33A 17 April 2001 inclu Enterprise (Star Trek series 5 forshadowed)
Eastlant Sci-Fi Group - 2000-2001 Season Progress Report 33A. This is a digest of recent Sci-Fi- and genre-related news as of 17th April 2001.
News & Notes
Group News:
Quota E-Mail Accounts
For some reason we have seen a dramatic increase recently in messages returned with the annotation “Over Quota” or “In-Box Full”, which is basically the same thing. This may be a symptom of on-line services reducing the capacity of e-mail inboxes, which ahs happened here in the US as demand has increased.
It isn’t a problem from our end, but if you have been using one of these on-line e-mail services and have an alternative, you might want to consider letting us have that address for the newsletters.
More News in Part B
As most of what we have gathered this week relates to new series starts, season finales and pilots, we have transferred a lot of this week’s TV news to Part B. As a result, this newsletter is considerably shorter than usual. Back to normal next week.
TV News:
Voyager Wraps, New Treks Prep
Star Trek: Voyager concluded its seven-year journey on April 9 when director Allan Kroeker called "cut" for the final time on the set of the series finale, "Endgame." UPN will air the two-hour capper, which involves alternate timelines, features Dwight Schultz as Reg Barclay and heralds the return of the dreaded Borg, on May 23.
Even as Voyager wound down, pre-production was underway on the next Star Trek show, referred to so far only as "Series V." Sets were already being erected on Paramount sound stages and John Eaves has reportedly designed a new starship for the series. Rick Berman and Brannon Braga co-created the show and will executive produce it, while casting will be announced shortly.
Well-placed sources confirm that former Quantum Leap star Scott Bakula is the frontrunner for captain's role in Series V. The plan is for production to begin in late April, with a two-hour pilot and possibly one episode to be shot before the looming writers and actors' strikes begin.
As for the film Star Trek X, Berman recently told SF journalist Ian Spelling that he, Brent Spiner and John Logan wrote the basic story, and that Logan is fine-tuning a second draft of the script. The film will involve cloning and a "lot" of Romulans, and, Berman added, it would "definitely" be a post-strike picture.
While no one wants the see any strikes, Berman--who, between the Trek series The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Trek films seven through nine, has overseen production on 526 hours of Star Trek--told SCI FI Wire that a work stoppage could have its benefits.
"If there is a strike, it would certainly keep Star Trek off the air for a while, which would mean that the audience could be a little hungrier for it," Berman said. "And if we go with the assumption that there's an actors' strike but no writers' strike, we can write numerous episodes and have them ready to shoot when the strike ends."
'B5: Rangers' Production Info
Details of the coming Babylon 5: Legend of the Rangers telefilm have turned up online. The B5LR website is reporting that production will ramp up on Monday, May 14th, with B5 veteran director Michael Vejar sitting behind the camera. The project, which is being created for the Sci-Fi cable channel, will shoot in Vancouver.
From an entirely separate source, we also learned this week that the first of the B5 major characters to guest in the telefilm had been announced – it’s G’Kar.
Production Begins on Sci-Fi’s “Firestarter”
Production began April 17 on The Sci-Fi Channel's upcoming original Firestarter miniseries, based on the Stephen King novel and starring Marguerite Moreau (Queen of the Damned), Malcolm McDowell (A Clockwork Orange), Danny Nucci (The Rock) and Dennis Hopper (Blue Velvet). The four-hour miniseries--tentatively titled Firestarter: The Next Chapter--began shooting in Salt Lake City under the direction of Robert Iscove (Cinderella), based on a script by Philip Eisner (Event Horizon).
Firestarter: The Next Chapter picks up the story of Charlene "Charlie" McGee (played by Drew Barrymore in the 1984 feature-film version of King's novel) 20 years after the events in the original book. Charlie (Moreau) has spent the past 20 years on the run from the government that created her and killed her parents. Tired of running, Charlie searches for answers to her dangerous and out-of-control psychic fire-starting powers. She discovers those answers at the university that ran secret mind-altering experiments on her parents. Rainbird (McDowell), a sociopathic agent who wants to control Charlie's powers, has finally caught up with her. The secret experiments never stopped, and now Rainbird has a human arsenal of powerful children with strange psychic abilities with which to catch Charlie. In the coming battle, Charlie's only chance for survival might be a turncoat government agent (Nucci) and half-mad character named Richardson (Hopper). Firestarter is tentatively scheduled to air in December.
Movie News:
Paquin Joins The Darkness
X-Men star Anna Paquin (Rogue) has been signed to headline director Jaume Balaguero's film The Darkness, according to Variety. The Darkness is a fright film that will cast Paquin as a girl whose family relocates to a house in the countryside; when the home turns into a house of horrors, the family promptly falls apart at the seams.
Paquin won an Oscar for her performance in The Piano and scored a commercial hit last year with the blockbuster X-Men. The Darkness will be shot in Spain with the Spanish company Filmfax funding the production and Dimension Films, Miramax's genre division, set to release it domestically.
Paquin will next been seen opposite Ed Harris, Scott Glenn and Joaquin Phoenix in the comedy/drama Buffalo Soldier, then will segue--barring any actor strikes--into the X-Men sequel.
