The BBC has released details on the new season of The Sarah Jane Adventures which will debut in the United Kingdom on September 29 and run through December 15.
Starring the Doctor’s former companion, Elisabeth Sladen, the second season is largely unchanged from the first and barely reflects on her appearance in Doctor Who’s fourth season finale. (more…)
Seth Green chatted with Entertainment Weekly about his forthcoming projects including joining the cast of NBC’s Heroes this season. He and pal Breckin Meyer and “starting on set Monday. I’m a really big fan of the show, and I kind of begged for a long time to see if there was anything I could do.” He also confirmed that a second Star Wars Robot Chicken special is in the works. Carrie Fisher will be participating. Meantime, Fox will be rebroadcasting the season premier of Fringe for those who missed it or forgot to set their DVRs on September 14. To round out the full two hour slot, they will preview the first four minutes from the September 16 episode plus sneak an extended scene from 20th Century Fox’s feature The Day the Earth Stood Still, opening December 12, and a preview of the two-hour November TV movie 24: Redemption. “>Entertainment Weekly about his forthcoming projects including joining the cast of NBC’s Heroes this season. He and pal Breckin Meyer are “starting on set Monday. I’m a really big fan of the show, and I kind of begged for a long time to see if there was anything I could do.”
He also confirmed that a second Star Wars-themed Robot Chicken special is in the works. Carrie Fisher will be participating.
Meantime, Fox will be rebroadcasting the season premier of Fringe for those who missed it or forgot to set their DVRs on September 14 from 8 p.m – 10 pm. To round out the full two hour slot, they will preview the first four minutes from the September 16 episode plus sneak an extended scene from 20th Century Fox’s feature The Day the Earth Stood Still, opening December 12, and a preview of the two-hour November TV movie 24: Redemption.
NBC released an announcement indicating their problems with Apple and iTunes are over. Beginning immediately, their top 10 programs will be available for download and season passes can be purchased for most of their series. This applies not only to the Peacock network but its USA Network, SCI FI Channel, Bravo, Sleuth and NBC News channels as well. Oxygen, Telemundo, Mun2 and NBC Sports will be added later.
With the debut yesterday of iTunes 8, the shows will be available in standard ($1.99) or HD ($2.99) formats. Older series can be seen for $.99 each while some can be had for free. Among these shows will be The A-Team, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Miami Vice, Kojak, and the original Battlestar Galactica.
NBC Universal is offering one free episode from each of their top series, available in either SD or HD, on the iTunes Store for the next two weeks. The premiere episodes of upcoming series, such as Knight Rider, My Own Worst Enemy and Kath & Kim will be available on iTunes a week before their broadcast premieres later in September and October, with subsequent episodes available the day after broadcast.
Rango is a new CG-animated feature film from Paramount Pictures, set to begin production in January. It is being directed by Gore Verbinski, making his animated debut, and he’s being joined by his Pirates of the Caribbean star Johnny Depp as the lead voice, that for a pet that goes on an adventure. The script is from John Logan (Star Trek: Nemesis) using an idea by Verbinski. Industrial Light & Magic will handle the actual animation chores.
The studio has staked a March 2011 release date.
The ambitious method of animation, Verbinski told Variety "will allow us to capture and translate every aspect of Johnny’s performance, using it to drive the computer-generated character in a way that has yet to be seen in an animated feature."
According to the trade, Verbinski and Logan have are also collaborating on Bioshock, a video game adaptation for Universal Studios.
The Sun in the UK is reporting today that David Tennant’s negotiations to return for a fifth season as Doctor Who may include a guarantee that he star in the much-rumored feature film. The contract being dangled before the 37-year old actor is reported to be worth £1.5 million.
An unnamed source told the tabloid, “For ages, BBC Worldwide held the rights and were planning to make a movie, but it got held up and former BBC1 boss Lorraine Heggessey decided to bring back the TV series in 2005.
“But everyone is keen now and the fans are clamoring. Part of David’s conundrum is that he wants to do films, so this looks like it would solve both issues.”
Peter Cushing in 1965 and Paul McGann in 1996 both starred as the Doctor in previous film versions. Tennant is already committed to four specials and a Christmas story for airing in 2009.
As reported during our weekly box office items, this was not a good summer for 20th-Century Fox. We’re not the only ones to notice and an analysis in Variety shows the depth of their troubles as the studio has tumbled from its number one spot, getting through the lucrative season without a single film to break the $100 million box office barrier for success.
The lack of a break out film is partly being blamed on X-Men Origins: Wolverine being a year behind its anticipated release. This was precipitated by Hugh Jackman agreeing to star in Australia, opening this fall, but pushing back Wolverine’s schedule. The production proved troubling with the studio nearly firing director Gavin Hood until Richard Donner flew to the Outback to smooth things over on the project, being produced by his wife, Lauren Shuler Donner.
Coming to their rescue, could be other Marvel Super-Heroes. In addition to Wolverine, David S. Goyer’s X-Men Origins: Magneto inches towards green light. Following could be the Young X-Men project we tipped you off to a while back. Now they include on their development slate Deadpool, possibly spinning out of Wolverine. Ryan Reynolds plays the merc with a mouth and could gain his own spotlight.
