30A 27 March 2001

Eastlant Sci-Fi Group - 2000-2001 Season Progress Report 30A. This is a digest of recent Sci-Fi- and genre-related news as of 27 March 2001.

News & Notes

Group News:

Request Lists

An odd side effect of our recent hardware and software update is that all the old e-mails before last weekend are on one computer and the current stuff is on another computer. In a week or so, the system will be networked, at which stage we will have easy access to everything, but in the short term, if you send an e-mail referring to an existing request list, could you please repeat the list in your message.

This will save us just a little time for each message, but it does add up considering the volume of messages we answer every day.

TV News:

Days May Be Numbered for 7 Days as Olga Quits

Word has it that one of the cast of UPN's 7 Days has walked off the production three weeks ago. According to Entertainment Weekly, Justina Vail, who plays the part of Olga on the series, left the program due to what EW's sources have speculated as being a strained relationship between the actress and series star Jonathan LaPaglia. The site reports that negotiations are under way to bring Vail back, with unnamed sources revealing, "They are filming around her and making it work."

This comes close on the heels of rumors that if Special Unit 2 is a success, UPN may well cancel 7 Days. Reasons for this potential cancellation are unclear, but it appears that there are several conflicts among the show’s cast, and production of the show has never been exactly plain sailing.

Editor’s Note: We have always been of the opinion that UPN is run by petulant children, but they would be out of their minds to cancel this show now. With the departure of their top-rated show Voyager, even with the prospect of a new Trek series to replace it, what could possibly possess them to cancel their 2nd highest-rated drama show of the week?

If anything did happen to delay Trek V, they would then be left with an entire night to fill, and they could well lose their audience altogether.

As always, we shall see.

UPN Ups Stakes For Buffy

UPN has made an offer for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, whose producer has failed to reach agreement on a contract renewal with its current network, The WB, Variety reported. The WB and 20th Century Fox Television, which produces Buffy, failed to come to terms on a new contract, leaving Fox free to shop the series to others, including its own Fox broadcast network.

An insider told Variety that UPN had made "a significant offer" for Buffy, but the trade paper reported that UPN is considered a long shot to acquire the show, and The WB remains in talks with Fox.

At issue is the amount of money the network is willing to pay Fox for each episode. Variety reported that The WB may have increased its early offer of $1.6 million per episode. Among other networks vying for the show, NBC has also put an offer on the table, but ABC has dropped out, sources told The Hollywood Reporter.

WB To Air Witchright Pilot

The WB will air the pilot of Witchright Hall, the spin-off of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, sometime next week, Comics2Film reported. The April 6 episode of Sabrina will serve as the pilot for the proposed new series.

The episode features Emily Hart (Sabrina star Melissa Joan Hart's sister) as Sabrina's troublesome cousin Amanda, who is sent to Witchright Hall, a special school for young witches.

Editor’s note: We have no intention of taping this unless requested to do so. Considering the time scale, if you want this, don’t hang around.

Thor Gets Hammered

Marvel Studios' Rick Ungar told Comics Continuum that not one single network had yet picked up the proposed live-action Thor television series for next season. "Thor, right now, is nowhere at this moment," Ungar said. "The script did not get picked up for a pilot. So we're looking at what we want to do with it. That's the way things work. They all can't go."

UPN had considered the series, which is part of Marvel's deal with Artisan Entertainment, but passed.

Meanwhile, Ungar said Marvel is still developing other TV projects, including its live-action Mutant X; Daughters of the Dragon, based on characters in the Iron Fist comic series; Nick Fury; and Bloodstone.

Special Unit 2 Mixes Genres

Alexandra Lee--star of UPN's upcoming SF comedy series Special Unit 2--told free-lance SF columnist Ian Spelling that the show combines elements of several types of show. Lee plays Kate Benson in the series, which centers on a squad of monster-hunting Chicago cops.

"It's a whole bunch of genres in one, but it's a completely different show from anything I've ever seen on television," Lee told Spelling. "It's definitely got an action side to it, like a Buffy the Vampire Slayer or an Angel, but there's a real funny side to it, like Men in Black, though our humor is a bit more dark and twisted."

Lee added, "There are so many different elements. You've got the buddy-movie thing going for it as well. Essentially, it's about an underground police unit that fights monsters--werewolves who are stockbrokers by day, kung-fu mummies and spiderwomen--in Chicago. So you can go pretty much anywhere with that." UPN has ordered six hour-long episodes of Special Unit 2, which premieres April 11.

