Dallas is back and the new series are set to premiere tonight at 08:00 p.m. on TNT.
Larry Hagman, Linda Gray and Patrick Duffy are joined by newcomers Brenda Strong (Desperate Housewives), Josh Henderson (Desperate Housewives), Jordana Brewster (The Fast and the Furious) and Jesse Metcalfe (Desperate Housewives).
The cast has been everywhere over the past month promoting the premiere Wednesday at 08:00 p.m. on TNT. The youngsters even rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday.
But controversy is already swirling around the production. Dallas original creator, David Jacobs, was cut out of the new show.
David Jacobs read the new scripts and thought that they were not up to snuff. The new Dallas producers didn’t want David Jacobs involved and tried to list themselves as the creators of the show.
David Jacobs got a lawyer and the Writers Guild to step in and iron out the problems. According to ShowBiz411.com, David Jacobs, creator of Dallas and Knots Landing, said he has been excluded entirely from the coming reboot of the famous series on TNT. He will get to keep his “created by” credit, but nothing else, no money, and no participation.
“I’ll get the $714 Writers Guild fee for a sequel,” David Jacobs says.
He found out that Dallas was being restarted second hand. When he inquired about it, he says he told everyone – including new head writer Cynthia Cidre – that he was essentially retired and didn’t want to write the show.
“I didn’t want any authority,” he told her at their one lunch. But he did think a consultancy wouldn’t be out of the question since basically, Dallas relies on all the characters he created in the 1970s – JR Ewing, Bobby Ewing, Sue Ellen, and their family, even the same Southfork Ranch set.