Happy Xmas!

2011 has been a tumultuous year around the world.  We’ve seen tragedies such as the Japanese earthquake and subsequent tsunami.  People around the world have risen up against ruling regimes to assert their wish for freedom in things like the Arab Spring and the ‘Occupy’ movements.  In the UK we had our own unfortunate merger of the two with riots and looting in cities across the country.

We don’t deal with world events like that here but for Kathryn Morris fans this year has been… complicated.  Here is KM UK’s round-up of 2011.

2010 saw Kathryn involved, to much differing degrees, in the making of two films: Cougars, Inc. (nee Mother’s Little Helpers) and Moneyball.  But it took until 2011 for both of them to see the light of day.  For the baseball statistics film the September release was done by the book.  However, for the ‘age is just a number’ movie it was a case of one thing not leading to another.

We may never know the full story but things clearly didn’t go to plan for Cougars, Inc.  The release was late (April instead of last December) and it went straight to streaming services and DVD.  There was a mid-week premiere (a news story broken by KM UK) but such things are very common.  The (allegedly) planned promotional tour didn’t get off to a great start and then just kind of stopped.  Rather predictable as it turns out.  If it wasn’t for the efforts of co-star Catalina Rodriguez trying to drum-up some interest we’d have had even less information to go on.  I suspect some interference by the producers/distributors changed the film itself and the way it was treated.  On the plus side we (well, me anyway) will always be grateful to the Asher Levin for making the best of the project’s biggest asset: Kathryn 😉  I really wanted to stick in a Queen of England-style ‘Annus Not So Horribilis’ reference in here but I’d probably better not 😉

Cougars, Inc. may have been a significant, and significantly different, role in a small film but Moneyball was a small role in a significant film.  Any movie with Brad Pitt as the lead is going to be big news.  And so it proved.  Despite the subject matter it was successful and critically acclaimed, with it likely to feature strongly in the upcoming awards season.  Moneyball could have been key in Kathryn’s move to concentrate her acting on films after many years on TV.  Sadly things didn’t work out as intended.  As the year progressed news from test screenings suggested that Kathryn’s role was down to just one scene and later nothing at all (another story broken by KM UK).  This turned out to be the case and Kathryn’s scenes were cut from the final release.  Despite the best efforts of the tabloid press to make a story out of it it just came down to focusing the film on the key relationships and time constraints.  We hope to see the missing scenes as extras on the forthcoming DVD release.  We’ll have more news on that very soon.

Mid-year we made the surprise discovery that Kathryn was signed up to star in short film, Sunday’s Mother, about a boy suffering at the hands of a bully.  KM UK was able to get involved at an early stage and help the film secure the necessary funding.  Photos and a trailer have been released and we await further news on the plans for the film being shown at various film festivals.  We will be keeping a close eye on this one as we move into 2012.

Back on the TV front, 2011 was our first calendar year without Cold Case but the show still made headlines for us.  The UK finally saw the seventh season broadcast as the Universal Channel picked it up and just last week it was announced that the ION network in America had purchased syndication rights.

On the other side of the camera Kathryn’s planned co-production project with Eva Longoria, the drama Sendera, failed to make the cut.  A true KM UK Exclusive not reported anywhere else.  Later in the year we found out that Kathryn’s Hotplate Productions company had very likely been wound-up, which was further confirmed when a new show was said to be in the planning stages under the auspices of new company Revival House.  The Princess Of Whales is being developed for the Lifetime network.

Kathryn made very few public appearances in 2011.  Up until just a few weeks ago it was looking like the only events she was going to be attending was the Cougars, Inc. première and after party.  Hopefully we will get to see more of Kathryn next year.

And what happened to photographer Mark Anderson’s M: Mermaids Of Hollywood book that was due in April?  We got the iPhone app a year ago and then nothing.

It could have been a difficult year for Kathryn’s fans but I think we kept things going, and looking back over the year for this piece it is clear that quite a lot actually happened.  Thanks to the large number of Cougars, Inc. postings (picture drops on an almost daily basis for a while) we surpassed 200 articles over the course of the year.  The final flourish of a new (to us) photoshoot and possible new ventures into social networking helped cap an interesting year.

We head into 2012 with a lot of questions: knowns (short film, website, Facebook & Twitter), known unknowns (deleted scenes in Moneyball and new TV productions) and unknown unknowns (?, exactly).

Thank you to everyone who takes the time to read this site.  Thank you to everyone that has contributed in some way during 2011.  Whether it be submitting news items, making fan art or posting comments it is you that makes this site what it is.  Hopefully we’ll see you all in 2012, there is plenty still to come here on KM UK.  Until then, have a great Xmas/Christmas/holiday/weekend/whatever*.

RichE.

KM UK is likely to be quiet until the after New Year but we will endeavour to cover any breaking news stories as best we can.  Check back regularly and follow us on Twitter to get the latest announcements.

* Delete as applicable.