The audience at a recent taping of the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory was treated to a bit of a surprise, as the show’s cast and crew spontaneously broke into a flash mob just before a scene was set to begin.  Set to that song that will not go away, “Call Me Maybe,” the ratings-dominating comedy’s crew was joined by cast members Johnny Galecki, Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco, and more in what was actually planned as a surprise for the series’ showrunners, Chuck Lorre, Bill Prady, and Steven Molaro.  The video is worthwhile if only to see Blossom’s Mayim Bialik get down behind a very enthusiastic Kaley Cuoco.  Hit the jump to watch the video.

It seems Rihanna isn’t going to let one leaky blockbuster sink her fledgling acting career. Today comes word that the pop singer will join with Jim Parsons (The Big Bang Theory) to star in DreamWorks Animation’s Happy Smekday!. It’s an adaptation of Adam Rex’s children book The True Meaning of Smekday, which finds a group of aliens invading earth on Christmas Eve (renaming the holiday “Smekday”) after being booted from their own planet by a villainous race called the Gorg. The story takes the form of an essay written by main character Tip, an 11-year-old human who travels cross-country with the alien that inadvertently put Earth on the Gorg’s radar. It will be helmed by Antz co-director Tim Johnson. Hit the jump for more.

The creator of Glee, Nip/Tuck and American Horror Story has a feature film project in the works and is stocking it with an all-star cast. Ryan Murphy’s adaptation of Tony Award-winning play, The Normal Heart, can now count Julia Roberts and Alec Baldwin among its stars that will join Mark Ruffalo. The autobiographical drama written by Larry Kramer, who also wrote the feature script, chronicles the rise of HIV/AIDS among New York’s gay community in the 1980s. Roberts will play wheel-chair bound doctor, Emma Brookner, who is one of the city’s few physicians who acknowledges the severity of the disease. Baldwin will play the brother to Ruffalo’s Ned Weeks. Matt Bomer (White Collar) and Jim Parsons (Big Bang Theory) are also joining the cast. Hit the jump for more on The Normal Heart.

Disney has released the music video for the song “Man or Muppet” from The Muppets. The number, penned by Flight of the Conchords’ Bret McKenzie, is one of the highlights of the movie. Sung by Jason Segel and the Muppet Walter, the music video is just the song sequence from the film, which features a Muppet version of Segel and a well-placed Big Bang Theory cameo. As I noted in our “What Awards can The Muppets Actually Win?” article, I think “Man or Muppet” stands a good chance for a Best Original Song nomination at the Oscars.

Hit the jump to watch the music video. The Muppets is currently playing in theaters everywhere.

Tonight was the 63rd Annual Primetime Emmy Awards and the winner’s list included some great names.  Perhaps the best win of the night was Peter Dinklage picking up Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for Game of Thrones.  Not far behind was Kyle Chandler finally picking up an Emmy for Best Actor in a Drama Series for the final season of Friday Night Lights (the show also picked up an Emmy for Best Writing in a Drama Series).  Martin Scorsese picked up an award for his direction of Boardwalk Empire‘s pilot episode, and ubiquitous character actor Margo Martindale won Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for her role as Mags Bennett on FX’s Justified.

The top awards for Best Drama, Best Comedy, and Best Variety, Music or Comedy Series went to last year’s winners Mad Men, Modern Family, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, respectively.  Best Miniseries or TV Movie was awarded to  PBS’ Downtown Abbey while CBS’ The Amazing Race picked up another Emmy for Best Reality-Competition Program.  Hit the jump for the full list of winners.

The cast and creators of TV’s “smartest, funniest and now Emmy-nominated” The Big Bang Theory dropped in on Comic-Con today to talk about the upcoming 5^th season of the popular series. Executive producers Chuck Lorre, Bill Prady and Steve Molaro joined principal cast Johnny Galecki, Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco, Simon Helberg, Kunal Nayyar, Mayim Bialik and Melissa Rauch on stage. In a nice touch for fans of the show, Carol Ann Susi provided the disembodied voice of Mrs. Wolowitz to introduce the panel. Hit the jump for more behind-the-scenes shenanigans and sneak peeks of the upcoming season.

I have just endured three painful hours of the Golden Globes.  Thankfully, folks who deserved awards got them (except for Community, which wasn’t even nominated, so way to screw that up, Hollywood Foreign Press Association).  You can click here to check out my live blog of the entire ceremony, but if you just want a listing of who won what, then hit the jump.  The Social Network took home four Golden Globes including Best Score (Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross), Best Screenplay (Aaron Sorkin), Best Director (David Fincher), and Best Motion Picture (Drama).

Tonight I’ll be live-blogging the 2011 Golden Globe Awards.  The Golden Globes continue to receive attention because they used to be seen as a reliable indicator of what films would be receiving Orscar love.  However, due to shifting deadlines, Oscar ballots are already due and there’s no way that the Globes can affect the Oscar nominees.  Also, the Globes, which are hosted by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, are known for being delightfully carefree with their integrity and will nominate you if you show them enough love.  They’re basically like the MTV Movie Awards except they serve food and there aren’t any sketches.

However, I think host Ricky Gervais will do a fine job tonight and I’m curious to see if the Globes will follow through on their clearly bought-and-paid-for-love of films like Burlesque and The Tourist.  Click here for a list of the nominees and hit the jump for my on-going live-blog and be sure to keep refreshing the page for my comments.  The 2011 Golden Globe Awards air at 8pm (EST) on NBC.

