fulltimer56
09-25-2006, 11:09 PM
NEWS OF THE WEEK FOR SEP. 25, 2006
Part 1 of 2
Buffy Lives--In Comics
Dark Horse Comics will publish a new series of Buffy the Vampire Slayer comics that will pick up the story of the cult TV show and act as a de facto eighth season, Comics Continuum http://www.comicscontinuum.com/stories/0609/18/index.htm reported.
The new Buffy series is targeted for a March launch, and the first story arc will be a four-part series that will chronicle events after the Buffy television series' finale, which aired in 2003. Buffy creator Joss Whedon will write, with art by Georges Jeanty.
G4 To Air Spaceballs Series
MGM TV has commissioned an animated series based on Mel Brooks' 1987 Spaceballs movie and sold exclusive rights in the U.S. to Comcast's G4 cable network, Variety reported.
Encompassing a one-hour pilot and 13 half-hour episodes, the project represents the first scripted series green-lighted by the new TV division at MGM, led by Jim Packer, president of the worldwide TV distribution group. The series kicks off on G4 in fall 2007, the trade paper reported.
Although the movie grossed only $38.1 million in the United States, the Star Wars satire has become a successful franchise on DVD and in cable and pay TV reruns.
Brooks and Thomas Meehan, who co-wrote the movie with Ronnie Graham, have written the one-hour pilot, and Meehan will supervise the writing of the 13 half-hours. Brooks will do two of the voices, President Skroob and Yogurt. Germany's Berliner Film Companie will provide the animation.
Who Season Two DVD Due
The complete second season of the BBC's new Doctor Who series http://www.scifi.com/doctorwho/ will be released on DVD in the United States on Jan. 16, 2007, BBC Worldwide Americas executives told SCI FI Wire. "We're over the moon with Doctor Who," said Megan Branigan, vice president of BBC video marketing, in an interview. "We're really pleased with the results this year. We're very excited to continue the momentum with [season] two as we did with [season] one." (The second season of Doctor Who will air in the United States on SCI FI Channel, starting Sept. 29.)
The six-disc set will feature a lenticular cover http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=10&id=2673&type=10 depicting David Tennant, who takes over the role of the Doctor from Christopher Eccleston, and Billie Piper as his traveling companion, Rose Tyler. Bonus features will include video diaries from Tennant and Piper, as well as episodes of the behind-the-scenes series Doctor Who Confidential, which ran concurrently with the show when it aired in the United Kingdom. The date of the release, and future releases, was timed to fall on the Tuesday following the airing of the second series finale, "Doomsday," on SCI FI Channel, Branigan said.
The content on the U.S. release will be identical to the version available in the U.K., which is due in November. "It's done that way on purpose, because it really is a global program," Branigan said. "We've agreed with the BBC that our fans in the U.K. would notice tremendously if the content was different, and we did actually do that with some of the classic Whos. And we got some feedback that people were upset because they had already bought the U.K. edition, and then all of a sudden ours got put out, and we had added value. So we decided as a global company to do [just one version]."
Like the program itself, the DVD is designed to appeal to longtime fans of the franchise, as well as to those whose familiarity with the Doctor is limited to the new incarnation. "It's the best of both worlds, because we're appealing to both the core fans and to this new audience," Branigan said. "I mean, the program does that all on its own. And SCI FI does that for us, too. Because it's more mainstream, maybe it brings more of an audience to SCI FI that they didn't have as well. But certainly the people who are watching the SCI FI Channel are a perfect target for the program." —Cindy White
USA Re-Enters Dead Zone
USA Network ordered up a 13-episode sixth season of its hit supernatural thriller series The Dead Zone, starring Anthony Michael Hall, Variety reported. The basic cable network also gave an order for a 16-episode second season of Psych, its comic one-hour show about an investigator who pretends to have paranormal abilities.
Psych airs Fridays; The Dead Zone airs with The 4400 on Sundays.
Dead Zone was an unlikely candidate for renewal: Shot in Vancouver, the show has grown more expensive over the years, rising from a production cost of $1.2 million per episode to about $1.7 million.
USA Network is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Lost Season 2 DVD Is Tops
The second season of ABC's hit SF series Lost debuted at number one on the national DVD sales chart for the week ending Sept. 10, beating Universal Studios' United 93, which came in second, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Lost is believed to be only the second TV-DVD set to snag the top spot on VideoScan's First Alert chart in its first week in stores. The first-season set of Lost, released in September 2005, bowed at number two, the trade paper reported.
Only three other new releases made it onto the First Alert top 20 their first week in stores, led by another TV-DVD set, Warner's Supernatural: The Complete First Season, which entered the chart at number 12.
New Tolkien Book Coming
An unfinished tale by Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien has been edited by his son into a completed work and will be released next spring, the U.S. and British publishers told the Associated Press.
Christopher Tolkien has spent the past 30 years working on The Children of Hurin, an epic tale his father began in 1918 and later abandoned. Excerpts of The Children of Hurin, which includes the elves and dwarves of Tolkien's Rings and other works, have been published before.
The new book will be published by Houghton Mifflin in the United States and HarperCollins in England.
Lost Game Comes To Close
The alternate-reality game The Lost Experience, based on ABC's hit SF series, came to a close at 8 p.m. PT on Sept. 24 with a live worldwide Internet radio broadcast http://abc.go.com/ hosted by the renegade DJ Dan, ABC announced. The broadcast will also feature a special in-studio guest and announce a link for the final video clue revealing the truth behind the actions of the Hanso Foundation.
The game has already revealed the secrets http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=1&id=38050 behind the show's numbers (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42) and the agenda of the mysterious Dharma Initiative.
The Lost third-season premiere, "A Tale of Two Cities," premieres Oct. 4 in the show's regular Wednesday timeslot, 9 p.m. ET/PT.
Old Friends Turn Up Lost
Many familiar faces return in the upcoming third-season premiere of ABC's hit SF series Lost, "A Tale of Two Cities," including William Mapother's deceased Ethan and John Terry's Christian Shephard, Jack's father, the network announced. The episode, written by co-creators J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof from a story by Lindelof, also marks the return of Julie Bowen as Jack's wife, Sarah, who was last seen in the season-two episode "The Hunting Party."
