Report 25A This is a digest of recent Sci-Fi- and genre-related news as of 20 February 2001.

News & Notes

Group News:

QoS Bites the Dust Yet Again

The Queen of Swords curse continues, but this time we can hardly complain.  This week’s episode was severely disrupted by the sad news of the death of NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt in yesterday’s Daytona 500.  Although not much for sport, my team would all like to express our condolences to Dale’s family. The death of such a public figure has quite an effect on the nation; however, we are all supporters of the opinion of medieval English poet John Donne – “The death of any man diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind. So send not to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee”.

Subject Heading in E-Mails

We have had several incidents recently where we have received e-mails with apparently innocuous subjects headings such as “Hello”, or “Tapes”, but which contained urgent requests which we received too late to act on. As we receive well over 100 e-mails every day, we simply have to prioritize.  These apparently routine messages are shuffled into a pending file and dealt with by whoever can get to them.

If you have an urgent matter, could you please make this clear in the subject header?  Either use the word “Urgent”, or at the very least make the subject relevant to the message.  “Scheduling News”, “Special Request”, etc, would at least draw our attention in time to do something about it.

TV News:

Lost Empire Myth Still Relevant

Thomas Gibson--who stars in NBC' s upcoming fantasy miniseries The Lost Empire--told the Associated Press that the story, based on an ancient Chinese legend, is relevant today as well. Gibson plays Nick Orton, an American scholar and businessman, in the Hallmark Entertainment miniseries, which is scheduled to air March 11 and March 12.

"The overarching theme is the triumph of the spirit of the individual against an oppressive, authoritarian government, which makes it a valid modern story, too," Gibson told the wire service. Gibson's character is transformed into an action hero by his love for the beautiful Kwan Ying, who turns out to be the goddess of mercy and is played by Bai Ling, the AP reported.

Gibson admitted that he didn't know much about Chinese culture or the legend of the Monkey King, on which the miniseries is based. "I still wouldn't consider myself any kind of expert, but I know a little bit more now than I did before," he said. He found the research and travel involved put "one's own life and one's own culture into a more global context, which I think is an extremely important perspective to try to give yourself." The miniseries filmed in Malaysia and Singapore and on sound stages in Prague in the Czech Republic. Playwright David Henry Hwang, author of the play M. Butterfly, adapted the legend to the screen.

Editor’s Note:  This has been seen on TV before in some parts of the world as the cult TV Series “Monkey”. No doubt this idea has been resurrected in the wake of the success of “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”.

UPN Orders Dead Zone Pilot

UPN has green-lighted a pilot for a television series based on Stephen King's novel The Dead Zone, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The approval is contingent on casting for the drama, the trade paper reported.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine co-creator Michael Piller will executive produce Dead Zone with his son, Shawn Piller. Lion's Gate Television will produce the show, according to the trade paper. David Cronenberg directed a 1983 feature-film version of the story, which starred Christopher Walken as a man who awakes from a coma to discover he has the power of clairvoyance.

Trek Series Set For Fall

Viacom, parent of UPN and Paramount, told a group of investment analysts that it would indeed premiere a new Star Trek series in the fall, according to a report by On24 media reporter Rick Ellis. Ellis said that Viacom executives were vague about the premise of the series, which would be the fifth Trek show since the original Star Trek aired on NBC in 1966. Another report suggests that the series will go “on payroll” from February 19th.  This means that they will actually start full pre-production and that Paramount will have made a formal commitment to the series.

Rumors have suggested that the new series, being developed by Star Trek: Voyager executive producers Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, will center on the early days of the Federation, in the days before the original series. Berman has denied those rumors. Voyager is winding up its seven-year run this season.

It's likely that the new Trek series could face delays, like all fall television shows, if writers' and actors' unions go on strike this spring.

More Details on Pern – Pilot Preps For March

Ronald D. Moore has suggested that he hopes to remain faithful to Anne McCaffrey's books, with some concessions to TV. "The show will be an interpretation of Anne's books, my take on Anne's world," Moore said in an interview. "It's how I see it successfully moving into television."

Moore added, "I have a great deal of respect for what she's done and the world she's created. I want to make the transition successfully into the filmed environment, which does require some interpretation and moving pieces around. But by no means do I want to reinvent the world or throw things aside."

Moore said The WB has green-lighted a pilot episode based on a script by Moore, who also produces Roswell. He is now in pre-production on the pilot, which he hopes to shoot around the end of March or the beginning of April. Filmmakers still haven't selected a cast, crew or filming location. The series will be live-action, with computer-animated dragons. "We're going to be pushing the envelope on what we can do on TV, and deliver creatures that haven't been seen before and in a way that hasn't been seen before," he said. The series' fall start could be delayed by impending writers' and actors' strikes this spring, Moore added.

