Sci-Fi Storm

Maisie Williams, who plays the diminutive but fiery Arya Stark on Game of Thrones, will guest star on the upcoming season of Doctor Who. The award-winning actress went straight from a U.S. tour to the TARDIS to film her guest role.

“I’m so excited to be working on Doctor Who as it’s such a big and important part of British Culture,” Williams said. “I can’t wait to meet the cast and crew and start filming, especially as we’ll be shooting not too far from my home town.”

“We’re thrilled to have Maisie Williams joining us on Doctor Who,” Producer Steven Moffat added. “It’s not possible to say too much about who or what she’s playing, but she is going to challenge the Doctor in very unexpected ways. This time he might just be out of his depth, and we know Maisie is going to give him exactly the right sort of hell.”

Hmm…I’m not really sure the Doctor is up to dealing with a teenager…especially one who carries Needle…

Syfy’s sophomore series Dominion is adding new characters, and a new composer as well.

Production is underway in Cape Town, South Africa for the 13-episode second season. Joining the series’ stellar cast are recurring guest stars Nic Bishop (Covert Affairs), Simon Merrells (Spartacus: War of the Damned), Christina Chong (24: Live Another Day), Olivia Mace (Doctors) and Luke Tyler (Chronicle).

In addition, Bill Brown, who scored all nine seasons of CSI: NY and countless video games (including Marvel’s Captain America: Super Soldier, for which he was nominated for Best Original Music for the orchestral/electronic hybrid at the Canadian Video Game Awards), and has been known to beta test cutting edge technology, will score the second season of Dominion, and he’ll soon be exploring the capabilities the new reissue of Moog Music’s classic synthesizers from the golden age of electronic music.

Season 2 of Dominion is set to premiere on Syfy in Summer 2015.
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Update 3/28: io9 reports that this is false…

There is a warm rumor being reported by The Nerdist that CBS is prepping a return of Star Trek to television, roughly 10 years after it left our TVs and eventually into a movie series reboot.

According to the article, CBS may be dusting off one of the two competing ideas presented after Enterprise was canceled. One, presented by J. Michael Straczynski (Babylon 5) and Bryce Zabel (Dark Skies), would have rebooted the original series, but that job has now been done in the J.J. Abrams films.

The other, from along with Bryan Singer (X-Men) and novelist Geoffrey Thorne, wouldn’t have affected any of the past series, instead being set further into the future. Star Trek: Federation would have been set in a time where the Federation had grown bloated and complacent; the races have evolved, and the spirit of adventure seems to have been lost, when an attack from a new enemy snaps them out of it.

Now it seems that Bryan Singer may be attached at some level to a development plan for Star Trek, which could see the return of Star Trek: Federation, while at the same time other big names like Rob Burnett and Ralph McQuarrie may be involved as well.

We probably won’t hear anything certain until the next movie is out, but CBS sounds eager…

First, there was the Marvel Cinematic Universe…then, Disney re-invigorated and extended Star Wars…and Warner Bros has been rallying around their Justice League plans. Now paramount wants in on the mega-franchise phenomenon. Could it be Star Trek? Not quite (but more on that in another story…), but it certainly could be more than meets they eye…

Word is that Paramount Pictures has tapped Akiva Goldsman to start planning with director Michael Bay and lay out the groundwork to transform their Transformers franchise, with an epic core and spin-off movies, similar to what Disney is doing for Star Wars.

Despite the almost universal criticism for the most recent installment, it was still one of the top grossing films of 2014, so its no wonder that Paramount is trying this…but hopefully they come up with better stories before the allspark loses power…

We learned from our friends over at Fanbolt that the name of the companion series to AMC’s The Walking Dead has been named: Fear The Walking Dead.

The news came from creator and producer Robert Kirkman himself via Twitter:

IT'S OFFICIAL! The walking dead companion show on AMC is called FEAR THE WALKING DEAD! Expect more news very soon! #FearTheWalkingDead

— Robert Kirkman (@RobertKirkman) March 27, 2015

The companion show will be set in Los Angeles and have all new characters. It stars Cliff Curtis, Kim Dickens, Frank Dillane and Alycia Debnam Carey. Co-creator/co-writer (with Robert Kirkman) Dave Erickson will executive produce and act as showrunner. The Walking Dead production gang of Kirkman, Gale Anne Hurd, Greg Nicotero and David Alpert will also executive produce.