In "A Tale of Two Cities," Jack (Matthew Fox), Kate (Evangeline Lilly) and Sawyer (Josh Holloway) begin to discover what they are up against as prisoners of the Others, led by Henry Gale (new series regular Michael Emerson), ABC said.
Besides Mapother, Terry and Bowen, the premiere's guest stars include M.C. Gainey as the Others' Mr. Friendly (aka Zeke), Brett Cullen as Goodwin, Blake Bashoff as Karl, Julie Adams as Amelia, Stephen Semel as Adam, Isabelle Cherwin as a little girl, Alexandra Morgan as a moderator, Sonya Seng as a receptionist, Sally Davis as a teacher and Julie Ow as a nurse. Jack Bender directed "A Tale of Two Cities," which premieres Oct. 4 in Lost's regular Wednesday timeslot, 9 p.m. ET/PT.
Lost Girls Selling Out
Lost Girls, the tastefully pornographic fantasy graphic novel from acclaimed writer Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie, sold out its entire 10,000-copy first printing in one day after hitting stores on Aug. 31, publisher Top Shelf reported.
Lost Girls, which conflates the stories of the fictional literary characters of Alice, Wendy and Dorothy, hit the top-20 list on Amazon.com and by the following Friday had back orders exceeding the second printing of 10,000, which is scheduled to hit stores in October.
Top Shelf has ordered another 20,000 copies for the third printing, to arrive in December.
Heroes' Grunberg Shapes Up
Greg Grunberg, one of the stars of NBC's upcoming superhero drama Heroes, told SCI FI Wire that he trying to get into shape because it fits his role as a police officer who develops psychic powers. "[Creator and executive producer Tim Kring] keeps telling me to eat more doughnuts and don't lose so much weight," Grunberg said in an interview. " I want to get into great shape. I mean, for health reasons I think it's great, but I've always wanted to just get into much better shape, and I'm going to take this opportunity to do that with this character."
Grunberg, who makes his first appearance in the second episode of the series, added that he sees the positive changes in his character's life as a result of his emerging ability. "We all have things in life that we want to do or aspire to, and it takes a kick in the butt sometimes to really [do them], whether it be a change in location or a new job or something," he said. "And we've been putting it off, putting it off. We know we should do it. For this character, ... his name is Matt Parkman, he's an LAPD cop. He wants to be a better cop. He wants to investigate bigger crimes and be where the action is. Suddenly he gets the one ability that a cop needs, which is information. And he gets it in a way that no one needs to know where he's getting that information. It's exactly what a cop needs to solve crimes as quickly as possible and be the best he can be. But that, I think, then changes the rest of his life."
Though his character's mind-reading power gives him an advantage both at work and at home (he uses it to please his wife in bed, Grunberg reveals), he isn't able to control them yet. "We're on the seventh episode, and I'm still having a hard time dealing with it," Grunberg said. "It really plays into exactly what Tim's talked about, which is these people [are] dealing with it like anyone else would, waking up and discovering they have these abilities. So it's far from being mastered yet. I hope my character doesn't get to master his power for a long time to come." Heroes premieres Sept. 25 and will air Mondays at 9 p.m. ET/PT. NBC is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM. —Cindy White
[b]Heroes Has Online Comic
Tim Kring, creator and executive producer of NBC's superhero drama Heroes, told SCI FI Wire that the the series will be accompanied by a Web comic at NBC.com http://heroes.nbc.com/ that will become an integral part of the show itself. "Just to give a little spoiler to everybody, the audience should look for the idea of the comic book to play a huge part internally inside the show," Kring said in an interview.
The weekly Heroes Web comic will run concurrently with the series and will have some relevance to the episode airing that week. "People can log on and view and sort of interact with the online comic book every week in conjunction with the episodes," Kring said. "And the comic won't be necessarily about that episode, but it will further enhance your viewing of the show. It will be sometimes an alternative look at what you've seen, or the other side of what you've seen, or a story that just sort of enhances your appreciation of the characters."
The series has a close connection to the world of comics, with comic-book writer Jeph Loeb on board as a writer and producer and artist Tim Sale providing drawings for one of the characters on the show, an artist who paints images of the future. The two were instrumental in attracting other well-known names to the online comic, including Jim Lee and Michael Turner. The stories will be provided by the show's writers.
Kring. who is overseeing the online comic and will also be involved in breaking the stories, said that the project has been time-consuming but was always part of the show's original conception. "We knew that this was coming," he said. "This show was always sort of going to have a large online and Internet component attached to it. So in the development of the show and preparation for launching the show, we took a lot of that into consideration. So we tried to carve out time and money and personnel to sort of handle that." Heroes premieres Sept. 25 and will air Mondays at 9 p.m. ET/PT. NBC is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM. —Cindy White
Jericho Asks 'What If?'
Jon Turteltaub, the executive producer of CBS' upcoming post-apocalyptic drama series Jericho, told SCI FI Wire that he did research about what might happen after a nuclear attack and was surprised by the answers he found. "This is going to sound odd, but a nuclear bomb is not as bad as everybody thinks," Turteltaub in an interview. "Without question on the scale of things in the world, it's on the bad scale of things that can happen. Puppies are on the really good side of things [laughs]. But sometimes we have this image that one nuclear bomb would take out all of New York City and Brooklyn and Queens and parts of New Jersey."
That wouldn't be the case with the initial blast, Turteltaub (National Treasure) added. "Part of the question is how much of the area is uninhabitable versus how much in our perception and our fears is uninhabitable," he said. "Coping with our own panic may be a greater enemy than the reality of these things."
Jericho follows the residents of the title Kansas small town, who witness a mushroom cloud on the horizon and lose all contact with the outside world. The series stars Skeet Ulrich, Gerald McRaney, Pamela Reed, Ashley Scott and Sprague Grayden.
"Those of us in New York who went through the blackout and those of us in L.A. who went through the riots and those of us in New Orleans who went through the hurricane, and on and on, understand how close all of us are to chaos," Turteltaub said. "We instantly can be put in this place where everything can just fall apart. And we know how thoroughly unprepared we are to trust ourselves to survive."
