Entertainment news round-up for Sept. 17

By Amanda Ack, Film Critic

• AMC has revealed that the final season of its hit show Mad Men will be split over two years, with seven episodes airing in 2014 and seven more airing in 2015.  The first half of the season will be called “The Beginning,” while the second half will be called “The End of an Era.”  Series creator Matthew Weiner says that the split will allow the episodes to “resonate a little bit longer in the minds of our audience. The writers, cast and other artists welcome this unique manner of ending this unique experience.”  For more information on the show, click here.
• Warner Bros. is developing an animated film based on Lego’s “Ninjago.”  Attached to the project are Disney XD’s Tron: Uprising director Charlie Bean and writers Dan and Kevin Hageman.  Much of the project’s creative team also Warner Bros., orked on Warner’s completed The Lego Movie, which is slated for a February 2014 release.  For more on both films, click here.
• CNN is moving forward with The Sixties, a ten-part documentary series that will focus on key moments of the 1960s.  The series will be produced by Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman and Mark Hertzog, and will include archival newsreel footage, personal movies, and interviews with eyewitnesses to important events of the decade.  The first episode, entitled “The Assassination of JFK (1963),” will air in November, coinciding with the anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.  To read more on the series, click here.
• A new study financed by NBCUniversal shows a rapid increase in piracy in recent years.  The study, conducted by NetNames, shows that “infringing bandwidth use” rose by 153.9% between 2011 and 2012.  The findings were unveiled on Tuesday at a Capitol Hill event featuring Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), cochairs of the International Anti-Piracy Caucus.  “Copyright infringement is, as the report’s author states, ‘tenacious and persistent,’ and our efforts must be tenacious and persistent,” Hatch said.  For more on the study, click here.