May 31: Firefly: The flopped series turned feature film will begin lensing tomorrow June 1st. 

May 31: Dr Who Gets Who?: What is up with the good Dr. Who? The Doctor's side kick Rose Tyler will be a music star turned actress Billie Piper. She is married to media mogul Chris Evans and has critically acclaimed roles in The Canterbury Tales and Bella and the Boys. (thanks to Grant Charvey)

May 31: The Dead Zone: It's time for the third season premiere of USA Networks The Dead Zone starring Anthony Michael Hall. Zone premieres Sunday June 6th at 10pm EST. Hall is already one of the series executive producers and will now become one of the series directors for one episode this season. Seaosn 3 will be expanding the shows visuals and will have story arcs that last two or three episodes. Mark Sunday on your calender! 

May 31: Fantastic Four: Rumor has it that Brendan Fraser is the front runner for the role of Mr. Fantastic. If rumors come to pass here are the leads... 
Reed Richards:   Brendan Fraser
The Thing:          Michael Chiklis
Johnny Storm:    Paul Walker 
Sue Storm:         Uma Thurman / Kate Bosworth
Dr. Doom:          Tim Robbins   (bad choice) 

May 31: Forbidden Planet: Moviehole.net has report that Dreamworks is after director David Twohy to remake  the classic feature Forbidden Planet. Steven Spielberg saw enough of the Riddick making to go after Twohy. This is another classic that fans and the people who matter don't want to see get fucked around with. Can you Planet of the Hacks from Tim Burton? I knew ya could. 

May 31: Sony & Marvel Make a Deal: Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios have signed a truce over Spiderman. The two companies have issued a joint statement they have "amicably resolved their pending court disputes." No point in working on a lawsuit when you have two other projects in development with each other which includes any further Spiderman sequels. The other two projects are Luke Cage and the forever in development Ghost Rider. 

May 26: Turner Puts Its Stake Into Blade 3: Turner is hot for Blade, They have already worked a deal for the first broadcast rights to Blade: Trinity on TNT and TBS. Trinity is the third and final film of the Blade franchise which opens in theaters in December. The final cost of Turner will be determined by the box office totals. Blade made $71 million and Blade 2 grossed nearly $82 million. 

May 26: Enterprise Dead After 4: The United Paramount Network has reportedly told the shows producers that regardless of the ratings for the the fourth season it will the last for Star Trek: Enterprise. UPN approved the fourth season of Enterprise to get the series over the 100 episode threshold to reach syndication levels. 

May 26: Godspeed: The new heavy SF thriller from James Cameron has its lead in actor Harrison Ford. A director has yet to be signed and Cameron will simply be producing the film.  What is with this guy and directing a major motion picture. Godspeed takes place on an international space station, where a life-threatening situation develops that could kill all the inhabitants on board. Indiana Jones IV was to have been his next project, but naturally George Lucas killed that over script problems. Nice George, real friggin' nice. 

May 26: Law Takes on New York: NBC is soon to have four Law and Order series and CBS to have three C.S.I. series. This fall on Wednesday night the original Law and Order series, which spawned three spin-off series with go head to head with C.S.I.'s newest spin-off C.S.I.: New York. Law & Order dropped in audience from last season going from 17.3 million to 16 million.  

May 26: Medium Gets Quality Writing: Deep Space Nine writing alumn Rene Echevarria will be joining the creative writing staff of the new NBC drama "Medium". Patricia Arquette portrays a woman who can communicate with the dead and solve police cases. Sound very familiar. Enchevarria has written for the series "Now and Again", "Dark Angel", "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine". His most recent work has been on the script for the USA Network mini-series 4400. Jim Finn is the special effects supervisor on the 4400 project, and he brought you the great special effects on shows like Andromeda, Poltergeist: The Legacy, Sliders, Special Unit 2, Secret Agent Man, The Crow: Stairway to Heaven and other series. 

May 26: Hellboy 2: The Hellboy sequel will be budgeted for the same as the first around $65 million. 

May 26: Van Helsing Series: While NBC might not have any interest in a series based on the feature film, Variety has learned that other networks are interested in picking up the project. 

May 26: New Scary Direction: Scary Movie 4 looks to be taking a new direction since the franchise is losing its star Anna Faris. It's rumored the actress is ready to move on from the character. She could appear in the first five minutes so they could kill her off.

May 26: Lost in Space: The $2 million dollar pilot for the WB remaking Lost In Space wasn't good enough to earn  a series spot in the 2004/2005 season. There's been no word if the pilot was even completed so that it could get an airing sometime during the new season. Likely the SFX shots were never completed, but principle photography might have been.

May 26: Sites Get Banner Happy: It had been a while since visiting the Comics2Film website until yesterday. I was totally blown away by the number of banner ads on the website. While viewing one article there were 21 banner ads of some sort on the page plus a pop-up ad. Websites today are going nuts with banner ads in an attempt to make a few bucks off their website. Banner ads from companies like Gorilla Nation load first before the actual site page does. Doesn't make viewing fun. Some ads are a necessity as you see on this site. Many ads can kill a website. 

May 26: More Shrek a Go: Plans for the third and fourth Shrek films will officially be moving forward after a wonderful $120 million opening five days. 

May 26: No Van Helsing Series: NBC has passed on plans to create a Van Helsing television series after what they feel is a disappointing box office performance. NBC has originally order six of Transylvania from Stephen Sommers. 

May 26: Marvel Animation: Marvel Comics has inked a deal with Lion's Gate Entertainment to create 8 direct to video animated features of its Marvel line of comic book characters. The first DTV DVD should hit shelves in 2005. Animation for each project will vary from 2D and 3D formats. Marvel will have full control of each project/film that will be at least 66 minutes in length. Details of which comic characters will appear in the 8 films was not announced. This could be a method for Marvel to punish some of their lower tiered characters like Cloak & Dagger, Moon Knight and others. Now, just bring in some creative talent. That doesn't mean writers, it means creative talent that can come up with some good storylines and knows what real dialogue should sound like. 

May 26: Braga Might Exit The Trek Realm: Brannon Braga, Enterprise's showrunner and half the franchise killer, is considering taking a step back from Star Trek after 14 years. He has something in the works on a project of his own and feels this is the best season of any Trek year and he's not sure he can top himself. Hey, great news for Star Trek fans. If we could just dump them both we might save the franchise. 

May 26: Potter IV: The fourth installment is already casting. It already has a 2005 release date. Mad-Eye Moody will be played by Brendan Gleeson. Francis de la Tour has landed the role of Madame Maxine, the headmistress from the French Wizardry school. 

May 26: Winston is Super: Creative special creation master Stan Winston has been tapped to create a new Superman costume. ESC Entertainment has landed the special effects duties on the big budget film. McG is directing a script from Alias' J.J. Abrams. 

May 24: Mindshadow Pusues Legal Action Against Midway Games: Mindshadow is hitting Midway Games with a copyright infringement lawsuit. The Chicago based computer game company stole the EXACT premise, storyline and paranormal abilities in the Area 23 story (the original title of Area 23 was in fact PSI OPS, and was registered by us with WGA/US Office Of Copyrights in 1998!).  The game is coming out on XBox/Playstation on June 14th with the same name, it's called PSI-OPS: The Mindgate Conspiracy. Mindshadow currently has a five year paper trail to prove that it was stolen, as well as a HOST of partners, well-known actors, directors, webmasters and graphic designers that can attest to this.  Midway Games has spent MILLIONS of dollars to promote this game (even at the E3 convention in Downtown LA a couple of weeks ago). Mindshadow plans to go forward with a LAWSUIT against Midway for COMPENSATORY DAMAGES, since Midway is a multimillion dollar game company that has already spent millions promoting a STOLEN INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY. You can contact the Midway yourselves to find out about the stolen material at Intellectual Property Infringement Notification Email: ip@register.midway.com To check out the game CLICK HERE. Visit the official game site at http://www.psiopsgame.com/ (the Official Site) 

May 24: Richard Biggs Passes: Richard Biggs who portrayed Dr. Stephen Franklin has died.  The paramedics who showed up suggested it was either an aneurysm or a massive stroke. Information is still be gathered up. Word is he woke up, got up out of bed...and went down. (thanks to Gary007 for passing the news on to me.)  Biggs played Marcus Hunter in the TV daytime serial Days of Our Lives from 1987-1992. Richard Biggs turned 43 back in March. 

May 23: Steven Culp: Unless your fans of JAG or Enterprise you likely won't recognize this guys name. Even then you might not know the name. This week Steven Culp, a wonderful television character actor died on two shows this week. That means he lost both acting gigs as well. On JAG he played the CIA agent, Clayton Webb, who died while on assignment. He never appeared in the episode. His Enterprise death was a bit graphic as we saw the man take the injury that killed him. Culpt joined the series this season as Major Hayes. 

May 23: Matrix Trilogy Boxed Set: The new boxed set coming to DVD for region four will a be HD transfer of all three films and will include the Animatrix disc as part of the nine disc set. The biggest goody in the set Matrix Reloaded which will include an additional hour of restored footage.  It is possible that the other two films could get special editions also. Unknown IF or when Region 1 will get the release. A release date for the Region 4 set has not be released either.

May 23: No Goonies II: Richard Donner is offiicially off the Goonies sequel project. Donner told fans at a screening of Superman: The Movie starring Christopher Reeves. He said the script wasn't up the original so it wouldn't be made.  This however doesn't mean that someone like Sean Astin couldn't take over the directing gig. 

May 23: THX-1138: George Lucas is ready to push his crap on the public. The director will not dump his dismal debut film "THX-1138" on DVD and promote the garbage film to the public. I know the George Lucas fans will be forking over that $20 bill for anything the man puts out. 

May 23: Woo Is In: John Woo has landed the helming duties for the Rock's new Spy Hunter feature. Sure hope this guy doesn't turn Spy Hunter into the next Hulk feature. Coming off of duds like Paycheck, The Hulk, and Windtalkers it could be bad. 

May 23: Shrek 2 Hits the Bank: The new release of Shrek 2 hit theaters on Wednesday. It is expected that by Sunday night the film will have taken an amazing $84 million in box office receipts over the five day opening.

May 23: Zorro to Return: Antonio Banderas plans to begin filming the sequel in Mexico on July 26th. Banderas originally turned down $20 million to return to the role back in 1998, but is ready to do the feature now. Not to many gigs floating around these days. He has confirmed that Catherine Zeta Jones will also return along with director Marin Campbell - who directed the first film.  

May 23: The Martian Chronicles: The original mini-series DVD will hit retailers September 7th.

May 20: Enterprise Turns Four: UPN has made the fourth season of Enterprise official this morning at their 2004/2005 prime time schedule announcement today. With the renewal comes a new timeslot for the viewer challenged series. It will make the move to Friday's at 9pm. UPN will use its hit reality series America's Next Top Model as Enterprise's lead-in at 8pm. Within the first few episodes they will be able to determine the shows fate based on the the lead-in audience and what percentage of that Enterprise will retain. To bad it will be a different kid of audience. I wouldn't watch that crap, but my wife does. She won't watch Enterprise and I do. This could mean a quick demise for the fifth Star Series.  Enterprise goes head to head with Arrested Development and American Dad (animated) on Fox. Over at CBS they'll be showing the hit series JAG at 9pm going into its tenth season. The WB comedies Reba and Grounded for life will be hitting the airwaves and ABC second season of Hope & Faith airs. Last, but not least NBC will hit the 9pm timeslot with another ratings challenged series in Third Watch. Friday is a tough night for viewers, but this could be a good move for Enterprise. WHAT TO EXPECT! The fourth season of Enterprise will be loaded with more action and special effects. We'll also be getting more in the relationship between characters T'Pol and Trip Tucker. 

May 20: Return of the King: Amazing what a $100 million dollar investment can get a studio. The third and final Lord of the Rings film has earned the studio a whopping $1.1 Billion worldwide.

May 20: Spy Hunter: It's possible that director John Woo will take the helm in the Rock's new feature film "Spy Hunter" if negotiations come through.  With John Woo its a hit or miss thing. This film has potential to be a hit or another video game to feature disaster. 

May 20: Rodriquez is Out: Official word has come down that director Robert Rodriquez is out of Paramount's "A Princess of Mars".  Rodriquez has withdrawn from the Director's Guild and Paramount has a contract with them, and only members of it may direct their films. 

May 20: Family Guy Returns: Fans of the animated series the Family Guy can jump up and down doing a jig. They have brought their series back from the dead. Fox, who originally canned the series will bring the show back with new episodes during the 2005 summer. Fans can gear up this season by watching the new Fox animated series "American Dad" from Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane. 

May 19: Enterprise is Alive, It's Alive! Alive!: Ok, so there may not be that much excitement from most people by UPN has greenlit a fourth season of the struggling series from Paramount. UPN is actually going to consider a Friday night time slot for Enterprise next season. This is great news... if they would just dump Brannon and Braga. The official news should be released tomorrow. Season three has been outstanding. Particularly the final ten episodes. That still doesn't earn B&B the right to stay. Bringing back the fans and viewers that have left will be almost impossible. Despite improved episodes, stories and creative writing the ratings are likely to remain where they are. 

May 19: WB Cans Genre Series: As reported earlier the Dark Shadows pilot and potential series have been cancelled by the WB. They have also pulled plans for the Lost in Space project and any planned telefilms based on the cancelled Angel series. 

May 19: No Mummy 3: There will be no Mummy 3 for director Stephen Sommers regardless of what Universal decides to do. The Deep Rising and Van Helsing has had his fill of mummies. He has decided to take some vacation on a beach somewhere after two-years of 16 hours a day for the past two-years.  

May 19: Knight Rider: I hear so much flack about Knight Rider. It sucked. It was stupid, bad writing, horrible stories and blah, blah, blah. Truth is the show has a huge fan base. Universal has obviously seen that and will release the first season to DVD on August 8th.The 22 episode first season will retail for around $59.98. Fans can order it online from Amazon at $41.99. Wallmart , Sams and Costco outlets are likely to sell the boxed at about that price as well.

May 19: Casino Royale: The Broccoli family is actually considering Quentin Tarantino's desire to remake Casino Royale and having Pierce Brosnan done the digs one last time. The rift between Brosnan and the Broccoli family isn't about the recent comments from Brosnan but his age. They would like to introduce younger fans to the James Bond character and beginning to believe that could Tarantino using the 40 something Brosnan to do it. Quentin's ideas for the new low budget film have peaked their interest. 

May 19: Alias Changes Coming: ABC is pulling Alias until January after its May 23 finale. The network is somewhat unhappy with this past season and wants creator Abrams to pull back to material that that first inspired the series. They want more of a happy once in a while smiling Jennifer Garner. 

