Sci-Fi Storm

It’s time to come out of our holiday-induced coma and get caught up on the news, so here is some rapidfire TidBits…

Sadly, we have learned that actress Heather Menzies-Urich, wife of late actor Robert Urich and best known as Louisa in The Sound Of Music, passed away on December 24th at the age of 68. Obscure SF TV fans may also known her for playing Jessica in the TV series version of Logan’s Run.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi added another $99 million over the holiday weekend, although analysts expected more from the weekend. Fans seem to be greatly debating the merits of the movie…from our point of view it was a good movie but with a slew of technical problems. Expect a spoiler-laden review later this week.

In the meantime, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle appeared to get a big turnout from holiday audiences looking for something lighthearted, getting $72m since the Wednesday open and including $2m from the Amazon Prime Members preview earlier in the month. It’s definitely a good movie for audiences looking for a laugh. The Greatest Showman, which appears to be fighting critical reviews as well as the competition, only made $19m for the same six days, but we think is a great musical film with several Oscar-worthy songs.

Lastly, Quentin Taranino’s R-rated Star Trek has named a writer – The Revenant‘s Mark L. Smith.

Alas, BBC America has decided to cancel Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. It was a wonderfully bizarre and quirky show adapted from a Douglas Adams novel, starring Samuel Barnett as the eponymous character who solves supernatural mysteries by simply giving in to fate, helped by Todd (Elijah Wood), a bellhop who helps his sister who suffers from a disease that causes her to have vivid hallucinations. They are chased not only by government agents, who want Dirk back for a secret project, but by the strange Bart Curlish (Fiona Dourif), who believes the universe is directing her to kill people and doesn’t allow her to die.

Admittedly, the show could be hard to follow at times, but it seemed to showcase actors playing more unusual characters – especially in the female characters who were often very odd in a variety of ways, such as The Beast (Emily Tennant) and Mona Wilder (Alexia Fast), along with the aforementioned Curlish.

I will be sad that the show will not be continuing, but it got two good seasons and didn’t leave us hanging.

Stargate: Origins premieres on February 15th, 2018 at Stargate Command

You may have heard about this tiny little deal in the entertainment world…Disney has agreed to purchase assets from 21st Century Fox, including Fox Studios, in a deal worth over $54 billion! Disney gets all of the film and television assets except the broadcast network (they already own ABC), sports and news divisions, which will be retained by Fox. Although this doesn’t include the broadcast network, it seems to leave the network without a TV production studio as a sibling, which the other major networks have.

Disney will also get the rights to all the upcoming Avatar movies, which isn’t surprising since the Mouse House has already incorporated the franchise into its Animal Kingdom theme park.

But one of the biggest ramifications everyone has been talking about is what it means for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Fox has owned the rights to the X-Men for some time, which as a result has left the X-Men out of the MCU, even for cameos. In fact, we ended up with two different versions of Quicksilver. In fact, both Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch where at the center of a battle between the two studios – Fox claimed they were part of the X-Men universe, while Disney wanted to use them in the Avengers. The studios came to an agreement to allow both to use the characters, so long as neither mentioned the other in either way. Fox never used Scarlet Witch, but Quicksilver first appeared in X-Men: Days of Future Past, and then in his MCU version in Avengers: Age of Ultron alongside Scarlet Witch.

Now with the acquisition, that line gets blurred and the X-Men could easily be included in the MCU going forward, if so desired. In fact, Hugh Jackman, who said he was retiring from playing Wolverine after Logan, left the door open if he could appear in an Avengers movie. So maybe Wolverine isn’t quite done yet.

Another Marvel rights property related to the acquisition is the Fantastic Four, but the rights issues are a little murkier. Fox did not own them outright but rather were in a partnership with the original optioner, Constantin Films. The rights and productions have an interesting history on its own, but rather than regurgitate it here Screen Rant has an excellent write-up. So the status of that property is perhaps less clear, although Disney mentioned them in their press release:

Combining with Disney are 21st Century Fox’s critically acclaimed film production businesses, including Twentieth Century Fox, Fox Searchlight Pictures and Fox 2000, which together offer diverse and compelling storytelling businesses and are the homes of Avatar, X-Men, Fantastic Four and Deadpool, as well as The Grand Budapest Hotel, Hidden Figures, Gone Girl, The Shape of Water and The Martian—and its storied television creative units, Twentieth Century Fox Television, FX Productions and Fox21, which have brought The Americans, This Is Us, Modern Family, The Simpsons and so many more hit TV series to viewers across the globe. Disney will also acquire FX Networks, National Geographic Partners, Fox Sports Regional Networks, Fox Networks Group International, Star India and Fox’s interests in Hulu, Sky plc, Tata Sky and Endemol Shine Group.

So Disney at least believes they are back in the fold.

Oh, and what of Deadpool, the R-rated superhero? Disney isn’t known for going after the R-rated audience, but Deadpool broke all the rules and was a massive success. Well, Disney CEO Bob Iger mentioned that specifically while addressing shareholders: “[Deadpool] clearly has been and will be Marvel branded. But we think there might be an opportunity for a Marvel-R brand for something like Deadpool. As long as we let the audiences know what’s coming, we think we can manage that fine.”