All Souls Not Chicago Hope

Serena Scott Thomas, one of the stars of UPN's upcoming midseason series All Souls, about a mysterious Boston hospital with a colorful past, said in an interview that the paranormal series isn't a typical medical drama. Scott Thomas plays Dr. Nicole De Brae, the hospital’s chief of staff.

"This is a hospital drama, but with supernatural elements, which is intriguing," Scott Thomas said. "Sometimes [in medicine], the supernatural does seem to enter, ... and usually in a good way, ... so there's a great potential for interesting debate, I think, in the premise of this."

The series--from producer Aaron Spelling and creators Stuart Gillard and Stephen Tolkin--tells the story of the medical staff in a massive hospital in which good and evil forces manifest in mysterious ways. "The premise is a hospital, a building that was built in 1850 or something," Scott Thomas said. "It's built on, I believe, an old burial site, where there is a merging of lines of energy, ... and the result of this merging is that there is a kind of vortex, whatever that is--a place where this energy merges--where the potential for evil is as great as, if not greater than, the potential for good. People who find themselves there find themselves pulled one way or another."

Scott Thomas' character remains an enigma, at least in the beginning. "I loved my character," she said. "She's smart, strong, intelligent, successful. ... It's quite rare for a woman character. I really liked the way that the writers wrote Nicole De Brae. I like that she keeps herself to herself, and doesn't give everything away. She's very self-contained, but she's not a bitch. A lot of the time, when a woman is strong, she's written or portrayed as a bitch, and [De Brae]'s not, and I like that. ... I like that she constantly questions herself, but she's still a strong woman."

Editor’s Note: We do not intend to tape this unless someone asks for it. Don’t wait too long – it starts next week.

Sci-Fi Taken With Spielberg

The Sci-Fi Channel announced that it will produce Taken, a 20-hour original dramatic miniseries from Steven Spielberg and DreamWorks Television. The previously announced project has moved from development to pre-production, Sci-Fi said.

The miniseries will weave together more than 50 years of alien abduction accounts into the story of three families' experiences. The miniseries is slated to begin production later this year. Les Bohem will executive produce and write Taken.

JMS on New B5 Movie

Here is the text of an open e-mail from J Michael Straczinski regarding the announcement by Sci-Fi of the new B5 movie and possible series:

Well, that's at least ONE weight off my chest....

To those who've heard the news already, and those just now finding out...the Sci-Fi Channel today announced that we have a new Babylon 5 TV movie going into production that will also serve as a pilot for a likely new series.

The movie (and the series) is under the heading of BABYLON 5: THE LEGEND OF THE RANGERS. The specific title for the 2-hour movie's story is "To Live and Die in Starlight."

There isn't much I can tell you about the story because we're kinda keeping the details under wraps as much as possible for the time being.

What little I can say....

It's set in the B5 universe just under 3 years after the events of "Objects at Rest." At this point there's one major character from the B5 universe in the script (a fan favorite). Where B5 was a heavy drama with some adventure/action elements, this one is a little more skewed toward adventure with underlying drama (which is about what you'd expect from the Anla-Shok).

We've been sitting on this information for a while now...such that we're already well into pre-production. We'll be shooting this movie around mid-May, well in advance of any potential actor's strike (the script is done and so far everybody likes it a LOT).

We've already got designs coming in on a new ship, and a new *kind* of ship...and we're going to be getting more into Minbari aesthetics, technologies and philosophy.

It's got some great characters, and it's a lot of fun.

I have other news to announce on other fronts...have since the end of the year, in fact...but I'm still sitting on the details awaiting another press release from another studio. What I *can* say is that I have a firm GO order to executive produce a new series (nominally SF) that will go into production after the potential SAG strike. When that's finally over, if the strike indeed happens, we pull the trigger and go into principal photography and it's an order for a full season's worth of episodes.

I can't give you any details right now on the subject, title, studio or network. That will have to await the studio's release...so don't even ask.

As far as doing both projects at the same time is concerned...it's actually quite common, as testified to by folks like John Wells and Aaron Sorkin and David Kelly and others. So there won't be any conflict.

More later.

Jms

A couple of notes on some of the Upcoming Pilots

A while back, Peta Wilson was mentioned for the NBC pilot "Spy Girl", which turned out to not be accurate. According to the Hollywood reporter, Peta is involved with the NBC pilot "Fair Play" about a female criminologist.

CBS's Wolf Lake pilot is described as "American Beauty" with werewolves, whereas the FOX pilot "Pasadena" is described as "American Beauty" meets "Dynasty".