The pilot--based on McCaffrey's first Pern novel, Dragonflight--introduces the central character of Lessa, the daughter of a noble family of Ruatha Hold. Her family is killed, and she journeys with F'Lar, F'Nor and Kylara to Bendan Weyr to reclaim her title and eventually return as a dragonrider, Moore said. "Lessa is the character who stuck with me the most when I read the first books," he said.

Moore's series is not related to a previous Dragonriders series that was in development at Alliance Atlantis Entertainment and Zyntopo Teo. But that show's champion, Eric Weymueller, will act as an executive producer on Moore's show.

Moore said that fans of the Pern books should reserve judgment on the upcoming TV show. "I just want to get people in the mindset that, look, we want to bring this property to television, but we want to give you what you love about the books. ... Anything you hate about [the TV show], you can lay at my doorstep. ... I'm not trying to outdo Anne at her own game, or improve the books, because I don't think they need improvement. ... It's a translation into a different medium. ... It requires looking at it through different eyes. ... You have to make choices: which characters to include, which not to, which standing sets you have, where's the home of the show, who do we follow each week, what span of time."

Moore added, "I'm very excited. It's a unique property. ... When we pitched it, I had the pleasurable experience of pitching something they've never heard before. There's this really interesting sort of science-fiction take that she found, this thing that looks like fantasy on its surface, but is really science fiction underneath, with really strong and interesting characters. ... The response to the pilot script is very gratifying. ... People walk away saying, 'Can you really do it?' And we said, 'Yes.' ... It's really an exciting time. It's been really fun. We're trying something new and really different. I guarantee there's not going to be another dragon show on the air. It's not like we're doing another cop show. ... This is going to be the only one, so it will be kind of cool, and will get a lot of attention, and I think we have a real shot at making it a success."

Matthew Blackheart Smashed

From Variety - Never make Nazi soldiers the villains of a TV series if you're seeking German financing. That's the lesson learned -- the hard way -- by Jeff Johns, producer of the action-adventure series ``Matthew Blackheart: Monster Smasher,'' which has gone down in flames before the first episode made its way to the Sci-Fi Channel.

Johns said the first four episodes of 22 commissioned by Sci-Fi Channel had already been written when one of the show's financial partners, the Telescene Film Group of Montreal, declared bankruptcy two months ago.

“We scrambled like crazy to find a replacement,'' said Johns, focusing on the German Tele Munchen Group. “In the two-hour pilot for Monster Smasher, Blackheart wipes out Nazis like some G.I. Joe superhero. Even though the series itself is set in present-day America, no German TV company would touch it”, says Johns.

A spokeswoman for Tele Munchen denies that Nazi soldiers in the pilot had anything to do with its decision to pass on Monster Smasher. The premise of the series is that the government freezes the corpse of WWII fighter Blackheart after he's killed in action in 1944, reviving him in 2001 to bring down the forces of evil.

Some of the humor in the series comes from Blackheart's fish-out-of-water confusion as a '40s soldier trying to figure out how to cope with the changes that have swept the country in the past 60 years. 

However, the production company is still seeking other backers, so the series may still make it to the screen, although not this year. 

Editor’s Note:  The article above seems to have seen a different version than the one we saw.  In ours, the only Nazis were in some stock footage of soldiers marching in review, used to illustrate Blackheart’s memories of the war.

If anyone does wish to see what this looks like we have the TV Movie that stands as the pilot for the series. Direct TV did show the Blackheart pilot well over a year ago as part of their pay-per-view Action Adventure Network, which also did a pilot of a Hong Kong action version of "Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde", which also never got to series.  The only show announced out of that original batch a couple of years ago was "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World".  Other shows announced but never seen (as far as I know) were Roger Donaldson’s "Fearless,” Steven de Souza’s "Gulliver: The New Voyages" and Clive Barker’s "Witness to Fear."

Electra Woman and Dyna Girl pilot for The WB

From the Hollywood Reporter:

The WB has ordered a pilot for a new version of "Electra Woman and Dyna Girl" that will be penned by Elisa Bell and Jeff Kline. While the old ABC version was about two magazine reporters, the revised take will have a young college student going to Las Vegas, where she finds "Electra Woman" and soon becomes her "Dyna Girl."  Show is from Michigan J. Frog Prods, the WB's in-house studio.

Mr. Bean Goes Scooby Doo

LONDON (Variety) - U.K. TV producer Tiger Aspect is creating an animated version of Bean, the geeky British character portrayed by comedian Rowan Atkinson. The series of 52 11-minute shows will be produced in London and Budapest over the next two years and will air on the ITV network.  No word on who in the U.S. will pick it up.

In other Rowan Atkinson news, he's supposed to be playing the bad guy in the live action Scooby Doo movie.  Warner Home Video/BBC Video will be releasing (almost) all of The Black Adder on DVD in May, including a Comic Relief Special and some bloopers.  This also includes the time travel special Blackadder Back and Forth which was made for the big screen theatre at the Millennium Dome in the U.K.