Turteltaub, who directed the pilot episode, said the situation in which the characters of Jericho find themselves will test them in every way. "In [an] odd way it's sort of the best of science fiction," he said. "It is allowing the 'what if?' to become reality, which I think science [fiction] has been charged with since it began. You always start with your hypothesis, and then you take that 'what if?' and try to get the most honest answer, which is not always the extraordinary answer. It can often be a simple, human and painful answer." Jericho premiered Sept. 20 and will air Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT. —Kathie Huddleston
Fountain Wins Sloane Award
Darren Aronofsky's controversial SF epic The Fountain will receive the $25,000 Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Award, to be presented at the Hamptons International Film Festival, which takes place Oct. 18-22 on Long Island, New York.
The cash prize is awarded to a feature-length film that explores science and technology themes in fresh, innovative ways and depicts scientists and engineers in a realistic and compelling fashion.
The Fountain tells the tale of a man's efforts to save the woman he loves over the course of 1,500 years. It stars Hugh Jackman, Rachel Weisz and Ellen Burstyn and was written and directed by Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream). The film garnered raves in its preview screening at Comic-Con International in San Diego in July, but has been blasted by critics at film festivals in Venice and Toronto.
"Although its themes and characters sprawl over 1,000 years, from the 16th to the 26th centuries, and invoke myth and fantasy as well as science, Darren Aronofsky's powerful central story is about a contemporary scientist who tries to save his beloved wife from cancer through scientific research and experimentation," the Sloan foundation said in a statement. "In accurately depicting the enormous potential—and very real limits—of modern scientific efforts to cure disease and extend human life, this beautiful symphony on what it means to lose someone you love pushes the frontiers of time and space to reveal that humanity and mortality may be inextricable, and only art, for now, can bestow immortality."
The Hamptons/Sloan feature-film prize comes from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's program in public understanding of science, which also includes the Sundance and Tribeca film festivals, to form part of a broader effort to stimulate leading artists in film, television and theater to create more credible works about science and technology.
Motherhood Helped Open's Messing
Debra Messing, who voices a park ranger in the upcoming animated comedy film Open Season, told SCI FI Wire she did the part before and after giving birth to her first child, which helped her understand her character's nurturing qualities. "I did some of the voice of Beth while I was pregnant, and some afterward," Messing said in an interview. "The lullaby [scene] was done after giving birth, and, yeah, I think it helped."
Messing gave birth to her son, Roman, in 2004, and the experience helped her define her character, which was not as fleshed out when she first took on the role opposite Martin Lawrence. Lawrence voices a bear named Boog, whom Beth raises from a cub.
"They said in the beginning that this character wasn't really well defined, but that they wanted me to make it as personal as possible and wanted me to really represent the female point of view as much as possible," Messing said. "Obviously, with the guys and the animals, it's so comic, and it's so playful, and then you have this other element of the maternal child relationship, nurturing, the struggle of knowing when to let go, when to encourage change and how to do that."
Messing said having a baby changed a lot for her, and she wasn't sure if it would translate to her character. "I didn't know if it would be interesting enough for the audience members to actually invest in, but they were really encouraging me the whole time to, as they said, give it as much heart as possible and to ground the film as much as possible," Messing said. "So I'm sure that had I done this before having a child ... I mean, I'm an actor, and it's my job to imagine, and so I would've attempted to do the same thing. I think that because I am a new mother, it was just accessible to me and very understandable to me. It's very easy to understand wanting to protect your child and not wanting to send them somewhere where you don't have control of them and you're not sure that they're going to be OK or happy or safe or whatever and what that would feel like." Open Season opens Sept. 29. —Mike Szymanski
It's Open Season On Hunters
The cast and crew of the upcoming animated movie Open Season told SCI FI Wire the movie has an anti-hunting message. "I think that hunting and killing anything for sport, just for fun, is just something that I can't wrap my mind around," Debra Messing, who voices an anti-hunting park ranger, said in an interview. "I wish that it didn't exist."
Open Season, the animated feature from Sony Pictures Animation, follows Messing's character, Beth, who raises a bear cub named Boog (voiced by Martin Lawrence). She needs to release him into the wilderness because he's getting too big for their small town.
The idea of the story came to syndicated cartoonist Steve Moore (creator of the In the Bleachers comic strip) when he read news accounts about wild animals that get domesticated because they live so close to cities. "Animals would invariably do something to seriously annoy the townspeople, and they would be tranquilized and moved to the wilderness," Moore said. "I always wondered what happened once they were dropped off in the wild, having lived on leftovers most of their lives. How did they survive in the woods?"
The movie also stars Ashton Kutcher, Patrick Warburton, Billy Connolly, Jon Favreau, Jane Krakowski and Georgia Engel. The film is scheduled to be released nationally on Sept. 29. In the story, the animals in the wild mount a counterattack against a group of hunters. Lawrence, who voices the lazy bear, quipped, "I don't know that much about hunting. The only thing I've ever hunted was roaches." —Mike Szymanski
Season Stars Had Toon Love
Martin Lawrence and Debra Messing, who voice characters in the upcoming animated film Open Season, told SCI FI Wire that they signed on because of a love for animation that goes back to childhood. "I always loved animation," Lawrence said in an interview. "When I was growing up, my favorites were Batman, Superman and Underdog, but most of all The Flintstones. I loved Fred. They were like my favorites. I felt like if anyone could stop a car with their feet, I mean, how can you not be impressed with that?"
Messing cited Disney's Winnie the Pooh as her favorite, which encouraged her to want to voice a cartoon character. "I loved Winnie the Pooh when I was a child," she said. "I loved The Little Mermaid and Charlotte's Web, too."
In Open Season, the inaugural feature from Sony Pictures Animation, Messing voices a park ranger named Beth who has a pet grizzly bear named Boog (Lawrence). Beth has to return Boog to the wild just as hunting season begins. Gary Sinise voices the role of Shaw, a mean-spirited hunter who wants Boog as one of his trophies.
"I think it's important to introduce animation to children, at least the parts that aren't scary," said Messing, who was pregnant during the making of Open Season and now has a 2-year-old son named Roman. "His first love was Winnie the Pooh, too. I would show him the non-scary parts of The Lion King, like the singing. He loved the songs. He loved 'Hakuna Matata,' so he would sing. And also The Jungle Book."
