Sci-Fi Storm

In an amazing talk in from of the Television Critics Association that probably has some of the producers a bit on edge, Edward James Olmos, who plays Adama in the upcoming Battlestar Galactica remake on SCI FI, said that if you are a die-hard fan of the original, that he “would not advise them to watch this program. It will hurt them . . .”. Apparently only the starting premise really has been preserved – humans see their homeworld destroyed, and decide to continue to fight. Beyond that, forget about following the original series.

Graydon Gould to appear at San Diego Convention!

Voice of Mike Mercury will sign at the Misc!MAYHEM
/A&E Home Video Booth.

Graydon Gould, fondly remembered by Gerry Anderson fans as the voice of SUPERCAR’s Mike Mercury, will be making a rare American appearance as the guest of Misc!MAYHEM and A&E Home Video at this year’s Comic-Con International 2003. The Comic-Con runs from July 17 -20 at the San Diego Convention Center.

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SCI FI Channel has previewed some of its plans for original movies for the 2004-2005 season. Part of the slate includes: Dead Rail, with a detective on a new bullet train fights aliens; Darklight, with an immortal warrior vs. genetically engineered creature complete with deadly virus; Chupacabra, where the mythical “Goatsucker” escapes in America; Raptor Island, where a search for a kidnapped scientist turns up everybody’s favorite carnivore; Mansquito and Hammerhead, both human-turned-creature flicks; Alien Blood, a vaguely V-like premise, except it sounds like they don’t pretend to be friends; and Larva, your worst nightmare about that hamburger you left out too long…

According to SCI FI Wire, James Cameron told BBCi (I couldn’t find the original page) that “To an extent, yes,” that they are looking at making Alien 5, in a vein similar to Aliens with a bunch of great characters – and Ripley would be back. The interesting twist – adding Arnold Schwarzenegger to the cast – possibly as the Terminator.

Yes, this is late, but I didn’t have time…there has been a bit of discussion in rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated regarding why no issues of the JMS-written Rising Stars have been released in a while. Finally, as a postscript to an unrelated post he gave a link (indirectly) to this column – scroll down to “Rise and Fall”. The gist of it is – there is a dispute between JMS and Top Cow over the handling of the script of the possible Rising Stars movie. The original JMS script was sent to the Russo Brothers for a “polish” – but after a long wait a chance meeting between JMS and the head of the production company involved resulted in JMS finding out that TWO complete rewrites had been turned in – even though Top Cow claimed otherwise. Also the new writers never met with JMS (against WGA policy), and completely reversed the intent of the original, with the “whole thing has just been dumbed down.”

We’re back online after a few hours of lack of power. A large power outage not only took the server down, but the network it is attached to, but all is well now. Expect more news (albeit late – haven’t had much time) later today or tomorrow.

Here is just a few of the items of note that I’ve been catching up on: The original Battlestar Galactica will be released on DVD on October 21st – both the complete series and the theatrical movie will be released and are available for pre-order now; Spielberg has reportedly dropped out of the production of the new Indiana Jones movie; Viacom and Activision are sparring over the Trek franchise; and Ashton Kutcher is the latest Batman rumor.

I’m back, and here is a quick review of where I’ve been – Walt Disney World. It’s at least partially relevant 🙂 Hey, none of you sent in a story… 🙂

Update: A couple of additions of things I forgot to mention.

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