For those of you in love with the geeky comedy of the CBS series The Big Bang Theory, we have some good news. Today the network announced that it has renewed their successful comedy series for 3 more season which will take Jim Parsons and the rest of the cast well into 2014. The standard publicity fluff quotes came from CBS Entertainment President Nina Tassler as she said, “It doesn’t take a theoretical physicist to see why this show is a big part of our comedy future. From ratings to critical acclaim to pop culture buzz, it’s struck a chord on all levels.  The creative genius of Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady and the on-camera talents of an amazing young ensemble have created a comedy that will entertain viewers for a long time.”

“The Nerd Empire Strikes Back” for season three of The Big Bang Theory and the gang is back and up to their usual shenanigans.  Raj is still too nervous to talk around Penny, Howard is willing to try anything to get laid (even almost get a tattoo), Sheldon is still a hilarious and neurotic mess, and Leonard and Penny are dating.  Wait a minute, that’s a new development…  Now Sheldon has to deal with being the third wheel to Penny and Leonard’s tumultuous and severely awkward relationship.  This season delivers the same amount of laughs as the last two and Sheldon is still the NERD KING, but the flaws of the more standard sitcom jokes and some performances are starting to stick out more this time around.

The month of May brings many a season finale to our airwaves; over the last week or so, I have been recapping the finales a few of our favorite shows here at Collider, and using that as a jumping off point to discuss the direction of the season and the show as a whole.  This Monday night, we got the 2-hour finale of NBC’s Chuck, as well as the season sendoffs for the CBS comedies How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory.

Hit the jump for a spoiler-filled dissection of the finale and overall season arc of each show.

Jim Parsons (The Big Bang Theory), Rashida Jones (Parks and Recreation), and Anjelica Huston have signed on to co-star in David Frankel’s The Big Year.  The film centers on three men (played by Steve Martin, Jack Black, and Owen Wilson) who try to outdo each other during a year-long competition to spot the rarest birds in North America.  I will now pray for a dearth of “cock” and “pecker” puns.  The cast also includes Rosamund Pike, JoBeth Williams, Brian Dennehy, Dianne Wiest, Anthony Anderson and Tim Blake Nelson.  Oh, and Variety also reports that Kevin Pollak and Joel McHale are in talks to join the film.  There are a lot of people in this movie.

Hit the jump for details on the roles Parsons, Jones, and Huston will play.

Despite his many neurosis and idiosyncrasies, The Big Bang Theory‘s Dr. Sheldon Cooper (played to perfection by Jim Parsons) has excellent geek fashion style.  His shirts (which he always wears over a long-sleeve) feature references to superheroes, quantum physics, geek television shows, and robots.  So where does he get them all?  With all his germaphobia and disdain for personal interaction, I imagine he gets them online.

Now you can too!  SheldonShirts.com has found almost every shirt Sheldon wears and provided a link to where you can buy them online.  As a bonus, they’ve also found Leonard’s shirts,  Wolowitz’ hideous belt buckles, shirts based on The Big Bang Theory (my personal favorite being the one featuring Sheldon’s face with the word “Bazinga!” emblazoned underneath), and other delightful items from the show like the Periodic Table of Elements shower curtain to the tattoo sleeves Wolowitz and Raj used to appear goth in one episode.

The Big Bang Theory is on Mondays at 9:30/8:30c on CBS.

While we usually like to post every news story as a separate article, sometimes it’s a lot easier to group shorter stories together.  Saying that, if you’re a fan of Fringe, The Big Bang Theory, or G.I. Joe cartoons, I’ve got some news to share.

The first bit of news comes from Michael Bell (the voice of Duke on the G.I. Joe cartoon series in the 1980′s) via Toynewsi.  In a recent podcast, Bell said he has auditioned for the voice of General Hawk for a brand new 26 episode run of G.I. Joe.  While it is unclear if the new show will be similar to G.I. Joe: Resolute or more like the 80′s cartoon, with voice casting underway, expect an announcement soon.

For fans of Fringe, EW is reporting  Irish actress Orla Brady (pictured after the jump) has landed the role of Peter’s mom/Walter Bishop’s wife on Fringe.  While she won’t debut till early next year, it will be very interesting to see how she is introduced, as fans of the show know where she must be coming from…

Finally, for fans of The Big Bang Theory, as you can see in the image above (via EW), on next week’s episode, Sheldon (Jim Parsons) lands a cougar.  Unfortunately, she’s Leonard’s mother Beverly (Christine Baranski).  If you saw the previous episode that featured Leonard’s mother, you could sort of see this coming.  But that doesn’t mean the episode won’t be a lot of fun.

Look out! Nerds are taking over movies and TV! Suddenly I’m the cool one because I know the alternate and conflicting origins of Wolverine and just how badly the new movie screwed them up.  All my friends that were the “cool” ones would be eaten alive at Comic-Con, which if you were lucky enough to bare witness to, you would know that Hollywood is really into “Geek Chic” right now.  When every comic book from “Thor” to “Green Lantern” to “Green Hornet” is being picked up to be another franchise opportunity, a show that centers around social outcasts with a plethora of nerd-knowledge is bound to be a hit in the current market trends.  I’m a self-proclaimed nerd and because of that and because “The Big Bang Theory” relishes in its nerd-dom it is easily one of the funniest shows on TV right now and definitely keeping the “traditional sitcom” alive.  More after the jump: