As the Emmy shift fallout is continuing to make waves (#emmysfail was yesterday the second hashtag on the Twitter trend topic list), this little post by theonetruebix on the Whedonesque forum sums it all up nicely with various links leading to other articles talking about the important issues at hand here. Will there be a boycott of the Emmy ceremony when the time comes?
There’s also some new details that have emerged regarding Avatar day (August 21).
Well, it’s actually more about what’s going on in France for Avatar Day but I would assume the same thing is going to go down elsewhere, including the States. Basically, the 3-D 15-minute preview will be shown for free every 30 minutes, starting at 6PM. More info should come out around the 19th.
In the meantime, Time Magazine has a great piece by Richard Corliss on Thirst and how it shows that “Vampires Beat Zombies”.
There’s also a couple of TV announcements with Bryan Singer producing and writing another Syfy mini following The Triangle in 2005. This 6-hour limited series will be about the 2012 myth and the Mayan calendar predicting the end of the world. USA also revealed a huge list of projects, including a lot of cop shows. Good Cop, Bad Cop, Busy Bodies, Gourmet Detective, you name it. There was as well a show entitled Hotel Dix written and produced by…Tom Fontana. Yes. A Tom Fontana show on the USA Network.
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.
Time for follow-ups to some of the post from the last year.
Hopefully this won’t turn into another Jaws, trying to follow on follow-ups with other follow-ups and pointless sequels.
Let’s begin with, guess what, follow-ups to a couple of posts from way back.
In late September, Russian channel 2×2 was facing a criminal investigation following the broadcast of a South Park episode, Mr. Hankey’s Christmas Classics. And now an update from ten days ago: the court has dropped the case against the adult cartoon channel. Problem solved.
The case deals with swearing on live TV: In March of 06, the FCC fined FOX for Cher and Nicole Richie saying “shit” and “fucking” during the 02 & 03 Billboard Music Awards, all due to a “new” FCC policy that allowed penalization even if the expletive is made only once, and live.
The case worked its way up to the Supreme Court and on Tuesday were heard the oral arguments for the case.
I forgot to talk about but finally a decision was reached at the end of last April:
The Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision on April 28, 2009 that the Federal Communications Commission had not acted arbitrarily when it changed a long-standing policy and implemented a new ban on even “fleeting expletives” from the airwaves. Justice Antonin Scalia, in the majority opinion, wrote: “The FCC’s new policy and its order finding the broadcasts at issue actionably indecent were neither arbitrary nor capricious.” In the dissenting opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens claimed that this decision was hypocritical given the presence of television commercials for products treating impotence or constipation.
Incidentally, “the Court explicitly declined to decide whether the new rule is constitutional, and sent that issue back to the lower courts for their review.” So long story short, First Amendment rights are still up in the air.
Richard Kelly’s The Box (reviewed here) also has a few new updates. The first trailer is now out:
And there is an interesting interview with Kelly on SciFi Wire.
Speaking of SciFi, given the backlash after the Syfy rebranding announcement earlier this year, there has been in the last month or so a few responses from channel president Dave Howe. In a very recent TVGuide interview he said:
This wasn’t an option, it was a mandate. We made a commitment to grow into a global lifestyle brand. Sci Fi is a genre; it is like calling a TV network Drama or Sport. The default perception of sci-fi is that it’s space, aliens, the future. It’s Star Trek. The new name positions us as having our own attitude and personality, which gives us permission to do a broader range of sci-fi/fantasy shows and take us into the supernatural, the paranormal, action-adventure and mystery space.
I think it’s been pretty much established, if only by Star Trek‘s very recent success, that the clichéd opinions regarding science-fiction are gone. We’ve seen pretty weak arguments regarding the brand change… Broadcasting & Cable also has a piece up detailing Syfy’s upcoming branding strategy, including “Wyfy from Syfy”.
You can as well check out the future Syfy TV spots right here.
Continuing on the SciFi side of things, we have another article on the genre by STLtoday‘s Gail Pennington. Included in it is an interview with Battlestar Galactica‘s Ronald D. Moore.
Moving back to more serious issues, there has been some talk regarding the future of entertainment, and especially the future of broadcast. TV Week‘s Brian Steinberg had an In Depth article on the conflicting visions of NBC and CBS:
NBC and CBS are at odds about how best to proceed at a time when the future of the business is under serious assault. Is the future of broadcast TV generating big audiences from early morning to late at night? Or is it picking the right spots, focusing instead on syndicating big-ticket programming — the Olympics or a favorite crime procedural — across a multitude of screens in exchange for advertising and other revenue?
It’s a very intriguing and interesting look at two network giants that are actually betting on opposite sides of what the future might be.
Well, that’s all the time we have folks. Tomorrow is writing day so be sure to tune in.