Open Season also features the voices of Ashton Kutcher, Patrick Warburton, Billy Connolly, Jon Favreau, Jane Krakowski and Georgia Engel. It opens nationwide on Sept. 29. —Mike Szymanski
Leondis To Helm Igor
The Weinstein Co. has tapped Tony Leondis to direct the upcoming animated film Igor, Variety reported.
Leondis served as a writer on the animated films The Prince of Egypt and Home on the Range and also helmed the home-video release Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch has a Glitch.
Igor, from Exodus Film Group, examines the machinations of a mad scientist's assistant. Christian Slater and John Cleese are among those voicing characters. John Eraklis and Max Howard produce; Chris McKenna is penning the script.
Kraken Name Game Praised
Charlie O'Connell, who stars in the upcoming SCI FI Channel original movie Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep, http://www.scifi.com/kraken/ told SCI FI Wire that he thought it was a brilliant idea to have SCIFI.COM visitors pick the movie's name. Kraken was originally titled Deadly Water and features former Sliders star O'Connell, Victoria Pratt and Jack Scalia battling a massive squid that protects a much-sought-after relic.
"That was a lot of fun," O'Connell said in an interview. "The only thing that threw me off was that in the beginning I was telling my mother to look out for Deadly Waters. But I think [Kraken] is a great name, and I think it's a lot of fun to have the fans interact right from the beginning. I think it gets [the movie] a lot more hype." (A kraken is a legendary sea monster, taken from an old Norwegian word.)
O'Connell said that he had a great time shooting Kraken. Part of it, he explained, had to do with the fact that he's a major SF fan. "I've been doing sci-fi ever since I did Sliders with my brother [Jerry O'Connell], and that was for SCI FI. It's a lot of fun, because every day is different, and you don't know what to expect. On Kraken, it was a lot of action, a lot of running around. At one point I got to shoot what I call the 'Rambo gun.' I don't know; I have a lot of fun doing these things. And being able to scuba dive [in Kraken] was very enjoyable." Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep premiered Sept. 23 at 9 p.m. ET/PT. —Ian Spelling
San Giacomo Joins Grace
Laura San Giacomo has been tapped to co-star opposite Holly Hunter in TNT's supernatural drama pilot Grace, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Leon Rippy and Bokeem Woodbine also have been cast in the project, from Fox TV Studios.
Grace centers on a jaded Oklahoma City police detective (Hunter) who is visited by an irascible angel (Rippy) and offered an opportunity to redeem her life. San Giacomo will play Grace's best friend, a forensic scientist. Woodbine will play a death-row inmate who also can see the angel.
In other pilot-casting news, Ty Burrell and model Brooklyn Decker round out the cast of the NBC/NBC Universal TV Studio comedy Lipshitz Saves the World. The single-camera show centers on a 17-year-old social outcast (Jack Carpenter) who finds out that he might be "the one" to save the world with the help of Leslie Nielsen. Burrell will play Lipshitz's nemesis, the Man in Red, while Decker will play Lipshitz's love interest.
NBC and NBC Universal TV are owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
BioWare Moves Into Hand-Helds
Computer games company BioWare (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire) has formed a new division to develop hand-held games because "hand-held technology is now at a point where we can create those rich and amazing adventures that we've had in mind for some time," Dan Tudge, project director of the BioWare Handheld Game Group, told SCI FI Wire.
Hand-held gamers tend to be younger, Tudge said. "Japan makes up the largest portion of that audience," he added. "The Japanese market is obviously very strong, but it's also an extremely tough market for us as a North American company to break into."
BioWare, which currently produces games for the PC, Xbox and upcoming Xbox 360, will begin producing games for the Nintendo DS. "The Nintendo DS was better suited to our needs for our first project, but we're always open to considering other platforms as well," Tudge said. He is keeping mum about upcoming titles, but said that BioWare fans should expect story and character-driven titles as usual. —Carol Pinchefsky
New Ghost Gets Bloody
John Gray, executive producer of CBS' supernatural series Ghost Whisperer, told SCI FI Wire that the series will continue to develop its ghostly mythology with the introduction of a new mysterious character, Bleeding Man, when the series premieres this week. "He shows up at the end of episode two," Gray said in an interview. "All you really see of him is from behind, and he is watching Melinda [Jennifer Love Hewitt]. And the first few times he appears, she's not aware of him, and his hands hang at his side. But his right hand is just drenched with blood and dripping blood."
Last season introduced the ghostly characters Laughing Man and Wide Brim Man to the show's mythology. This season, the story of the Bleeding Man will evolve over the first few episodes until we learn who he is and what he wants, Gray said.
Ghost Whisperer stars Hewitt as Melinda Gordon, a young woman who helps the dead cross over. Last season, Melinda's best friend, Andrea (Aisha Tyler), was killed when an airplane crashed into her car in a shocking season finale that was reminiscent of The Sixth Sense. In the last moments of the episode, Wide Brim Man was headed toward Andrea, indicating her soul was in jeopardy.
"The big question now is will Andrea cross over?" Gray said. "And how will that come about, if it comes about? What happens if it doesn't come about? All those things. That's what we'll be tackling in the first new episode."
The cagey Gray added that just because a character dies on the show, that doesn't mean he or she won't pop up again on a regular basis. "That is the beauty part of our show," he said with a laugh.
This season Ghost Whisperer will also introduce two new living characters, played by Camryn Manheim and Jay Mohr. Manheim will play a real-estate agent with an office on the square; Mohr will play a skeptical professor of the supernatural. Also look for both Melinda's mom, who was played by Anne Archer, and Jim's mom, who was played by Christine Baranski, to make a return visit.
"Mostly we're still going to stick with our core, our nucleus, of emotional stories, and get a good scare and a good cry," Gray said. "And continue to develop Melinda as a character and her relationship and her world. Then we'll also be just weaving in how her world is affected by the mythology that we choose and the ongoing good and evil elements of that. It's going to be like last year, but more." The second season of Ghost Whisperer premiered Sept. 22 at 8 p.m. ET/PT. —Kathie Huddleston
Part 1 of 2
Buffy Lives--In Comics
Dark Horse Comics will publish a new series of Buffy the Vampire Slayer comics that will pick up the story of the cult TV show and act as a de facto eighth season, Comics Continuum http://www.comicscontinuum.com/stories/0609/18/index.htm reported.
