TNT picks up 5th season of Babylon 5
roving himself a friend of quality science fiction TV, media mogul Ted Turner and his TNT cable network have picked up Babylon 5 for its fifth -- and presumably last -- season.
Word of the renewal, which will pull B5 off its current
syndicated broadcast stations in favor of TNT, breaks the suspense that has been keeping the series' fans on tenterhooks. The renewal decision, originally scheduled for June, was delayed a month as Warner Bros., B5's producers, waffled about its future. Series creator J. Michael Straczynski even filmed a coda to the increasingly popular show to air in the event the series was not picked up for its climactic season.
TNT's decision came on the heels of a concerted campaign by fans who flooded TNT with hundreds of e-mail messages and telephone calls imploring the cable network to keep the show alive. TNT will begin airing 22 new episodes of the epic series in January. Earlier, TNT had announced a deal to make two B5-related telefilms, and rumor has it they may be talking to Stracyznski about a third made-for-TV film.
TNT is a sister company of Warner Bros.
-- Patrick Lee, U.S. Correspondent
Sliders moves to Sci-Fi Channel
ox's low-rated cult SF show Sliders, which was dumped from the network's fall schedule at the end of its third season, has been picked up by the Sci-Fi Channel, series creator Tracy Torme told Science Fiction Weekly.
"They think we're a good fit for them," Torme said. The network has ordered a full season's complement of 22 new episodes from Universal Television, which would bring the total number of episodes to 70 -- enough for syndication of the reruns, said Torme, who is also the show's executive producer. Though dates have not been set, production should resume in the fall, with the first of the new episodes appearing near the beginning of next year, he added.
As for changes in the show? "I sure hope so, based on last season's
show," Torme told SFW with a laugh. But he said that casting and plot decisions were still up in the air.
He added that fan response to the show's cancellation made the
difference in the show's revival. "The fan response to the show has really been amazing," he said. "They've been very vocal and we're very grateful for that. They're happy we're back from the dead."
The SF series, about a group of inter-dimensional wanderers, stars Jerry O'Connell, Sabrina Lloyd, Cleavant Derricks, Kari Wuhrer and John Rhys-Davies.
The Sci-Fi Channel is owned in part by Universal Studios.
-- P.L.
Clancy Brown talks about Starship Troopers
t should come as no surprise that actor Clancy Brown is a big fan of SF: He's played a villain in Highlander and a hero in TV's Earth 2, and has a featured role in this fall's Starship Troopers, the lavish feature film based on Robert Heinlein's classic SF novel.
"It's a good script," Brown recently told TV Guide Entertainment Network's Area 52 News. "But it's not all of the book. There's only a smidgen of the great controversial philosophy Heinlein had in the book.
"You can't film rhetoric; you can't film debate," said Brown, who plays a battle-hardened drill sergeant in a futuristic boot camp. Still, he allows, "It should be a pretty good movie. If you want to know about the book, read it."
-- P.L.
X-Files secrets revealed
he truth may be out there, but details of the feature film version of Fox's The X- Files -- now shooting in Los Angeles -- are harder to come by than government records of alien autopsies.
But that hasn't stopped the Internet gossip engine from chugging away. But before the gossip, here are a few hard facts:
The movie is code-named Blackwood; it was written by series creator Chris Carter and is directed by Rob Bowman; it is now being shot in Los Angeles; it will resolve issues in the TV series' fifth-season cliffhanger, and it will feature Academy Award-winning actor Martin Landau as the mysterious "Mr. Farber." Series regulars David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson and Mitch Pileggi, as well as Lone Gunmen Dean Haglund, Tom Braidwood and Bruce Harwood, will reprise their TV roles.
Beyond these bare facts, however, Fox is keeping a stony silence,
leaving the speculation on the film's top-secret plot to run wild. (Supposedly, the script of the movie is printed on red paper, making it difficult to photocopy, and security on the set rivals that at the cleanup of the Roswell UFO crash site.) Among the top Internet rumors about the plot:
- It involves a virus killing off the human race, spread by infected bees.
- It is set in Dallas, in the American Southwest, in Alaska and in the Antarctic.
- It involves a race of lizard-like aliens (this from the National
Enquirer).
- Mulder and Scully kiss! (In past interviews, Chris Carter has
vehemently denied any plans to get the two dour FBI agents together in the Biblical sense.)
- Frank Black, Lance Henriksen's character from Chris Carter's sister series Millennium, makes an appearance. (For the record, other reports say Henriksen has declined a role in the movie, opting instead to play Abraham Lincoln in a TNT telefilm.)
- The president of the United States is abducted by aliens.
- Series characters Alex Krycek (Nicholas Lea) and the late Deep Throat (Jerry Hardin) make appearances.
What to believe? We adopt Mulder's motto: Trust No One.
-- P.L.
Canadian SF fans open discussion on creating newsgroup
ans of Canadian science fiction are calling for discussion on the
creation of a new Usenet designation -- can.arts.sf -- that would be an unmoderated newsgroup devoted to postings on the burgeoning science fiction world north of the U.S. border.
