Sci-Fi Storm

Just before tomorrow’s Season 4 premiere, Syfy has insured there is enough magic in the world for a fifth season of The Magicians!

“The Magicians raised the bar at Syfy and has gained momentum season after season, attracting a new audience to the channel. We are proud of this series as it continues to break the boundaries of storytelling,” according to
Bill McGoldrick, President of Scripted Content for NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment.

The series, based on the novels by Lev Grossman, follow the students of Brakebills University as they learn to harness magic – and defend magic against those who would destroy it.

Executive producer Henry Alonso Myers (Ugly Betty) joins as a co-showrunner alongside John McNamara and Sera Gamble who have shepherded the series since the first season.

Now who you gonna call? It appears another Ghostbusters film will be a reality, but this time it will be a true sequel to the original team as opposed to be a sequel to the 2016 remake. And Jason Reitman, the son of original director Ivan Reitman, will be directing. It has not been announced if the original Ghostbusters team will be involved. Production is expected to start this summer.

Reitman even released a teaser for the movie:

A couple of recent Syfy items – first, Season 2 of Happy! will debut Wednesday, March 27th. A trailer has been release which you can see below. Based on the graphic novel of the same name, it follows former cop and now hit-man Nick Sax (Christopher Meloni) and and an imaginary blue unicorn only he can see (Patton Oswalt) as they hunt down child kidnappers.

In less, well, happy news, the anthology series Channel Zero was not renewed for a fifth season. The series devoted each short season to a different “creepypasta” – short horror stories told online. The final series, “The Dream Door”, aired this past October.

Deadline reports that primary production on the third Fantastic Beasts film will not start until the Fall, pushed back from a planned July start, likely in order to have more prep time which would have had to start by now to make the original scheduled start.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald left fans with a LOT of questions, and few answers. Author and script writer J.K. Rowling promised that answers will be found in this upcoming film, and the new production start date might mean they aren’t going to rush things.

The next chapter in Peter Parker’s journey as the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, trying to take a vacation…

Thwips into theaters July 5th, 2019

Hot on the heals of finding out that Dave Bautista was joining Denis Villeneuve’s Dune adaptation, another MCU actor will join him – and they’ll be related.

Stellan Skarsgard, who played Dr. Erik Selvig in the first two Thor movies as well as the first two Avengers movies, will play Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, the scheming leader of House Harkonnen who collaborates with the Emperor on a plan to rid themselves of House Atreides and maintain control of the planet Arrakis, the only source of the spice melange, the most valuable substance in the universe. Glossu “The Beast” Rabban (Bautista) is the Baron’s sadistic nephew, charged with the subjugation of Arrakis.

Skarsgard most recently appeared in Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again.

Guardians Of The Galaxy‘s Dave Bautista will reunite with his Blade Runner 2049 director Denis Villeneuve for the latter’s upcoming version of Frank Herbert’s Dune, one of the biggest SF book series that has previously been a [asin=604]feature film[/asin] from David Lynch and a [asin=158]Syfy (then Sci-Fi Channel) mini-series[/asin]. Bautista’s role is not currently known. [Update: We now know he will play “The Beast” Rabban – as if there was any question…]

He will join Timothée Chalamet (Lady Bird), who will play hero Paul Atreides, and Rebecca Ferguson (Mission: Impossible – Fallout), who will play Lady Jessica.

The David Lynch film was a visual spectacle but a box office failure, with Lynch himself distancing himself claiming there was too much interference from the producers and financiers, and in some cuts the director was credited as “Alan Smithee”, a code name for a disavowed credit. The mini-series proved more successful, spawning a sequel series for Children of Dune, both of which were some of the highest rated programming on the network at the time.

We are very saddened to learn of the passing of actor W. Morgan Sheppard, father of fellow actor Mark Sheppard, yesterday per an instagram post by his son.

View this post on Instagram

We went to spend some time with my father today. Though he couldn’t speak, we held hands, he laughed and was so happy to see us. We left and came home. A good day. He was rushed to hospital and passed at 6:30pm, my mother by his side. I am so grateful that he didn’t have to suffer any longer. Thank you for all your kind thoughts, love and prayers.

