Report 24A.This is a digest of recent Sci-Fi- and genre-related news as of 13 February 2001.

News & Notes

Group News:

Slow News Week

This is a fairly short newsletter, as there hasn’t been much in the way of news coming out over the weekend.  Hopefully, it will be a little longer next week.

A Request for UK Clients

We recently managed to get hold of a complete set of Season 1 & 2 Buffy episodes, from a contact who imported the tapes from the UK.  These are of such good quality and are so much better edited than the US versions that we have decided to try to get hold of all the other releases from over there.

Rather than go through all the nausea of exchanges, if any of our UK clients would be prepared to get hold of the box sets that we are looking for and send them over instead of their next payment for tapes, we would be most grateful.

And before we get howls of protest from our regular traders over there, we know that had we asked, you would have fallen over yourselves to send these tapes to us, but they are expensive items and we would like to pay for them this time.  It isn’t right that you keep paying out for stuff when we cannot reciprocate equally.

TV News:

New Genre Shows Confirmed as NATPE Conference Closes

The WB has ordered Pern, an hour-long SF drama based on Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern novel series, for the fall, Variety reported. The show, to be produced by longtime Star Trek and current Roswell writer Ronald D. Moore, is one of several genre series green-lighted for the fall.

Moore announced in January that he was developing the live-action series. "It's a series that I had read back when I was in college, and it always stuck in my mind as an interesting world, a different slice of sci-fi that hadn't been explored," Moore said. "It seems at this point in time that it's a show you can do on TV because of the technology."

The WB has also given the green light for 13 episodes of "Smallville" about 15 year old Clark Kent as his Super Powers start to grow.  Tom Welling will star as Clark Kent and Kristin Kreuk will play Lana Lang. 

ABC, meanwhile, has ordered a new hour-long fantasy drama, The Brothers Grimm, Variety reported. The show will focus on two modern-day siblings who discover they're descendants of the original Grimm brothers, and who find themselves enmeshed in fantastic or fairy-tale-related mysteries and situations, the trade paper reported.

CBS picked up Wolf Lake, described as an hour-long werewolf suspense thriller set in the Pacific Northwest.

Fox has given the green light for a pilot for "24" a sprawling spy thriller about a government agent who uncovers an assassination plot against a presidential candidate -- and has 24 hours to stop the murder. In a unique twist, the series will unfold in real time, with each episode focusing on one hour.  Created by Joel Surnow and Robert Cochran ("La Femme Nikita") and exec producer Tony Krantz. Not much scope for Season two there then.

Magic Time

Writer and producer Marc Scott Zicree (Sliders, Babylon 5) is working to develop a television series based on the upcoming Magic Time series of fantasy novels he developed with his wife, Elaine. Former B5 producer John Copeland is on board to produce Magic Time, Zicree said in an interview.

HarperCollins will publish Magic Time, by Zicree and novelist Barbara Hambly, in December as the first of three planned novels, Zicree said. The books tell the story of a world in which machines have stopped running and magic has re-emerged as a force in the universe. Some of Earth's inhabitants remain human, but others have morphed into strange creatures or monsters, Zicree added. The second book will come out in December 2002 and the third a year after that.

"The three books tell a larger story, and they stand alone as a single adventure," Zicree said. "They follow a group of characters who travel from Manhattan across the country to see what caused the change. The hero is a lawyer who had been raising his orphaned 12-year-old sister, who is now no longer human. So he's searching for his sister and trying to save her."

Separately, Zicree is also developing Core, a SF TV series co-created with writer Michael Reaves, author of the Star Wars novel Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter.

Trek News

The rumor mill is working thick and fast this week and here is some of its output.  As always, none of this is confirmed, but as you know about 50% of what we hear comes to pass, so forewarned is forearmed.

Trek Special Canceled?

The Trek Web fan site reported a rumor that UPN will cancel its previously announced retrospective special commemorating Star Trek: Voyager's run. Citing an unnamed source, Trek Web reported that the network was worried about the cost of assembling the special, which was scheduled to air on the Tuesday night before the final episode of Voyager in May.

Trek 5 Ready to Launch?

The SFX Network Web site reported a rumor that the fifth Star Trek series may be ready to launch pre-production as soon as Feb. 19. Citing an unnamed source, the site reported that payroll for staff on the new series kicks off on that day.

The site also reported that producers are seeking space for the show on Paramount's Los Angeles lot, which is fully subscribed with other productions. Star Trek: Voyager, meanwhile, has just four episodes left to film before it heads into the sunset.

It has been suggested that the 10th Trek movie will hit the screens at almost the same time as Star Wars Episode II.  Could be an interesting match, or perhaps each film will whet the appetite for the other.

Gish Talks 'X-Files'

Annabeth Gish is quite happy about joining the cast of The X-Files in a role that may become regular should the program go into a ninth season.

While talking to Ian Spelling for his syndicated Inside Trek & Sci-Fi column, Gish talks about getting the role of FBI agent Monica Reyes, saying, "I don't think you could be a citizen of this country and not at least know about The X-Files. I had watched the show for the first two or three seasons, even though I'm not much of a television watcher...So this was kind of a surprise when I heard about it, but it was a welcome one. The X-Files is obviously such a high-caliber show. I jumped at the chance."