May 19: Xanth: Anyone read the Xanth novels by Piers Anthony?  I have read nearly all of them. Warner Bros. has bought the film options to the fantasy novels. Wolfgang Peterson, David Beniof, and Radiant Productions (Wolfgang's production company) will produce the film. There are over 29 Xanth novels which Anthony began writing in 1977. My favorite series of his has been The Blue Adept (Split Infinity). 

May 19: Angel Is Gone: No more rumors, at least for now. No more about TV telefilms. No more changing networks. As Angel airs it final episode tomorrow night the series will officially come to a close. There appear to be no more windows of opportunity to save the series. A series in which the shows main star isn't interested in returning. Watch the episode and bid your series good-bye. I will be watching Enterprise at 9pm. 

May 19: Paramount and TV Series: Paramount is hitting the DVD market with a slew of TV Series. Unfortunately that doesn't include any new genre series other than maybe the comedy Mork and Mindy.  Fans will be able to get the first season of Hogan's Heroes on DVD come October 12th. 

May 19: Jungle Cruise: Didn't Disney firmly state that after Haunted House there would be no more features, excluding sequels, based on their amusement rides? Well, they did! But it's just another lie in many for the company that kicked the companies creators out. Now they'll be making Jungle Cruise into a feature film. It will be developed into an adventure film. If they make it like the Haunted House... don't bother.

May 19: William Shatner: The Shat has turned in his excellent performance on The Practice into a full time gig next season with James Spade in the Practice spin-off series The Practice: Fleet Street.  Also coming over from the original is Lake Bell and Rhona Mitra. 

May 19: Who Shot J.R.?: Dallas, like every other old series is now getting a reunion movie on CBS. The cast will reunite at the Southfork Ranch. Reappearing will be Larry Hagman, Patrick Duffy, Linda Gray, Victoria Principle and other cast members that passed through the series.   ALSO getting the reunion treatment will be the nine-year comedy One Day at a Time which starred Valeria Bertinelli, Bonnie Franklin, McKenzie Phillips and Pat Harrington. Phillips spent most of the shows run in a drug induced stupor.  The series is not considered a classic comedy, but did have a successful nine-year run and was a top twenty show. 

May 18: Hercules Returns: NBC has ordered a four-episode mini-series titled Hercules. It will be produced by the Emmy Award winning producer Robert Halmi. The mini will be based on the heroic adventures of the mythological super-human Hercules. Production is slated for New Zealand, which just happens to be where the television series Hercules starring Kevin Sorbo was filmed. Fans will see the multi-headed Hydra in the mini.  (futoncritic.com) 

May 18: Enterprise May 20th: Paramount and UPN should announce the shows status for next season officially by Thursday May 20th. If it's any hint of what is going on Connor Trinneer and Dominic Keating told fans at the London Expo this weekend that they have received calls to report to the Enterprise sets. (darkhorizons.com)  This could be to begin production on next season, or to tell the cast before it's announced that the series has been axed in favor of a reality series on UPN.

May 18: Raymond Returns: After learning that his movie career is in the toilet, Ray Ramano is ready to return to his Everybody Loves Raymond for a ninth and final season of 16 episodes. CBS will be paying through the nose at $5 to $6 per episode.  Hits disappearing. Friends, Drew Carey, Frasier and Everybody Loves Raymond. Frasier and Carey actually dropped in the ratings and were forced out by the networks. Friends and Raymond leave on top of the ratings charts. It use to be a show ran until the ratings were in the toilet. Now the salaries of the actors are forcing the shows off the air. Cheers was on of the first series to go off the air with top ratings, and unable to make a profit off the advertising money due to the actors pay checks. 

May 18: Scotty's Had Enough: James Doohan has done his share to promote the Star Trek franchise through the convention circuit, and getting paid to do it has been nice too.  The 84 year-old actor is finally calling it quits when he hits the Planet Xpo on Aug 28-30th at the Rennaisance Hollywood Hotel. Anyone even thinking about attending should do so. Appearing with Doohan will be almost all of the remaining original series actors. William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols, Majel Roddenberry and Grace Lee Whitney. To bad George Takei will not be in attendance. It will be the final time to see them all together. Over a dozen of other Trek stars will be on hand for the convention. This will be a great con.

May 18: Tru Calling Get the Call: The struggling Fox television series Tru Calling is a go for the 2004/2005 season. Staffing has already begun on next season.

May 18: Troy #1: At least this week Brad Pitts new action epic Troy was at the top spot with box office receipts taking in $45.6 million over the weekend. Only $138 million to go bring in what the film cost to make. If the film takes in less than $32 million next week it could spell doom for the film. 

May 18: Van Helsing:  A planned sequel could be on the outs after the film dropped 61% from its opening weekend. It's second week only saw the film scare up $20.1 million. Wow. Could this awesome film be a dude in the making? Underworld was outstanding but did no do well at the box office too. 

May 18: More Shrek: Moviehole.net has news that if Shrek 2 is financially successful at the box office Dreamworks has plans for a Shrek 3 and Shrek 4. The stories were pretty much planned out with the fourth film showing exactly how Shrek ended up in the swamp to begin with.