The new Buffy series is targeted for a March launch, and the first story arc will be a four-part series that will chronicle events after the Buffy television series' finale, which aired in 2003. Buffy creator Joss Whedon will write, with art by Georges Jeanty.
G4 To Air Spaceballs Series
MGM TV has commissioned an animated series based on Mel Brooks' 1987 Spaceballs movie and sold exclusive rights in the U.S. to Comcast's G4 cable network, Variety reported.
Encompassing a one-hour pilot and 13 half-hour episodes, the project represents the first scripted series green-lighted by the new TV division at MGM, led by Jim Packer, president of the worldwide TV distribution group. The series kicks off on G4 in fall 2007, the trade paper reported.
Although the movie grossed only $38.1 million in the United States, the Star Wars satire has become a successful franchise on DVD and in cable and pay TV reruns.
Brooks and Thomas Meehan, who co-wrote the movie with Ronnie Graham, have written the one-hour pilot, and Meehan will supervise the writing of the 13 half-hours. Brooks will do two of the voices, President Skroob and Yogurt. Germany's Berliner Film Companie will provide the animation.
Who Season Two DVD Due
The complete second season of the BBC's new Doctor Who series http://www.scifi.com/doctorwho/ will be released on DVD in the United States on Jan. 16, 2007, BBC Worldwide Americas executives told SCI FI Wire. "We're over the moon with Doctor Who," said Megan Branigan, vice president of BBC video marketing, in an interview. "We're really pleased with the results this year. We're very excited to continue the momentum with [season] two as we did with [season] one." (The second season of Doctor Who will air in the United States on SCI FI Channel, starting Sept. 29.)
The six-disc set will feature a lenticular cover http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=10&id=2673&type=10 depicting David Tennant, who takes over the role of the Doctor from Christopher Eccleston, and Billie Piper as his traveling companion, Rose Tyler. Bonus features will include video diaries from Tennant and Piper, as well as episodes of the behind-the-scenes series Doctor Who Confidential, which ran concurrently with the show when it aired in the United Kingdom. The date of the release, and future releases, was timed to fall on the Tuesday following the airing of the second series finale, "Doomsday," on SCI FI Channel, Branigan said.
The content on the U.S. release will be identical to the version available in the U.K., which is due in November. "It's done that way on purpose, because it really is a global program," Branigan said. "We've agreed with the BBC that our fans in the U.K. would notice tremendously if the content was different, and we did actually do that with some of the classic Whos. And we got some feedback that people were upset because they had already bought the U.K. edition, and then all of a sudden ours got put out, and we had added value. So we decided as a global company to do [just one version]."
Like the program itself, the DVD is designed to appeal to longtime fans of the franchise, as well as to those whose familiarity with the Doctor is limited to the new incarnation. "It's the best of both worlds, because we're appealing to both the core fans and to this new audience," Branigan said. "I mean, the program does that all on its own. And SCI FI does that for us, too. Because it's more mainstream, maybe it brings more of an audience to SCI FI that they didn't have as well. But certainly the people who are watching the SCI FI Channel are a perfect target for the program." —Cindy White
USA Re-Enters Dead Zone
USA Network ordered up a 13-episode sixth season of its hit supernatural thriller series The Dead Zone, starring Anthony Michael Hall, Variety reported. The basic cable network also gave an order for a 16-episode second season of Psych, its comic one-hour show about an investigator who pretends to have paranormal abilities.
Psych airs Fridays; The Dead Zone airs with The 4400 on Sundays.
Dead Zone was an unlikely candidate for renewal: Shot in Vancouver, the show has grown more expensive over the years, rising from a production cost of $1.2 million per episode to about $1.7 million.
USA Network is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Lost Season 2 DVD Is Tops
The second season of ABC's hit SF series Lost debuted at number one on the national DVD sales chart for the week ending Sept. 10, beating Universal Studios' United 93, which came in second, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Lost is believed to be only the second TV-DVD set to snag the top spot on VideoScan's First Alert chart in its first week in stores. The first-season set of Lost, released in September 2005, bowed at number two, the trade paper reported.
Only three other new releases made it onto the First Alert top 20 their first week in stores, led by another TV-DVD set, Warner's Supernatural: The Complete First Season, which entered the chart at number 12.
New Tolkien Book Coming
An unfinished tale by Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien has been edited by his son into a completed work and will be released next spring, the U.S. and British publishers told the Associated Press.
Christopher Tolkien has spent the past 30 years working on The Children of Hurin, an epic tale his father began in 1918 and later abandoned. Excerpts of The Children of Hurin, which includes the elves and dwarves of Tolkien's Rings and other works, have been published before.
The new book will be published by Houghton Mifflin in the United States and HarperCollins in England.
Lost Game Comes To Close
The alternate-reality game The Lost Experience, based on ABC's hit SF series, came to a close at 8 p.m. PT on Sept. 24 with a live worldwide Internet radio broadcast http://abc.go.com/ hosted by the renegade DJ Dan, ABC announced. The broadcast will also feature a special in-studio guest and announce a link for the final video clue revealing the truth behind the actions of the Hanso Foundation.
The game has already revealed the secrets http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=1&id=38050 behind the show's numbers (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42) and the agenda of the mysterious Dharma Initiative.
The Lost third-season premiere, "A Tale of Two Cities," premieres Oct. 4 in the show's regular Wednesday timeslot, 9 p.m. ET/PT.
Old Friends Turn Up Lost
Many familiar faces return in the upcoming third-season premiere of ABC's hit SF series Lost, "A Tale of Two Cities," including William Mapother's deceased Ethan and John Terry's Christian Shephard, Jack's father, the network announced. The episode, written by co-creators J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof from a story by Lindelof, also marks the return of Julie Bowen as Jack's wife, Sarah, who was last seen in the season-two episode "The Hunting Party."
