Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King will make its network television debut on December 15th on TNT. The cable network has already aired the first two movies, The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers over the last two years. The Return of the King, for those of you living under a rock, wraps up the series. TNT is airing it in HD. It'll be available on VOD beginning Dec. 24th.

As is customary with TNT, The Return of the King will air for three nights in a row. And, on Sunday December 17th, it will be preceded by the first two movies. With commercials, that's more than eleven hours of programming. I pity the fool who sits down to watch that. I mean, yes, Viggo Mortenson and Orlando Bloom are super hot in all three movies, but if you're going to spend that much time watching television, why not just buy the DVDs?

Good news, Goonies fans. Or LOTR fans. Or 24 fans. Sean Astin has bigger plans than just a meerkat soap opera. He's reportedly in negotiations to star in an ABC comedy pilot called The Guys. It's about five dads who become friends when their kids have a playdate at one of the fathers' homes. If two of the four Hobbits are on ABC, can we start calling it Middle Earth?

Javier Grillo-Marxuach, a supervising producer and writer on Lost, is leaving the show. He was hired on about two years ago when Lost was just a gleam in J.J. Abrams' eye. On his website, Javi says his gig on Lost was only meant to be a couple of months so he could help create long-term story arcs and basically plan out the series (and write a pilot!). Two years, seven episodes, and "one hanging hobbit" later, Javi said it's the right time for him to leave and let the other writers take the show where it needs to go.

Javi has been one of the most high-profile writers of the show, frequently producing the Radio Free Javi podcasts about Lost and his other interests, including comic books. He also is a frequent contributor to The Fuselage, the ABC-sanctioned forum about the show.