Sci-Fi Storm

Times Up.

ABC has pulled freshman series Time After Time after only five of seven completed episodes aired, after the show pulled dismal ratings, averaging only 2.2 million viewers.

The show was based on the novel by Karl Alexander and the 1979 movie adaptation, and featured Freddie Stroma as H.G. Wells and Josh Bowman as Jack the Ripper, brought to the present day via Wells’ time machine.

The show may have had a hard time finding viewers in a prime time landscape awash with time-bendy shows, but at the same time we didn’t see a lot of heat generating for the show in general. Although as fans of the original movie we had high hopes for the show, but due to a very busy second-half schedule it was being queued up for binge-watching on our TiVo.

There are currently no plans to air the remaining two episodes.

“I can take care of myself. I’m from Texas.”

But why does Jack The Ripper seem at home in the present day?

The ABC series remake of Time After Time, starring Freddie Stroma as H G Wells and Josh Bowman as John Stevenson, premieres Sunday, March 5 at 9/8c on ABC.

It appears that execs weren’t happy with some of the test results from the Time After Time pilot, so some changes are being made – although nothing similar to the level of the changes being made to MacGyver.

The role of Vanessa Anders, a philanthropist and collector who is the modern day owner of the time machine and H.G. Wells great granddaughter as seen in the trailer below, was played by Regina Taylor (The Unit) in the pilot. But audiences weren’t as happy with the character as the rest of the pilot, resulting in the decision to rework the character and replacing Taylor with Nicole Ari Parker (Boogie Nights, Revolution).

It seems like today was deadline day on the pickups, and ABC swung the bat both ways. In my despondency over the loss of The Muppets and Castle, I was saved by the news that the network at least picked up Time After Time the series we’ve been reporting on based on the Karl Alexander novel and previously made into a 1979 feature film. We have high hopes for this one.

To no one’s surprise, ABC officially canceled Marvel’s Agent Carter after two seasons, given a nearly 50% drop in ratings and star Haley Atwell getting a new series pickup by ABC with Conviction.

Also on the plus side is that Supergirl will make the giant leap from CBS to sibling network The CW, rather than being sentenced to the Phantom Zone at least. There it will join three other Berlanti Productions-made superhero cousins: Arrow, The Flash, and Legends of Tomorrow. It will also join them physically, with production officially relocating to Vancouver, as we expected would happen. This is a cost-cutting movie that Warner Bros TV was already planning regardless which network picked it up. We expect there may be some additional cuts as well before production picks up. How this could also affect planned storylines remains to be seen as well. The CW also picked up three new series: Riverdale, based on the Archie Comics characters; No Tomorrow, about a straight-laced distribution center manager and a freewheeling man knocking off items on their bucket list because they believe the apocalypse is coming; and Frequency, a series adaptation of the 2000 feature film, with a female police detective who discovers she can communicate with her deceased father in the past via a ham radio.

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.

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.