It’s the end of an era. The LA Times reports that both Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper are terminating their relationship with their weekly syndicated, movie review program At the Movies. Roeper announced his departure on last week’s show, and now Ebert has followed suit.
It sounds like what was going on here was more than simply a question of salary in contract negotiations. Word is that Disney wanted to radically change the program, push it away from a serious movie review format to turning it into another vapid clone of Entertainment Tonight. Roeper and Ebert wanted no part of it, and good for them.
It’s depressing times for movie fans though. This is after all, the show that put film criticism on the map here in America. Siskel and Ebert blazed a trail decades ago, and Ebert & Roeper, and lately Roeper & whoever continued it. I guess this was inevitable. Ebert’s health has continued to get worse, and any hope that he might return to the show vanished a long time ago. Without his name in the title, despite Roeper’s best efforts, it just wasn’t the same show anymore anyway. It was time.
It’s unknown whether the show will continue with a different group of hosts. Michael Phillips has become the regular Ebert fill in on the show, perhaps they’d throw it to him or one of the other recent Ebert fill-ins like Dallas’s own Robert Wolanski. Personally, I hope not. Let it die, rather than sullying the At The Movies name by turning it into another awful Access Hollywood.