May 18: Denzel Washington?: Anyone seen Denzel Washington? Judging by his film choices I don't think anyone wants to see his crap anymore. What a waste of talent. Training Day was his last success, but the film was shit. I could not even finish watching it. Man of Fire made just $5.25 million in its second week falling off 31% from its premiere. Washington, born in Dec. 1954, could have been a great action/drama star.  His best run of films was 1993 to 1995 when he put out The Pelican Brief, Philadelphia, Crimson Tide and Virtuosity. 

May 18: Geena Davis: The 48 year old actress, who gave us the Fly, Cutthroat Island, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Earth Girls Are Easy and Beetlejuice has given twins to her 33 year old husband, Reza Jarrahy.  This is Davis' fourth marriage. Amazing that a 48 year old woman can have healthy children at 48. When they're 15 she'll be 63. Whew! 

May 18: Hellboy DVD: The Hellboy DVD is slated for stores July 27th with tons of extras, which include a 27 part documentary on bringing the character from script to the big screen. Of course it will include the deleted scenes, but they are not restored to the feature. The street price for the DVD will be $28.95. 

May 18: Superman Returns: Actor Dean Cain, of Lois & Clark fame, is heading back to a new CBS television drama titled "Clubhouse". Cain's most recent stint in acting has been in several B movies and telefilms. He has been in 25 projects since 2000. 

May 18: Keith Richards A Pirate: Rolling Stones Keith Richards will indeed be appearing in at least the first of two Pirates of the Caribbean sequels. Pirates 2 & 3 will be in production at the same time with 3 releasing just six month behind Pirates 2 in 2006. The entire cast and production team are onboard for both films. 

May 18: The District: Looks like CBS will pull the plug on the Craig T. Nelson series, The District after the two-hour season finale. While ending with a two-hour finale I hope it's not a cliffhanger. 

May 18: Kingdom Gone: Kingdom Hospital has been pulled from the ABC schedule until June 24th. At that time the network will burn off the remaing four unaired episodes (three one-hour and the two-hour finale). 

May 18: Rocky 6: Other than Sly Stallone I don't think anyone is interested in seeing Rocky return to the big screen. MGM was a little willing to make the film, but after Stallone demanded that his son direct the film MGM pulled the plug and said they would do the musicals based on Rocky on their own. Now Sly has MGM in court over the entire affair. Stallone needs to worry about the proposed Rambo feature, rather than a return to Rocky. Hell, do another Dredd or Demolition Man film... not Rocky. "Yo Adrienne! I did another knock-out in my pants. Can you get me a depends?"

May 15: Andromeda Gets Greenlight: Just got word that the fifth season of Andromeda is back on. The show is crewing up and plans are to go into production by the of May. 

May 15: Troy: This movie could be another $150 million dollar flop ($185 million actually) after its premiere. While the special effects are spectacular, the dialogue is a bit cheesey in many places with the speech of the time going into contemporary speech for no reason. Even with the all-star cast much of the acting is mediocre at times during the two-and-a-half hour film. Troy may suffer the fate as The Alamo. Overall, the film is very good and an exciting watch. 

May 15: House of Wax: The remake of House of Wax in Australia has hired Brian Van Holt (S.W.A.T.) to play the lead villain in the film. Also appearing in the new film are Elisha Cuthbert, Chad Michael Murray, Paris Hilton, Jon Abrahams and Damon Herriman. 

May 15: Salem's Lot part two: The second half of the mini-series jumped into action from where the last hour ended. In standard TNT fashion the first hour was spent setting things up. The final three hours are an intriguing haunt as Vampires take over the town of Salem with nothing more than the cover of night and two sharp pointed teeth. Most of the supporting roles are small. Those played by Donald Sutherland and Rutger Hauer could have been played by just about any actor. I was hoping for a larger role in the second part for Andre Braugher, who plays Matt Burke (currently in HACK on CBS). The guy is an underrated actor who turns in a good performance here. After suffering a heart attack at the end of part-one the character was relegated to a hospital room. Samantha Mathis plays Ben Meads love interest Susan Norton. Her performance is good, but not memorable. The real performances that make the telefilm so good come from the cast of extras. From the child vampires in the school bus to the poor cop trying to make a difference while everyone is either dying or disappearing. Salem's Lot could be one of the best adaptations to mini-series in a long time. The Stand and Storm of the Century come to mind, which were excellent Stephen King projects that I thought had unfavorable endings. Mikael Salomon does an excellent job at the helm of this television epic.  What about Salem's Lot? Will you enjoy the ending?  I'm not sure you'll enjoy how this one turns out but the mini-series is definitely worth a quality watch. Part-two has Ben Mears and his small band of vampire hunters chasing after Barlow and discovering just how many towns people have been changed into blood sucking vampires - including his love interest Susan Norton, played by Samantha Mathis. Mears finds her but cannot bring himself to put a stake through her pretty little heart. He hopes instead that killing Barlow will turn everyone back into themselves. To many are turned and Mears is forced to burn down the towns haunted house forcing the vampires go elsewhere.  The story returns to the hospital with a nearly conscious Ben Mears finishing up his story to the young doctor. The doctor sprints out of the room and down the hall to check on the Priest. There is finds the priest already dead, suffocated - the pillow still laying across his face. Returning to Meads room the doctor finds... 