In "A Tale of Two Cities," Jack (Matthew Fox), Kate (Evangeline Lilly) and Sawyer (Josh Holloway) begin to discover what they are up against as prisoners of the Others, led by Henry Gale (new series regular Michael Emerson), ABC said.
Besides Mapother, Terry and Bowen, the premiere's guest stars include M.C. Gainey as the Others' Mr. Friendly (aka Zeke), Brett Cullen as Goodwin, Blake Bashoff as Karl, Julie Adams as Amelia, Stephen Semel as Adam, Isabelle Cherwin as a little girl, Alexandra Morgan as a moderator, Sonya Seng as a receptionist, Sally Davis as a teacher and Julie Ow as a nurse. Jack Bender directed "A Tale of Two Cities," which premieres Oct. 4 in Lost's regular Wednesday timeslot, 9 p.m. ET/PT.
Lost Girls Selling Out
Lost Girls, the tastefully pornographic fantasy graphic novel from acclaimed writer Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie, sold out its entire 10,000-copy first printing in one day after hitting stores on Aug. 31, publisher Top Shelf reported.
Lost Girls, which conflates the stories of the fictional literary characters of Alice, Wendy and Dorothy, hit the top-20 list on Amazon.com and by the following Friday had back orders exceeding the second printing of 10,000, which is scheduled to hit stores in October.
Top Shelf has ordered another 20,000 copies for the third printing, to arrive in December.
Heroes' Grunberg Shapes Up
Greg Grunberg, one of the stars of NBC's upcoming superhero drama Heroes, told SCI FI Wire that he trying to get into shape because it fits his role as a police officer who develops psychic powers. "[Creator and executive producer Tim Kring] keeps telling me to eat more doughnuts and don't lose so much weight," Grunberg said in an interview. " I want to get into great shape. I mean, for health reasons I think it's great, but I've always wanted to just get into much better shape, and I'm going to take this opportunity to do that with this character."
Grunberg, who makes his first appearance in the second episode of the series, added that he sees the positive changes in his character's life as a result of his emerging ability. "We all have things in life that we want to do or aspire to, and it takes a kick in the butt sometimes to really [do them], whether it be a change in location or a new job or something," he said. "And we've been putting it off, putting it off. We know we should do it. For this character, ... his name is Matt Parkman, he's an LAPD cop. He wants to be a better cop. He wants to investigate bigger crimes and be where the action is. Suddenly he gets the one ability that a cop needs, which is information. And he gets it in a way that no one needs to know where he's getting that information. It's exactly what a cop needs to solve crimes as quickly as possible and be the best he can be. But that, I think, then changes the rest of his life."
Though his character's mind-reading power gives him an advantage both at work and at home (he uses it to please his wife in bed, Grunberg reveals), he isn't able to control them yet. "We're on the seventh episode, and I'm still having a hard time dealing with it," Grunberg said. "It really plays into exactly what Tim's talked about, which is these people [are] dealing with it like anyone else would, waking up and discovering they have these abilities. So it's far from being mastered yet. I hope my character doesn't get to master his power for a long time to come." Heroes premieres Sept. 25 and will air Mondays at 9 p.m. ET/PT. NBC is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM. —Cindy White
[b]Heroes Has Online Comic
Tim Kring, creator and executive producer of NBC's superhero drama Heroes, told SCI FI Wire that the the series will be accompanied by a Web comic at NBC.com http://heroes.nbc.com/ that will become an integral part of the show itself. "Just to give a little spoiler to everybody, the audience should look for the idea of the comic book to play a huge part internally inside the show," Kring said in an interview.
The weekly Heroes Web comic will run concurrently with the series and will have some relevance to the episode airing that week. "People can log on and view and sort of interact with the online comic book every week in conjunction with the episodes," Kring said. "And the comic won't be necessarily about that episode, but it will further enhance your viewing of the show. It will be sometimes an alternative look at what you've seen, or the other side of what you've seen, or a story that just sort of enhances your appreciation of the characters."
The series has a close connection to the world of comics, with comic-book writer Jeph Loeb on board as a writer and producer and artist Tim Sale providing drawings for one of the characters on the show, an artist who paints images of the future. The two were instrumental in attracting other well-known names to the online comic, including Jim Lee and Michael Turner. The stories will be provided by the show's writers.
Kring. who is overseeing the online comic and will also be involved in breaking the stories, said that the project has been time-consuming but was always part of the show's original conception. "We knew that this was coming," he said. "This show was always sort of going to have a large online and Internet component attached to it. So in the development of the show and preparation for launching the show, we took a lot of that into consideration. So we tried to carve out time and money and personnel to sort of handle that." Heroes premieres Sept. 25 and will air Mondays at 9 p.m. ET/PT. NBC is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM. —Cindy White
Jericho Asks 'What If?'
Jon Turteltaub, the executive producer of CBS' upcoming post-apocalyptic drama series Jericho, told SCI FI Wire that he did research about what might happen after a nuclear attack and was surprised by the answers he found. "This is going to sound odd, but a nuclear bomb is not as bad as everybody thinks," Turteltaub in an interview. "Without question on the scale of things in the world, it's on the bad scale of things that can happen. Puppies are on the really good side of things [laughs]. But sometimes we have this image that one nuclear bomb would take out all of New York City and Brooklyn and Queens and parts of New Jersey."
That wouldn't be the case with the initial blast, Turteltaub (National Treasure) added. "Part of the question is how much of the area is uninhabitable versus how much in our perception and our fears is uninhabitable," he said. "Coping with our own panic may be a greater enemy than the reality of these things."
Jericho follows the residents of the title Kansas small town, who witness a mushroom cloud on the horizon and lose all contact with the outside world. The series stars Skeet Ulrich, Gerald McRaney, Pamela Reed, Ashley Scott and Sprague Grayden.
"Those of us in New York who went through the blackout and those of us in L.A. who went through the riots and those of us in New Orleans who went through the hurricane, and on and on, understand how close all of us are to chaos," Turteltaub said. "We instantly can be put in this place where everything can just fall apart. And we know how thoroughly unprepared we are to trust ourselves to survive."