In other new show news, according to a Hollywood reporter article, in a UPN meeting with advertising reps, UPN president and CEO Dean Valentine confirmed that the network is "deep in negotiations with the studio (Paramount) and expect to have something to say about it shortly." He called the unnamed new show "extraordinary." "It is going to blow people away," he said.

Sci-Fi Channel Specials and Miniseries Announced

Firestarter: The Next Chapter, a four-hour miniseries based on the Stephen King novel Firestarter and the 1984 movie version of the book, which starred Drew Barrymore. The miniseries picks up the story 20 years after the events in the movie.

In the new miniseries, Charlie has stayed on the run from the government that created her and killed her parents. With her enemies using their own arsenal of human weapons, Charlie must find the answers to her own dangerous abilities before they find her.

Firestarter: The Next Chapter is green-lighted and expected to go into production soon. Tom Thayer will executive produce and Robert Iscove will direct.

Ed: Sounds a bit like Dark Angel to me.

Barker Unveils Saint Sinner – a two-hour telefilm based on his Saint Sinner comic series--tells the story of a 19th-century monk who unwittingly unleashes two female demons and must pursue them through time to present-day Los Angeles to stop them from wreaking havoc. The project is slated to premiere on Sci-Fi in 2002.

Barker said he first wrote the comic for Marvel, but that it didn't last very long. "I loved the title," Barker said. "I thought, 'One of these days, I'm going to use that title again.'" When he heard that Sci-Fi executive Steve La Rue was looking for new projects for Sci-Fi to produce, Barker sent him the first 25 pages of Saint Sinner. "He instantly responded to the material, and got a writer on to it, ... Doris Egan [Dark Angel]," he said. Egan is now writing the script.

Barker added, "What I think is fun about it, is it's metaphysical, it's horror, it's a little science fiction .. all mingled together: a very powerful combination, I think. ... I want to be a bit of a tease about it. It's about a pursuit through time, initially, by a monk of a very strange and potentially heretical order, of two female entities whose origins and nature I don't want to go into, but who end up in our culture. And they end up doing great harm here. So the first story, at least, is a sort of time travel story involving monks ... and female demons."

Galactica Gears Up – Tom DeSanto--who is developing The Sci-Fi Channel's update of Battlestar Galactica with his X-Men partner Bryan Singer—announced that the project is moving forward. "We have opened offices, which is a good sign," DeSanto said in an interview. "Right now, we have outlines and a bible we're working on, characters and all that stuff."

DeSanto added, "We've got a bunch of ideas for the pilot. The basic storyline is all done, and where we're taking it for the first season, hopefully. ... [The timeline] will be a bit ahead. I won't say how many years, but it will be a little bit ahead." DeSanto declined to say whether the show would bring back characters from the original 1970s series. "That I can't discuss," he said. But he added that the title starship will be back, as will the old series' cyborg enemies. "I promise. ... I will leave the show if there is not a Battlestar Galactica on the show. Cylons will be back. But this time they won't be clunky. But they'll still be cool."

DeSanto--who executive-produced the hit X-Men movie, which Singer directed--said that reviving the show fulfills a long-standing dream. "It was a project, like X-Men, which was something from a kid that I wanted to do," he said. "Fortunately, X-Men was a hit, so now it affords the opportunity to go and pull Galactica out of mothballs. ... It's something I'd been working on, probably, since I was, like, 20 years old, just sketching Vipers. And I'd always write storylines and figure things out. ... All of those things that I had done behind a cash register when I was working retail--sketching new designs for Vipers--I can use them now."

DeSanto added that he's willing to sit down and talk with original series star Richard Hatch, who has been pursuing his own efforts to resurrect the show and who recently penned an open letter to Singer and DeSanto. "I'm looking forward to sitting down and talking with Richard, because I think he's got such passion," DeSanto said. "Anyone who's really carried the banner for the show that he's done, I think he's really done an amazing job with the novels and the comics and all that stuff."

'Invisible Man' 2nd Season

Vincent Ventresca has been shedding some light on what we can expect to see happening on his program, The Invisible Man, as its heads into its second season.

