Quick Takes: ‘Touch and go’ for George Michael

George Michael appeared outside his North London home Friday and acknowledged that he had nearly died during his monthlong battle with pneumonia.

“It was touch and go for a while,” said the 48-year-old singer, who appeared to have lost weight during his month in a hospital in Vienna. He fought back tears and seemed short of breath.

The solo star and former Wham! frontman said his staff had downplayed the severity of his illness to avoid alarming his fans. He implied that he had been in a coma when he talked about having “woken up” 10 days ago.

—Associated Press

New haunts for ‘Horror Story’

Now that FX’s “American Horror Story” has ended its first season, creator and executive producer Ryan Murphy reveals that each succeeding season will start fresh.

“Next year on the show — every season of the show — will be a different haunting,” Murphy told reporters. That means new characters and a different home (or building) to haunt.

But not necessarily an all-new cast.

“Some of them will come back,” Murphy said. “I’m in talks with several of them. There will be familiar faces ... but they will be playing completely different characters and creatures and monsters.”

—Yvonne Villarreal

No Peters for L.A. ‘Follies’

When the revival of Stephen Sondheim’s “Follies” comes to the Ahmanson Theatre in the spring, it reportedly will be without one of its leading ladies, Bernadette Peters.

Playbill.com reported that Peters wishes to honor her obligations for concert performances that conflict with the Ahmanson dates.

The actress will finish with “Follies” on Broadway when it closes on Jan. 22.

It’s not yet known if the rest of the Broadway cast will come to Los Angeles in May.

—Sherry Stern

‘Buffy’ film script falls flat

That big-screen revamp of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” has been dealt a setback: It looks as though the movie’s first-time screenwriter bit off more than she could chew.

Two sources close to the project say that the script submitted this past summer by Whit Anderson fell far short of expectations and, in the end, was rejected completely.

That’s news that will spark celebration from some longtime “Buffy” fans who were less than thrilled by the prospects of a “Buffy” revival that didn’t involve Joss Whedon, who wrote the 1992 film and created the WB series.

A new writer is being sought but the entire endeavor may have lost some steam.

—Geoff Boucher

AARP picks its top 10 movies

Three movies opening this weekend — “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close,” “We Bought a Zoo” and “War Horse” — made the list for the year’s Top 10 Movies for Grownups, as voted by the editors of AARP, the magazine on behalf of “older moviegoers who value human stories over special effects.”

The other picks: “The Artist,” “The Descendants,” “The Help,” “Hugo,” “Margin Call,” “Midnight in Paris” and “Moneyball.”

—Lee Margulies