They’re even thinking of rebooting Daredevil, the way Paramount rebooted Universal’s Hulk. A director’s cut of Mark Steven Johnson’s film is due out September 30 and its performance could influence the decision.
First, they need to win back to the fanboys who are outraged that Fox’s lawsuit might deprive them of seeing Watchmen next March.
Week two of the Siegel & Shuster Society’s auction to fund the restoration of Jerry Siegel’s Cleveland home is underway and more creators have signed on to add items for bidding.
Joining in the auction, which already includes items from Brad Meltzer, Ed Brubaker, Joe Staton, Gene Ha, Judd Winick, Ivan Reis, Bill Morrison, John Romita Jr., Dave Johnson, John Cassaday and Andy Kubert are:
BOOM! Studios Editor-in-Chief Mark Waid, donating the original Curt Swan cover art to Legion of Super-Heroes Index #2.
J.H. Williams III, donating his cover art from Superman Beyond 3-D #1
Jimmy Palmiotti is donating a chance for a fan to become a character that will be shot by the star in a future issue of Painkiller Jane.
Danny Fingeroth is donating autographed copies of his books Disguised as Clark Kent: Jews, Comics, and the Creation of the Superhero and Superman on the Couch: What Superheroes Really Tell Us About Ourselves and Our Society.
At Sunday’s Screen Actors Guild 25th anniversary celebration of The Greatest American Hero, creator Stephen J. Cannell confirmed once and for that a feature film version is coming. Disney has carried the project on its development list for several years but the current boom in super-hero movies seems to have moved it off the backburner.
"We’ve written a screenplay, and we’ve hired a director, and we’re in the midst of putting this together for the future," the prolific producer said, according to Sci-Fi Wire.
After the announcement, Connie Sellecca took the mike and grilled her former boss. "I’m going to put Stephen on the spot," Sellecca asked. "Cameos for us?"
"Absolutely guaranteed," Cannell responded. "More than cameos: acting jobs."
"I took a sneak peek at the [feature] script, and it’s absolutely charming and wonderful," William Katt confirmed for the crowd. "I know people are going to love it." Katt made headlines this summer with word that he was cowriting a new GAH comic book series with producer Chris Folino. The comic is due from their Catastrophic Comics this November.
The actors, including Robert Culp, discussed how much fun they had shooting the series and looking forward to reviving their characters, first in a series of animated web shorts.
Word is that Stephen Herek (Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure) is on board to direct although Cannell did not mention his name.
All-Star Batman & Robin #10 has caused some controversy since DC Comics announced it was recalling issues scheduled to be on sale today. They described the problem through the Diamond Comics announcement that it was a printing error.
Apparently, Frank Miller’s expletive-filled dialogue was intended to be blacked out but the process employed failed to effectively do this.
The actual dialogue and scans of the offending pages can be found over at Comic Book Resources. According to Heidi MacDonald at The Beat, Miller insisted his dialogue be lettered in and blacked out. The production approach clearly failed to achieve the desired effect but editorial judgment has also to be questioned.
According to former DCer Brian Pearce over at the DC Archives board, “What puzzles me is the suggestion that the dialog in the word balloons might have printed in a four-color black (essentially, solid black backed up with a small percentage of the other process colors), while the bar that was supposed to obscure it was just a flat black, and not adequately opaque. ‘Backing up the black’ as it’s called, is often used to give large flat black areas a more ‘rich’ (and less washed out) appearance, or to ward off problems with trapping (when registration is slightly off) — but what strikes me as odd is that there’s really no need to do that with a fine detail like lettering. It’s not really necessary, and against a white background, that would betray even the slightest misregistration. (And even as comics printing and coloring have become more elaborate through the years, lettering inside baloons and caption boxes was genenerally left as only black because it was easiest to strip out that detail from just that one plate for foreign licensees and reprints.)
“And before the usual suspects start speculating on who might lose a job over this, this is an error that would be difficult, if not impossible to spot without a very specific type of proof, or a press proof. (It was probably caught on one of the unbound ‘last chance copies,’ when the books have been printed and bound, but there’s still time to do something.)”
Copies are already being hawked at eBay and its likely that similar to similar recalled comics, such as the Elseworlds 80-Page Giant, it will remain a rare collectible.
Unnoticed in all this was that Action Comics #869 and DC: Decisions #1 were also recalled for other printing problems. The reasons behind these two remain unclear.
Although he arrived first in 1973, Heathcliff was pretty quickly eclipsed as king of the cartoon cats by Garfield, who arrived just five years later. Created by George Gately, the strip was filled with gentle humor and was quickly added to papers turning him into a quiet star. The strip can be found in over 1000 newspapers via the Creators Syndicate.
After Gately passed away, the strip as taken over by his nephew, Peter Gallagher in 1998. Now, FitzRoy media has signed a comprehensive licensing deal with Gallagher that will include animated feature films, direct-to-DVD releases and location based entertainment projects.
The tabby has previously been seen in animated form starting with a 1980 animated series from Ruby-Spears which is noteworthy only because it was Mel Blanc’s last original voice role. DIC revived the character for a new series in 1984.
Additionally, Marvel’s Star Comics imprint release a comic book adaptation with new longer adventures which lasted for a healthy 56 issues.
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