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Posts published in “Year: 2009

Sigh-Fi

Back to news posts today with a few info:

Screenwriter/God Tim Minear is writing a TV remake/adaptation of the 1988 movie Alien Nation which spawned in the 90s a FOX show.

The new “Alien Nation” would include a mythology that evolves over time and will also touch on some of the issues of the day, such as the immigrant experience and how society integrates an incoming culture.

Minear said he’s looking forward to incorporating a mix of all the different kinds of series he’s written in the past.

“It’s genre mixed with procedural mixed with funny and mixed with big, giant scary,” Minear said. “I love serialized stuff, but this is also a cop franchise. That ‘Starsky and Hutch’/’Lethal Weapon’ buddy cop comedy is absent from TV right now.”

Minear is currently busy outlining the “Alien Nation” script and mapping out the project’s mythology. The new “Alien Nation” will likely take place in the Pacific Northwest, and will take place about 20 years after the first ship of aliens – who have been banished as slaves – crash lands into Earth.

By the time the show begins, some time in the 2020s, the alien population has multiplied from a few thousand to 3.5 million. And much of the “newcomers” live their own segregated existence, in what Minear compares to the North African ghettos in France.

“You can take (the original ‘Alien Nation’) a step forward and really do a show that encompasses the clash of civilizations, and the idea of a ghettoized minority,” he said. “You can touch on racism, terrorism, assimilation, immigration. And there’s room for satire.”

I’m assuming it’s going to get pitched to SciFi Syfy.

Speaking of, another sci-fi show is coming to ABC, and this one is interesting.
I present to you Defying Gravity.
Starring Ron Livingston, Laura Harris and Christina Cox, this drama is actually internationally produced and is “also set to air on Canada’s CTV, Germany’s ProSieben and the BBC”. The brains behind the show is non other than an ABC alumni, James Parriott, a former exec on both Grey’s Anatomy and Ugly Betty, and Michael Edelstein, from Desperate Housewives.
The show will center around an eight-person team of astronauts travelling through the solar system in a mysterious 6-year mission.

After Lost with Bad Twin in 2006, another ABC show is getting its own tie-in “ARG-like” book: Castle.
Meanwhile, the ratings for HBO’s Hung were pretty huge.
And no I’m not gonna do a lame pun.

One Year of TV Calling

One year ago to this day (plus a day at the stroke of midnight), A TV Calling was created.
And here we are now.


Great blog or Greatest blog?

Your hopes are up, time to dash them.
I’ll go straight to the bullet points for maximum effect (remember: less is more).

A few stats to accompany the blog for its birthday:
There were not One Hundred, nor Two Hundred, nor Three Hundred, but 312 posts in total.
That’s 312 posts for 365 days, meaning a great average of 0.85 posts a day.
As said on Wednesday, my most popular post, besides a few Script of the Week (such as SOTW13 and SOTW23) is, or rather was, Four Reasons why Dollhouse might be Renewed.

This blog was visited by 3,195 cities in 109 different countries.
It was also visited at least 5 times by all 50 states of the U.S.A.
California is at the top of the list with almost 2,000 unique visitors.

Throughout the year a few changes to the blog itself were made, such as a domain of its own being added and a wider central column.

How weird is it to now look back at the four June 2008 posts?

It’s even more weird to look back at the first sentence ever written on this blog: “Yes I’m lazy.
Yeah, I’m still pretty lazy.

Like I said last year regarding the purpose of this blog:

But why am I rumbling on about all this now?
Well it is merely intended to point out what purpose this blog will hopefully achieve. That is to help other struggling (international) writers out there in their daily, and not-so-daily problems. Additionally, I hope my trial and [errors,] will help show that nothing is impossible when you pour your heart and soul into it.

I think that sums it up pretty nicely.

And if this blog helped at least one person somewhere at some time, then the mission is just beginning.
Please don’t get all teary-eyed.

What have we learned in the past year?
Bears can dance, television as we know it won’t exist in five years, the networks are desperate, movies get made but are released two years later, great writing still exists, and last but not least, the future is now.

Let’s wrap this party up.
Regarding what is to come:
More breakdowns, more writing tips and tricks, more reviews, more shows, more scripts, more news, more you name it.

All in all: more craziness, more pointlessness, and more epicness.

Welcome to Year Two.