"In the past years, Canadian SF has grown in strength, scope and
importance. Several Canadian authors have acquired enviable reputations in the field, and a strong national fan network has assured the vitality of the genre," the proponents argue in a request-for-discussion posting
Existing discussion groups in the rec.arts.sf newsgroups are dominated by Americans, and the one Canadian group -- ont.sf-lovers -- is often mistaken as a group for lovers of single females, the proponents argue.
Those wishing to comment on the creation of a Canadian SF newsgroup are asked to post to can.config.
-- P.L.
Bantam offers $500 to the Web designer who can capture Meg
ant a piece of the next big monster movie? Bantam Doubleday Dell,
publishers of the prehistoric shark thriller Meg by Steve
Alten (slated to become a summer movie), has created a contest for
Web heads: $500 to the person who designs the best Web site devoted to the book. The contest runs through July.
Jon Guttenberg, Doubleday's vice president of new media, told
HotWired that the idea for the Web site contest is unique to this project. "This is not going to work for every type of book," he said. "We're hoping that the enthusiasm of people who read the book and are excited about it spreads to other people, and the Web is one way to do that."
The publisher is making available excerpts, images and sounds to help
out. Official rules can be found on the Doubleday home page.
Meg is the story of a killer shark from prehistoric times. Wags have already dubbed it "Jurassic Shark."
-- P.L.
Star Trek fans get their own documentary
rekkers, it seems, don't get no respect. First there was that British researcher who concluded that Trek love was tantamount to addiction. Now a new documentary gives Trekkers the National Geographic treatment, examining them as if they were some aberrant lost tribe in Borneo.
"The thing that most surprised me was the lengths to which people express their love for the TV show," documentarian Roger Nygard told The Hollywood Reporter about his new movie, with the politically incorrect title Trekkies. Among the evidence he cites in his new film: the establishment of a Klingon language school in Redlake Falls, Minn.; a fan who legally changed his name to James T. Kirk; and the 31-foot replica of the Starship Enterprise that graces the city of Vulcan, Alberta, Canada.
"One of my favorite stories is the one (actor) DeForest Kelley tells
about a piece of fan mail," Nygard told the trade paper. "He got a letter from a delightful-looking young lady that contained a photograph and a marijuana cigarette. The letter said, 'You've turned me on so many times I thought I'd return the favor.' "
-- P.L.
More on Babylon 5: Tidbits from the final season
he week TNT announced it would pick up Babylon 5 for a fifth season, series creator J. Michael Straczynski went live on the Internet at TNT's Rough Cut Web site to chat with fans.
In guarded comments about the show's climactic season, Straczynski revealed a few bits and pieces of the stories to come, as well as plans for future B5 projects. Reading between the lines, it seems that TV Guide's report that the Babylon 5 space station would end in a fiery explosion is accurate. Also, viewers may see a war develop between telepathic and non-telepathic humans, and the child of John Sheridan and Delenn will likely make an appearance.
Stracyznski also said that nothing has been formalized about the possible spin-off series Babylon 5: Crusade but it was under discussion, Sonic Images will be releasing a series of CDs which contain soundtracks from complete episodes of B5, and Columbia House will be releasing B5 on video after this year.
-- P.L.
Keanu Reeves gives SF another try
eanu Reeves, whose last outing in SF (Johnny Mnemonic)
didn't work out so well, has apparently reconsidered the genre, and is
reportedly in negotiations to play the lead in Warner Bros.' large-scale SF
film Matrix, the Mr. Showbiz Web site reported.
The film, written and to be directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski
(Bound), concerns a futuristic world created by a computer. Reeves plays a man who believes he's living a normal life in 1997
when he is actually being fed that virtual reality by nefarious machines.
-- P.L.
Sphere on the ball
phere, the underwater/UFO thriller based on Michael
Crichton's novel of the same name, wrapped principal photography on time and under budget, according to Daily Variety's legendary senior columnist Army Archerd.
"It's amazing!" Sphere director Barry Levinson told
Archerd. Levinson wound up the (reportedly) $73 million Sphere immediately after completing Wag the Dog.
Sphere, which stars Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone, Samuel L. Jackson and Peter Coyote, was filmed virtually entirely on San Francisco Bay's Mare Island, a former Navy base converted into a movie studio, Archerd reported. All the underwater scenes -- they are supposed to be 1,000 feet under water -- were created in tanks in the former hangars, thanks to creative production designer Norman Reynolds, he added.
-- P.L.
Blue Mars wins top Locus Award
im Stanley Robinson's 1996 novel Blue Mars won the Best Science Fiction Novel of the year in the annual Locus Awards, given by Locus magazine at Westercon in Seattle, Wash., on July 4, 1997. Other awards, based on a Locus poll and survey, included:
- Best Fantasy Novel: A Game of Thrones, by George R.R.
