Bad News for '30 Rock'

The Call Sheet sifts through the day's glut of Hollywood news to find the stories even non-industry types care about. Today: 30 Rock debuts low, HBO announces important dates, and Jessica Chastain does one for the kids.

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Last night was the strangely lovely season premiere of 30 Rock and, oof, with a 1.8 rating in the 49 and under set it posted the lowest season premiere numbers in its history. That is bad news! It's always been baffling that more people don't watch this show. It's a good show, guys! You should watch it! You should not, however, watch Rob!, but you did. A depressing 13.5 million of you, in fact. So, ugh. Fine. Whatever. Sigh/grunt. Everything's bad and brown and dull. Happy Friday! [Vulture]

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Oh, wait, no! Spoke too soon! Everything's great! HBO has announced the premiere date for the second season of their big bad fantasy show Game of Thrones, so there is finally something to look forward to. The season will premiere on April 1st, which is only a few measly months away. Calloo, callay, happy day! HBO also announced that Lena Dunham's Girls will debut April 15th, Julia Louis-Dreyfus political comedy Veep on April 22nd, and Game ! Change, the movie with Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin, will premiere on March 10th. So, several things to look forward to! Screw you, Rob! You can't bring us down anymore. [EW]

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Jessica Chastain, world's busiest actress, will try out a new genre when she does voice work for the animated movie Madagascar 3. So now she'll have done espionage thriller, indie drama, Shakespeare, arty Malick movie, feel-good comedy, and animated kids movie all in the span of like 24 months. Meanwhile, we managed to clean the house once a few months ago. [THR]

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Kate Winslet has signed on to star as a magazine columnist in the post-WWII romance The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society for director Kenneth Branagh. Heh, that will be a fun title to hear people say at, like, the 2013 Oscars. Hopefully Penelope Cruz presents the award. "The Guern... Potato.. Oh the hell with it, Kate Winslet, everybody. It's Kate Winslet." [Variety]

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Interesting. Lionsgate has bought Summit Entertainment, the privately owned company that produced the ! Twilight movies. So this means that both the Twilight franchise and the Hunger Games franchise will be owned by the same company. So, basically, Lionsgate has just bought all the teenagers. All the teenagers are now owned by Lionsgate and there is nothing you can do about it. Might as well just ship them to the studio to meet their new parent/god. Clever move, Lionsgate. CBS owns all the old people, Lionsgate the teens, Disney the tweens, and everyone else? Well, Bank of America and Subway are still fighting over us. [THR]

Here's a trailer for Canadian weirdo Guy Maddin's new movie, Keyhole. It's some kind of noir something sort of? Who knows. Everyone loves this guy's movies, like The Saddest Music in the World and My Winnipeg, but some things are just too impenetrable for us, and his oeuvre is one of those things. Why not make an action movie or a sex comedy or something, Guy? Something everyone can like? Jeez Louise.

Everyone's gone weird, what is going on?? First Isabella Rossellini is shrieking things in a bathtub and now Will Ferrel is speaking Spanish (in this new trailer for Casa de Mi Padre)??? This is all your fault, Maddin!