The Point Radio: BITTEN Adds Some Nasty Witches

SyFy’s BITTEN is back for a new season, taking a sharp turn deeper into the supernatural with the addition of a coven of witches to the storyline. Stars Greyson Holt and Laura Vandervoort talk about how this changes the show’s dynamic. Plus Amazon Prime expands their programming with their first live action children’s show. GORTIMER GIBBONS LIFE ON NORMAL STREET is under the watchful eye of Oscar winning director, Luke Matheny who talks about making a kids show for today’s market.

We are back in just a few days with more in our exclusive talk with Laura Vandervoort (did you remember she was TV’s first Supergirl?) plus a visit with the star of LOST GIRL as their final season begins. Be sure to follow us on Twitter @ThePointRadio.

Transcript

The Point Radio. Hey, it's Mike Raub. Bitten is back on the Sci-Fi network for a second season, and this time, there are witches involved. Series stars Grace and Hold and Laura Vandegoater are along to talk about just how that affects

things. Plus, Amazon Prime opens up the door to a brand new original kids series. It's going to be the new Sesame Street. We'll find out. Let's get to The Point.

This is The Point. The Point Radio. Get The Point Radio. Get The Point Radio. Get The Point Radio.

Get The Point Radio. The Sci-Fi supernatural drama Bitten is back for a second season, and I had a chance to sit down with series stars Laura Vandegoater and Grace and Hold as well to talk about a number of things, including this season, the addition of witches to the storyline. It broadens all of our horizons a little bit.

You know, it was a big bomb to drop in our world that there were others out there with, you know, supernatural abilities. And there's a whole new world that's opened up, and I think it's just kind of made all of us a little more accepting and trustworthy of the world around us. Laura agrees.

Well, what I love about Becca and the character is, I mean, no matter what she's going through, you know, she's trying to make the right decision, and she's trying to do it with love and without trying to hurt anyone. So she'll do anything she can to try to stop things or start things that she knows is going to be wrong or right, but at the same time, what is right and wrong.

And it's just quite confusing after a little while, and she starts to kind of lose it. And I love her because she's juicy, and she can relate. I think a lot of women can relate to their character because, you know, if she's going through so much and she's trying to make the right decision and trying to change and live and I mean, I think everybody can relate to her.

So coming back for a second season, is there a different change in attitude? I mean, I think with a lot of shows, you know, I mean, speaking for myself, but I think it's most of us, at the beginning of this first season, we were all a little nervous to get it right and make the fans happy because the books existed before we were even in the roles.

And so that, you know, it's important to the fans. So we wanted to get it right. And I think now that they've accepted the show and are happy and the fans, you know, the fan base has been growing, it sort of gives us a little more freedom to play with the characters and we're more comfortable.

We've always gotten comfortable with one another, but the comfort factor is a lot higher. And this season, you know, it's a darker show with witchcraft and it's gorier. So I think this season, we just feel more comfortable to expand our characters' minds a little bit more. The writers always give us great material.

So we are following the books in a way, but taking a lot of liberty. Bitten is based on a successful book series. And one thing that made me curious was how much feedback the actors get from those who are pretty much involved with the book version of the characters. Yeah, I mean, we get feedback on many levels, you know, there's Twitter now and the online

forum, but you know, the best is, you know, we go to these conventions and meeting the fans well. And I think, you know, like anything, you know, there's a certain amount of winning fans over in the beginning, especially when, you know, these characters already existed and we have to kind of do our own version of them and our own interpretation.

But I think people have, at least the doubters in the beginning have grown to love our characters. And I think the people who were with us right on board in the beginning are just happy to see it come to life. But everyone's, the reaction has been amazing. Laura said that social media sure helps.

Yeah, like Grayson said, social media, you know, this tool now that we can use to interact with the fans has been, you know, there's a double-edged sword, but it's great when you get the fans that really want to talk to you and are excited about the show. And you can, you know, send out behind the scenes photos and get them excited as well. And they're live tweeting and the instant feedback we can give them on the show as they're

watching it is amazing. And then like Grayson said as well, the convention. It's just a great way to pass them what they like about the show, what they don't like. Hopefully there isn't anything that they don't like, but they seem very happy with what we've done so far.

So we're grateful that they're watching. More on Bitten coming up as we talk exclusively to Laura about her future on Bitten and what it was like to be TV's first Supergirl. All that's coming up. Here's what's going on in pop culture.

Coming off the critical and sales success of the Spider Gwen series, Gwen Stacy gets a whole month full of variant covers from Marvel. In June you have a chance to see Gwen portrayed as various different Marvel characters, including the Mighty Gwengers, the Inguinable Hulk, and a lot more. There's 20 all together and they'll appear on various titles like Captain America and

the Mighty Avengers number nine, future imperfect number one, Groot number one, and how are the duck number four better plan on being patient. If you're looking for an Apple watch over the weekend, free sales began with a watch in stores. And of course the ship date was originally said to be the 24th of April.

Now Apple is saying that the earliest you can get a watch may be the middle of June or possibly even later into the summer with more announcements coming over the next few weeks. In the second season of The Last Ship premieres on TNT in a couple of months. It'll also have an exclusive video on demand presence as well on Hulu.

