It’s just that now, instead of riding My Little Pony and making out with Barbie (or vice-versa), they maintain a silent vigil over your work cubicle…and your teacher won’t make your put a piece of tape over “hell.”

So cubicles and teachers everywhere will be excited to know that Fox has announced a line of limited-edition, Comic-Con-exclusive products based on their most popular franchises.

Executive Vice President of Fox Consumer Products, Robert Marick, says, “Comic-Con is a great place to engage our most passionate fans and we want to reward them with unique and special offerings that they won’t be able to acquire anywhere else.” What better way to make your co-workers jealous or finally impress Meg in accounting?

Toys, T-shirts, comics, and more will be featured at booth #4313, and a full list can be found below the fold.

While he’s obviously more of a household name for creating and running 3 years of Fox’s hit high school musical series Glee, before that Ryan Murphy was known as the man who created Nip/Tuck. That series, obviously very different than Glee, was his real masterpiece, bringing 100 episodes of drama, horror, and intrigue.

Now that things look to be settling down for his series on Fox, their raunchier network sister station, FX, has picked up 13 episodes of Murphy and his co-creator Brad Falchuk’s American Horror Story. THR has the scoop on the premise and who we can expect to see on the show:

From 20th Television, the mysterious drama revolves around Ben and Vivien Harmon (The Practice’s Dylan McDermott, Friday Night Lights’ Connie Britton) who move their family from Boston to a haunted San Francisco home in an attempt to rebuild their family after a miscarriage and affair.

Murphy is said to be revising the initial script to increase the role of the nosy neighbor once Jessica Lange (Grey Gardens) signed on to the project in April. Denis O’Hare (True Blood) co-stars as Larry the Burn Guy, a former resident of the haunted estate; with Frances Conroy (Six Feet Under) and Alexandra Breckenridge (Life Unexpected) both playing Moira O’Hara, a housekeeper who has worked at the home for years and appears as a young woman to Ben and an older woman to Vivien.

It’s not particularly surprising that Mad Men and Mildred Pierece had the most nominations today when Melissa McCarthy and Joshua Jackson made the 2011 Primetime Emmy announcement. Jane Lynch will be hosting the 63rd Annual Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, September 18.

For the complete list of nominees, head over to the Emmys website. We’ve just got the ones we really care about for you here. (aka The Big Ones).

Of course, the fact that Community isn’t nominated in the Outstanding Comedy category just makes these awards that much less special. Plus, I wouldn’t want to be nominated in a category against Peter Dinklage for Game of Thrones. He’s pretty much got that one in the bag

Check out the nominations below.

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series

Jim Parsons, The Big Bang Theory
Johnny Galecki, The Big Bang Theory
Matt LeBlanc, Episodes
Louis C.K., Louie
Steve Carell, The Office
Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series

Steve Buscemi, Boardwalk Empire
Michael C. Hall, Dexter
Kyle Chandler, Friday Night Lights
Hugh Laurie, House
Timothy Olyphant, Justified
Jon Hamm, Mad Men

There is one major rule when it comes to casting a TV series that one plans on continuing past 3 years: stay away from creating “ageless” child characters. In just about every series, that character type seems to be the main downfall of the realism of a series, from LOST to Saved by the Bell.

That’s where Glee showrunner Ryan Murphy has decided to pull some strings. It seems that the decision has been made to not have the show’s stars, Chris Colfer, Lea Michele and Cory Monteith, return for the fourth season. Here’s the breakdown from THR.

Murphy tells THR: “You can keep them on the show for six years and people will criticize you for not being realistic, or you can be really true to life and say when they started the show they were very clearly sophomores and they should graduate at the end of their senior year.”

As with NBC earlier today, Fox jumped into the fray and announced its primetime schedule for next season also. The network has one new drama, Terra Nova, three comedies, New Girl, I Hate My New Daughter and the animated Allen Gregory, launching in the fall.

Dramas Alcatraz, the Bones spinoff Finder and animated comedy Napoleon Dynamite drop in midseason. Prehistoric drama Terra Nova wil anchor the network’s Monday lineup at 8 PM with House moving to 9 PM. House will return to 8 PM in midseason to help launch the J.J. Abrams show Alcatraz.

Fox is keeping the Tuesday comedy block with New Girl joining Glee and Raising Hope. I Hate My Teenage Daughter will launch after X-Factor. Also remaining where it is is American Idol on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Thank goodness for that, right?

Obviously, we’re happy to see Family Guy and Fringe back for next year. It just would have been nice to see Human Target get another chance. That could have fit nicely in the hole left by Terra Nova once it gets cancelled.

Yes, we’re cynical about Fox so we assume they will cancel the show just when it starts to get interesting. Fox, this is why we can’t have nice things.

Here are Fox’s fall and midseason schedules followed by descriptions of the new shows:

FOX FALL 2011 PRIMETIME SCHEDULE

MONDAY
8:00-9:00 PM  – TERRA NOVA (new)
9:00-10:00 PM  – HOUSE

TUESDAY
8:00-9:00 PM  – GLEE
9:00-9:30 PM  – NEW GIRL (wt) (new)
9:30-10:00 PM  – RAISING HOPE

WEDNESDAY
8:00-9:30 PM  – THE X FACTOR Performance Show (new)
9:30-10:00 PM  – I HATE MY TEENAGE DAUGHTER (wt) (new)