May 13: The Fate of Enterprise: Last nights episode of Enterprise was outstanding. I watched it twice. It has been execellent for the past several original episodes. This has been the series best season by far. Only it could have come too late. Paramount and UPN will decide the shows fate by Thursday, May 20th. The ratings have been far from stellar. Wednesday's episode finished behind Smallville with a poor 3.4/5 share rating. About 38% less than the WB's Smallville.  Should the series be cancelled Paramount would likely attempt to shop the series, but it's unlikely to find a new home. Syndication could be looked at, but the market now is very small compared to when the Next Generation and Deepspace Nine were on the airwaves. UPN has never given the show a chance on another night with less competition. 

May 13: Salem's Lot - part one: Just completed watching the first half of TNT's Stephen King mini-series Salem's Lot, which stars Rob Lowe, Rutger Hauer, Andre Braugher, Samantha Mathis and Donald Sutherland. The mini opens up with Rob Lowe chasing a priest through town until both end up crashing out of a second story window. At the hospital Lowe begins talking with a doctor about what is going on in this small town after the doctor asks him "Tell me why I should save your life?" From there the film starts back to when things began with Rob Lowe narrating things about the people and the town of Salem, introducing viewers to the characters.  The first-hour moves a bit slowly setting things up for everyone. The final hour things begin to move forward with the story. Vampires have come to Salem, and they've come for Rob Lowe, who plays a writer named Ben Mears. The final scene of the first-half is chilling as Rob Lowe is locked up in a cell. The only vent, a twenty-foot twelve inch by twelve inch, leading to another cell. A cell holding the vampire determined to get at Ben Mears. Mears and the vampire are yelling at one another through this vent when he discovers the vampire has contortioned himself inside the vent crawling through it. Salem's Lot is a typical TNT production with quality special effects and top notch performers and a decent television budget.  If you've enjoyed other King minis like "The Stand", "It", or "Storm of the Century" you'll enjoy Salem's Lot. More on the sequel after I view part-two. Salem's Lot premieres on TNT in June. 

May 13:  Enterprise & the BB Blues: Berman's blabbing his mouth to the Star Trek Communicator magazine about what they are planning for the fourth season of Enterprise. He says the potential demise of the series has made things difficult, but they are working on the storylines for next season. Who the hell does this moron think is responsible for the situation? The Fans? UPN? Paramount? The bulk of if lays at the feet of Rick Berman and Brannon Braga. These two fucked up the movie franchise and the series franchise.

May 13: NBC Universal Complete: The creation of NBC Universal is complete. While the deal gives NBC Universal about $15 billion annually, it comes down to viewers in what we'll be getting. The new deal gives NBC the networks USA Network, the Sci-Fi Channel, Bravo, Trio (which we don't get in Las Vegas), CNBC, MSNBC and Telemundo.  One wonders what will changes will come to USA Network and The Sci-Fi Channel. 

May 13: Catwoman: Wow, if this film is going to make any money the studio better hope for a miracle. It looks like something from Roger Corman's Black Scorpion television series on the Sci-Fi Channel. It looks totally dismal and Halle Berry proves she is not a very good actress. Save your money for a second viewing of Van Helsing or take in the new Troy feature starring Eric Bana, Orlando Bloom and Brad Pitt.

May 13: More Enterprise and Berman: Rick Berman is now speaking to the USA Today news outlet. He believes in the near future Star Trek will be taking a breather. Imagine that. The guy and his buddy have run the franchise into the ground with the same crap for ten years. No fresh takes on the subject matter, just pound the fans with the same boring material over and over and over and... Paramount may decide to pull the 13 episode commitment it gave to the series last month. There may be no room at UPN for the struggling series with shows like America's Top Model scoring in the ratings.

May 13: More Angel ???: Rumors are that Angel is headed to NBC next season. Don't bet on it folks. If any of this was true Joss Whedon would have announced it to everyone. He's heavily involved with the new Serenity feature film based on Firefly that begins production in about three weeks. The sets are gone, and the writers have moved on to other projects. It's a hopeful rumor, but it's just a rumor. (From the Herc at AICN.com) 

May 13: Transporter 2: Europacorp will begin production of The Transporter 2 at the end of July. 20th Century Fox will distribute the sequel as they did the first film. Jason Statham will return to star. Steve Chasman will again produce with Louis Leterrier & Cory Yuen directing.

May 13: Fantastic Four: Michael Chiklis (The Shield) has confirmed that he is up for the character of The Thing. Julia Stiles might be up for the role of Sue Storm and Cliff Curtis (Deep Rising, Collateral Damage) may be after a role in the upcoming feature film also. 

May 13: The Dick Still Has It: Dick Van Dyke proved he still has some power on television. I personally got bored and changed the channel. It was humorous at all. The Dick Van Dyke Show Revisited won its hour with a 12.0.17 rating and 14.45 million viewers. It has to be the TV Land syndrome. Fans just had to see what these old farts looked like today. 

