Stewart: Too Old For More Trek?
atrick Stewart told the WENN Web site that Paramount may want him to reprise his Star Trek role of Capt. Jean-Luc Picard, but that he may be too old should a new Next Generation movie get off the ground.
"Weighty people in Hollywood have come up with a very interesting proposition," Stewart, 65, told the site. "But they told me it was still two, three or four years down the road, by which time I would only be able to sit in the captain's chair and not have the energy to get out of it!"
Officially, Paramount has said nothing about any future Trek films or TV projects, though several script ideas are rumored to be making the rounds.
SCI FI To Air New Doctor Who
CI FI Channel announced Jan. 12 that it will air the first season of the BBC's hit SF series Doctor Who, starting in March. The 13 episodes, starring Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor and Billie Piper as Rose Tyler, will air as part of SCI FI Fridays at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
The series, from head writer and executive producer Russell T. Davies, ran originally in the United Kingdom last year and was one of the network's biggest hits ever. An update of the classic Doctor Who show, the series continues in the U.K. with an upcoming second season that will star David Tennant as the Doctor.
"The Doctor's made all sorts of journeys in time and space, but this is one of his most exciting yet!" Davies said in a statement. "I'm a huge fan of the SCI FI Channel, and I'm delighted that Doctor Who is appearing on a channel that supports and enhances the entire genre."
"With its rich history of imaginative storytelling, Doctor Who is a true sci-fi classic," Thomas P. Vitale, SCI FI's senior vice president, programming and original movies, said in a separate statement. "We're excited to add the show to our lineup."
Meanwhile, BBC Video announced that it has moved the proposed U.S. release date of the Doctor Who first-season DVD set to July 4 from its originally planned February launch.
Serenity Might Fly Again?
oni Peristere, visual-effects supervisor for the SF movie Serenity, told SCI FI Wire that there's hope for future flights of the cast and crew of the movie, which just came out on DVD. Director Joss Whedon—who also created the canceled Fox TV show Firefly, on which the movie is based—expected that the movie might draw the low numbers it did in its theatrical release, Peristere said in an interview. But he added that the movie's sales on DVD, which came out on Dec. 20, are running neck-and-neck with the hit comedy Wedding Crashers, which bodes well for a possible Serenity sequel.
"We kind of expected this from our audience," Peristere said. "We did so well on [Amazon.com] with the Firefly box set and the performance of that helped us get the movie made. We wish the audience would get up and go to the theater, but it shows that they like to keep coming back and revisiting the world Joss created." Serenity made $25 million at the domestic box office after it was released Sept. 30.
Whedon and his crew are waiting to see how well the DVD numbers go before proceeding with a Serenity sequel, Peristere said. "We really hope to return to this work," he said. "We love the characters. It's fun storytelling, and we all love using our talents. ... It all depends on Joss. He's not giving up on the characters. He had incredible writers who had a million stories to tell, and we're all just hanging out and seeing what the world has to give us, and given the opportunity we'll make more."
In the meantime, fans of both show and movie can enjoy the DVD's various extras, which include an easter egg: a featurette about the making of the Fruity Oaty Bar commercial that appears in the film. "In the main menu, if you play around with the buttons you'll find a featurette of the Fruity Oaty Bar," Peristere revealed. (From the main menu highlight "play," then press left, which will highlight a marker on the right side of the menu; press enter to see the featurette.) "It's all a lot of fun," he said.
Firefly F/X Led To Galactica
oni Peristere, visual-effects supervisor on the SF movie Serenity, told SCI FI Wire that the movie's computer-generated visual effects mimicked hand-held camera moves and realistic lens effects, which also directly influenced the F/X on SCI FI Channel's original series Battlestar Galactica.
When Galactica creator Ronald D. Moore and visual-effects supervisor Gary Hutzel saw the visual effects that had been pioneered for director Joss Whedon and Serenity's predecessor TV show, Firefly, they came to Peristere. They told him "that's the way it should be photographed, and please bring those rules to Galactica," Peristere said in an interview. "That is the way this should be shot. And now Galactica has taken on its own set of rules. But it started with appreciation for Firefly and appreciation for work Joss had begun." (Serenity is now available on DVD.)
In Serenity, digital animation of the title spaceship taking off in the rain included raindrops on the camera lens. "When you have a massive ship lifting off, it would be hard for the cameraman to keep the lens clean," said Peristere, who worked with Whedon on both the TV show and movie. "We proposed this as a style to Joss, where the animation would have mounted cameras, depth of field, zoom lenses, all in CG, and he's like, 'Well, yeah, my whole movie is a documentary. Find the story in the camera design.' And we went with it."
Peristere's team from his Zoic Studios created Firefly/Serenity's jerky digital style, which differs from the static style of 2001: A Space Odyssey and the more fluid F/X of the Star Wars films. The style adds a sense of realism, as if things were shot by real people and not created in computers. "It seemed sort of silly to not apply the cinematic language to digital photography as well," Peristere said.
As an example, in Serenity's climactic battle scene, visual-effects designers worked as if they had three camera operators following the title ship. "Our job from an animation standpoint was to create an action that moves through the battle, rather than participating in the battle," Peristere said. "Our pilot is chasing Serenity and has to keep Serenity in frame, even though large chunks of debris and fire is coming toward him." The new Serenity DVD includes features on the creation of the movie's visual effects.
WB Nets Its Aquaman
fter a three-month search, The WB has cast 28-year-old newcomer Will Toale as the star of its upcoming Aquaman series, created by Smallville producers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, Variety reported.
The Florida-born Toale worked as a model before landing a supporting role in A Streetcar Named Desire at Broadway's Roundabout Theater alongside Natasha Richardson and John C. Reilly. Toale beat out 400 contenders in England, Australia, Canada and several U.S. cities, Gough told the trade paper.
The pilot will shoot in March, probably in Miami. The series is expected to be a signature offering next fall for the network and Warner Brothers TV.
In the show, the aquatic superhero will be Arthur Curry, who owns a dive shop.
Caspian To Follow Narnia
he success of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is spurring plans for a sequel based on the next title in C.S. Lewis' epic book series, Variety reported. Cary Granat, chief executive officer of production company Walden Media, said that work is already underway on a script for the sequel, Prince Caspian, with plans to tap a director within a few weeks.
