Duchovny weds Leoni in private ceremony
-Files co-star David Duchovny may have dealt his famed "Estrogen Brigade" a devastating blow on Tuesday, May 6, when he not-so-secretly married The Naked Truth star Tea Leoni. The pair had reportedly been romantically involved for about six months when they exchanged vows during a small, private ceremony at Grace Church in Manhattan (where Duchovny attended school as a lad).
The marriage is the first for the 37-year-old Duchovny and the second for 31-year-old Leoni. The ceremony was reportedly followed by an intimate dinner at a French bistro in Hell's Kitchen and a brief honeymoon stay in the Lowell Hotel.
-- Craig E. Engler, Editor
Deep Space Nine set for seventh season?
he aging Star Trek spinoff series Deep Space
Nine was supposed to expire gracefully at the end of next season, the TV show's sixth. But Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith, the Hollywood columnists for The San Jose Mercury News, quoted series star Nana Visitor (who plays Major Kira Nerys) as saying: "We're now hearing rumblings about a seventh season."
The columnists added that Visitor, who is engaged to co-star Alexander Siddig (who plays Dr. Julian Bashir), said there's buzz that "one or two of the characters from our show will be used in the next movie," which is being written now. Stay tuned.
-- Patrick Lee, U.S. Correspondent
Straczynski said to have set American TV precedent
ccording to a press release from Serling & Associates, Babylon 5 creator and executive producer J. Michael Straczynski has set a new precedent for American television writers by scripting 50 one-hour episodes in a row. The scripts represent more than two full seasons of the series, which is currently in its fourth season.
"It was nothing I ever wanted to do...but the difficulty of incorporating freelance stories into what is, essentially a novel for television, began to make that impossible, as much as we tried to make it work," the press release quoted Straczynski as saying.
Straczynski will also write and co-produce two feature length Babylon 5 movies for Turner Network Television, one a prequel and the other a sequel to Babylon 5's current storyline. Straczynski also made his directorial debut with what is currently scheduled to be the last episode of season four. It may well be the last episode of Babylon 5, as current speculation is that Warner Bros. will not renew the series for its fifth and final season.
-- C.E.E.
The Sci-Fi Channel announces slate of original
programming
he five-year-old Sci-Fi Channel said it will be unveiling an ambitious slate of original miniseries and movies starting in the fall.
Its first original miniseries, the six-hour Invasion Earth, will be a coproduction with the BBC about the discovery of a clandestine invasion of Earth since World War II, and the abduction of its residents by multi-dimensional aliens. Invasion will feature a British and American cast and will go before the cameras in Scotland this August, according to The Sci-Fi Channel's parent USA Networks Entertainment.
The channel also has plans for a new six-hour version of the SF classic Dune and an original movie based on late SF television pioneer Rod Serling's Playhouse 90 script, This Town Has Turned to Dust.
Previously, The Sci-Fi Channel said it would premiere its first original series in July: Mission Genesis, the story of two humans in the year 2157 AD who are the guardians of the survival of the human species.
-- P.L.
Arrival 2 in the works, minus Charlie Sheen
lthough The Arrival didn't do particularly well at the box office, it has become something of an underground hit with SF aficionados, and apparently LIVE Entertainment is taking notice. According to Variety, LIVE will begin production of The Second Arrival in June, with Patrick Muldoon replacing Charlie Sheen as the leading man.
Don't get your hopes up, though, as LIVE has only budgeted a meager $6 million for the sequel, which is said to revolve around a computer scientist who receives information on how to fight an alien plot to colonize Earth.
-- C.E.E.
Luke, Japan is your destiny
tar Wars: The Special Edition, which has already taken most of the known galaxy by storm, opens in Japan at the end of this month, with its two renovated sequels following in the weeks after.
Star Wars is scheduled to play in theaters for five weeks,
and the special editions of The Empire Strikes Back and
Return of the Jedi will each play for three. In conjunction with the 20th-anniversary rerelease of the classic films, more than 50 Japanese companies will be releasing various toys and merchandise, and a special discount ticket will be offered to those who buy their tickets for all three films at once.
-- P.L.
The movie is out there: The X-Files feature on
track
he much anticipated feature film version of the hit Fox series The X-Files is already raising expectations at the studio, which foresees it becoming a "worldwide event movie" in the summer of 1998, according to The Los Angeles Times.
That is, if its stars live long enough to complete it. The Times cites an
unnamed source saying that the pressure to get the movie made this summer is taking its toll on stars David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, as well as the crew. Because the film is expected to resolve the cliff-hanger at the end of the TV show's next season, the movie must be shot now -- giving the cast and crew no time for a break from their regimen of 16-hour days.
"These are great people but like any actors they get testy," the source
told the Times. "You're talking 16-hour-long days for practically a
year with no break in between. This schedule would make anyone
insufferable."