So there you have it. It might be a while before we see the rewards on screen, but I think I can hear the gears of MCU master Kevin Feige’s brain turning now…

A couple of renewal-related items…Netflix sure does love their slate of Marvel programs, as it gave a second season renewal for The Punisher. The show, starring Jon Bernthal as former soldier turned vigilante Frank Castle, debuted just last month and it now joins its brethren (Daredevil, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage) is getting a second season (with Daredevil getting a third already).

For vigilantes of a more financial nature, USA Network series Mr. Robot – which concludes its third season tonight – has received a fourth season order from the network, according to creator Sam Esmail on Instagram:

Calm down everyone. #MrRobot season_4.0 writers' room is officially open for business.

A post shared by Sam Esmail (@samesmail) on Dec 13, 2017 at 6:59am PST

In less than an hour, the premiere of HAPPY! airs on SYFY on the east coast!

HAPPY! is based on New York Times best-selling author Grant Morrison and Darick Robertson’s graphic novel of the same name. The series follows Nick Sax (Christopher Meloni, Law & Order: SVU) – an intoxicated, corrupt ex-cop turned hit man – who is adrift in a world of casual murder, soulless sex and betrayal. After a hit gone wrong, his inebriated life is forever changed by a tiny, relentlessly positive, imaginary blue winged horse named “Happy” (Patton Oswalt).

Check out the latest promo video!

Time to get caught up after a very busy weekend capping off a few busy weeks around here with school productions…so some tidbits from the past several days…

Director Quentin Tarantino has an idea for the next Star Trek movie…we don’t know what it is, but according to Deadline J.J. Abrams thinks enough of the idea to pull together a writers room to discuss and develop a script. Tarantino typically operates with free reign over his original movies, where a franchise like this might present challenges, so we’ll see how this shapes up.

Disney has blasted the $5 billion worldwide barrier for a record third time this year, following Thor’s Hammer smashing through box offices all over. Thor: Ragnarok has crossed $800 million alone.

The kids from Stranger Things will be back as Netflix picked up a third season of the hit thriller series. No word on what 80s iconic properties might show up this time around.

Michael Green and Bryan Fuller have abruptly left the production of the second season of Starz’ American Gods series. The two brought Neil Gaiman’s novel to the small screen and acted as executive producers/showrunners. No reason so far as been given for the departure, but rumors are that budget cuts were being imposed by FremantleMedia North America’s new head of scripted programming, Dante di Loreto.

A couple of casting updates…How To Get Away With Murder‘s Kendrick Sampson is joining the cast of The Flash for a multi-episode arc as Brainstorm, a TSA Agent who gains the meta-human power to read people’s thoughts – whether he wants to or not. He will first appear in the last episode before the Winter break.

Maggie Grace (Taken, Lost) will join Fear The Walking Dead as a series regular for the show’s fourth season. No details on the role are yet available.

George R.R. Martin’s SF-horror novella Nightflyers has been picked up for a 10-episode series by Syfy, according to the writer himself.

Syfy ordered up a pilot earlier this year, but apparently made the decision to go straight to series after seeing the script by Jeff Buhler (Jacob’s Ladder). Netflix will handle international viewers, and possibly also as a second-run domestic source.

Also according to Martin, the show is in pre-production/casting stages, but there is apparently already a cast selection made that “has pleased me more than I can possibly say,”, according to the Game Of Thrones scribe. But we will have to wait a little longer to find out who that is…

The supernatural thriller is set in the future on the eve of Earth’s destruction, a crew of explorers journey on the most advanced ship in the galaxy, The Nightflyer, to intercept a mysterious alien spacecraft that might hold the key to their survival. As the crew nears their destination, they discover that the ship’s artificial intelligence and never-seen captain may be steering them into deadly and unspeakable horrors deep in the dark reaches of space.

The Doctor Who episode “Shada” is legendary…unlike other incomplete episodes, which were due to the BBC purging the film archives of some of the original masters, Shada was never completed. The final episode of the 17th season, starring Tom Baker and written by Douglas Adams, had production canceled part way through due to a strike at the BBC. When the strike ended, the schedule had slipped too far into the holiday programming production time and ultimately it was never resumed. Douglas Adams was reportedly fine with the episode remaining in the annals of legend, unhappy with the script in the end.

Since then, the episode was released in its incomplete form with some narration to fill in the missing parts, and also retooled as an audio drama for the Eighth Doctor.

Now the original is getting the BBC’s latest method of filling in lost episodes – by animating them! Last year, they restored Patrick Troughton’s debut episode, [sfs=1582]”The Power Of The Daleks”[/sfs], by reconstructing the missing parts with animation. As an added bonus, not only does Tom Baker lend his voice to the animated segments, but also filmed a new segment with an appearance by K-9!

The episode follows the Doctor and Romana as they are called to Cambridge by Dr. Chronotis, a “retired” Time Lord who holds the key to the location of Shada, the prison planet of the Time Lords. A alien genius, Skagra, wants the location to be able to harness the collective intellect of the most notorious criminals in the universe so that he may take over, well, everything.

The new release is available today on iTunes (at least in the UK – I don’t see it in the iTunes store in the US), and a DVD release in the UK on December 4th and the [sfs=1622]US on January 8th[/sfs].