"We're planning on starting production by the fourth quarter of next year," Granat told the trade paper.
Narnia, based on the first released title in Lewis' series, was the number-two draw at last weekend's box office and has taken in nearly $250 million domestically, the trade paper reported.
Pirates 3 Will Shoot In Summer
berproducer Jerry Bruckheimer told the ComingSoon.net Web site that production is almost finished on the upcoming sequel film Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and will begin on the third Pirates movie later this year. "We're in the Bahamas," he told the site. "We're finishing 2 and then doing 3. I think we have about five or six more days left on Pirates 2, and then we're done with it. We'll break in March and edit 2 and then go back at the end of the summer and finish 3."
Dead Man's Chest picks up the story of Capt. Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley). It opens July 7.
FX Flies With Superman Rights
X has bought the cable TV rights to Bryan Singer's upcoming Superman Returns movie six months before it hits theaters on June 30, Variety reported.
The network has agreed to pay Warner Brothers Domestic Cable about 12 percent of the eventual domestic gross, with a cap at between $17 million and $25 million, depending on the contract's length of term and on whether Warner finds another buyer to share the window with FX, the trade paper reported. The network gets the first burst of Superman runs in its TV premiere early in 2009, the trade paper reported. FX declined to comment to Variety.
Routh Talks Superman's Journey
randon Routh, who takes on the iconic title role in Bryan Singer's upcoming Superman Returns, told SCI FI Wire that his Man of Steel finds himself a bit lost at the beginning of the movie. "He's come back [after being away for several years]. He's lost. He's learned things about the world that have changed, and he's not found what he went after, ... and he just feels alone," Routh said in an interview during a break in filming in Sydney, Australia, last July. "And he's not sure if he wants to use his power even."
Routh spoke with SCI FI Wire during a two-day press visit to Sydney last summer. Shooting took place in the Australian Museum, which was doubling for a museum in Metropolis, featuring Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor. Warner Brothers granted permission to run portions of that interview now and in the next few days.
Superman Returns, the fifth film in the most recent Superman saga, picks up the story at the point when Superman/Clark Kent returns to Metropolis and sees his old friends, including Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth). "It's at that point that he really tries to connect with the world, with humanity, with his humanity," Routh said. "I mean, he's an alien, but he's human. Or he does his best to be. He lives here. He wants to be part of that world, I think."
Superman/Clark Kent must also try to pick up the pieces of his relationship with Lois, which was the subject of Superman II and gets further developed in Superman Returns. "I think the love story is very relatable to everyone," Routh said. "You lose love, you get it back. The journey you take to get the person you love back. Giving up things. Finding the positive in the negative. All these are human things, and I trust that's evident in the film, in my portrayal. ... The one worry he has is this love of Lois, because it's something that he doesn't understand, and it's hard for him, because that's a very strong emotion, and it's the only person he's ever truly loved in that way." Superman Returns debuts June 30.
Lost's Watros Guilty Of DUI
ynthia Watros, who plays Libby on ABC's hit SF series Lost, pleaded guilty in Hawaii to drunken driving on Jan. 12, the Associated Press reported. She was fined $370 and had her driver's license suspended for 90 days.
District Judge James Dannenberg also ordered Watros, 37, to undergo an alcohol assessment and to submit to 14 hours of counseling. "I'm sorry," Watros said after entering her plea, the AP reported.
Watros' Lost co-star Michelle Rodriguez has also been charged with drunken driving. The two were pulled over in separate cars within 15 minutes of each other Dec. 1.
Rodriguez, 27, is scheduled to stand trial March 30 after pleading not guilty last month. She was also cited for speeding in Hawaii three times last year, the AP reported.
Lost films in Hawaii. It airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
Spielberg's Nine Green-Lighted
CI FI Channel announced that it has given a green light for production of Nine Lives, a 12-hour supernatural miniseries from executive producer Steven Spielberg and screenwriter Les Bohem, the team behind SCI FI's Emmy-winning 2003 miniseries Taken. Nine Lives, which looks at life after death, is slated to air in 2007, SCI FI announced at the winter press tour of the Television Critics Association in Pasadena, Calif.
Bohem, who wrote the entire 20 hours of Taken, will write all of Nine Lives, which focuses on several characters who discover a way to reunite with dead loved ones in the afterlife through near-death experiences. Each journey to the other side brings an unknown evil closer, SCI FI said.
Nine Lives will be executive-produced by Spielberg, Bohem and DreamWorks Television co-presidents Justin Falvey and Darryl Frank.
The miniseries was part of the production slate unveiled by SCI FI at the press presentation.
Reality programming includes Who Wants to Be a Superhero?, in which comic writer Stan Lee and Bruce Nash embark on a nationwide search for a true-life superhero. SCI FI will also try to find a homegrown psychic in The Gift. Medium at Large will focus on celebrity psychic Char Margolis. All three shows will debut this year.
Scripted series include The Bridge, a dramedy about souls trapped in purgatory, from producers Sean Hayes (Will & Grace) and Todd Milliner, and a pilot based on the SF movie The Butterfly Effect, centering on a man who discovers he has the ability to go back in time and affect the future. Battlestar Galactica executive producer Ronald D. Moore, meanwhile, is developing a pilot for Warehouse 13, about the strange objects housed in a government repository, each of which has a unique story to tell.
Potter V Seeks Its Lovegood
arner Brothers has sent out a casting call for the role of Luna Lovegood in the upcoming fifth Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The production is seeking girls between the ages of 13 and 16 who are resident in the United Kingdom or Ireland to make an application to audition for the role to casting director Fiona Weir. No experience is necessary.
Applicants are asked to apply in person on Jan. 14 at the Central Hall, Westminster Storey's Gate, Westminster, London. The production will take applications from 10 a.m., with no queueing before 8 a.m. The queue will close at 2 p.m. Applicants will be asked to show a copy of their passport as proof of age and nationality. Applicants are also asked to eschew makeup, costumes and high heels.
Potter author J.K. Rowling has described Lovegood as the "anti-Hermione." She is one of Harry Potter's classmates at Hogwarts, the daughter of the editor of The Quibbler and a free spirit who befriends Harry in the fifth novel.
British director David Yates will helm Order of the Phoenix, which is expected to begin production in the United Kingdom this month.
