Sci-Fi Storm

Producers James Wan (The Conjuring) and Roy Lee (It) want to take author Stephen King’s 1987 sci-fi/horror novel The Tommyknockers to the big screen.

THR reports the two will team up with Larry Sanitsky, who executive produced the 1993 miniseries adaptation which starred Jimmy Smits and Marg Helgenberger.

The Tommyknockers is set in the small town of Haven, Maine (a frequent setting for King’s stories), where during a walk one of the residents stumbles upon a metallic object stuck in the ground. It turns out that the object is in fact a buried UFO which begins emanating an invisible gas. The gas gives inhabitants of Haven enhanced intelligence to begin building things, but don’t really understand what they are doing, and appear to be controlled by the spacecraft.

The 1993 miniseries was successful for ABC. NBC announced development of a remake in 2013, but no mention of it was made after the announcement.

Yes, my friends…we will see more chainsaws and sharks and Ian Ziering…SYFY has given a green light to a sixth and final entry in the camp movie franchise…and this one will have time travel!

Finn (Ziering), left in a world devastated at the end of Sharknado 5: Global Swarming, will apparently travel back in time in an attempt to stop the very first Sharknado – and if successful it will be as if it never happened…some may wish it never had. 🙂

Ian Ziering, Tara Reid, Cassie Scerbo, and Vivica A. Fox will all be back as will director Anthony Ferrante. I’m sure in the coming weeks we’ll start hearing the list of guest stars and cameo appearances.

SYFY’s untold Superman series Krypton, premiered to an audience of over 2.6 million people in the Live+3 ratings, the best new series premiere on the network since Ascension in 2014. Krypton debuted on March 21 and was the #1 entertainment program on cable for the night.

The show was the #1 entertainment program on cable in total viewers on its premiere night, beating Riverdale in all key demos, and was the best cable genre series premiere in key 18-49 demo since Legion on 2/8/17.

Set 200 years before the destruction of Superman’s home planet, Krypton follows Seg-El (Cameron Cuffe), the legendary Man of Steel’s grandfather, as a young man who is faced with a life and death conflict – save his home planet or let it be destroyed in order to restore the fate of his future grandson. He must redeem his family’s honor and protect the ones he loves while being challenged by familiar DC characters Brainiac (Blake Ritson) and Earthly time-traveler Adam Strange (Shaun Sipos).

Krypton is from Warner Horizon Scripted Television and is executive produced by David S. Goyer (Man of Steel) through his Phantom Four banner, alongside Cameron Welsh, who serves as showrunner. In addition to Cuffe, Sipos and Ritson, the show also stars Georgina Campbell (Black Mirror), Elliot Cowan (Da Vinci’s Demons), Ann Ogbomo (World War Z), Rasmus Hardiker (Your Highness), Wallis Day (Will), Aaron Pierre (Tennison) and Ian McElhinney (Game of Thrones). Based on the DC characters created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

At WonderCon this weekend CBS released a deleted scene from the finale of Star Trek Discovery that shows the return of a group suspected to be behind the “black badge” Starfleet members, and show where the show is heading in its upcoming second season.

Note: The scene may present spoilers if you’d rather wait, or if you haven’t finished watching the first season…so stop reading now.
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SYFY’s jump into the DC universe takes a jump back in time to explore not really the origin story of its most famous superhero, but of his ancestors instead. An ambitious move, to eschew the draw of having a well known character to revolve around, instead developing a backstory for the world he ultimately came from.

We know the planet Krypton explodes, and we know Jor-El sends his only son Kal-El to Earth just before that, where he grows up to become Superman. But this isn’t about that exactly – we’ve seen that in a few different versions of the Superman mythos.