Banderas: 'Phantom' Changes?
Antonio Banderas is saying some things about the long in development movie of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera that may alarm some of the fans of the original stage version.
According to the UK's Daily Express (quoting Empire as the primary source, although we didn’t spot this ourselves), Banderas spoke of the project, saying, "With this film we are not trying to draw in people who really love the theatre and go to the movie to see what they saw on stage. We are creating a completely different concept, looking at it from a completely different point of view. It will be a new creation with even new music. A lot of the music you have heard in the theatre version is being cut out."
Obi-Wan, Buffy To Co-Star?
Rumor has it that Star Wars star Ewan McGregor and Dark City star Rufus Sewell are being considered to appear with Buffy the Vampire Slayer star Sarah Michelle Gellar in a British SF movie. Mondo Beyondo will focus on two friends who survive a nuclear holocaust that happens during a school reunion.
The movie, due to be made in spring next year, will reportedly be produced by British-backed FilmFour and Good Machine.
Janssen To Play MIB 2 Villain
X-Men heroine Famke Janssen (Jean Grey) is in talks to portray the main villain in Men in Black 2, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Genre queen Janssen--who will reprise her role in the upcoming X-Men sequel--will menace Will Smith's Agent J and Tommy Lee Jones' Agent K as the nefarious Serleena in MIB 2.
Janssen has previously appeared in Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Rising, Model By Day, The House on Haunted Hill and Lord of Illusions. Set to co-star with Janssen, Smith and Jones are Johnny (Jackass) Knoxville and Rosario (Pluto Nash) Dawson. Barry Sonnenfeld will once again assume the director's chair for the production, which will go before the cameras in June and shoot for as long as possible before the possible actors' strike halts the proceedings.
Odds and Ends: Short items not worthy of an article in their own right.
Angel star David Boreanaz has joined the cast of I'm With Lucy, Variety reported. The film is about a terminally ill woman (Monica Potter) seeking Mr. Right before she dies.
MGM will release Rollerball on Aug. 17 pending the completion of special effects, according The Hollywood Reporter.
Latest word on The Tick is that it will not now air until November 2001 at the earliest. Fox will only say that it is being held for the fall. More detail when we have it.
The yellow-and-chrome, 34-foot Naboo starfighter model used in the making of Star Wars: Episode I will go on display at the Arts and Industries Building of the Smithsonian Institution, the Associated Press reported. The exhibit, which will run from April 28 to June 24, will also include an interactive kiosk that explores the creative process of filmmaking and the development of the starfighter in the Star Wars movies.
Eastlant Sci-Fi Group - 2000-2001 Season Progress Report 33A. This is a digest of recent Sci-Fi- and genre-related news as of 17th April 2001.
News & Notes
Group News:
Quota E-Mail Accounts
For some reason we have seen a dramatic increase recently in messages returned with the annotation “Over Quota” or “In-Box Full”, which is basically the same thing. This may be a symptom of on-line services reducing the capacity of e-mail inboxes, which ahs happened here in the US as demand has increased.
It isn’t a problem from our end, but if you have been using one of these on-line e-mail services and have an alternative, you might want to consider letting us have that address for the newsletters.
More News in Part B
As most of what we have gathered this week relates to new series starts, season finales and pilots, we have transferred a lot of this week’s TV news to Part B. As a result, this newsletter is considerably shorter than usual. Back to normal next week.
TV News:
Voyager Wraps, New Treks Prep
Star Trek: Voyager concluded its seven-year journey on April 9 when director Allan Kroeker called "cut" for the final time on the set of the series finale, "Endgame." UPN will air the two-hour capper, which involves alternate timelines, features Dwight Schultz as Reg Barclay and heralds the return of the dreaded Borg, on May 23.
Even as Voyager wound down, pre-production was underway on the next Star Trek show, referred to so far only as "Series V." Sets were already being erected on Paramount sound stages and John Eaves has reportedly designed a new starship for the series. Rick Berman and Brannon Braga co-created the show and will executive produce it, while casting will be announced shortly.
Well-placed sources confirm that former Quantum Leap star Scott Bakula is the frontrunner for captain's role in Series V. The plan is for production to begin in late April, with a two-hour pilot and possibly one episode to be shot before the looming writers and actors' strikes begin.
As for the film Star Trek X, Berman recently told SF journalist Ian Spelling that he, Brent Spiner and John Logan wrote the basic story, and that Logan is fine-tuning a second draft of the script. The film will involve cloning and a "lot" of Romulans, and, Berman added, it would "definitely" be a post-strike picture.
While no one wants the see any strikes, Berman--who, between the Trek series The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Trek films seven through nine, has overseen production on 526 hours of Star Trek--told SCI FI Wire that a work stoppage could have its benefits.
"If there is a strike, it would certainly keep Star Trek off the air for a while, which would mean that the audience could be a little hungrier for it," Berman said. "And if we go with the assumption that there's an actors' strike but no writers' strike, we can write numerous episodes and have them ready to shoot when the strike ends."