Potter Outsells All In 2005
.S. fans bought more copies of J.K. Rowling's sixth Harry Potter book on its first day of release than any other book sold in the country in all of 2005, the Reuters news service reported.
According to industry sales tracker Nielsen BookScan, Rowling's Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince sold 4.1 million copies in the United States on day one and 7.02 million copies for the full year.
Among the rest of the nation's best-sellers, Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code proved its enduring popularity as the fifth-highest U.S. seller of the year. His earlier novel Angels & Demons took eighth place.
Christopher Paolini's fantasy novel Eldest came in 10th.
Creature Book Travels Time
H Press announced the newest addition to its original Universal Monsters novel series: Creature From the Black Lagoon: Time's Black Lagoon. Following in the footsteps of previous DH Press original novels featuring Dracula and the Wolf Man, the Creature has been revamped with a modern horror sensibility by SF author Paul Di Filippo and is set in the year 2015. The book will be released in May, with a suggested retail price of $6.99.
The book is based on the 1954 creature feature Creature From the Black Lagoon and centers on the title amphibious "Gill-Man," a missing link in the evolutionary chain. Six decades later, one scientist attempts to find out the Creature's secret, using a time machine to journey into the past. What he finds not only shatters his vision of what the Creature might be, but could change the history of the human race forever.
Di Filippo reinvents the classic monster with a tale of time travel, horror and mystery that blends Cold War science fiction with cutting-edge cyberpunk in a vision of what terrors still lurk in the swamp, the publisher said.
The Universal Monsters series is based on characters from Universal Pictures movies; Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Uglies Considers Beauty
F writer Scott Westerfeld told SCI FI Wire that society's preferential treatment of beautiful people inspired his young adult Uglies trilogy. "Research shows that beautiful people are treated better by the rest of us," Westerfeld said in an interview. "As kids, they make better grades for the same work, and as adults [they] enjoy ... greater social and economic success. So I asked myself, 'What if a society decided to wipe out the bigotry of beauty?' Not as an aesthetic exercise, but as a way to improve social discourse; for example, by ensuring that ideas are judged on their own merits and not by how pretty the person expounding them is."
The trilogy—Uglies, Pretties and Specials—is set 300 years in the future and deals with a dystopian society in which the government enforces compulsory cosmetic surgery, making everyone beautiful at age 16. "The story is about Tally, a girl about to turn 16, who is reluctantly drawn into a conflict between her city and a group of mostly young conscientious objectors who want to keep their own faces," Westerfeld said.
Readers and critics agree that the books depict adolescent anxiety in a true and believable way, but Westerfeld said that he doesn't deserve all the credit for that. "Uglies is my future society's term for everyone between the ages of 11 and 16, that uncomfortable passage between infantile cuteness and beautifying surgery. Of course, adolescence is bumpy in our society, too. It's a time in which we're uncomfortable in our own skin, both figuratively (we don't know how we fit into the world yet) and literally (we hate our faces, bodies, hair, etc.)," Westerfeld said. "The society in Uglies is simply an exaggerated version of contemporary reality. Rather than feeling inadequate because of older 'pretties,' teens today are made anxious by the retouched faces that inhabit every TV show, film and advertisement and simply don't compare with what they see in the mirror. So perhaps it's not to my credit that what I'm writing feels realistic; maybe it's reality's fault for being so dystopic."
The final volume of the trilogy, Specials, is due out in May. "'Specials' are the enforcers of the pretty regime," Westerfeld said. "They are enhanced not just for looks, but for strength and speed and even mental clarity. So the last book is less about appearance and more about all the other advantages that future surgeries may bring for those who get hold of them first and what that means for the rest of us." And, Westerfeld promised: "Lots of things blow up."
Lost's Andrews Fathers Child
aveen Andrews, who plays Sayid on ABC's hit SF series Lost, has acknowledged that he fathered a child while briefly separated from his longtime girlfriend, actress Barbara Hershey, the Associated Press reported.
Andrews' publicist told the wire service that Andrews and Hershey were separated for a "brief period" last year, during which Andrews had an encounter with another woman. He recently learned that he is the father of her baby boy, the AP reported.
"I have every intention of assuming appropriate responsibility for the child," Andrews said in a statement released to the Associated Press on Jan. 6.
Andrews said he and Hershey have worked things out and remain committed to their relationship.
Warner Tames Wild Things
arner Brothers has acquired a film based on Maurice Sendak's classic children's book Where the Wild Things Are from Universal Pictures, which had placed it in turnaround, Variety reported.
Spike Jonze will direct from a script he and novelist Dave Eggers wrote. It's expected to get under way late in the year, the trade paper reported.
Playtone's Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman are producing, along with Sendak and John Carls.
Figuring out a way to turn the 338-word Wild Things story into a movie has been a long process, with multiple helmers and writers weighing in. Details of the Jonze-Eggers version have been closely held, but the movie will be a live-action feature that will likely require a sizable computer-animation budget.
The current vision of the movie has the strong support of Sendak, who told The New York Times in October, "I am in love with it. If Spike and Dave do not do this movie now, I would just as soon not see any version of it ever get made."
Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
PKD Award Nominees Named
udges and the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society announced the final list of nominees for the 2005 Philip K. Dick Award, which honors distinguished science fiction published in paperback original form in the United States. First prize and any special citations will be announced April 14 at Norwescon 29 in Seattle. The award, named for the prolific SF writer, is sponsored by the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society, and the award ceremony is sponsored by the Northwest Science Fiction Society.
The six nominees are Cowl by Neal Asher, War Surf by M.M. Buckner, Cagebird by Karin Lowachee, Natural History by Justina Robson, Silver Screen by Justina Robson and To Crush the Moon by Wil McCarthy.
Kong Wins Critics' Award
ing Kong was awarded a special Distinguished Achievement in Performing Arts Award to recognize the blend of visual effects with Andy Serkis' performance to bring the big ape to life at the Broadcast Film Critics' 11th annual Critics' Choice Awards, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
SF&F films were otherwise poorly represented in the evening's awards, presented Jan. 9 in Santa Monica, Calif.
Freddie Highmore won a best young actor award for his performance in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, while Dakota Fanning took home the young actress award for her role in War of the Worlds. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe received the award for family film.