Hulu will pick up not only the first season but the new second season episodes as well. And the show does return on TNT with new episodes on the 21st of June. Rocker John Bon Jovi is entering the reality TV world with a new show called If I Wasn't a Rockstar. The series will have various rock and roll icons returning to their hometowns to see

what their lives would have been like if they hadn't followed their musical dreams. Right now the show is being done by TWC Dimension with no network plans so far. Looks like Fox will be the home of the remake of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. It's a two hour event directed and executive produced by High School musicals Kenny Ortega. Original Rocky Horror Producer Lou Adler will also be involved as well as Gail Berman and

it's set for sometime later this year for broadcast. Mark Millar and Frank Whiteley's Jupiter's Legacy may be headed to the big screen according to The Hollywood Reporter. Millar is partnering again with some of also involved with this is Lorenzo Di Bonavincura who is currently adapting Millar's MPH for the big screen as well.

He also was involved with Transformers and GI Joe films and Warren Ellis' Red Adaptation 2. Next step in the process for Jupiter's Legacy would be to find a writer for the adaptation. Marvel on top of the shares in Star Wars Driving It. That's a picture for comic sales in stores in March.

In fact when you look at the first quarter of 2015 comics are up nearly 10% mostly with periodicals a little bit of a growth for graphic novels as well. Who are the big sellers? Well we'll tell you about that and run down all the analysis for the sales charts coming up in a few minutes.

Amazon Prime is stepping a little bit out of the box by doing their first original live action kids series. Gordon Mergivins Life on Normal Street. It's under the watchful eye of Oscar winning director Luke Matheny and I asked Luke why a kids series?

Well the reason I did it was because my agent sent me this script that was written by this guy David Axagoras. It was called Gordon Mergivins Life on Normal Street which is his long weird title that's got my attention and I read it and it I hadn't not really done kids programming before but there was something about it that reminded me of a weird mix of like wonder years with

like the twilight zone. Just kind of fun family adventures that reminded me of things that I had read when I was a kid that I hadn't really seen on Nickelodeon or Disney just in my kind of purple view of those sorts of programming. So I just thought it was kind of a cool place to really be creative and when the show got

picked up and we started to make the whole season we just found just a wealth of cool stories like a frog that controls the weather or a dream catcher that gives you someone else's dreams or a tooty catcher fortune teller that like predicts the actual future. So we really found it was like a really fun way to do like a timeless sort of show. So the concept actually came from an open submission.

Right yeah Amazon had what was called an open submissions process which means anyone can submit a script typically in the industry you need to have an agent or something like that and those channels were already sort of established whereas Amazon wanted to go beyond those channels so they just opened it up on their website and this guy David and Exegorus who had been quietly writing in his off hours when he was a preschool teacher

for about 20 years he never had anything produced and then instead of being a crazy success story for him and Tara Sorensen the head of Amazon Kids champion the script and they ended up making the show and he has to now Dave take I had a three school job he moved to LA now he comes to work for me every day so it's been a crazy crazy journey for him after the show.

Kids lifestyles are a little different than they were even a decade ago so how does he go about creating a show that will keep the audience riveted? Well riveted is what we hope is a great word that certainly what any filmmaker or TV maker would try to do. Yeah I guess we just take the philosophy that the story is good enough people are going

to pay attention and we found that it looks like a lot of the audience is not just the kids but people's parents or grandparents who watch it with their kids so I think it becomes more of a family experience than there's just a greater incentive just to keep people watching. What age group was the show aimed for?

It was designed I think technically for I think eight to eleven year olds were what they were telling us at the beginning but now that we've sort of been working on it for a season and we're going into season two now it's really more of a family show is how I think of it. And I think if you had kids in the house it's something the whole family can watch together.

So is there an educational component included? Sure but I would say there's an educational aspect sort of overtly it's not like you learn specific lessons about math or science although there's plenty of math and science in the show and it certainly depicts very smart resourceful kids but insofar as any show is about smart resourceful people I think our show is one of them and I can call that educational

but I guess that's what it is. New episodes of Gordon McGivens life on normal street catch them right now exclusively on Amazon Prime. The point, the point. 2015 looking to be a pretty good year for comic sales in comic stores.

So far when you compare them to where they were last year they're up some 10 percent and most of that growth is through regular comics as opposed to graphic novels. Standard format comics rose about 13 almost 14 percent of the quarter. Graphic novels only grew just a little bit less than 1 percent. Marvel continued their dominance of the market share holding fast at just under 40 percent

as opposed to just over 23 percent for DC. To give you an example of Marvel's dominance Howard the Duck number one came out in March. It was not at the number one best selling comic but it was in the top 10 and it actually sold more 17 percent more than the best selling DC comic which is Batman Arkham Knight number one.

So what were all the big sellers starting at number 10 Amazing Spider-Man number 16.1 for Marvel Batman Arkham Knight number one at number nine. Darth Vader number three came in at number eight Howard the Duck number one at number seven for Marvel. At number six it was Amazing Spider-Man number 16 the regular issue.

At number five Princess Leia number two. Spider-Gwen number two was at number four for the month. Guardians team up number one was the third best selling book Star Wars number three also the second best selling book and in the same genre Princess Leia number one. Best selling comic for the month from Marvel in March.

That's it for now but we're back in a few days more with Laura Vandervold in our exclusive talk with her about the future of Bitten plus Lost Girl cranks up for its final season and where's that gonna go. Series star Anna Silk is along to talk about how it all ends. All that and more waiting for you in all the usual places like ComicMix dot com, Michael

Davis World dot com, GetThePointRadio dot com and in the iTunes podcast directory. You can always keep up with us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook under the point radio and we'll see you back here in just a few days. GetThePointRadio.com