Turteltaub, who directed the pilot episode, said the situation in which the characters of Jericho find themselves will test them in every way. "In [an] odd way it's sort of the best of science fiction," he said. "It is allowing the 'what if?' to become reality, which I think science [fiction] has been charged with since it began. You always start with your hypothesis, and then you take that 'what if?' and try to get the most honest answer, which is not always the extraordinary answer. It can often be a simple, human and painful answer." Jericho premiered Sept. 20 and will air Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT. —Kathie Huddleston
Fountain Wins Sloane Award
Darren Aronofsky's controversial SF epic The Fountain will receive the $25,000 Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Award, to be presented at the Hamptons International Film Festival, which takes place Oct. 18-22 on Long Island, New York.
The cash prize is awarded to a feature-length film that explores science and technology themes in fresh, innovative ways and depicts scientists and engineers in a realistic and compelling fashion.
The Fountain tells the tale of a man's efforts to save the woman he loves over the course of 1,500 years. It stars Hugh Jackman, Rachel Weisz and Ellen Burstyn and was written and directed by Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream). The film garnered raves in its preview screening at Comic-Con International in San Diego in July, but has been blasted by critics at film festivals in Venice and Toronto.
"Although its themes and characters sprawl over 1,000 years, from the 16th to the 26th centuries, and invoke myth and fantasy as well as science, Darren Aronofsky's powerful central story is about a contemporary scientist who tries to save his beloved wife from cancer through scientific research and experimentation," the Sloan foundation said in a statement. "In accurately depicting the enormous potential—and very real limits—of modern scientific efforts to cure disease and extend human life, this beautiful symphony on what it means to lose someone you love pushes the frontiers of time and space to reveal that humanity and mortality may be inextricable, and only art, for now, can bestow immortality."
The Hamptons/Sloan feature-film prize comes from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's program in public understanding of science, which also includes the Sundance and Tribeca film festivals, to form part of a broader effort to stimulate leading artists in film, television and theater to create more credible works about science and technology.
Motherhood Helped Open's Messing
Debra Messing, who voices a park ranger in the upcoming animated comedy film Open Season, told SCI FI Wire she did the part before and after giving birth to her first child, which helped her understand her character's nurturing qualities. "I did some of the voice of Beth while I was pregnant, and some afterward," Messing said in an interview. "The lullaby [scene] was done after giving birth, and, yeah, I think it helped."
Messing gave birth to her son, Roman, in 2004, and the experience helped her define her character, which was not as fleshed out when she first took on the role opposite Martin Lawrence. Lawrence voices a bear named Boog, whom Beth raises from a cub.
"They said in the beginning that this character wasn't really well defined, but that they wanted me to make it as personal as possible and wanted me to really represent the female point of view as much as possible," Messing said. "Obviously, with the guys and the animals, it's so comic, and it's so playful, and then you have this other element of the maternal child relationship, nurturing, the struggle of knowing when to let go, when to encourage change and how to do that."
Messing said having a baby changed a lot for her, and she wasn't sure if it would translate to her character. "I didn't know if it would be interesting enough for the audience members to actually invest in, but they were really encouraging me the whole time to, as they said, give it as much heart as possible and to ground the film as much as possible," Messing said. "So I'm sure that had I done this before having a child ... I mean, I'm an actor, and it's my job to imagine, and so I would've attempted to do the same thing. I think that because I am a new mother, it was just accessible to me and very understandable to me. It's very easy to understand wanting to protect your child and not wanting to send them somewhere where you don't have control of them and you're not sure that they're going to be OK or happy or safe or whatever and what that would feel like." Open Season opens Sept. 29. —Mike Szymanski
It's Open Season On Hunters
The cast and crew of the upcoming animated movie Open Season told SCI FI Wire the movie has an anti-hunting message. "I think that hunting and killing anything for sport, just for fun, is just something that I can't wrap my mind around," Debra Messing, who voices an anti-hunting park ranger, said in an interview. "I wish that it didn't exist."
Open Season, the animated feature from Sony Pictures Animation, follows Messing's character, Beth, who raises a bear cub named Boog (voiced by Martin Lawrence). She needs to release him into the wilderness because he's getting too big for their small town.
The idea of the story came to syndicated cartoonist Steve Moore (creator of the In the Bleachers comic strip) when he read news accounts about wild animals that get domesticated because they live so close to cities. "Animals would invariably do something to seriously annoy the townspeople, and they would be tranquilized and moved to the wilderness," Moore said. "I always wondered what happened once they were dropped off in the wild, having lived on leftovers most of their lives. How did they survive in the woods?"
The movie also stars Ashton Kutcher, Patrick Warburton, Billy Connolly, Jon Favreau, Jane Krakowski and Georgia Engel. The film is scheduled to be released nationally on Sept. 29. In the story, the animals in the wild mount a counterattack against a group of hunters. Lawrence, who voices the lazy bear, quipped, "I don't know that much about hunting. The only thing I've ever hunted was roaches." —Mike Szymanski
Season Stars Had Toon Love
Martin Lawrence and Debra Messing, who voice characters in the upcoming animated film Open Season, told SCI FI Wire that they signed on because of a love for animation that goes back to childhood. "I always loved animation," Lawrence said in an interview. "When I was growing up, my favorites were Batman, Superman and Underdog, but most of all The Flintstones. I loved Fred. They were like my favorites. I felt like if anyone could stop a car with their feet, I mean, how can you not be impressed with that?"
Messing cited Disney's Winnie the Pooh as her favorite, which encouraged her to want to voice a cartoon character. "I loved Winnie the Pooh when I was a child," she said. "I loved The Little Mermaid and Charlotte's Web, too."
In Open Season, the inaugural feature from Sony Pictures Animation, Messing voices a park ranger named Beth who has a pet grizzly bear named Boog (Lawrence). Beth has to return Boog to the wild just as hunting season begins. Gary Sinise voices the role of Shaw, a mean-spirited hunter who wants Boog as one of his trophies.
"I think it's important to introduce animation to children, at least the parts that aren't scary," said Messing, who was pregnant during the making of Open Season and now has a 2-year-old son named Roman. "His first love was Winnie the Pooh, too. I would show him the non-scary parts of The Lion King, like the singing. He loved the songs. He loved 'Hakuna Matata,' so he would sing. And also The Jungle Book."