Instead, we are set a couple generations before those events, focusing instead on Kal-El’s grandfather, Seg (Cameron Cuffe), in his younger days. Seg’s own grandfather, Val-El, is declared a heretic and banished to the Phantom Zone, leaving the House of El disgraced and nameless. Seg becomes one of the Rankless – the lowest class of Kryptonians. He gets the chance to rejoin the ranks, but learns about his grandfather and what may happen after an Earth man from the future named Adam Strange (another DC comics character, played by Shaun Sipos), warns that someone is coming to change the course of history to prevent Superman from being born.

The show is set in the domed city of Kandor, the capital city of Krypton and one of nine city-states that exist in the remaining inhabitable areas of the planet after a previous catastrophe. In recent years, the democratic government has been overthrown by a theocratic form that revolves around the worship of the sun god Rao, who is embodied by the Voice of Rao, a mysterious figure who wears a six-faced golden mask. All other religions have been banned. Several guilds exist to maintain the functioning government and the members live the “high life”, literally, while the Rankless occupy the streets.
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Nightflyers follows eight maverick scientists and a powerful telepath who embark on an expedition to the edge of our solar system aboard The Nightflyer – a ship with a small tightknit crew and a reclusive captain – in the hope of making contact with alien life. But when terrifying and violent events begin to take place they start to question each other – and surviving the journey proves harder than anyone thought.

Eoin Macken (The Night Shift) is set to star as Karl D’Branin alongside Sam Strike (EastEnders) as Thale, Maya Eshet (Teen Wolf) as Lommie, Angus Sampson (Fargo) as Rowan, Jodie Turner-Smith (The Last Ship) as Melantha Jhirl, Gretchen Mol (Boardwalk Empire) as Agatha, David Ajala (Fast & Furious 6) as Roy Eris, and Brían F. O’Byrne (Million Dollar Baby) as Auggie.

Coming this Fall to SYFY

We finally see the return of Indy! Steven Spielberg, on hand at the Rakuten TV Empire Awards to receive a special award for his enormous body of work, also dropped word that the long awaited Indiana Jones 5 will begin filming in the UK next April!

“It’s always worth the trip when I get to work with this deep bench of talent coming out of the UK,” he told the audience. “The actors, and the crew, the chippies, the sparks, the drivers — everybody who has helped me make my movies here, and will continue helping me make my movies here when I come back in April 2019 to make the fifth Indiana Jones movie right here.”

We’re excited to say the least – but it will be interesting how they deal with Indy’s son, played by Shia LeBeouf, as they had the chance to pass the fedora on but opted not to…

In case somehow you haven’t seen this yet…tears were shed when it was seen…

Sadly we lost a brilliant mind today. Stephen Hawking, who has fought an amazing battle against ALS for decades, passed away this morning.

Hawking, despite being trapped in his body and only able to communicate via a computer speech synthesizer, was the world’s preeminent theoretical physicist, postulating many new models of physics including reconciling general relativity and quantum mechanics. At the same time, he tried to bring advanced physics to the masses as a best-selling author, his most famous work being A Brief History of Time. He was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge for 30 years, from 1979-2009.

Hawking was also a friend of the science fiction community, making cameo appearances in various shows including The Big Bang Theory, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Futurama. SYFY has already announced that they will air seven episodes of Futurama including several that feature Stephen’s electronic voice tonight starting at 11pm ET.

He leaves behind three children and three grandchildren. His children released a statement: “We are deeply saddened that our beloved father passed away today. He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years. His courage and persistence with his brilliance and humor inspired people across the world. He once said, ‘It would not be much of a universe if it wasn’t home to the people you love.’ We will miss him forever.”

The condolences and memories on Twitter are too great to cover here…but fellow physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson’s seemed appropriate:

His passing has left an intellectual vacuum in his wake. But it's not empty. Think of it as a kind of vacuum energy permeating the fabric of spacetime that defies measure. Stephen Hawking, RIP 1942-2018. pic.twitter.com/nAanMySqkt

— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) March 14, 2018

It’s time to delve back into the magical realm…here is the first teaser for Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, in theaters November 16th…