Sci-Fi Storm

CBS has already given a second season order for the Stephen King summer series Under The Dome, announced today at their Television Critics Association presentation. Stephen King himself will pen the second season premiere episode.

The show premiered to a 4.6 Live+7 rating in the 18-49 demos and has been relatively stable since. It also shows on [asin=B00DAHSY58]Amazon[/asin] only 4 days after the network premiere, free to Amazon Prime subscribers (not a subscriber? Try a 30-day free trial.)

Amazon struck a deal with CBS to allow online streaming of the upcoming summer series Under The Dome, from Steven Spielberg and Stephen King, just 4 days after the initial airing on CBS. Amazon Prime members exclusively will be able to stream the show an unlimited number of times.

Why four days? Because currently networks sell commercial slots to advertisers based on the “C3” rating – which counts the number of viewers who watch the commercials played during the broadcast, both live and time-shifted up to three days. After the third day it doesn’t matter much to the network, so this is likely the soonest you’ll see digital distribution done by anyone other than the broadcast network for a show.

CBS has announced that actors Natalie Martinez (CSI: NY) and newcomer Alex Koch have been signed to star in the 13-episode straight-to-series Under The Dome, which is being produced by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Television and is based on a novel by Stephen King.

The series, set to air this summer, is about a small New England town that suddenly finds itself cut off from the rest of the world by a dome, and must learn to survive in post-apocalyptic conditions while trying to discover where they dome came from, and why.

CBS has given a 13 episode order – straight to series – for drama Under The Dome, to be produced by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Television and based on a novel by Stephen King, in which a small New England town suddenly finds itself cut off from the rest of the world by a dome, and must learn to survive in post-apocalyptic conditions while trying to discover where they dome came from, and why.

Neal Baer (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit) will act as showrunner, with Niels Arden Oplev (Unforgettable) directing the lead episode.

If this sounds familiar, we reported on this over a year ago, when the project was set up at Showtime. Apparently the project was stalled there, so Amblin asked for it to be released and CBS picked it up in turnaround.

Remember that modern-day retelling of Sherlock Holmes CBS brought to pilot, and made Steven Moffat angry considering it is basically the same concept as his Sherlock series on the BBC/PBS? Well, it’s been picked up for series, and we’ve got the preview for you so you can see if it really is similar. One major difference – Holmes’ (Jonny Lee Miller, Eli Stone) companion, Watson, is a woman! Lucy Liu (Southland) plays Joan Watson, is his “sober companion”, as Holmes is a unpaid consultant for Scotland Yard in New York attending a rehab facility.
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