Martin
- Best Dark Fantasy/Horror Novel: Desperation, by Stephen
King
- Best First Novel (tie): Whiteout, by Sage Walker, and
Reclamation, by Sarah Zettel
- Best Novella: Bellwether, by Connie Willis
- Best Novelette: Mountain Ways, by Ursula K. Le Guin
- Best Short Story: Gone, by John Crowley
- Best Non-Fiction: Look at the Evidence, by John Clute
- Best Art Book: Spectrum III: The Best in Contemporary Fantasy
Art, by Cathy Burnett, Arnie Fenner and Jim Loehr, editors
- Best Collection: None So Blind, by Joe Haldeman
- Best Anthology: The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirteenth Annual Collection, Gardner Dozois, editor
- Best Artist: Michael Whelan
- Best Editor: Gardner Dozois
- Best Magazine: Asimov's
- Best Book Publisher: Tor
-- P.L.
Film Briefs
- The movie's a certified hit, so talk is now turning to a sequel for the cops-and-aliens feature Men in Black. The Mr. Showbiz Web site reports that neither of the movie's stars, Will Smith or Tommy Lee Jones, nor its director Barry Sonnenfeld, is contractually bound to do a follow-up. But the entertainment site said that if all three can get their schedules together, they'll do one.
- Warner Bros. is bidding for the rights to make a movie of the 1960s SF TV show The Invaders, which starred Roy Thinnes, Daily Variety reported. The rights are part of the bankruptcy auction of film company Carolco.
- Rock star Tom Petty signed on to appear in Kevin Costner's The Postman, Daily Variety reported. In his feature film debut, Petty will play the mayor in the story about a man (Costner) who keeps society together in a post-apocalyptic world by continuing to deliver mail to the survivors. The Postman is based on David Brin's acclaimed novel of the same name.
- Dougray Scott joins Tea Leoni, Elijah Wood, Morgan Freeman and Vanessa Redgrave in the cast of DreamWorks SKG/Paramount's Deep Impact, playing an MSNBC cameraman as the world faces the approach of a killer comet.
- Jim Henson Pictures has optioned Susan Cooper's 1973 SF novel The Dark Is Rising, the story of 11-year-old Will Stanton who discovers that he is the last of an immortal fellowship dedicated to protecting the world from the rising forces of evil.
- A crisis erupted during the filming of Men in Black when a 12-foot-tall alien created by Rick Baker was rejected by co-producer Laurie MacDonald on the grounds that it wasn't scary enough, USA Today reported. It seems MacDonald's five-year-old son actually liked the alien because it resembled the family cat. The creature was reportedly replaced by a computer-generated one made by Industrial Light & Magic at a cost of $2.5 million.
TV Briefs
- Can't wait until the premiere sometime next year of the syndicated TV series Earth: Final Conflict, based on a 1970s idea by the late Gene Roddenberry? Visit Tribune Entertainment's home page for the show. There's not much there, but wait for the audio download.
- NBC is releasing a home-video version of Nightmare on Dick Street, the one-hour season closer of 3rd Rock from the Sun, which included 3-D dream sequences that reportedly cost $1 million to produce. The tapes will be priced at $17.95 and come with four pairs of 3-D glasses, and will include an alternative ending and "bloopers."
- Alien sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun broke the syndication record barrier by winning a $100 million jackpot from 22 Fox-owned stations for the licenses to the NBC hit's reruns, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Under the deal, the Fox stations will be able to run the show six times a week, including one weekend run.
- The Sci-Fi Channel is reportedly trying to work out a deal with Nickelodeon to pick up the cancelled Peter David comedy Space Cases, but so far it seems nothing has come of it. We'll keep you posted.
- Fox airs the fifth and final chapter in its series of telefilms based on the 1988 feature film Alien Nation on July 29. Alien Nation: The Udara Legacy wraps up the adventures of alien L.A. police detective George Francisco (Eric Pierpoint) and his human partner Matt Sikes (Gary Graham).
- Paramount Network Television has signed a three-year deal with longtime Star Trek writer/producer Brannon Braga to develop TV series and miniseries. Braga was also named co-executive producer of Paramount's UPN series Star Trek: Voyager, for which he had served as supervising producer.
Briefly Noted
- You say you just spent $60 for the digitally remastered versions of the Star Wars videos? Then you'll probably kick yourself when Fox releases home videotapes of The Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition next month, in both Pan & Scan ($49.98) and Widescreen ($59.98).
- The planned summer opening of the themed amusement attraction Star Trek: The Experience at the Las Vegas Hilton is being delayed until year's end because of technical problems. The $70 million attraction features a motion-simulator voyage, state-of-the-art computer games, retail shops and a Star Trek-themed restaurant and lounge.
- Dennis Muren, the senior visual-effects supervisor at George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic with credits on movie classics including Star Wars and Jurassic Park, will be honored with a lifetime achievement award by the International Teleproduction Society, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
- Computer game maker Westwood Studios and the Blade Runner Partnership said they have joined to produce a PC game based on the classic 1982 SF film Blade Runner. The game will be available on four CD-ROMs in November.
