Dr. Luke is out. Will.i.am is out. Keith Urban is in. Jennifer Lopez is ‘close.’ The American Idol rumor mill never stops for a day. The next artist reportedly in talks to join the show is crooner Harry Connick Jr.
E! News now reports that Connick Jr., who has appeared on the show in the past, is in talks to judge the show. Coincidentally, back in May, Connick Jr. told E! that he was previously approached for the job.
“I think you need to be completely honest, and I think you need to be diplomatic,” he told E! at the time about being a judge. “I think there's no reason to be mean, but it is called being a 'judge.' You have to judge. That's what you do.”
The Hollywood Reporter’s sources also confirmed that Connick Jr. is in talks, but THR also noted that Fremantle, which produces the show, and Fox weren’t too keen on going to Connick Jr. It sounds like he was their last resort and it still might delay production.
The site notes that Idol producers had hoped to bring in a music industry insider, which is why they showed interest in Dr. Luke, who isn’t a household name but knows how the industry works. He had to drop out because of a conflict of interest - he works at Sony, but Idol is a competition tied to Universal Music. THR says that Dr. Luke was so interested in Idol that he told Sony that it could take half of his reported $12 million fee.
Urban and Lopez are the only known variables in the Idol judging panel equation. Fox did not comment on the Connick Jr. reports.
Will.i.am is going back to The Voice U.K. and will be unavailable for Idol
image: Fox
There has been a critical error on your website.<\/p>
Learn more about debugging in WordPress.<\/a><\/p>","data":{"status":500},"additional_errors":[]}