Jonathan Franzen's novel 'The Corrections' was the publishing sensation of 2001. It won multiple awards and made its author a household name.

Especially after Oprah Winfrey chose it as one of her Book Club picks and he famously turned down an invitation to appear on her show.

Rumors have swirled for years about possible movie and TV adaptations of the lengthy tome and now there are reports that producer Scott Rudin ('The Social Network,' 'There Will Be Blood') and writer-director Noah Baumbach ('The Squid and the Whale,' 'Margot at the Wedding') are close to a TV series deal with HBO.

According to Deadline, the cable network may soon place an order for a pilot episode.

It's also been reported that none other than Anthony Hopkins has expressed an interest in playing one of the central roles.

Conan O'Brien has been trying to worm his way into Oprah's audience of unimaginative simpletons who lack the ability to form their own opinions, taste and style by offering his own recommendations for books, movies and music.

This week, he recommended the classic Troll 2, an extremely B-minus movie about a family attacked by a group of vegetarian trolls who turn people into plants for sustenance. Conan's people may or may not already know this, but Troll 2 already has an insane following of people. The film's star, Michael Paul Stephenson, made an acclaimed documentary on the film's history and popularity called Best Worst Movie and the film's director Claudio Degrasso is reportedly prepping a sequel called (I swear I'm not making this up) Troll 2: Part 2.

Does it seem like somebody lit a fire under Oprah Winfrey? It seems like it to me. Her new season commenced this week with the Whitney Houston two-parter, she's off to Central Park for tomorrow show which will relaunch Oprah's Book Club, and on Monday Oprah's doing a flashback to the 1960's with Mad Men's Jon Hamm and January Jones as guests.

A year ago at this time, who would have guessed that Jay Leno would be leaving late night and NBC would be handing him five hours of prime time instead? Who would have predicted CBS continuing to dominate in the ratings or that ABC's sophomore series like Eli Stone and Pushing Daisies would stumble and fall so completely after being off the air all last spring? Predictors from last January were on target about there being a writers' strike; that did happen and it was definitely not a good thing.

Fortunately, I don't see a SAG strike in the future. However, here are ten things I'm betting will happen by the time the ball drops on December 31st.

1. Martin Scorsese will be the next big thing on HBO. He's producing a drama based on the book Boardwalk Empire. HBO is overdue to launch another big series in The Sopranos tradition. Boardwalk Empire seems to have all the right elements: violence, sex, gambling, and Oscar-winning, iconic director Martin Scorsese.

Recently, TV columnist Aaron Barnhart took note of the fact that Oprah Winfrey's show is sinking in the ratings. Her talk show, which is the centerpiece of her multimedia success -- a success that has made her the richest woman in show business -- has been losing ratings consistently for the last six months. At first blush, the politically minded of you might think it's because she endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, but I think it's more than that. After all, if anything, the vast amount of grassroots support that the Senator from Illinois has engendered might be a plus for Oprah rather than a minus.

Therefore, there have to be other factors to explain why Oprah's landmark TV talk show has lost its luster -- at least ratings-wise. I've come up with six possible reasons.