Sci-Fi Storm

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.

The Flash’s longtime ally Elongated Man – a.k.a. Ralph Dibny – will be joining the team on the CW’s The Flash this season as a recurring character, played by Hartley Sawyer (Glory Daze, Miss 2059).

Elongated Man has the ability to stretch his body to extremes. In the comics he gained this ability by refining a drink that was popular among the contortionists he admired. Presumably in the show it will be related in some way to the accident at Star Labs – in fact, he was named in the first season as one of the people presumed dead from the accident.

I hope everyone enjoyed Halloween! Some quick tidbits as I attempt to get caught up on all the great programs I’m trying to follow these days…

Timeless is one of the shows I am enjoying so far, although the implications of the show are mind-boggling…but the show will get a little extra time to play out, with an additional three episodes ordered by NBC for a total of 16. It also seems that NBC is calling this a “full season” order now, compared with the typical 22-26. I’m not sure what a “season” really means any more…

Now while Marvel appears to rule the roads of cinema release schedules, DC still seems to be having trouble getting off the starting line. Last year, the Wonder Woman movie had a false start when director Michelle MacLaren departed the project over creative differences, and now the feature version of The Flash is seeing the same thing happening. Director Rick Famuyiwa is walking away for “creative differences” as well, and this time the project’s start date is in jeopardy. And this isn’t the first time for this film. Original director Seth Grahame-Smith left the film earlier this year over – you guessed it – “creative differences”.

Lastly, the Seth MacFarlane sci-fi dramedy set up at Fox still doesn’t have a name, but it does have some more cast members. In addition to MacFarlane and previously announced members Adrianne Palicki (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), Scott Grimes (ER, Party of Five), Peter Macon (Friendship!) and J Lee (Family Guy), Halston Sage (Crisis, Goosebumps) and Penny Johnson Jerald (Castle, 24) have now signed on as regulars. Still no idea what any of the characters are yet though…

Interesting news coming through the grapevine…with Supergirl moving to the CW, it almost certainly would include budget cuts, likely with some concessions in the cast especially with the move of the production to Canada. One possibility is that Callista Flockhart, who plays CatCo head honcho Cat Grant, may be seen less, as apparently Ian Gomez (Cougar Town) has been signed to play Snapper Carr, who Cat hires to be the editor-in-chief at CatCo.

Meanwhile, the CW released a pic of Kid Flash/Wally West, who will debut with the third season of The Flash and played by Keiynan Lonsdale (Allegiant)…looks pretty slick…

Tom Felton, who played Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter films, is joining the cast of The Flash for the upcoming season in a new regular role. No magical or super powers though, at least not yet – he’ll be playing mere human Julian Dorn, a fellow CSI in Central City who suspects there is more to his colleague Barry Allen.

The upcoming season will be taken from the “Flashpoint Paradox” storyline in the comics, where Barry’s actions trying to save his mother result in drastic changes across the DC universe.

[Minor spoilers ahead] So the big crossover episode of Supergirl aired on Monday, while we await word of renewal. Did The Flash give it a good enough boost? Time will tell, as there has been no announcement yet, but it definitely had an effect on the ratings. Overall viewers were up 21% and the all-important 18-49 demo was up 31% over last week, to see how the DC television universe would handle this network-and-multiverse-crossing episode. It also had the highest rating for any scripted show that night.

So, how did they handle the crossover, given that Flash’s Earth seems to have no awareness of Kara or her better known cousin or other aliens, while Kara’s version has no metahumans? Simple – the comic multiverse, DC-style.

The Flash has already established the multi-Earth concept, with the Golden Age Flash, Jay Garrick, coming to Barry Allen’s Earth-One, and Barry going to Jay’s Earth-Two. So to expand a bit, Barry does something (to be explained in The Flash‘s Tuesday episode) back home that results in him arriving on Kara’s version of Earth, where he helps out and then Kara gives him a boost – literally – to get back. This now opened up a myriad of possibilities in storytelling with other DC characters, in such a way that they can be independent of shows or even the movies – we already know that a movie version of Barry Allen’s Flash will be played by Ezra Miller instead of Grant Gustin. So it sets op independent franchises that in some ways can lean on each other occasionally.