Dead Raises Vampire Science
harlie Huston, author of the mystery books Caught Stealing and Six Bad Things, told SCI FI Wire that his first horror novel, Already Dead, takes a scientific look at vampires. "We should really be talking about 'science,' not science," Huston said in an interview. "Anything in Already Dead that seems like real science ... only seems that way to someone who didn't take Biology 101. What led me into the idea of vampirism being contracted through a virus rather than by supernatural means was a desire to have a protagonist rooted in a real-ish world, someone who would be skeptical of all things spooky. If your soul has been consigned to the devil it's hard to be a skeptic. Certainly the whole vampirism-as-sickness thing is not an original concept; I'm just hoping to put enough of a twist on it to make it entertaining. But that's always the trick with genre fiction: playing by the rules while finding ways to subvert them."
Already Dead is about a P.I. named Joe Pitt, who runs afoul of Manhattan's most powerful vampire clan; he's a vampire too, but he's not happy about it. As to why Huston chose to write about vampires, the answer is simple: They're his favorite monster. "I just like vampires. ... Vampires are cool," Huston said. "I like the interplay of the human and unhuman, the appetite that requires acts of cannibalism. This idea that what makes a vampire a monster is its appetite. A human being drinking human blood is a monstrous act." As for the zombies, Huston said: "Well, they eat brains. I like brain eaters. They're funky."
Huston was also recently hired by Marvel Comics to revive the Moon Knight character. "Marvel Comics has an initiative run by their director of development, publishing, Ruwan Jayatilleke, where they find writers outside the field of comics, capture them, subject them to conditioning experiments, tag them, release them back into the wild and wait for them to pitch ideas to their editorial staff. See, here's my tag," Huston said, with tongue in cheek. "Really, I'm just a chump who dug comics when I was a kid, and I happened to be in the right place at the right time when Marvel was looking for new writers. I got even luckier when they told me Moon Knight was one of the characters they were looking to do something new with. The original Moon Knight, back in the early '80s, was one of my all-time favorite comics; getting a crack at bringing him back into the mainstream of the Marvel Universe is a pretty big deal for me."
SCI FI Announces Dark Kingdom
CI FI Channel announced it will premiere the original two-part, four-hour fantasy adventure miniseries Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King on March 27 and 28 at 9 p.m. ET/PT. Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King stars Julian Sands, Kristanna Loken, Alicia Witt, Samuel West, Robert Pattinson and Max Von Sydow.
Based on the German myth that was one of the inspirations for J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, the miniseries centers on Eric (Benno Fuermann), a young blacksmith who is unaware that his true identity is actually Siegfried, the orphaned heir to a conquered kingdom. When an asteroid strikes the Earth, it sets off a chain of events that sends Eric on an adventure to discover his destiny. He encounters his true love, the Norse warrior Queen Brunhild (Loken), becomes a hero to the Burgunds after slaying the much-feared dragon Fafnir and is rewarded with the ancient treasure trove the beast protected: the treasure of the Nibelungs. Eric ignores warnings of a curse placed on the treasure, an act that ultimately endangers his love for Brunhild and the reclaiming of his birthright.
Dark Kingdom previously aired in Germany, where it was the top-rated TV film. It is executive-produced by Tim Halkin and Andreas Grosch and produced by Rola Bauer and Andreas Schmid. Diane Duane, Peter Morwood and Uli Edel wrote the miniseries, which was directed by Edel. The miniseries was licensed to SCI FI by Debmar-Mercury and its principals, Mort Marcus and Ira Bernstein.
Raimi To Helm Wee Free Men
am Raimi (Spider-Man 3) will direct The Wee Free Men, an adaptation of Terry Pratchett's best-selling young-adult fantasy novel, Variety reported. Sony Pictures Entertainment has acquired the book and set Pamela Pettler to write the script.
Published in 2003, Wee Free Men centers on a 9-year-old farm girl who heads off to a parallel world to retrieve a brother who has been grabbed by a nasty fairy queen. She battles the monsters of Fairyland with the help of 6-inch-tall, blue-faced rowdies who wear kilts, speak in thick Scottish brogues, steal sheep and drink heavily.
The novel is part of the British author's Discworld series, whose volumes are big sellers around the world.
Raimi and Josh Donen will produce through their Sony-based company, along with Created By's Vince Gerardis and Ralph Vicinanza.
Raimi will also direct the upcoming third Spider-Man film, which gears up production this month.
SG-1's Browder Back With Black
en Browder, who stars in SCI FI Channel's original series Stargate SG-1, told SCI FI Wire that he's thrilled to be reunited with former Farscape co-star Claudia Black in the show, which kicked off the second half of its ninth season last week. Browder plays Lt. Col. Cameron Mitchell opposite Black's Vala; both actors will be regulars in the show's 10th season, which is about to begin production in Vancouver, Canada.
"Anybody who has Claudia Black on their show, I think, is a very intelligent producer," Browder said in an interview. "I just think she's magnificent. She's a wonderful actress, and she's a good friend. I couldn't be happier than to go anywhere and have Claudia Black around."
Even as Stargate SG-1 rolls on, Farscape fans continue to clamor for the further adventures of star-crossed lovers John Crichton (Browder) and Aeryn Sun (Black). Browder noted that he'd welcome a follow-up to the SCI FI Channel's 2004 miniseries Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars. "Oh, I'd be more than happy to play John Crichton again," Browder said. "I haven't heard any news lately about it. I think that will [be] a business decision. When it's the right time for it to be realized, and when there's a will by [executive producer] Brian Henson to do it, that's probably when it will happen."
Browder added: "Brian is obviously busy doing other things at the moment, but he and I have talked about it. I think it's more a question for Brian than it is for me as to when and whether we'll see more Farscape. But Farscape has a very special place in my heart. I absolutely adored the series and adored playing John Crichton, so if the opportunity presents itself I'd be more than happy to go back into the fold again."
Browder laughed when asked who'd win if John Crichton and Cameron Mitchell ever got into a fight. "The simple answer is that Aeryn would dispatch Vala and then rescue John," Browder said. "Cameron would have the upper hand until Aeryn kicked his ass." Stargate SG-1 airs Fridays at 8 p.m. ET/PT.