Series creator and the film's writer, Chris Carter, meanwhile, told
USA Today that he hasn't ruled out staying for a sixth year of
the paranormal hit, Fox's highest rated show. "I'm not ruling [it] out,"
Carter told the paper. With or without him, the show itself
"could definitely go seven years strong," he added.
-- P.L.
Tea can play the SF game too
hile her newly minted husband is off chasing aliens, sitcom star Tea
Leoni (i.e., Mrs. David Duchovny) will be joined by Elijah Wood, Robert
Duvall, Morgan Freeman and Vanessa Redgrave in her own SF thriller, the comet vs. Earth saga Deep Impact, filming this summer,
according to Daily Variety.
The film -- inspired by the 1951 movie When Worlds Collide and Arthur C. Clarke's novel The Hammer of God -- goes before the cameras June 9 under the direction of Mimi Leder (The Peacemaker), Variety reports.
Duvall plays an old astronaut, and Freeman (also starring in Steven
Spielberg's upcoming Amistad) will play the President.
Impact isn't the only sky-is-falling feature on tap: Walt
Disney Co.'s Armageddon will star Bruce Willis and films in
mid-August, Variety reports.
-- P.L.
If you liked the movie, you'll eat up the exhibit
niversal Studios Florida will open an exhibit to coincide with the May
23 release of their summer blockbuster The Lost World: Jurassic
Park.
Housed in a fog-filled soundstage, the exhibit will recreate scenes from
the movie through the use of lighting, sound and special effects. The exhibit will also display props, costumes and more than a dozen different dinosaurs from the film, which is expected to gobble up the competition this summer.
-- P.L.
And you thought chasing UFOs didn't pay
een wondering what to do with that videotape of a flying saucer
abducting your pet schnauzer? Send it to computer game maker Microprose, and you'll win a prize!
In a contest based on the upcoming release of its alien strategy game
X-COM: Apocalypse, Microprose will reward the most convincing video or photographic evidence of the existence of UFOs with a grand prize: an all-expenses paid trip to the Electronic Entertainment Exposition (E3) in Atlanta, June 19-21 (saucer flight not included).
Other prizes, including copies of the new game, will be awarded based on a random drawing of all entries, which are due May 30.
-- P.L.
David Lynch to shoot Sci-Fi Channel ads
irector David Lynch (Dune, Twin Peaks), who is no stranger to weirdness, has been signed to direct the "global
television image campaign" for The Sci-Fi Channel. The campaign will debut in July and marks the first time Sci-Fi Channel commercials will air on local broadcast television.
Lynch will direct and produce four television spots as part of the
campaign: Nuclear Winter, Dead Leaves, Rocket, and Aunt Droid. Each will feature "a common, everyday scene that can appear very different upon closer examination."
The Sci-Fi Channel's earlier brand campaign "Welcome to the Edge" was created in 1994 by Lynch's daughter, Jennifer Chambers Lynch.
-- P.L.
Hewlet-Packard/ACM Award Winners Posted
inners and finalists of the Hewlett-Packard and ACM Science Fiction
Writing contest have been posted to the Web.
The stories, which may be read in their entirety, concern the next 50
years of the relationship between people and computers. Writers represented include David Laderoute, Gareth Williams, Marrie Champie, Miguel Conner and Ben Di Vito.
-- P.L.
Briefly Noted
- When MovieFone added listings for The Lost World earlier this month, calls for the dinosaur flick went through the roof. MovieFone president Russ Leatherman said by mid-month the film had already had more than 100,000 inquiries and ticket sales above 10,000, an unprecedented response.
- Among People Magazine's recently announced "The 50 Most Beautiful People in the World 1997" were X-Files co-star Gillian Anderson, Star Trek: Voyager's Garrett Wang and Xena's Lucy Lawless.
- A female Borg will reportedly join the crew of Star Trek: Voyager in the show's next season.
- SF titles figure prominently in LIVE Entertainment's first releases in the new DVD format: they include Total Recall, Stargate and The Arrival.
- Lucasfilm has extended its 20-year-old licensing deal with toymaker Hasbro for original Star Wars trilogy toys, games, puzzles and related products through 1998. The license extension gives Hasbro the inside track on the lucrative license for the next trilogy that takes effect in 1999 and is expected to be awarded next month.
- Nebula Award-winning SF author Robert J. Sawyer will read from his new novel Frameshift at an open house at the University of Toronto's Hart House on May 27.
- Bernard Vonnegut -- the brother of famed SF writer Kurt Vonnegut -- died at the age of 82. According to Time, Bernard Vonnegut invented the process of "conjuring rain" by seeding clouds with silver iodide.
- Nominations for the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Film's Saturn Award are in: ID4 racked up 11 nominations, followed by Star Trek: First Contact with 10, The Frighteners with eight, Mars Attacks! with seven, Scream with six and Bound with five. Fox garnered nine nominations, including 67 percent of the best genre network TV series contenders: Millennium, The X-Files, Sliders and The Simpsons.