It also provides a gimmick that can unfortunately be used as an end-around to any intractable situation, so let’s hope they keep this trick in the back pocket unless it actually helps with the story.

The CW has released the first trailer for DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, which features characters spun off from Arrow/The Flash, including the Atom (Brandon Routh), White Canary (Caity Lotz), Firestorm (Victor Garber and Franz Drameh), Heat Wave (Dominic Purcell), Captain Cold (Wentworth Miller), plus newcomers Hawkman (Falk Hentschel, Knight and Day) and Hawkgirl (Ciara Renée), and Rip Hunter (Arthur Darvill, Doctor Who), united to fight Vandal Savage (Casper Crump, Almost Perfect)…the show itself will debut on January 21st at 8/7c, where it will be followed by the third season premiere of The 100 at 9/8c.

DC’s Legends of Tomorrow will actually get a kickoff next week during the two night crossover episodes of Arrow and The Flash, titled “Legends of Yesterday” and “Legends of Today”, appropriately enough…

Warner Bros is very busy the next several years, announcing today it’s release slate. And it features both dipping back in the well that works as well as trying to out-superhero Marvel.

Warner Bros.’ Chairman and CEO Kevin Tsujihara spoke at the Time Warner shareholder’s meeting and laid out a lot of their studio plans for 2016-2020.

First up is the expected Harry Potter spinoff, Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, which is currently being set at three separate films, set to release in 2016, 2018, and 2020.

Next, after the HUGE success of The LEGO Movie, the already-announced sequel has been set for 2018, but it will be preceded by two others: Ninjago (2016), based on the Cartoon Network series, and The LEGO Movie: Batman (2017), a spin-off that follows the rather stuck-up (and not to mention, blocky) take on the character from the first movie.

And then there is the world of DC Comics…we’re already waiting for Batman vs. Superman (2016) and Justice League (2017), but Wonder Woman will indeed get her own standalone movie before Justice League (starring Gal Gadot, who will be introduced in BvS), 2018 will see The Flash (starring Ezra Miller, and apparently not connected at all to the just-started TV series) and Aquaman (with Stargate Atlantis and Game of Thrones Jason Momoa finally confirmed).

2019 will give us Shazam and a second Justice League movie, and in 2020 Warner Bros will try and get Green Lantern off to Oa again with a reboot after the disappointing Ryan Reynolds effort.

Shuffled in are two other titles, Suicide Squad in 2016 and Cyborg in 2020. And apparently this isn’t even ALL of the planned DC movies. Yikes!

The CW’s newest superhero, The Flash, became the network’s most watched debut in the Live+3 ratings with 6.42 million total viewers, rising 33% over the same day ratings it started with. This boosts it over previous record holder The Vampire Diaries, which still had stronger Same Day numbers from it’s debut in 2009, but did not rise as well in even the Live+7 numbers, which were lower than The Flash‘ L+3.

Meanwhile, across the dial, Fox’ Batman-origin Gotham series, set its own records, with the highest L+7 boost in the 18-49 demographic of 2.7 points to 6.0, or an 82% increase. This has convinced Fox to increase the show’s episode order from 16 to 22.

Robbie Amell is landing on his feet back on CW after the cancellation of his series The Tomorrow People, as it was announced today that he will join the Arrow spinoff series The Flash.

Amell, whose brother Stephen stars in the parent series, will reportedly play Ronnie Raymond, a maintenance worker at S.T.A.R. Labs and fiance to Caitlin Snow (Danielle Panabaker, Shark). Raymond is known to DC Comics fans as one half of the superhero known as Firestorm, after he and a another person experience a nuclear accident that allows them to fuse together in to the superhero.

The CW is pulling together its own little section of the DC multiverse…