This has me excited…Sony gave a press release today announcing that they have obtained the rights to the popular Robotech anime series with an eye on turning it into a film franchise!

Robotech was released in the U.S. in 1985, produced by Harmony Gold USA in partnership with Tatsunoko Production Company, and was actually three separate anime series (“Super Dimension Fortress Macross”, “Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross”, and “Genesis Climber MOSPEADA”), dubbed and edited to have a common plot line, showing three “generations” of characters. The common theme in the series is what is called “robotechnology” (a.k.a. “mecha”) – vehicles and spaceships which could transform into robots, which allowed the humans to take on aliens of immense size. It also spawned a number of direct-to-video movies.

According to Michael de Luca, Sony/Columbia Pictures head of production, “Robotech is unique in that it has always been a marriage of spectacle with human characters that seem drawn from life. With a history that offers an epic love triangle, a renegade hero, and a world on the brink of extinction, Robotech offers a wide scope and a rich and impressive universe where the story possibilities are endless.”

I always thought the premise of the first series was perfect for a film or TV franchise – an enormous spaceship crashes on Earth, the crew dead and containing advanced and unknown technologies which get adapted by humans who take the ship back into space – and into battle…

Hey Sony, I’m still waiting for an English-language live version of StarBlazers…

Art Marcum and Matt Holloway, the writing team behind Iron Man, are working on a re-imagining of the 1988 film (that also spawned a one-season TV series and several TV movies) Alien Nation for Fox.

The original film dealt with the integration of the alien “Newcomers” (if you were being nice – “slags” if you weren’t) into American society, several years after their enormous spaceship became stranded on Earth with its cargo of slaves, and the abusive “Overlords” – Newcomers who kept the slaves in line for an unknown authority. Detective Sykes (James Caan), a bigoted veteran of the force who just lost his partner in a shootout with Newcomers, is forced to take on the newly promoted Sam Francisco (Mandy Patinkin) – who he immediately re-dubs “George” (Newcomers were often assigned human names by bored government workers…) The two then investigate a similar crime, and find a much bigger conspiracy to exploit the aliens. Aside from the twist of the aliens, it was basically a reluctant buddy cop story.

I personally found the TV series to be a bit better than the film. As much as I like Patinkin, and Caan is perfect as a cantankerous cop, the interaction in the series, where Sykes was played by Gary Graham and Francisco by Eric Pierpoint, seemed more natural and playful. Graham’s Sykes is younger and has to address his growing affection for Newcomer neighbor Cathy (Terri Treas). It also deals a lot more with the problems of integration, Newcomer family life, and the origins of the Newcomers.

While plot details for the new version are not yet being released, it is expected that this movie will deal with the aliens’ arrival on Earth, which wasn’t really addressed in the film.

Marcum and Holloway are no strangers to re-imagining films…they were behind last year’s Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles, and a remake of Highlander for Summit that is still in development.

In this preview for the next episode of Helix, Winger and Alan uncover the Navy’s plan to stop the virus once and for all. Tune in for “Plan B” Friday night at 10/9c on Syfy!

Director Steven Spielberg will return to film a movie for Warner Bros after a 14 year absence…he is taking the reins of Ready Player One, based on the [asin=0307887448]popular novel[/asin] by Ernest Cline. Spielberg’s last movie for the studio was A.I.: Artificial Intelligence

The story takes place in 2044, and Wade Watts, a young gamer, seeks to unravel the clues left within the massive game universe of Oasis, which the late creator left as a challenge to find someone worthy of of taking over his estate – including the corporation and the game itself. When Watts closes in on the first clue, he discovers that others are willing to kill for it…

Zac Penn is writing the script, after it was started by Cline and Eric Eason (A Better Life).

Director Bryan Singer announced via Instagram that a new mutant will join the cast…Jubilation Lee, better known as Jubilee, the Chinese American girl with pyrotechnic abilities. She will be played by newcomer Lana Condor.

The character has in fact made appearances in the movies before – in the first three X-Men movies, she appeared only as a background character in the classrooms but never identified by name except in a deleted scene.

It also looks like we will get the younger versions of Cyclops, Storm and Jean Grey as well.