'B5: Rangers' Production Info
Details of the coming Babylon 5: Legend of the Rangers telefilm have turned up online. The B5LR website is reporting that production will ramp up on Monday, May 14th, with B5 veteran director Michael Vejar sitting behind the camera. The project, which is being created for the Sci-Fi cable channel, will shoot in Vancouver.
From an entirely separate source, we also learned this week that the first of the B5 major characters to guest in the telefilm had been announced – it’s G’Kar.
Production Begins on Sci-Fi’s “Firestarter”
Production began April 17 on The Sci-Fi Channel's upcoming original Firestarter miniseries, based on the Stephen King novel and starring Marguerite Moreau (Queen of the Damned), Malcolm McDowell (A Clockwork Orange), Danny Nucci (The Rock) and Dennis Hopper (Blue Velvet). The four-hour miniseries--tentatively titled Firestarter: The Next Chapter--began shooting in Salt Lake City under the direction of Robert Iscove (Cinderella), based on a script by Philip Eisner (Event Horizon).
Firestarter: The Next Chapter picks up the story of Charlene "Charlie" McGee (played by Drew Barrymore in the 1984 feature-film version of King's novel) 20 years after the events in the original book. Charlie (Moreau) has spent the past 20 years on the run from the government that created her and killed her parents. Tired of running, Charlie searches for answers to her dangerous and out-of-control psychic fire-starting powers. She discovers those answers at the university that ran secret mind-altering experiments on her parents. Rainbird (McDowell), a sociopathic agent who wants to control Charlie's powers, has finally caught up with her. The secret experiments never stopped, and now Rainbird has a human arsenal of powerful children with strange psychic abilities with which to catch Charlie. In the coming battle, Charlie's only chance for survival might be a turncoat government agent (Nucci) and half-mad character named Richardson (Hopper). Firestarter is tentatively scheduled to air in December.
Movie News:
Paquin Joins The Darkness
X-Men star Anna Paquin (Rogue) has been signed to headline director Jaume Balaguero's film The Darkness, according to Variety. The Darkness is a fright film that will cast Paquin as a girl whose family relocates to a house in the countryside; when the home turns into a house of horrors, the family promptly falls apart at the seams.
Paquin won an Oscar for her performance in The Piano and scored a commercial hit last year with the blockbuster X-Men. The Darkness will be shot in Spain with the Spanish company Filmfax funding the production and Dimension Films, Miramax's genre division, set to release it domestically.
Paquin will next been seen opposite Ed Harris, Scott Glenn and Joaquin Phoenix in the comedy/drama Buffalo Soldier, then will segue--barring any actor strikes--into the X-Men sequel.
Banderas: 'Phantom' Changes?
Antonio Banderas is saying some things about the long in development movie of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera that may alarm some of the fans of the original stage version.
According to the UK's Daily Express (quoting Empire as the primary source, although we didn’t spot this ourselves), Banderas spoke of the project, saying, "With this film we are not trying to draw in people who really love the theatre and go to the movie to see what they saw on stage. We are creating a completely different concept, looking at it from a completely different point of view. It will be a new creation with even new music. A lot of the music you have heard in the theatre version is being cut out."
Obi-Wan, Buffy To Co-Star?
Rumor has it that Star Wars star Ewan McGregor and Dark City star Rufus Sewell are being considered to appear with Buffy the Vampire Slayer star Sarah Michelle Gellar in a British SF movie. Mondo Beyondo will focus on two friends who survive a nuclear holocaust that happens during a school reunion.
The movie, due to be made in spring next year, will reportedly be produced by British-backed FilmFour and Good Machine.
Janssen To Play MIB 2 Villain
X-Men heroine Famke Janssen (Jean Grey) is in talks to portray the main villain in Men in Black 2, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Genre queen Janssen--who will reprise her role in the upcoming X-Men sequel--will menace Will Smith's Agent J and Tommy Lee Jones' Agent K as the nefarious Serleena in MIB 2.
Janssen has previously appeared in Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Rising, Model By Day, The House on Haunted Hill and Lord of Illusions. Set to co-star with Janssen, Smith and Jones are Johnny (Jackass) Knoxville and Rosario (Pluto Nash) Dawson. Barry Sonnenfeld will once again assume the director's chair for the production, which will go before the cameras in June and shoot for as long as possible before the possible actors' strike halts the proceedings.
Odds and Ends: Short items not worthy of an article in their own right.
Angel star David Boreanaz has joined the cast of I'm With Lucy, Variety reported. The film is about a terminally ill woman (Monica Potter) seeking Mr. Right before she dies.
MGM will release Rollerball on Aug. 17 pending the completion of special effects, according The Hollywood Reporter.
Latest word on The Tick is that it will not now air until November 2001 at the earliest. Fox will only say that it is being held for the fall. More detail when we have it.
The yellow-and-chrome, 34-foot Naboo starfighter model used in the making of Star Wars: Episode I will go on display at the Arts and Industries Building of the Smithsonian Institution, the Associated Press reported. The exhibit, which will run from April 28 to June 24, will also include an interactive kiosk that explores the creative process of filmmaking and the development of the starfighter in the Star Wars movies.
posted by Catherine Jemma at 7:14 PM
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