Dreamfall Finally Falls
erri Perkins, a spokeswoman for game publisher Funcom, told SCI FI Wire that it took nearly five years to come up with Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, the follow-up to the hit game The Longest Journey, but that the sequel finally arrives this spring for the Xbox and PC.
"The game developer Ragnar Tornquist was busy working on Anarchy Online and other games for us," Perkins said in an interview. "It was something he wanted to do and we wanted to do. He's basically been working on it off and on for two years."
Dreamfall: The Longest Journey picks up a decade after the events of the first game, in which April Ryan went on many adventures and faced challenges to preserve the balance of power between the twin worlds of science and magic. The new adventure introduces a new protagonist, Zoe Costello, who is aided by a "cyber-intelligent" purple gorilla. Costello will battle a new conspiracy that threatens the future of mankind.
Dreamfall: The Longest Journey will feature appearances by April Ryan and other characters from the first game, but is self-contained and does not require any experience with the first game, Perkins said. She added that the sequel will take advantage of technical advances in the intervening five years.
"The game is totally advanced in terms of advanced graphics," Perkins said. "You play from the point of view of different characters during the course of the game. There are gameplay variations that allow players to play in physical and mental variations. There is also a 'focus field,' rather than a traditional point-and-click, [which] lets the player know if there is anything in the game field he can interact with."
Van Vogt's Slan Sequel Lives
F author Kevin J. Anderson told SCI FI Wire that Lydia van Vogt, widow of the late science fiction Grand Master A.E. van Vogt, recently asked him to finish van Vogt's uncompleted Slan Hunter, the sequel to the SF classic Slan. "I was honored to be asked," Anderson said in an interview. He added: "This is a great work of classic science fiction. I reread the original Slan and van Vogt's outline and draft pages and agreed to take on the project. I have already completed writing the first draft and will be editing it. Lydia will write an introduction and memoir, giving a background on this project, her life with A.E. van Vogt and the touching story of her last years with him as [Alzheimer's disease] stole his memory before it stole his life."
Slan, originally published in 1940, tells the story of a race of super-intelligent telepathic humans known as "slans," who are despised and feared by regular humans. "Long before the beginning of the story, great wars between slans and humans devastated much of the Earth and knocked human society back for centuries," Anderson said. "Now, the few remaining slans have gone into hiding, hunted down mercilessly wherever they go. The story of young Jommy Cross—orphaned when slan hunters murder his mother, searching for his identity, trying to find other genetically superior slans hated by human society—is one of the most compelling tales from SF's golden age."
The sequel, Slan Hunter, will be based on a detailed outline and 125 finished draft pages left by van Vogt. Anderson said that the pages describe "the outbreak of war between the humans, the slans and [the non-telepathic slans known as] the tendrilless." He promised that "all of the familiar characters are here, with romance, adventure and plenty of plot twists and turns."
Anderson has several other projects in the works, including the "grand climax" of the Dune saga—Hunters of Dune and Sandworms of Dune, both co-authored with Brian Herbert—as well as the final two volumes of Anderson's own Saga of the Seven Suns. As for Slan Hunter, Anderson said that he is enthusiastic about the book's prospects. "This should be an event among science fiction fandom, and I sincerely hope it draws new readers to the original works of van Vogt," he said.
Stirling To Follow Mum With 007?
ritish actress Rachael Stirling is rumored to be the favorite to play Bond girl Vesper Lynd opposite Daniel Craig's 007 in the upcoming Casino Royale movie, the U.K. tabloid newspaper The Sun reported. If Stirling gets the job, she would follow in the footsteps of her famous mother, Diana Rigg, who married George Lazenby's James Bond in 1969's On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
Stirling, who is best known for her role in the BBC lesbian drama Tipping the Velvet, has reportedly screen-tested for the Bond part.
"Rachael's dark, sultry looks and pedigree as an actress make her a favorite with producers," an unnamed source at Eon Productions told The Sun. "Diana is a legendary Bond girl, and bosses think Rachael has the same sexy appeal."
Other actresses reportedly under consideration for the role include Sienna Miller, Thandie Newton, Natasha Henstridge and Australian actress Kimberly Davies, but The Sun reported that Stirling is said to be favorite. Angelina Jolie and Charlize Theron were previously reported to have turned down the role. Producers complete casting this week as production starts in the Caribbean on Jan. 30. Eon Productions declined to comment on the record to The Sun.
Meanwhile, the Dark Horizons Web site reported that French actors Michael Youn and Romain Duris have apparently screen-tested for the role of the villain Le Chiffre.
Episode III Is People's Choice
tar Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith was named favorite movie and favorite movie drama at the 32nd annual People's Choice Awards in ceremonies Jan. 10 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The awards were broadcast live on CBS.
Alias star Jennifer Garner won multiple awards: female action star and female TV star.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory star Johnny Depp was named favorite male movie star. Mr. and Mrs. Smith's Brad Pitt took the honors as favorite leading man.
The nominations were determined by editors at Entertainment Weekly, the People's Choice production team and a panel of pop culture fans. Winners were determined by Internet voting.
Novik Mixes Sail And Dragon
aomi Novik, author of the upcoming historical fantasy His Majesty's Dragon, told SCI FI Wire that she undertook the novel with only an era in mind—"the Age of Sail and the time of the Napoleonic wars"—and was able to flesh it out after she asked herself: What if there were dragons? (The book is due in March.)
"I've long had a passion for the language and the monumental, almost legendary quality of this time period and the contrast of enormous, world-shaping events taking place against the backdrop of an everyday life that is at the same time recognizable to us now in many ways, and yet still very alien," Novik said in an interview. "I've [also] loved the idea of dragons since I was a child reading The Hobbit for the first time, an affection that's held through many, many variations on the theme, from Earthsea to Pern. ... I felt strongly that combining the two would allow me to put an original, speculative twist on both the Napoleonic era itself and the treatment of dragons."
In His Majesty's Dragon, a naval captain discovers a dragon egg aboard a captured French ship and bonds with the creature. As a result, he must leave his beloved navy for Britain's Aerial Corps—a division of His Majesty's Armed Forces that rides dragons into battle against France's own dragon-borne forces.
Novik's book shows influences of Patrick O'Brian and Anne McCaffrey, whose Pern series was for Novik "one of those formative reading experiences of childhood that the heart never quite lets go." Novik added that there are "legions of others a few more steps removed" who influenced Dragon, including Jane Austen, C.S. Forester and J.R.R. Tolkien.