May 12: Rambo IV: Cinescape Online has a rumor that Rambo IV is back on the slate maybe for Dimension Films. Andrew Vanja and Mario Kassar, of C2 are in negotiations with Dimension to produce the new film. Start Date? May or June of 2005 and rumors of John Woo at the helm are also being mentioned. Stallone's career is dead in the water for the 50+ year old actor, but he's expecting a $30 million pay day for this one. Kassar and Vanja paid Arnold $30 million for Terminator 3.

May 12: Spawn TV: The character can't get resurrected on the big screen, so Todd McFarlane is looking to take Spawn on a trip to the small screen in a new TV version. McFarlane has struck a deal with IDT Entertainment which will revive the animated Spawn for 18 episodes at HBO over three years. The deal also includes at least two more projects 

May 12: Death Jr.: The video game is joining the ranks of other games turn horrible feature film adaptation and comic book. Circle of Confusion and video game developer Backbone Entertainment are developing both projects. 

May 12: The Talisman: Dreamworks is controlling the new Talisman project based on the novel by Stephen King and Peter Straub. The Last Samurai director Ed Zwick is negotiating with Dreamworks to helm the project.

May 12: The Dead Zone: Season three of The Dead Zone debuts in June. The USA Network will be cross promoting Monk with the Dead Zone in spots (commercial ads) that include both Adrien Monk and Johnny Smith. 

May 12: Mortal Kombat 3: New Line Cinema has given up the rights to Mortal Kombat which puts Threshold Entertainment in search of another studio to make the sequel. According to Zero Entertainment.com there's $25 million already put up aside for the film. Threshold expects to find a partner within months and put the project into production. (darkhorizons.com) 

May 12: Ventresca Not a Vegas Dick: UPN has dropped Vegas Dick from their 2003/2004 development schedule. This was another Joel Silver project canned by UPN. (The Strip and Freedom). It was to have starred Invisible Man lead Vincent Ventresca. The new series was to have been about a reformed con man who gets a job as an in-house detective at a Las Vegas casino. Rich Wilkes ("XXX" ) had written the pilot script. NOTE: UPN is apparently pulling back from its genre style series and moving towards the comedy/reality series.

May 12: Kamelot Kanned: The return of King Arthur will have to wait for another project to come along. UPN has also cancelled its Kamelot project which would have been a drama in which King Arthur is resurrected as a hip revolutionary who reigns supreme in a Camelot-like future society. Likely a good thing this project fell by the waste-side. Other genre projects dropped by UPN... Danger Girl, Juggernaut and Night Thrasher. Check out UPN in the Channel News area for details of what the series would have been about. 

May 12: The Flash To Return: The WB still has "The Flash" in development for its 2004/2005 season. The comic book about the Fastest Man alive just might return to the airwaves. (futoncritic.com)

May 12: No Young MacGyver: The folks over at the WB were not happy with the progresst of the Young MacGyver project and dumped it from their 2004/2005 development slate. Also getting the axe finally was Fearless. 

May 8: Babylon 5 Feature: There's been a huge run of news in the last week about the proposed Babylon 5 feature film, and JMS' post in the newgroups concerning the project. Here's what I ran on Dec 15... Dec 15: Babylon 5 Gets Big: The Babylon 5 project JMS doesn't want to tell anyone about looks to be a Feature Film. A UK source for the Dark Horizons website reports that Winchester Films is in discussions with creator J. Michael Strazynski about taking the series to the big screen. The project would begin shooting late 2004 should it happen. Winchester Films would have to be working with Warner Bros. for this to take place.     It's been almost 4 months and the talk/rumors remain the same, except now they are deep into phase two of getting a feature on the road. Nothing firm, no dates sets, no script reportedly being complete... nothing.  Stay patient folks. Hopefully something will break soon. I haven't been reporting it, but it the same crap. 

May 6: Serenity Blasting Off: Joss Whedon's floop Television series Firefly turned feature film is slated to begin production in about three weeks according to Joss Whedon himself while talking with the Sci-Fi Wire. All of the original cast members from the series will be returning for the film. Serenity will be shot entirely in Los Angeles with on all new sets. 

May 6: Dark Shadows 2004 Gets a NO GO: I have been dispatched a rumor that the Dark Shadows 2004 pilot will not be picked up on the WB as a series for the 2004/2005 season. 

May 6: Partridge Family: Another series looks headed to the big screen. For some reason Paramount has optioned the ABC TV series. They are aiming for a School of Rock style picture. 

May 6: ID4 Sequel Nixed: Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin had the cash and the story - well almost. Neither film maker was very happy with their new ID4 storyline. These guys went to the studio and returned the money. Their new script just felt like they were rehashing the same old stuff, and it was something they didn't want to do. 

May 6: Andromeda: The fifth year series attempting to end its run as part of the Sci-Fi Channel's line-up has not yet been canceled. Unlike it's sister series Mutant X, Andromeda has been put on hold, actors and studios contracts are being held for an indeterminate time while they are attempting to find funding to complete the season. NOTE: Tribune entertainment is running a note today on their website, CLlCK HERE, stating the renewal of Andromeda and Mutant X, but refers to a scifi.com link from January. It is possible this is an old post, and was posted before the demise of Fireworks Entertainment. More later as I get it.