While talking to fans in an on-line chat, the actor who stars on the Sci-Fi Channel TV series revealed, "One thing we can expect in the second season was something I thought we put on the back burner for too long, and that is that at its core the show is a morality tale, about a guy who can do good or do bad with this gift that he has in his head. Well, I felt like Darien was sort of saving the day at the end of every episode. But if you think about it, if you're really honest about [it],... if you're willing to get on the ship that believes that someone could become invisible, what would you do with that invisibility? And not all the thoughts that come to my mind are specifically good... And so, going back to the pilot, the idea of the invisibility itself has a cost. If I don't get a shot of the quicksilver, as Arnaud said in the pilot, it's as if the lid is blown off my id... That's what I think we're going to see in the second season a little bit more. Not Darien the naughty boy, but not necessarily not Darien the naughty boy."

Movie News:

Voyager Crew Members May Guest in Future Trek Movies

Robert Picardo, who plays the Doctor on Star Trek: Voyager, told Cinescape that there's a chance members of the crew will appear in future Trek movies. "At the TV critics' press conference, [executive producer] Rick Berman was asked that question and was, as usual, totally evasive," Picardo told Cinescape contributors Gregory L. Norris and Laura A. Van Vleet.

Picardo added, "He said there were possibilities that all or some of the Voyager characters would appear in a future film. However, I think the sense I got from his answer was that there are no current plans at all for that--that they were just keeping their options open."

Kate Mulgrew, who plays Capt. Janeway, told Cinescape, "They haven't precluded the notion of a Voyager movie, nor have they established it. I think they need to see how the next series goes and what happens in the wake of the Voyager finale."

Soderbergh Pens New Solaris

Oscar winner Steven Soderbergh told Film Threat magazine that he's writing an update of the classic 1972 Russian SF movie Solaris for producer James Cameron. The original movie, by director Andrei Tarkovsky, is based on Stanislaw Lem's 1961 novel of the same name.

The novel and film detail the encounter with an alien intelligence by a psychologist who travels to a planet after three scientists mysteriously perish. "I'm writing it," Soderbergh told Film Threat. "What's interesting about it is it's not a hardware science fiction movie; it's a psychological drama that happens to be set in space, and that's what's interesting to me about it. I'm interested in science fiction, but only in the conceptual side of it."

Soderbergh--who won the best director Oscar for Traffic--added, "There are hardly any real science fiction movies made today. They're all about the hardware or selling action figures. ... My whole pitch to James Cameron's company--because they owned the rights, and it was something I was interested in for a while-- ... I said, 'If we do our jobs right, it's a combination of 2001 [A Space Odyssey] and Last Tango in Paris.' They said, 'Oh, that sounds good.' ... I'm excited by it. It's the first thing that I've wanted to write in a long time. I had been writing Son of Schizopolis, and I put that aside to work on this."

Mary Straddles Real And Unreal

Clive Barker told journalists that the idea for his upcoming supernatural thriller movie Bloody Mary resulted from a true story about the urban legends told in homeless shelters. Disney's Touchstone Pictures unit is developing the movie, based in part on a nonfiction article by journalist Lynda Edwards, called "Myths Over Miami," about a vengeful spirit who snatches the souls of children and lives in the plane between reality and illusion.

"This began with our reading a piece about urban legends," Barker said in an interview. "I've always been fascinated by urban legends. Candyman was one of the first urban-legend movies, and what's very interesting is, when people write about urban legends, they very often write about Candyman as if it were a real urban legend, though it's a complete invention, which is kind of fun. The interesting thing about Bloody Mary was, to us, here is a series of stories that were told--and this was a real article in the Miami [New] Times--about kids who told stories about Bloody Mary to one another, and they were often orphaned or abused children, and they ... had this incredibly elaborate mythology worked out about how Bloody Mary and her demons entered and exited the world, how they caused trouble and so on. It just seemed like a natural subject for a movie."

Barker will produce the film. "We bought the article, and we now have the piece being written [by Silvio Horta]," he said. "That will be a movie, which--if the writers' and actors' strikes don't happen--hopefully we'll have before the cameras this year. I have a few directors in the back of my head, and a few dream directors. ... I want someone who has a real visual sense, who can tread this wonderful line between the fantastic and the realistic, which the kids draw. Used refrigerators being the doorways between this world and hell, that kind of amazing imagination is something we want our director to be able to exploit in the movie. ... We need a real visualist, ... a great storyteller, and also we want someone to ... create some amazing images."

Effects Go To The Dogs

Elizabeth Perkins, star of the upcoming fantasy movie Cats and Dogs, told syndicated columnists Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith that the movie is heavy in visual effects. "There are 700 special effects in the film, and we had a filmmaking crew of 200 people and five cameras," Perkins told the columnists. "It's a huge endeavor. ... It's almost like we've taken a movie like Babe and inserted Mission: Impossible. That's an incredible feat to try and pull off."