A post shared by Mark Sheppard (@realmarksheppard) on Jan 6, 2019 at 8:16pm PST

Sheppard appeared in many genre shows…I first saw him that I recall in Shogun, but what I most remembered him from originally was in the role of Blank Reg, the mohawked pirate radio operator in Max Headroom. He also played the memorable and eponymous “Soul Hunter” on Babylon 5, and even played the older version of his son’s character of Cantor Everett Delaware III in the Doctor Who episode “The Impossible Astronaut”. More recently he appeared in an episode of The Librarians. His jovial face and white beard also earned him the the title role in Farewell Mr. Kringle, and he voiced “The Big Guy” in the Prep & Landing specials.

Color me unsurprised, but The CW has ordered up a pilot for a Batwoman series starring Ruby Rose (Orange Is the New Black)  after the character appeared in the most recent Arrowverse crossover event. David Nutter, who directed the pilot episode of sibling show The Flash, will direct with a script from Caroline Dries (Smallville, The Vampire Diaries).

This would make the first openly gay lead series character in a live-action superhero series. Batwoman/Kate Kane (Rose) appeared in the three part “Elseworlds” crossover event spread across Arrow, The Flash, and Supergirl, helping Gotham as a highly-trained street fighter but must face her own demons before she’s willing to take on the mantle of hero.

Dries, Nutter, Berlanti Productions’ Greg Berlanti, Sarah Schechter and former DC Entertainment president Geoff Johns will executive produce.

Happy Holidays everyone! I planned an article about “our favorite things” this year, but by the time I got to it it was too late to buy anything for the holidays 🙁 But in case you are looking for some belated gifts, here are some of our favorites, and also a few that will be out in the New Year!

[Disclaimer: we are an Amazon Associate site – it’s one of the few income sources we have to keep this site going…so if you could be so kind to follow some of these links and make purchases – ANY purchases, that would help TREMENDOUSLY…hosting costs, etc. have gone up while revenues are, well, nearly non-existent these days…]

First up is the upcoming release for [sfs=1672]Killjoys season 3[/sfs] on January 22nd – one of our favorite shows of the recent crop on Syfy (along with [sfs=1656]The Magicians[/sfs] and [sfs=1670]The Expanse[/sfs] , both of which had their 3rd seasons released this past summer)!

And for both old and young Doctor Who fans, there are both classic and new releases! For 5th Doctor fans like me, Peter Davison’s first series was [sfs=1682]released on Blu-ray this month[/sfs], and will be followed by Tom Baker’s [sfs=1683]final season on March 29th[/sfs] – say goodbye to Romana and K9, while companions Adric, Nyssa and Tegan join for the regeneration and lead in to an all new set of adventures…confession…while Jon Pertwee was the first Doctor I saw, and Tom Baker was the one I saw the most, watching the show was sporadic for me because of random scheduling and it wasn’t until the regeneration to Davison that I was able to watch regularly and was forever hooked – so Davison became MY Doctor…

Current Eleventh Doctor Jodie Whittaker sees her first series released on [sfs=1676]January 29th[/sfs], followed by the upcoming New Year’s Day special released on [sfs=1676]February 19th[/sfs].

As for some of our favorite things this year, if you are still looking for ideas for that SF fan, gamer, etc…

On the video game front, especially for Marvel fans, the Playstation 4 Spider-Man game is currently our favorite in-house – we love the open-world games like Skyrim and the Fallout series, and this gives us a new world to explore with great graphics and gameplay. And if you like the game check out the Art of the Game book!

Speaking of Fallout, Fallout 76 is out for PS4, XBox One and PC, and finally adds a multi-player element to the game. We’re still evaluating this one, as we really loved the single-player experience in the previous installments without the necessity of coordinating a play night or playing with random people…

Another game we’re liking is Detroit: Become Human, which is sort of a choose-your-own adventure with spectacular visuals – see the world – and humans – through and android’s eyes as you play through three different characters seeing the world change around them. Unfortunately, like Spider-Man it is a Sony exclusive.

Do you have a young Marvel Cinematic Universe fan looking forward to Captain Marvel and the many other female superheroes finally getting their due? Check out the book Marvel Fearless and Fantastic! Female Super Heroes Save the World co-authored by our friend Sam Maggs!

Lastly, if you are a electronics tinkerer and know about Raspberry Pis, stay tuned as I’ll be putting something together about a little project I’ve been working on…a touchscreen weather station…