Sci-Fi Storm

The CW announced today in their upfronts that they have already picked up DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, the official title of the proposed Arrow/Flash spinoff, for the upcoming 2015-2016 season.

From their release:

When heroes alone are not enough… the world needs legends. Having seen the future, one he will desperately try to prevent from happening, time-traveling rogue Rip Hunter is tasked with assembling a disparate group of both heroes and villains to confront an unstoppable threat – one in which not only is the planet at stake, but all of time itself. Can this ragtag team defeat an immortal threat unlike anything they have ever known?

The cast includes returning actors Victor Garber (Dr. Martin Stein, The Flash), Brandon Routh (Ray Palmer/Atom, Arrow), Caity Lotz (Sara Lance/The Canary, Arrow), Dominic Purcell ( Mick Rory/Heat Wave, The Flash), and Wentworth Miller ( Leonard Snart/Captain Cold, The Flash). Joining them is Arthur Darvill (Doctor Who) as Rip Hunter.

Greg Berlanti, Marc Guggenheim, Andrew Kreisberg and Sarah Schechter are the executive producers.

Having managed to successfully spin off The Flash from its DC Comics-sibling series Arrow, CW wants to strike gold again…but rather than do it with another DC property, they are going to pull again from Arrow – with some Flash thrown in as well.

No title has been given to the project, but the plan is to pull together some of the secondary characters from both shows into a new series, starting with Ray Palmer/The Atom (Brandon Routh) from Arrow and Dr. Martin Stein (Victor Garber) and Leonard Snart/Captain Cold (Wentworth Miller) from The Flash. Also planned to be part of the show is actor Caity Lotz, who played Sara Lance/Black Canary on The Arrow but was killed off, it is uncertain what role she may play.

The CW has been cleaning up it’s schedule today for the next season to make room for the pilot pickups, and some genre shows have felt the axe. The Tomorrow People and Star-Crossed were not renewed, with the former not finding a foothold with the CW’s primary demographics, and the latter’s mid-season start possibly falling victim to the weak lead-in.

On the other side, The 100, which looks to be a surprise hit, gained renewal along with the rebooted Beauty and the Beast, but the number of episodes has not been decided – some believe they may get less than the full 22 episodes. The 100 will also say goodbye to two of the co-runners of the show, Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain, who were there to help shepherd executive producer and creator Jason Rothenberg for it’s freshman run, but he will go solo going forward.

The CW has released the first full-body picture of star Grant Gustin decked out as his superhero alter ego for the upcoming spin-off pilot The Flash.

Filming will presumably start soon on the pilot, a spin-off of The CW’s Arrow, soon. Originally this was envisioned as a back-door pilot directly from an episode of Arrow at the end of the current season, but it was decided that the origin story deserved its own pilot and was separated. Gustin appeared in a couple episodes of Arrow already as Barry Allen, and was injured/irradiated in an explosion in that show.

The Flash will also star Jesse L. Martin (Law & Order) and Tom Cavanagh (Ed) as well as 1990’s The Flash star John Wesley Shipp in an unknown role.

Wasting no time, the CW gave renewals today to its strongest shows this season, almost all of which are genre shows: The Arrow (the CW’s #1 show), Supernatural, Vampire Diaries, The Originals and Reign. Left out – at the moment – are The Tomorrow People and Beauty & The Beast, which are on the bubble and right now are probably even money on renewal. Some reports say that the CW is waiting to see how the upcoming midseason shows, The Hundred, about 100 juvenile delinquents sent back to a post-nuclear-war Earth to see if it can be repopulated, and Star-Crossed, about a human girl who strikes up a romance with an alien boy when several aliens are integrated into society (a younger Alien Nation?).

John Wesley Shipp, who played Barry Allen, a.k.a. The Flash in the one-season 1990-1991 TV series on CBS, has signed on for a part in The CW’s remake, which is rapidly adding cast. Who he is playing, however, is being kept very secret at the moment…

Actor Tom Cavanagh (Ed, Yogi Bear) will join the pilot of The CW’s Arrow spinoff, The Flash.

Cavanagh will play Harrison Wells, a “rock star” of the physics world and the brains and money behind S.T.A.R. Labs Particle Accelerator – the one that explodes and turns Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) into The Flash. After becoming a pariah in the scientific community due to the accident, he tries to regain his stature after discovering the side effect.

Joining Grant Gustin and Jesse L. Martin for the CW’s pilot The Flash are Candice Patton (The Game) and newcomer Carlos Valdes.

Patton will play Iris, Barry Allen’s best friend and the daughter of Allen’s mentor/father figure Detective West (Martin). Valdes, who is currently appearing on Broadway, will play Cisco Ramon, the youngest member of the STAR Labs team.

The CW has had a change of plans for the debut of The Flash. Originally it was planned that the character of Barry Allen would appear in episodes 8 and 9 of Arrow to introduce the character, but then in episode 20 he would become The Flash, serving as a backdoor pilot to spin off into another series.

Now the plan (per Deadline) is to leave him in episodes 8 and 9, but will now be given a traditional pilot with which, they hope, to kick off the series.

The CW is hoping it bats 1.000 this season, keeping all three freshman drama series The Tomorrow People, Reign and The Originals with back end orders for a full season.

The spin-off of The Vampire Diaries, The Originals, has made good gains in viewers after a moderate debut, reaching a 0.9 rating for the 18-49 demo as well as 2 million same-day total viewers. The other two are holding steady at around 0.6, but all three also enjoy a fairly strong digital viewership as well.