The movie, which opens in May, chronicles the secret war between felines and canines. "At any given time there were 30 cats and 20 dogs on stage," Perkins said. Lawrence Guterman directs.

'Star Trek X' Spoiler?

There have been rumors before that suggest that the next Star Trek film may also see one of the cast of characters kicking the bucket, but the latest word suggests someone different than previously reported.

Now, of course, this new rumor could be a major spoiler for the coming Star Trek X. So, if you would rather not know a thing about may happen in the coming film, we suggest that you scroll down to the next story.









Previous rumors regarding Star Trek X have suggested that Data may be dying (if androids can die), courtesy of comments that Brent Spiner made after the release of Star Trek: Insurrection. Now, according to the rather dubious Sun Newspaper, a British tabloid, Patrick Stewart is suggesting that it may actually be Jean Luc Picard who moves on.

Regarding the coming film, Stewart is quoted as saying, "With the movie I have very strong feelings that it should be the last for the Next Generation, at least the last for Jean-Luc Picard...We have at the moment a 28-page storyline, which sounds really exciting."

Stewart is then quoted as saying, "I have written an ending for Picard in which we finally kill him off and producers are looking over it now. All I can say is that this film will deal with a supreme and hopefully memorable villain. There's some cloning involved, and enemy Romulans. But I will say no more."

Okay, now what is questionable about this latter portion is that last quote. Rick Berman said almost exactly the same thing to syndicated columnist Ian Spelling back on March 16th. At that time, the franchise head honcho said, "All I can tell you now about the plot is that it will deal with a supreme and hopefully memorable villain. There's some cloning involved, and there are also a lot of Romulans involved. But I will say no more."

Sure, plans may well be afoot to kill off Picard, but you might still want to take this one with a huge chunk of salt.

Mostow May Helm T3

Jonathan Mostow (U-571) is in talks to direct Arnold Schwarzenegger and Edward Furlong in the proposed sequel Terminator 3, Variety reported. Mostow met with Schwarzenegger, though final terms have to be ironed out, the trade paper reported.

Mostow would succeed James Cameron, who created the Terminator franchise and directed the first two films. Tedi Serafian's script for T3 would pit Schwarzenegger's cyborg against an indestructible female robot, Variety reported.

Production is expected to commence after the impending actors' union strike this summer.

Odds and Ends: Short items not worthy of an article in their own right.

Oz producers Barry Levinson and Tom Fontana will produce Born Again, an HBO movie about cloning, Variety reported. Bob Balaban will direct the film, about a couple that takes part in a controversial attempt to clone an infant, the trade paper reported. Bradford Winters and Sean Jablonski wrote the script. Production is slated to begin before the impending actors' union strike in July.

Fox took over the feature-film rights to Tess Gerritsen's 1999 SF thriller novel Gravity from New Line Cinema, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Michael Goldenberg adapted the book for the screen. The book tells the story of a female research physician who travels to the international space station, where a culture of single-celled organisms has killed most of the crew.

Charmed star Shannen Doherty pleaded innocent March 23 to a drunk-driving charge, E! Online reported. Doherty was arrested in December after police saw her car allegedly weaving on a Southern California highway.

Director Kevin Smith has cast Carrie Fisher, Shannen Doherty and Tracey Morgan in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Entertainment Weekly reported. Fisher joins her Star Wars co-star Mark Hamill in the movie, which will feature SF and supernatural elements.

Amber Benson--who plays Willow's love interest, Tara, on The WB's Buffy the Vampire Slayer--will co-write a Willow and Tara comic book for Dark Horse, the comic publisher announced. Benson will join Buffy comics writer Christopher Golden and Terry Moore on the one-shot book. The comic will center on the relationship between UC Sunnydale students Willow and Tara, which is complicated by the arrival of an overeager new Wicca. "This comic is about the special friendship between Tara and Willow," Benson told the Dark Horse official Web site. "So, Chris Golden and I really tried to [imbue] our story with the idea that friendship, when put to the test, can help us overcome anything." Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Willow and Tara goes on sale April 4 for $2.99.

The role of Michael Myers has been cast for the coming Halloween 8. According to the official Halloween films website, stunt actor Brad Loree will be the man under the rubber mask. His credits include stunt work for Mission To Mars, Romeo Must Die and Reindeer Games.

Part B Follows Shortly.

Best wishes,

David Gerhard, Chairman

Bob Jenner, Information Officer

Alexandra Benedict, Entertainment Industry Liaison Officer

Eastlant Sci-Fi Group

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