Open Season also features the voices of Ashton Kutcher, Patrick Warburton, Billy Connolly, Jon Favreau, Jane Krakowski and Georgia Engel. It opens nationwide on Sept. 29. —Mike Szymanski
Leondis To Helm Igor
The Weinstein Co. has tapped Tony Leondis to direct the upcoming animated film Igor, Variety reported.
Leondis served as a writer on the animated films The Prince of Egypt and Home on the Range and also helmed the home-video release Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch has a Glitch.
Igor, from Exodus Film Group, examines the machinations of a mad scientist's assistant. Christian Slater and John Cleese are among those voicing characters. John Eraklis and Max Howard produce; Chris McKenna is penning the script.
Kraken Name Game Praised
Charlie O'Connell, who stars in the upcoming SCI FI Channel original movie Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep, http://www.scifi.com/kraken/ told SCI FI Wire that he thought it was a brilliant idea to have SCIFI.COM visitors pick the movie's name. Kraken was originally titled Deadly Water and features former Sliders star O'Connell, Victoria Pratt and Jack Scalia battling a massive squid that protects a much-sought-after relic.
"That was a lot of fun," O'Connell said in an interview. "The only thing that threw me off was that in the beginning I was telling my mother to look out for Deadly Waters. But I think [Kraken] is a great name, and I think it's a lot of fun to have the fans interact right from the beginning. I think it gets [the movie] a lot more hype." (A kraken is a legendary sea monster, taken from an old Norwegian word.)
O'Connell said that he had a great time shooting Kraken. Part of it, he explained, had to do with the fact that he's a major SF fan. "I've been doing sci-fi ever since I did Sliders with my brother [Jerry O'Connell], and that was for SCI FI. It's a lot of fun, because every day is different, and you don't know what to expect. On Kraken, it was a lot of action, a lot of running around. At one point I got to shoot what I call the 'Rambo gun.' I don't know; I have a lot of fun doing these things. And being able to scuba dive [in Kraken] was very enjoyable." Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep premiered Sept. 23 at 9 p.m. ET/PT. —Ian Spelling
San Giacomo Joins Grace
Laura San Giacomo has been tapped to co-star opposite Holly Hunter in TNT's supernatural drama pilot Grace, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Leon Rippy and Bokeem Woodbine also have been cast in the project, from Fox TV Studios.
Grace centers on a jaded Oklahoma City police detective (Hunter) who is visited by an irascible angel (Rippy) and offered an opportunity to redeem her life. San Giacomo will play Grace's best friend, a forensic scientist. Woodbine will play a death-row inmate who also can see the angel.
In other pilot-casting news, Ty Burrell and model Brooklyn Decker round out the cast of the NBC/NBC Universal TV Studio comedy Lipshitz Saves the World. The single-camera show centers on a 17-year-old social outcast (Jack Carpenter) who finds out that he might be "the one" to save the world with the help of Leslie Nielsen. Burrell will play Lipshitz's nemesis, the Man in Red, while Decker will play Lipshitz's love interest.
NBC and NBC Universal TV are owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
BioWare Moves Into Hand-Helds
Computer games company BioWare (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire) has formed a new division to develop hand-held games because "hand-held technology is now at a point where we can create those rich and amazing adventures that we've had in mind for some time," Dan Tudge, project director of the BioWare Handheld Game Group, told SCI FI Wire.
Hand-held gamers tend to be younger, Tudge said. "Japan makes up the largest portion of that audience," he added. "The Japanese market is obviously very strong, but it's also an extremely tough market for us as a North American company to break into."
BioWare, which currently produces games for the PC, Xbox and upcoming Xbox 360, will begin producing games for the Nintendo DS. "The Nintendo DS was better suited to our needs for our first project, but we're always open to considering other platforms as well," Tudge said. He is keeping mum about upcoming titles, but said that BioWare fans should expect story and character-driven titles as usual. —Carol Pinchefsky
New Ghost Gets Bloody
John Gray, executive producer of CBS' supernatural series Ghost Whisperer, told SCI FI Wire that the series will continue to develop its ghostly mythology with the introduction of a new mysterious character, Bleeding Man, when the series premieres this week. "He shows up at the end of episode two," Gray said in an interview. "All you really see of him is from behind, and he is watching Melinda [Jennifer Love Hewitt]. And the first few times he appears, she's not aware of him, and his hands hang at his side. But his right hand is just drenched with blood and dripping blood."
Last season introduced the ghostly characters Laughing Man and Wide Brim Man to the show's mythology. This season, the story of the Bleeding Man will evolve over the first few episodes until we learn who he is and what he wants, Gray said.
Ghost Whisperer stars Hewitt as Melinda Gordon, a young woman who helps the dead cross over. Last season, Melinda's best friend, Andrea (Aisha Tyler), was killed when an airplane crashed into her car in a shocking season finale that was reminiscent of The Sixth Sense. In the last moments of the episode, Wide Brim Man was headed toward Andrea, indicating her soul was in jeopardy.
"The big question now is will Andrea cross over?" Gray said. "And how will that come about, if it comes about? What happens if it doesn't come about? All those things. That's what we'll be tackling in the first new episode."
The cagey Gray added that just because a character dies on the show, that doesn't mean he or she won't pop up again on a regular basis. "That is the beauty part of our show," he said with a laugh.
This season Ghost Whisperer will also introduce two new living characters, played by Camryn Manheim and Jay Mohr. Manheim will play a real-estate agent with an office on the square; Mohr will play a skeptical professor of the supernatural. Also look for both Melinda's mom, who was played by Anne Archer, and Jim's mom, who was played by Christine Baranski, to make a return visit.
"Mostly we're still going to stick with our core, our nucleus, of emotional stories, and get a good scare and a good cry," Gray said. "And continue to develop Melinda as a character and her relationship and her world. Then we'll also be just weaving in how her world is affected by the mythology that we choose and the ongoing good and evil elements of that. It's going to be like last year, but more." The second season of Ghost Whisperer premiered Sept. 22 at 8 p.m. ET/PT. —Kathie Huddleston