May 5: 4400: The USA Network's new project 4400 has a new special effects supervisor in Jim Finn. Finn as you may know was the special effects supervisor on Andromeda, Special Unit 2, Secret Agent Man, The Crow: Stairway to Heaven, Sliders, John Doe, and Poltergeist the Legacy. He was also supervisor on the movie projects, Executive Decision, Ecks vs Sever, and Valentine.  He's working with Deepspace Nines Rene Enchevarria, who's writing the project. 4400 centers around 4400 people who were abducted by UFO's and returned with no memory of their experience. Each of them was gone from one month to several decades. The pilot will premiere in the summer of 2004. It is produced by Viacom Productions and Renegade 83. 

May 5: The Lost Boys: Warner Home video is planning a two-disc special edition release of The Lost Boys. 1988 film from Joel Schumacher is getting a release that includes deleted scenes that have never been seen before and five featurettes, commentary and a making of the film. The two-disc release hits retailers this summer, August 10th, with a MSRP of $26.99. Fans should be able to find The Lost Boys at a cheaper rate through Costco, Sam's Town, and initial release through Best Buy or Wallmart. 

May 5: Wonder Woman: Warner Bros. will release Wonder Woman on DVD in a 3D boxed sets which includes the pilot and first 13 episodes of the series. the two-disc set contains 728 minutes worth of material. Wonder Woman ropes into stores on June 29th for an un-impressive retail price of $49.98. The extras don't really matter. How many times will you watch the extra crap? It's just 13 episodes that were cheesy at best. $49.98 is what you would expect to pay for a 22 episode boxed set.

May 5: Battlestar Galactica: I was at Wallmart a few days ago and discovered that the Battlestar Galactica boxed sets no longer include the special cylon collectors box. Now it's just the standard style box with the same outrageous price tag of $79.99. How the hell do you expect the average fan to pay that price? How can Universal expect to make any profit at this price. 

May 5: Jack & Bobby: The WB might be picking up a new series titled "Jack & Bobby". It follows two brothers, one of whom is set to be elected president of the United States in 2040, Variety reported. Christine Lahti stars as their single mother, a hard-nosed college professor who's reluctant to let her oldest son take on the job of shaping his younger brother.  

May 5: V: the Series: All 19 episodes of the poorly produced series based on the two maxi-series V are heading to DVD (mentioned here earlier). Titled V: The complete series, will be released July 27th in a three-disc boxed set. MSRP on the set is $39.98, but can be pre-ordered through Amazon.com for $27.99 with free shipping. 

May 4: Star Wars, the Series: Yep, I wrote that correctly. TheForce.net is reporting that a new Star Wars live action series will premiere during the 2006 season after Episode III makes its run at the theater. The new series will likely be a Fox project if it comes to pass. 

May 4: Charmed: The series definitely isn't what it was, but the fans are still hanging around for the seventh season in the fall. Alyssa Milano told the TV Guide that the series could return for an eighth season but the cast isn't sure they want to. 

May 4: The Shield: FX has greenlit the cutting edge series for a fourth season of 15 episodes. The ratings for the third season averaged a 2.7. The first two seasons averaged 3.3 ratings. 

May 4: Scream: A horror channel is coming to a cable outlet near you.  Joel Silver's Pictures, who brought you the Matrix, and Orchid Ventures have formed a partnership that will bring fans the Scream channel. A 24-hour cable TV network that will feature horror, suspense, and thriller oriented material. Also joining this Robert Zemekis (Back to the Future) and Silver will team up to create and develop top-tier genre programming. The new network is currently in negotiations with two studios to license their libraries. (Variety)  Now, if we could just get a real Sci-Fi/Action Channel. 

May 4: Hellboy Gets Sequel: Guillermo del Toro has confirmed that a sequel is currently in the works. Also in the works are an animated Hellboy series. At $70 million the studio considers the first project a budget film. Storylines and ideas are being fleshed out. 

May 4: Pirates Wanting: Johnny Depp wants rocker Keith Richards to appear in the upcoming sequel to Pirates of the Caribbean. Depp is interested in Richards portraying Jack Sparrows father. 

May 4: Dredd???: Where the hell is Judge Dredd? There were to have two feature films done back to back from Law Productions and Framework. That fell through, and now they are attempting to do just one film. Producer Silvio Astarita is determined to make the new film, but doesn't feel a big name is needed to take on the lead role of Judge Dredd. The new film, if it's done, will be a dark film similar to Blade Runner and The Crow. No studios are onboard and the script isn't even done yet. (moviehole.net)  I find it odd all the negative response about the original starring Sly Stallone. The film made big bucks, was a fun action flick with decent acting. A great all around action packed adventure. Witch Diane Lane in the female lead how could you go wrong. One of Stallone's best flicks. Pick up Judge Dredd and the Demolition Man and your loaded for the evening.