Sci-Fi Storm

The latest installment of the X-Men franchise set two records this weekend – the best 4-day Memorial Weekend take at $120.1 million, and the 4th best 3-day opening ever at $103.1 million. The Da Vinci Code placed second ($43 million for the 4 days), and animated Over the Hedge came in third ($35.3M). Mission: Impossible III continues to fade, earning only $8.6 million.

I think the SCI FI Channel has gone WAYYYY out of their core programming now. SFC announced today that it is teaming up with World Wrestling Entertainment to re-launch WWE’s Extreme Championship Wrestling brand. Beginning on June 13th at 10pm, SFC will begin airing ECW programming “suited” for the channel. Now, if they wanted a more SF-bent wrestling, they should have checked out Kaiju Big Battel. Where else can you see giant plantains take on japanese monsters and the evil Dr. Cube…

Tom Johnson writes “Has anyone else heard about a new scifi podcast that’s coming soon? I can’t remember where I heard about it but its supposed to be all about sci-fi, games, conventions and the best part is its supposed to be done by an “industry insider”. I didn’t see many details other than that but its supposed to be hitting soon. Anyone else heard about it?” Anyone know of this? Podcasts seem to be getting as common as blogs…

Bryan Burk, executive producer on Lost, has signed on to work on Star Trek XI with Lost co-workers Damon Lindelof and J.J. Abrams. Speaking at the fan-run charity event “Destination: L.A. 2”, he also spoke about the rumored plot, which SCI FI Wire says he “dismissed”, but the quote indicates only that reports leaked “prematurely” and that “…no formal statement made from any of us.” Maybe there’s hope…

Lost, which probably beats Battlestar Galactica in the watercooler talk area, should answer a lot of questions posed in the show, but according to executive producer Bryan Burk, there will still be a lot of discussions after the 2-hour season finale, Live Together, Die Alone”, airing this Wednesday. I must say, the pseudo-SF themes are getting a lot more interesting as it goes on…the producers and writers seem to have put a lot of thought into what is going on in the backstory. If you are interested, Lostpedia is a good resource for all of the collected information and theories, but beware of spoilers if you are not up to date with the U.S. airings.

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The merged CW Network, sorting through the plethora of old and new shows it inherited from its defunct parents, UPN and WB, announced its fall schedule. What is noticible is the absence of the Aquaman series (it went under several tentative names), a pilot which was made for the WB, and even had a casting change when the merger was announced, with Justin Hartley (Passions) replacing relative newcomer Will Toale. Still dead is Charmed, yet previously cancelled 7th Heaven is being resurrected. Smallville and Supernatural live on.

Disney has announced that they have pushed back the release of the second Narnia movie Prince Caspian from Christmas 2007 to Summer 2008, in order to avoid problems with Colombia’s release of children’s fantasy tale The Water Horse the week before. In other news, Darren Aronofsky’s oft-delayed The Fountain is finally nearing release (not announced but expected in the fall), and star Hugh Jackman says the movie will surprise people, and calls Aronofsky “genius” and a “modern-day Kubrick”. Jackman’s character is a man shown at three different points over 1,000 years, following a love story between him and Rachel Weisz’ (The Mummy) character.

Bryan Singer’s schedule is filling fast. So fast, it seems, that he may not have time to direct the planned Logan’s Run remake. Warner Brothers and producer Joel Silver want the project to get moving this fall – but Singer already has plans for a sequel to this summers Superman Returns.

I’m starting to hear reports that ABC has cancelled SF series Invasion, finally following its SF contemporaries: Threshold on CBS and Surface on NBC.