Regarding her role, Gish says, "Reyes has a bent for spirituality. In the context of a science-oriented show like The X-Files, I get to bring in spirit dialogue. It's wonderful for me, because it's a nice intersection of a professional interest and a personal interest.

"I like to meditate. I'm very curious about religions. Being able to bring that into The X-Files is really exciting.

"As far as the dialogue, though, I had to fire up some new brain synapses to get the technical jargon going."

Gish' debut episode also features the return of David Duchovny. On that point, Gish says, "I didn't have scenes with him, per se."

The February 25th episode won't be her sole appearance on the show this year, as Gish reveals, "I'll be doing four episodes this season. I'm in episodes 14, 17, 21 and 22, and if the show does in fact return next year, then I'll be back for more."

Heading off any potential negative rumors, Gish also notes that her character was not created as a replacement for a potentially departing Gillian Anderson, saying, "And it has nothing to do with replacing Gillian. Chris even made a statement about that. It's just adding another color to the palette - Reyes is just another layer...It feels like a good fit."

Some Lone Gunmen Chat

Here is an extract from a recent on-line chat with Lone Gunmen stars Dean Haglund and Tom Braidwood:

What's the show's emphasis?

Braidwood: Oh, yeah, it's quite different. It doesn't go into the spooky realm or the alien realm. It's aimed at the conspiracy realm.

Haglund: Urban myth kind of thing. All those stories that you've heard about - we go investigate. We're taking it from the newspaper that we run, The Lone Gunmen, so we're like investigative journalists going into these things so it's like Mission: Impossible with us three.

Was starting as supporting characters on X-Files helpful?

Haglund: I find it’s actually really good to start as a small recurring character, because then you know your character and you’ve got everything down. Once you get into that pressure of fourteen-hour days you’re like, what’s my line? You know?

Braidwood: We definitely had the benefit of having done the characters for seven years.

Haglund: ...and having known each other...

Braidwood: We kind of rolled into it rather naturally other than the day-in and day-out aspect of it which we did a couple of times when they did the shows that were dedicated to us. But none of us had ever done anything like this which was basically day-in and day-out, week-in and week-out for two, three, four months. But the character part of it was easy because we’d already had our character relationships and our personal relationship worked out by that point. So, we kind of just rolled into it and started doing it I think quite naturally.

How will the characters change to support a whole show of their own?

Haglund: I don’t know if it’s changed our approach to the characters so much, but they’ve also cast two other people. Their real names are Zuleikha Robinson and Stephen Snedden. Zuleikha Robinson plays a gorgeous computer hacker who is smarter than is, but she’s doing it for the money whereas we’re doing it for the American people. And then Steve Snedden plays Jimmy Bond – he’s the...

Braidwood: Big-hearted...

Haglund: ....big-hearted dumb lunk who’s got the money to fund the paper.

Braidwood: He likes us. He likes our morality, so he wants to become a Gunmen so he hangs around a lot.

Haglund: Sort of like the Fourth Gunmen.

Braidwood: There's talk that there's a mythology behind Zuleikha's character...

Haglund: But that just might be more of a character arc than a whole mythology story arc because they found that you can't write that every week and now with The X-Files you get a mythology episode and then suddenly there's four or five where they're just chasing some monster and everybody goes, what about the oil in the eyes? And how can they just go into the...? And you run into that kind of problem when you do large arcs like that.

Braidwood: I think you might see more that's hints of where we came from and where we were, what we've done, individually and not just as a threesome.

X-Files crossovers?

Braidwood: We’re only just now doing our first crossover. Up until now, the pilot and the first eight shows have really just been us and guest stars, but Skinner – Mitch Pileggi – is in the one that we’re doing now. There’s always been talk of doing a crossover, but we don’t know how many more there’s going to be. We know that Skinner’s signed up for two or three of them. Whether we see anybody else, Mulder, Scully, Krychek, anybody...

Movie News: 

Dead Crew Pitch Bought

Pandemonium, the production company run by former Fox studio boss Bill Mechanic, will develop The Dead Crew, an SF film based on a pitch by writers Ken and Jim Wheat, Variety reported. The Wheat brothers co-wrote last year's Pitch Black with director David Twohy.

Dead Crew tells the story of four people who discover that they are immortal after surviving a mysterious meteorite shower, the trade paper reported.

Darabont Warms Up to '451'

Green Mile director Frank Darabont may be taking on the stalled Fahrenheit 451 project.

According to Variety columnist Michael Fleming, Darabont is currently in negotiations to rewrite the Terry Hayes written script for the film as well as direct it. Should the deal be sealed, the eventual film will be financed and produced by Castle Rock with Mel Gibson's Icon Prods. Warner Bros. will distribute the film domestically.

For quite some time, Mel Gibson was attached to the project to direct the film which was based on Ray Bradbury's classic book. Warner Bros. was hoping that Gibson would star as well, but he was actively seeking Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt in the film's lead role of Guy Montag, a fireman in a future society. However, Guy doesn't put out fires, but the firemen of the future start them, burning books in a society that hopes to keep its populace in line, complacent and not too knowledgeable. Unfortunately, Montag himself starts to have problems with his job resulting in his attempting to escape.

Neither Cruise nor Pitt took the part, finally resulting in the project falling apart, and Gibson moving on.

Darabont is currently at work on The Majestic (previously titled The Bijou), which will star Jim Carrey.