His Majesty's Dragon is the first book in the Temeraire series; the sequel Throne of Jade will follow in April and Black Powder War in May. But the series won't end there. "I really envision the Temeraire books as an ongoing set of adventures in the [style of Patrick O'Brian's] Aubrey/Maturin [novels], rather than as a trilogy or a longer series with a set start and finish," Novik said. "I'm always a little frustrated myself by very long series, so I feel strongly about wrapping up the main plot in each book, while leaving some interesting hooks behind for future adventures and to reward continuing readers, without making it impossible for someone to come in fresh later on along the way. Book four of the series is already underway, with book five mostly plotted out, and various other ideas for the future brewing on the back burner."
Robson Stunned At PKD Nods
F author Justina Robson told SCI FI Wire that she was totally taken aback and is still stunned that two of her novels, Natural History and Silver Screen, were named as finalists for the 2005 Philip K. Dick Award. "My friend Stephanie Samphire told me about it this morning on the doorstep," Robson said in an interview. "I hadn't done e-mail for a couple of days, so I had no idea."
Robson was nominated Jan. 9—along with Neal Asher, M.M. Buckner, Karin Lowachee and Wil McCarthy—for the award, which was named for the prolific SF writer and which recognizes distinguished science fiction published in paperback original form in the United States.
The nominations mean a little something extra to Robson, because she considers Dick's works to be genius. The prize itself is important, she added, because it allows some attention to be given to the shortlisted books, which might otherwise be overlooked. "It's judged by panels of writers and academics, so it's out searching for something that might be really valuable to the genre as a whole," she said.
Natural History is Robson's third novel, but the first to be published in the United States. Silver Screen is her first novel and has only now been published in this country, five years after its initial release in the United Kingdom. That both of these novels were nominated for the same award in the same year seems very strange to Robson.
"The publication timing in the U.S.A. is very interesting and really quite a coincidence, because the two books are being done by different publishers entirely on their own schedules," she said. "Both Bantam and Pyr started a strong move towards publishing SF which fell outside the obvious categories at the same time and for similar reasons: because good books were being overlooked, both at home and abroad, and because they felt there was a strong enough but underexplored market to support the move. Other Brit writers and myself in particular just happened to be around at the moment they were working on those plans, and we got seen as something that fitted those new bills, so we were lucky to have the timing work out."
Next up, in March, is a new novel, Living Next Door to the God of Love; in September, readers can expect the first U.S. edition of Mappa Mundi, Robson's second novel. Robson's current project is Quantum Gravity, a "series of adventure space opera books with assassination-spy-robot girls and rock-star elves and art-crazy demons, which are rather fun," she said. "The only rule about it was that there were no rules. I swore blind there wouldn't be a stitch of serious thought in them when I started—they were going to be glamour therapy for me after the odyssey of writing Living Next Door to the God of Love—but strangely enough they're turning out to be rather deep in their own offbeat way." The first book, Keeping It Real, is due in the United Kingdom in May.
Butterfly 2 Starts Shooting
he Butterfly Effect 2, the sequel to 2004's eerie SF movie, begins production Jan. 12 with Eric Lively and the previously announced Erica Durance (TV's Smallville) in the lead roles, Variety reported. Dustin Milligan also stars.
The sequel won't bring back characters from the original, which starred Ashton Kutcher and Amy Smart. The story will follow a time-traveling character who discovers that changes to past events carry unforeseen consequences in the present.
John Leonetti is directing a script by Michael Weiss. Filmengine's A.J. Dix and Anthony Rhulen are producing, along with Benderspink's Chris Bender and J.C. Spink. William Shively executive-produces.
The original Butterfly Effect grossed $58 million domestically.
CBS, NBC OK SF Pilots
BS gave a green light to a pilot for the SF drama Jericho, and NBC said yes to a pilot for a superhero show titled Heroes, Variety reported.
Jericho, penned by Stephen Chbosky (Rent), is a post-apocalyptic thriller about a small Kansas town that struggles to survive after being shut off from the rest of the world as most of America is destroyed. The project comes from Paramount Network TV and Jon Turteltaub's Junction Entertainment. Turteltaub will direct the Jericho pilot and executive-produce with Chbosky.
NBC Universal TV will produce Heroes, executive producer Kring's ensemble drama about regular people who discover they harbor superhero-style powers.
NBC and NBC Universal TV are both owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Scanner Delayed Again
arner Independent Pictures has bumped the release date of its much-delayed SF film A Scanner Darkly yet again, to July from its most recent release date in March, a spokeswoman told SCI FI Wire's sister publication Science Fiction Weekly.
A Scanner Darkly, based on the novel by Philip K. Dick, was scheduled to come out last September, then was moved to March 31 of this year. In the film, director Richard Linklater overlays live-action photography with advanced animation, as in his 2001 movie Waking Life. Delays in the sophisticated animation process were cited when the movie was pushed to March from September last year.
Set in suburban Orange County, Calif., in a future where America has lost the war on drugs, A Scanner Darkly stars Keanu Reeves as an undercover cop who is ordered to start spying on his friends. He is launched on a paranoid journey into the absurd, where identities and loyalties are impossible to decode, Warner said. The cast also includes Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson, Winona Ryder and Rory Cochrane.
Dark Reaches Heads To Taiwan
herry Road Films and Double Edge Entertainment are producing the teen horror movie Dark Reaches, with Jessica Pare (Notorious) and Johnny Lewis (The OC) in talks to star, Variety reported. Shooting is slated to begin this spring in Taiwan.
Mark Marabate wrote the script about five teens who stumble upon an eerie cave and get trapped inside, only to discover unspeakable horrors, the trade paper reported.
Cherry Road's Kendall Morgan is producing, with Double Edge's Nina Yang. The pair previously partnered to finance and produce Mail Order Wife.
Cherry Road, which has an overall development deal with Warner Independent, is in post-production on Southland Tales, an SF movie written and directed by Donnie Darko's Richard Kelly.
Di Filippo Prescribes Doc Samson
cience fiction writer Paul Di Filippo told SCI FI Wire that he will work again in comics by writing a five-issue series based on the Marvel Comics character Doc Samson, a minor player in the Hulk universe whom he hopes to elevate to "A" status. The first of the five issues hits comic shops this month.
