Sci-Fi Storm

If you were looking forward to the premiere of the new Fox human-android-cop-partners drama Almost Human starring Karl Urban (Star Trek), you’re going to have to wait a couple more weeks. Fox has decided to push back the premiere from November 4th to November 17th, to take advantage of a football double-header as a lead in. A second episode would air on the following night.

The show may not be SF, but it does star – and will star – a favored actor.

ITV’s recent police drama Broadchurch (shown in the U.S. on BBC America), which starred Doctor Who‘s David Tennant and was about a police investigation into the death of a young boy that rocks a small beachside town, is going to get it’s own U.S. version done by Fox…and it will star David Tennant!

Tennant will be an American detective this time (with accent), and the show will be set in an American beachside town, with the same basic premise, but I’m going to guess the ending will be different. Original creator Chris Chibnall (who has also written for Doctor Who and Torchwood, and produced the latter) will executive produce. Filming will begin in January for the 2014-2015 TV season. No details if this will be a mini-series or stretched for an entire season.

The characters from Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s series League of Extraordinary Gentleman seem likely to take an adventure on to your TV screens.

The comic series, which features Captain Nemo, Allan Quatermain, the Invisible Man and Dr. Jekyll, among others, going on adventures in the Victoria era (and later) battling evil, has received a put pilot commitment from Fox. Michael Green (Everwood, Heroes) will serve as showrunner for 20th Century Fox TV, alongside Erwin Stoff (Water for Elephants). Moore is reportedly not involved.

20th Century Fox released a film adaptation in 2003, starring Sean Connery, which garnered a cult following.

The “put pilot” commitment means that Fox basically guarantees that the pilot will be shown, whether or not it is picked up for series, or pay a substantial penalty.

Not a lot of details yet, but reports are out this evening that Fox has picked up an unnamed pilot from J.J. Abrams, described as a “near-future action-packed buddy cop show”, in which the LAPD police are teamed up with “highly evolved human-like androids”. J.H. Wyman (Fringe) will write and executive produce with Abrams and Bryan Burk.

For some reason, my mind instantly turned to the Tekwar movies/series, which had human-like androids (derogatorily called “mechs”) working for the police. And does anyone remember Holmes and Yo-Yo?

Twentieth Century Fox is looking to it’s science fiction past for it’s future, with a re-release and sequels.

Today the studio announced that after the success of the re-release of Titanic in 3D (which made $344 million worldwide), they would give the same 3D treatment to Independence Day, looking to release that July 3rd, 2013. Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters will be released on August 16th, and for the holidays a movie based on the TV series/live show Walking With Dinosaurs will be released December 20th.

Then, in 2014, Fox plans to take the Spring to Summer season starting with the Steven Spielberg directed Robopocalypse on April 25th; Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, the sequel to Rise of the Planet of the Apes, on May 23rd (Memorial Day); and the next currently-untitled X-Men movie, on July 18th.

Word came late last night that Fox has officially canceled Terra Nova. The move is definitely not surprising, as Fox has been hesitant to pull the trigger for so long, which would have made getting a second series completed on time a struggle. The network had been trying to figure out how they might be able to produce a second season much cheaper than the first, with the producers bringing forward a number of potential showrunners the take the reins.

But hope is not lost yet – 20th TV will begin shopping the show to other networks. It’s a long shot, but there could still be a chance.

Want another contemporary fantasy drama? We’ve yet to see ABC’s Once Upon A Time or NBC’s Grimm, but now Fox wants in. The network has reportedly purchased a script commitment with penalty (they have to pay a penalty if they don’t go to series) to adapt Lev Grossman’s 2009 fantasy novel The Magicians. Something akin to Harry Potter with older protagonists, the novel tells the stories of some young adults that discover that the fantasy books they read as kids were not fiction, and find themselves attending a school of magic.

The scribe team of co-writers Ashley Miller and Zack Stentz (X-Men: First Class, Thor) will write the script, with Michael London (Milk), Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum, Real Steel) and Michael Adelstein (Desperate Housewives) producing. And a little tweety bird tells me that Wil Wheaton wants a role – well, it was a tweet from him: “And so begins my relentless campaign to secure a role in the TV version of Lev Grossman’s The Magicians…”

At least we don’t think it’s a joke…Deadline is reporting that Fox has ordered a new version of the late Carl Sagan’s Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, and the new series will be produced by – wait for it – Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane.

Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey will be a 13-part series produced by MacFarlane and Sagan’s original collaborators – his widow Ann Druyan and astrophysicist Steven Soter, and will be hosted by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.

According to the producers, the new series will tell “the story of how human beings began to comprehend the laws of nature and find our place in space and time. It will take viewers to other worlds and travel across the universe for a vision of the cosmos on the grandest scale. The most profound scientific concepts will be presented with stunning clarity, uniting skepticism and wonder, and weaving rigorous science with the emotional and spiritual into a transcendent experience.”

Fox will air the show in primetime, with encores shown on the National Geographic channel, which will co-produce.

Could Steven Spielberg’s Terra Nova series be in trouble? Insiders say no, but 20th Century Fox Television has apparently laid off the entire writing staff, although show runner Brannon Braga still remains. Fox has reportedly changed its mind about when to debut the series – originally planned as a mid-season January start, they have decided to postpone it until Fall 2011 and instead do a two-hour pilot movie to air in May. Letting the writers go is seen as a cost-cutting measure in the meantime, and the writers will be rehired if available when production picks up again – if it picks up. Welcome to Fox, Steven…have you met Joss?