Sci-Fi Storm

Marvel Entertaiment is rescheduling some of its releases, pushing back both Thor (now scheduled for June 17, 2011) and Avengers (May 4, 2012) by about a year from their previous dates. According to Marvel they’ll concentrate their single character films in 2011 with Thor, Captain America (also pushed back a few months to spread them out) and Spider-Man (with Iron Man 2 still scheduled for 2010), and giving a “runway” leading up to the cross-franchise Avengers. It also gives Marvel a major tentpole release in 2012, which it did not have before. There is also a hint of a lot more cross-pollination between the franchises coming…

The list is extensive, so I won’t reproduce it, but you can see the list of nominees here at the official site. Sadly the site itself is a bit out of date regarding past awards, not listing awards since 2006.

Bryan Fuller, who worked in the Trek franchise as writer and producer between Deep Space 9 and Voyager, has some ideas about bringing the show back. I loved Voyager and Deep Space Nine, but they seem to have lost the ’60s fun and I would love to take it back to its origin,” he said. He has had some contact with J.J. Abrams “team”, so it would be interesting to find out how it might be integrated with Abrams reboot…

Scott Laming writes “This is a must for all hardcore SF fans. You can buy a first edition copy of every Hugo and Nebula award winner atll at once for $116,530. Check out the First edition Hugo and Nebula Winners at AbeBooks.com.

If money was no object and you wanted to create the ultimate modern science fiction and fantasy rare book collection in a single swoop, then what you need is first editions of all the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novels for a cool $116,530.

The listing includes 126 books covering 82 titles (many titles won both awards), and 95% of the titles are signed or inscribed, and in fine or better condition. When a paperback is the true first edition, then the first hardcover is also included. In some cases, US and UK hardcovers have been included where the paperback is the true first.” Seems a little steep, but they are first editions at least…

The long awaited (does Lucas ever do anything quickly? At least, except giving the green light to the Star Wars Holiday special?) live action Star Wars series, which took a back seat to The Clone Wars, is currently casting. Script writing has supposedly been underway for over a year, so hopefully it won’t be long before we find out what we are getting – but it still may be a while before we SEE anything, as the plan is still to shoot the entire season before shopping the series.

I wonder if we’ll be hearing the bad news soon. Seems that the ratings for sophomore series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and relatively new Joss Whedon effort Dollhouse, filling up Fox’s Friday night SF lineup, continue to slide in the ratings. Update 3/10: Apparently once you account for the DVR ratings, Dollhouse didn’t do so bad…

A new extended trailer, which reveals a bit more of the plot points of the movie, is now available at the Apple trailer site in a variety of different resolutions all the way up to 1080p. Update: For the Quicktime-challenged, Read More for the Flash version.

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Aaron writes “I recently rounded up the latest ‘V’ remake news and corresponded with ‘V’ creator Ken Johnson about the remake, his plans for the ‘V’ movie, and his classical training. Check it out if you have a second.

You can read it here“

J. Michael Straczynski posted on rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated really early this morning that due to all the leaks on the Internet about his Forbidden Planet script, he and Warner Bros. have decided to throw the script away and start completely from scratch. “So to the sites that say, “Where’s the harm, it’s not like they’re gonna toss out the script because we blew the contents of same all
over the nets,” well, yes, that’s exactly what it’s like, and it’s
precisely your responsibility that a year’s worth of work was
destroyed.” It seems some leaks need plugging…in the head. Updated 3/11: Because the post for some reason never ended up on jmsnews.com, Read More for the actual post. This link should get you the post via Google Groups.

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Family Guy will continue doing parodies of Star Wars beyond the upcoming (in the Fall) Episode V parody, “Something-Something-Something Dark Side”. The cast just completed a read-through of their version of Episode VI: Return Of The Jedi, tentatively titled “Episode VI: The Great Muppet Caper”.