"Doc Samson has always been kind of a 'B' player in the Hulk mythos," Di Filippo told SCI FI.COM. "Marvel wanted to kind of break him out and see what he could do as a lead character."
Di Filippo, who describes Doc Samson as a Doc Savage-Indiana Jones type, says that his marching orders from Marvel were fairly specific. "I don't think this will be any reflection on Marvel, because it's just a common way of thinking," he said. "Alan Moore had this character named Tom Strong, and Marvel said they wanted Doc Samson to be like Tom Strong, and they felt he had the potential to have the same kind of adventures."
The author, whose previous comic-book assignment was the authorized sequel series to Alan Moore's Top Ten in 2005, hints that the five stand-alone stories of Doc Samson will lean toward the quirky. "Doc Samson's backstory is that he's a psychiatrist," he said. "Well, I've made him kind of a brawling psychiatrist. He'll try to talk the bad guy down, but if that doesn't work, here comes the beating."
Di Filippo does not want to spoil the story surprises, but offers that the tone of the Doc Samson stories will be on the wacky side. "There will be some wild speculation on whether what is going on is scientific, cosmic, religious or economic," he said. "It's kind of like a Warren Ellis influence."
Robbins Mulls New 1984
im Robbins (Zathura) told Empire Online that he wants to mount a new movie version of George Orwell's classic dystopian SF novel 1984. "I've got a screenplay of it," Robbins told the site. "And now I'm starting the process of trying to put it together."
Robbins is currently directing a stage version of the book, written by Michael Gene Sullivan, for his Los Angeles theater troupe, The Actors' Gang. That runs from Feb. 11-April 8.
"In the book, Big Brother says we're not really concerned about 85 percent of the people, because they're so stupefied by poverty and overwork that they're never going to be part of the problem," Robbins said. "What they're really worried about is the other 15 percent."
Robbins added: "When we think about the authoritarian world that Orwell painted, the catchphrases are one thing, but when you read the book again, the specifics and relevance for now are stunning."
Robbins wouldn't tell the site whether he wanted to act in the movie. Whether the film actually happens is "really a matter of whether I can raise the money for it," he said. "We'll see if there's an appetite for it. Orwell may have been 20 years off, but I know that I find it incredibly relevant."
Spike Announces Blade Film
onfirming a story first reported in SCI FI Wire last July, Spike TV officially announced it would adapt the Blade movie franchise for television, beginning with a two-hour original drama that marks the network's first foray into scripted entertainment. Produced by New Line Television, Blade premieres on Spike TV in June.
"Blade is perfectly suited for Spike TV and its male viewers," Pancho Mansfield, executive vice president, original programming at Spike TV, said in a statement. "The new Blade promises to capture what men want to see: thrilling action and effects combined with an intelligent and highly creative story."
David S. Goyer, who wrote the screenplays for the Blade trilogy, as well as Batman Begins, serves as executive producer and co-wrote the script with popular comic-book author Geoff Johns. Peter O'Fallon (American Gothic) directs. The two-hour telefilm is likely a pilot for an eventual series.
Kirk "Sticky" Jones (Over There) will star as the title character, a half-human, half-vampire warrior, who was played by Wesley Snipes in the movies. The cast also includes Jill Wagner, Neil Jackson, Nelson Lee and Jessica Gower.
Based on the Marvel Comics series, Spike's Blade focuses on the immortal warrior who fights a shadowy underworld of vampires who want to destroy the human race.
Goyer: TV Will Open Blade Up
avid S. Goyer, the writer behind the Blade movies, told reporters that his upcoming Blade telefilm for Spike TV will open up the world of vampires hinted at in the film franchise. "I realized that in order to do it for TV, we had to do something that TV could do better than the features," Goyer said at a news conference during the Television Critics Association winter press tour in Pasadena, Calif., on Jan. 12. "And one of the things that the fans always seemed to be really interested in were all the inner workings and machinations of the vampire world. So we tried to come up with an idea that would allow us to explore that more."
The show stars Kirk "Sticky" Jones as the title half-human, half-vampire warrior in the show, which Goyer described as "like a Wise Guy with vampires." Jill Wagner plays Krista Starr, who goes undercover in the vampire world. "Jill's character is kind of a double agent working for Blade, within the vampire community, and with treating the vampires sort of like the ultimate crime family," Goyer said.
For his part, Jones said that his version of Blade may differ from Wesley Snipes' monosyllabic incarnation in the movies. "Clearly the point of going into the TV show is that we can explore more of his background, more of ... his history from the time when he was first in the streets, even before he met the Whistler character." He added: "I feel that Blade has to be communicative. He has to be able to communicate with other characters. You know, he's kind of closed, but he's half-human as well, so he's kind of open. And from Blade 1, 2 and 3, what Wesley did is he kind of graduated it, and I guess we're picking up where that left off."
As for whether Blade will eventually go to series, Spike executive Michael Hirschorn said that a decision "will be made in the next few weeks" based on the pilot. The Blade telefilm airs in June.
Farentino Brings Science To Eureka
ebrah Farentino isn't a scientist, but she plays one on SCI FI Channel's upcoming original series Eureka—oh, wait: She really is a scientist, studying for her bachelor's degree in molecular biology at Los Angeles' Mount St. Mary's College. "By hiring Debrah, we don't have to have a research staff," joked series creator and co-executive producer Jaime Paglia at the Television Critics Association winter press tour in Pasadena, Calif., on Jan. 12.
Farentino, who stars as brilliant psychotherapist Beverly Barlowe in Eureka, went back to college to study science after having two children and working as an actress in TV and films for two decades (she's perhaps best known to SF fans for her starring role in 1994's short-lived NBC series Earth 2). "Technically, I'm a biochemistry major," Farentino told SCI FI Wire in an interview. "But ... a great thing about women in their 40s, going back to school and doing it part time, is that I thought that's what I wanted to do, and after a year there, I realized it was really molecular biology that I love. And it's really a long-term journey, because I'm juggling family and work."