The Bi-Annual Comic Relief Red Nose Day is coming up on March 16th in the U.K.  The last one two years ago featured the special edition of Doctor Who with Rowan Atkinson as The Doctor.  In checking the Comic Relief web site or the Red Nose Day web site, I couldn't find any info on what special skits they may be doing this time.  If anyone hears anything, please let me know, especially if there are genre-related items as there have been several times in recent years.

Networks Taken by Surprise at Success of Mainstream Dramas

Although this newsletter usually concentrates on genre shows, it has been such an unusual year for non-genre shows that we thought it deserved a mention. We believe that we could be seeing the first shift in Network planning in decades. This is illustrated by three main factors:

Factor 1: As you are no doubt already aware, there has been a considerable diversion from the standard routine for new episodes and reruns on most networks, especially WB. Usually, January is a desert for new episodes, but this year, some Networks even ran new eps over Christmas, which was unheard of before now.

WB seem to like their approach of airing just one or two reruns before feeding us a new show or two, and the viewing figures for the two weeks where they aired a new Buffy and an Angel rerun, followed by a week of vice versa were so favorable that they may well opt for more of the same when they have more shows to play with (i.e. next season).

Factor 2:  Cancellations.  In a typical year, probably 25% of all, new shows go under in their first couple of months.  Last year for example (1999/2000), almost half of all the new sitcoms failed, and about 35% of all new dramas.  This year, the sitcoms faired a little better, with about 25% either never making it to the screen or failing after a few weeks.  The dramas on the other hand have faired beyond belief.  So far this season, there has not been one major drama cancellation.  In fact, the new shows have done so well that some shows which were being held on hiatus as replacements were canceled instead. One example is Bull – a show that ran for 13 episodes with some success last year, and which was being held over until a slot opened up for it.  In the end, none did and the show was canned.  This could be the first time that a show was canned not because of its on failure, but because of the success of other shows.

Networks have already announced renewals for shows such as CSI, The Fugitive, Ed and The District as well as for old standards such as ER, The Practice, etc.  This means that next year’s schedule is going to look very much like this one with few slots available for new shows.

Factor 3:  Having already spent a lot of money on pilots and part-seasons of several new shows, the networks are now faced with either wasting the money or airing these new shows outside the main season. NBC have already announced one new series “The Big Apple”, a crossover NYPD/FBI show starring Ed O’Neill (Married With Children).  This show will run through the late-season rerun period and into the summer interregnum.

If this proves successful, it could well become the norm, and reruns could become a cable phenomenon.  Let’s hope so.

Pilots May Be Delayed By Writers’ Strike

In this week’s Hollywood Reporter is an article about pilot season and how the possible strikes have affected it.  In it are several tidbits of info, including:

FOX has held back debuting a couple of their mid-season comedies (The Tick and Undeclared) because their new dramas have done so well.  Again still no word on when they may finally debut The Tick.

Other Genre pilots mentioned briefly are

"Ball and Chain" for FOX, based on a comic;

"Earth Angels" A supernatural drama from Anne Rice for NBC;

Plus a couple of sexy secret agent shows:

"Alias" for ABC described as "Felicity meets James Bond";

"Spy Girl" for NBC –  Supposed to star Peta Wilson.  Described in another report as "a romantic mystery drama pilot about a twenty something Ivy League grad who joins a private investigation agency. Once there, a romance develops between her and another P.I."  I guess Peta could pass for twenty something, although she turned 30 last November;

Company Man - A drama about a young CIA agent;

Lucy on the end of Xena

Lucy Lawless and her Xena: Warrior Princess cohorts intend to go out with a bang. The long-running Xena series ends this May, and Lawless and her colleagues seem determined to have fun with their last few months of work. Though you'd think the series' demise would have them down in the mouth, Lawless says they're singing and dancing their cares away.

"We're doing one of the last four episodes as a musical," she says. "I know musicals don't rate particularly well, but we don't care. We always made the show to express our ideas. And there is no stopping us now. Plus, I think what has made us so successful are the wild ideas. On Xena, you'll have heavy drama and then slapstick comedy. And then every now and then you'll do a musical. We're going to do a take-off of The Donkey Show, which is a disco version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. There are all sorts of relationship mix-ups and gender bending. All kinds of crazy stuff."

But here's what fans will really think is crazy: They can't start looking forward to a Xena movie.

"If my husband and I owned the rights, we would do a movie. To be honest, in the second or third season, when we were with Universal, they wanted to do a movie. And I couldn't manage it," Lawless says. "I couldn't play Xena solidly without a break for 18 months. You need some recuperation time. USA is not in the movie business. And they own the rights."

