Sci-Fi Storm

Genesis Rodriguez (Big Hero 6, Identity Thief) has been cast as the female lead in the upcoming Starz series pilot Time After Time. Rodriguez will play Jane Walker, the museum curator who catches H.G. Wells’ eye in modern-day New York City. Wells is being played by Freddie Stroma.

A couple of tidbits this weekend…

Syfy’s Channel Zero: Candle Cove finally has a director. Craig William Macneill (The Boy) will take the reigns for all six episodes. Candle Cove is expected to debut in October. A second 6-episode story which has not been named yet will follow in 2017.

And just days after it was announced that Freddie Stroma would play H.G. Wells in ABC’s pilot Time After Time, we now know who will play his nemesis. Revenge‘s Josh Bowman will take on the dark mantle of Dr. John Stevenson, a surgeon and a friend of Wells, who in fact moonlights as Jack the Ripper. Stevenson steals Wells’ time machine and escapes to the modern day.

The Time After Time TV series we reported on in September has found its H.G. Wells.

Freddie Stroma, who played Cormac MacLaggan in the final three Harry Potter films and more recently Adam Cromwell on UnReal, has signed on to play the author of “The Time Machine” who, in Karl Alexander’s 1979 novel after which the series is named, builds an actual working time machine, only to have it stolen by none other than Jack the Ripper and taken to the present day. Wells then embarks on a chase to stop Jack from killing again. The original novel, which was also the basis of a 1979 film starring Malcolm McDowell in the starring role, will be used as a starting point for the series.

ABC commissioned the pilot from Warner Bros. TV. Kevin Williamson wrote the pilot and will executive produce, with Marcos Siega directing.

Just some quick stories…first, Han Solo himself, Harrison Ford, will star in a Wonderful World of Disney special called “Disneyland 60” where he will preview the upcoming Star Wars-themed park areas at both Disneyland and Disney’s Hollywood Studios park in Walt Disney World. Filming of the special starts tomorrow and will air on February 21st on ABC. The special itself will focus on Disneyland’s 60th anniversary, with Derek Hough as host and Elton John, Josh Gad and Witney Carson already announced as guests.

The 100‘s Ricky Whittle will be protagonist Shadow Moon in the upcoming Starz adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, about the struggle between the old gods of mythology and the new gods that represent modern society’s influences – money, power, technology, etc. Ex-con Shadow find himself as a bodyguard to the mysterious Mr. Wednesday, “a conman but in reality one of the older gods, on a cross-country mission to gather his forces in preparation to battle the new deities.” Bryan Fuller and Michael Green are writers/showrunners, and David Slade (Hannibal) is directing the pilot and will direct additional episodes. Shooting is expected to start in April.

The Time After Time series remake for ABC we reported on in September has gotten a pilot order from ABC. It’s still early in the process as there does not appear to be any casting contingency in the pilot order, but I understand that studio Warner Bros. TV had one or more “if come” deals with casting directors if the project got picked up.

The 1979 movie Time After Time by Nicholas Meyer, based on and concurrently written with the novel of the same name by Karl Alexander, is set to become a series from Kevin Williamson, the creator of The Following and Stalker.

The movie followed science fiction (or so we thought) author Herbert George “H.G.” Wells (Malcolm McDowell) after he builds a time machine, which is subsequently used by his surgeon friend Leslie John Stephenson (David Warner), who turns out to be Jack the Ripper, and he’s just escaped to 1979. H.G. pursues him in the time machine, where he is befriended by and falls in love with Amy Robbins (Mary Steenburgen).

ABC has purchased the project with a script commitment from Warner Bros. TV under a deal Williamson has with the studio.

The 1953 George Pal version of The War of the Worlds has been named one of the 25 films that will be added to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry, which lists films that are considered culturally, historically or aesthetically significant. Films so registered are then preserved by the LOC for future generations.

Another movie included is A Computer Animated Hand, a one minute short created by Ed Catmull as a grad student in 1972, which is one of the earliest examples of computer animation. Catmull would go on to co-found Pixar Animation Studios.

Other movies in this year’s class include Disney’s Bambi, Forrest Gump, The Kid (Charlie Chaplain’s first full-length feature), The Silence of the Lambs, and Stand and Deliver (an early starring role for Battlestar Galactica‘s Edward James Olmos).

It seems to be PBS Pledge Week around here, and one of the items I haven’t seen before that proved to be very interesting is [asin=B000J10LC2]Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War Of The Worlds[/asin] (currently discontinued but available – also available as a [asin=B0009MAPUO]Hybrid SACD[/asin]). This originally started as a concept album in 1978 and featured the talents of Justin Hayward (Moody Blues), Phil Lynott (Thin Lizzy), David Essex and Julie Covington, and Richard Burton narrating the story. On stage, it isn’t a play so much as an orchestra plus video and a light show, but with a few actor/singers playing parts – plus a giant disembodied head using Burton’s original narration, and still features Justin Hayward singing. If you like the 1970s psychedelic rock style and the story, this may be of interest to you. But beware…the two lines Hayward sings at the beginning in “The Eve of the War” tend to stick in your head…