Farentino made the decision to return to school while working on the 1999 Fox sitcom Get Real. "I was playing a mom and doing the same thing and kind of missing my kids growing up," she said. "And I found myself reading Scientific American and other science magazines, and thinking, 'I know there's something out there for me [that's] different.'" On a whim, she stopped by a lab at Mount St. Mary's College, which is in Brentwood, Calif., along her carpool route. In the lab, "I just started weeping," she recalled. "I said, 'I need to be here.'"
Farentino has completed about two years of part-time instruction in the program and hopes to return. In the meantime, she's playing a scientist on Eureka, about a small town in the Pacific Northwest that is the top-secret home of a group of geniuses placed there by the federal government. Farentino has even brought some of her textbooks to set to help the writers, though they may not have been as useful as hoped. "She brought in some books that were her 'light reading,'" said creator and executive producer Andrew Cosby. "Jaime and I looked at each other when she was gone, ... 'I don't understand a word of this. And we're smart guys.'" Eureka, which also stars Colin Ferguson, Joe Morton and Salli Richardson-Whitfield, begins shooting in Vancouver, Canada, in February for a summer premiere.
Sackhoff Stretches In Sentinel
attlestar Galactica star Katee Sackhoff told SCI FI Wire that she's about to begin shooting The Last Sentinel, an independent SF movie with a theme similar to her day job as fighter jock Starbuck. "My character's a lot harder, though," Sackhoff said in an interview Jan. 12 at the Television Critics Association winter press tour in Pasadena, Calif. "She's got blue hair and a scar down her face, and she's covered in tattoos, and she's pretty much just a renegade. Like, she's really bad. She's got knives like hidden all over her body. Yeah, so I'm excited."
The Last Sentinel, directed by Jesse Johnson, is set in a dystopian future in which drone soldiers have taken over the world. Sackhoff's character, called simply "Girl," is a member of a resistance cell. "There's the [drones] that they ... brought in as a police force, and they ended up taking over the world," Sackhoff said. "So it's, like I said, very similar to Battlestar Galactica. But ... you know, we'll see. She's one of the resistance fighters. I basically just get beat up the whole movie. I get beat up, and I get to have some sex. So, I'm good. Very similar, like I said, it's so similar to Galactica, it's disgusting."
That similarity gave Sackhoff second thoughts about appearing in the film, which also stars Bokeem Woodbine and martial-arts actor Don "The Dragon" Wilson. "The director Jesse Johnson called, and they offered it to me, and I read the script, and I loved it," Sackhoff said. "My only worry was that people would say, 'Wow, it's so similar to Battlestar Galactica.' Had I not done Battlestar, I would have jumped at it. And so it just took me a while to like kind of say to myself, 'What a challenge, though, to take two characters who are on paper very similar and make them different.'"
The Last Sentinel begins shooting this month in Los Angeles; Sackhoff has a few months off before Galactica resumes shooting its upcoming third season.
In the meantime, Sackhoff said to expect more travail for Starbuck as Galactica's second season concludes. "Expect her to kick some more ass, fire some more guns and fall in love and, you know, end up in a really bad position at the end of the show," she said. Battlestar Galactica airs Fridays at 10 p.m. ET/PT.
Briefly Noted
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Fox has set a May 25, 2007, release date for Jim Carrey and Ben Stiller's SF comedy movie Used Guys, about a futuristic world run by women who buy and sell male clones for sexual duties, where it will square off against Spider-Man 3 and Shrek 3.
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NBC has green-lighted Seeing Red, a drama pilot from writer-producer Graham Yost about an eccentric, brilliant cop who talks to dead victims who help him solve his cases, Dark Horizons reported.
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The X-Files alumni Frank Spotnitz and Vince Gilligan are readying Amped, an SF miniseries in development at Spike TV, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
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IESB.com reported that Robert Patrick will appear in the upcoming fantasy film Bridge to Terabithia.
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Melissa Joan Hart, former star of the TV series Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, gave birth on Jan. 11 to a healthy 9-pound baby boy, the first child for Hart, 29, and husband, Mark Wilkerson, 28, of the rock band Course of Nature, the Associated Press reported.
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Dimension Films has acquired domestic distribution rights to Piranha, the remake of the 1978 carnivorous-fish hit that Chuck Russell will direct in spring, Variety reported.
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A new image from the upcoming Omen 666 has been linked through SCI FI Wire's Photo Gallery page.
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Herbie: Fully Loaded star Lindsay Lohan has denied to Teen People that she told Vanity Fair magazine she suffered from bulimia, but Vanity Fair stood by its reporting and said Lohan's comments are all on tape.
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Mr. and Mrs. Smith star Angelina Jolie is pregnant with her co-star Brad Pitt's baby, which is due this summer, People magazine reported.
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Toy maker Hasbro Inc. signed a licensing deal with Marvel Entertainment Inc. to make toys, games and other products based on its more than 5,000 characters, including Spider-Man and X-Men, the Los Angeles Times reported.
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Carrie-Anne Moss and Tim Blake Nelson head the cast of Fido, a comedy horror film about a small town with a zombie problem, Anagram Pictures announced.
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As Marvel Studios transitions to a studio in its own right, the company has promoted Kevin Feige to president of production, Avi Arad to executive vice president, production, and Craig Kyle to vice president, creative development, animation, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
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Tyrese Gibson confirmed to the IESB.com Web site that he has already met with Marvel head Avi Arad to star in a film adaptation of the Luke Cage comic series, and that they are waiting for a second draft of the script.
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Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, King Kong, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith and War of the Worlds are among the seven films in consideration for the sound editing Oscar, Variety reported.
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The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe could emerge as the biggest-grossing live-action film in Disney history, with worldwide grosses so far of $530 million and counting, Variety reported.
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A new teaser trailer for the upcoming Adam Sandler fantasy comedy Click has been linked through SCI FI Wire's Trailers page.
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Dan Brown's best-selling The Da Vinci Code will be released in a paperback edition on March 28, nearly three years after it came out in hardback, the Associated Press reported.
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NBC's midseason limited-run series The Book of Daniel debuted Jan. 6 in third place among the broadcast networks, averaging 9 million viewers and a 2.7 rating among adults 18-49, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
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Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera will earn the title of longest-running show in Broadway history, surpassing another Webber extravaganza, Cats, when the curtain goes up for performance number 7,486 on Jan. 9 at the Majestic Theater in New York, where it has run for nearly 18 years since opening on Jan. 26, 1988, the Reuters news service reported.
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