Editor’s Note:  They are, however, the biggest producer of TV Movies in the USA, and we have been hearing rumors about TV movies for a while now.  This may just be Lucy blowing more smoke.

Movie News: 

Tim Allen's 'StarChild'

Galaxy Quest's Tim Allen may be returning to the genre of sci-fi comedy in a project connected to Mel Gibson called StarChild.

According to Variety, the film is being developed under Mel Gibson's Icon Prods. with Allen's Boxing Cat Prods. as a potential starring vehicle for Tim Allen. The project will tell the story of a socially challenged CIA agent who eventually finds himself helping an alien being get back to his home in the stars. Unfortunately, in doing so, the agent also gets caught up in an interplanetary war.

The trade does not report on who wrote the script or conceived the idea. Paramount will distribute the film. Plans are to begin production after the threatened writer and actor strikes have been settled.

'Indy 4' Start In 2002?

Is the seemingly limbo locked Indiana Jones 4 project going to finally ramp up production in spring 2002? Word has it that Harrison Ford will command a paycheck in the £15M range to reprise the title role in the production. One report also suggests that “Spielberg has been discussing a spectacular farewell to Indiana movie with Ford to going into production next spring."

It continues, "Steven thinks Harrison is worth every cent. The film would bring a classic end to the series...The guest star list Steven has planned is amazing with Connery, his wife Kate Capshaw and Karen Allen who was in the first Jones movie."

Time, as always, will tell.

Hamill Vs. 'Jay & Bob'

Mark Hamill is also in the currently filming Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. While talking to Empire, the film's stunt coordinator, Gray Jensen, spoke of what Hamill will be doing, saying, "We have a big comedy scene where they’re spoofing a lot of movies. Jay and Silent Bob go to Hollywood and we’re spoofing E.T., we’re spoofing Star Wars, and a whole bunch of others...We’re doing a big light saber fight, it’s kinda fun. Jay and Silent Bob versus Mark Hamill. It’s very funny."

In related news, in his weekly postings to News Askew, writer and director Kevin Smith revealed that the production is now "at the mid-way mark. This movie's just flying by."

Campbell Hails The King, Baby

Bruce Campbell (Jack of All Trades) will play an elderly Elvis in the independent supernatural film Bubba Ho-Tep, co-starring Ossie Davis, syndicated columnists Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith reported. Genre favorite Campbell will play the King, who is stuck in a nursing home after having switched identities with an Elvis imitator years before.

He and his fellow residents come together to battle an ancient force of evil. Davis plays a resident who believes he's John F. Kennedy.

Chimera Comes Together

Joel Silver and Robert Zemeckis' Dark Castle Entertainment will develop Chimera, an SF horror film based on a spec script by Mark Hanlon, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The movie will tell the story of a group of boat salvagers who claim a lost 1953 passenger ship in the Bering Sea, only to find that strange things begin happening after it's towed back to land.

Dark Castle draws inspiration from the films of the late schlock horror director William Castle; its next production is a big-budget remake of Castle's 1960 13 Ghosts.

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

·        TNT will begin production of its original series Witchblade in Toronto on Feb. 20. The network has ordered 11 episodes of the show, based on the Top Cow series of the same name; the show premieres in June. Toronto will stand in for New York, the setting of the story of NYPD detective Sara Pezzini (Yancy Butler) and her supernatural gauntlet. A Witchblade television movie aired on TNT last summer, winning impressive ratings.

·        Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World is getting yet another remake, this time a three hour TV movie from the A&E cable network with the BBC with Walking With Dinosaurs' Tim Haines co-producing. According to the Hollywood Reporter, this latest version of the classic story will star Bob Hoskins in the role of Professor George Challenger. Peter Falk will also make a cameo appearance in the coming film in the role of Rev. Theo Kerr. The film will also feature Tom Ward (Quills) as Lord Roxton, James Fox (Passage to India) as Professor Leo Summerlee, Matthew Rhys (Titus) as cub reporter Edward Malone and Elaine Cassidy (Felicia's Journey) as Agnes Kerr.

·        The Sci-Fi Channel has bought the rights to the 13 existing episodes of Crusade, and will air them immediately after Babylon 5 finishes its first run in April. However, it has been suggested that these will not be aired in wide screen format.  Why, we don’t know, as we believe it was filmed that way.  Perhaps they will do so later.

·        Alliance Atlantis, production company for several genre shows, has bought Salter Street Productions outright.  Although known principally for comedy shows, Salter Street also produces Lexx.  This show will now be added to Alliance’s stable of syndicated Sci-Fi shows.  Season 4 of Lexx is due to air on the Sci-Fi Channel later this year.

Part B Follows Shortly.

Best wishes,

David Gerhard, Chairman

Bob Jenner, Information Officer

Alexandra Benedict, Entertainment Industry Liaison Officer

Eastlant Sci-Fi Group

Fans Working for Fandom, Not for Profit.