Stuff….

Updated on May 10, 2013 By Ken Begg 19 Comments

  • NBC has passed on a pilot based on the incredibly cool horror western comic The Sixth Gun. In a way, I’m relieved. In theory, there should have been no way they could have screwed the pooch no this. The comic itself is basically a long storyboard; all you have to do is film it. In reality, chances are it would have been the TV version of the gawdawful looking Jonah Hex movie from a few years back. Anyway, check out the graphic novels, they are spectacular.
  • Not to bum you out, but NBC has also officially cancelled Guy with Kids, Up All Night, Whitney and 1600 Penn. Man, I remember the day when I had actually heard of shows before they left the air.
  • ABC, meanwhile, has passed on the Gothica pilot. Gothica would have been sort of Once Upon a Time or Grim, only focusing on classic monsters–Dracula, the Monster, Mr. Hyde, Dorian Gray–rather than fairy tales.
  • Fox has picked up Almost Human, the 1,000,000,000th show about a cop teamed up with a robot partner since the ’70s, Rake, which stars Greg Kinnear and basically looks to answer the question, “What if House were a lawyer?” and, I swear this is true, “Sleepy Hollow is a modern-day retelling of Washington Irving’s classic. Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison) is resurrected and pulled two and a half centuries through time to find that the world is on the brink of destruction and that he is humanity’s last hope, forcing him to team up with a contemporary police officer (Nicole Beharie) to unravel a mystery that dates all the way back to the founding fathers. “
  • Elijah Wood, who starred in the epic, universally beloved The Lord of the Rings trilogy, has now starred in a remake of the 1980 slasher flick Maniac. What a world.
  • The CW is going ahead with a revamp of the Brit sci-fier The Tomorrow People. I’m going to take a flier and guess this new version will focus more on F/X and The Sexy than the original show.
  • NBC did, however, pick up a revamp of Ironside. Ironside will no be played by Blair Underwood. I was amused to think of that cable redo of Kojak a while ago starring Ving Rhames. I do think, in honor of the ’60s and ’70s when the original shows were made, it would be a lot more fun if they called these shows Black Ironside and Black Kojak. In any case, I can’t wait for Forrest Whitaker’s Black Columbo.
  • Here’s a list of upcoming Cartoon Network series, pilots and specials. I really used to watch a fair amount of CN stuff, and I still love Venture Bros. and Metalocalypse and early Robot Chicken , but both shows kind of ran out of steam when the writers got lazy / bored and just decided to focus on gross out humor. The problem isn’t with scat and sexual deviancy jokes per say, it’s that the ratio of gross to smart humor starting tipping way too much towards the former. Anyway, I can see any of these concepts working; it’s always a matter of execution.
  • I’m not interested in a ton of new movies these days, but World’s End (as opposed to the also new End of the World) looks pretty hilarious. Maybe Attack the Block good? That would be sweet.
  • People who bitch about Kickstarter only being for small scale projects give me gas. Shut up, hippies. As long as people are free to choose where to give their own money, it’s none of your damn business if they’d rather support a Veronica Mars movie or something. Things grow organically, often not where people thought it would go, so take your “that’s not what it’s supposed to be!” and shove it, control freaks.
  • Two producers who were axed from the Godzilla reboot are taking the whole thing to court. We’ll see if that screws up next summer’s release date or not.
  • Speaking of lawsuits, Hasbro is taking Warners over the latter’s rights to do a revamp of Dungeons & Dragons. Why do they always remake the classics?
  • 24 (which I never saw) may return to Fox as a limited mini-series.
  • Shane Black *gaak* is set to co-write and direct a Doc Savage movie. Sigh.
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  • fish eye no miko

    “Elijah Wood […] has now starred in a remake of the 1980 slasher flick ‘Maniac'”

    Elijah Wood played a cannibalistic serial killer in “Sin City”, so this is actually not that much of a shock.

    “Almost Human”: “which stars Greg Kinnear and basically looks to answer the question, ‘What if House were a lawyer?'”

    Uuuugghh… Honestly, I could barely stand House most of the time. I’m not sure why I watched that show as a long as I did. One thing (among many) that “Elementary” does right is not let Holmes get away with being an asshole just because he’s smart.

    Re: Cartoon Network: Have you ever watched “Adventure Time”? I think it’s pretty great.

    [checks link]

    Oh, wait… You know Adult Swim is kind of a separate entity from Cartoon Network, right? Yes, they air on the same channel, but they have very little to do with each other.

    Re: Godzilla: Goddammit!

  • Cullen Waters

    RE: Sleepy Hollow – a part of my soul died reading that description. You’d have thought that impossible, what with all the abhorrent crap I’ve watched. But nope. Gone.

    RE:Tomorrow People – This could be bad, though I’d be happy if it was better than the Nickelodeon version (in theory it shouldn’t be hard to be better than the original version, but that’s just me grousing about my childhood memories betraying me.)

    In potentially equally depressing news about British Science Fiction classics, SyFy is remaking Blake’s Seven. All we need now is a Quatermass movie starring Nicholas Cage and all my nightmares will have come true.

    Well not really. just feels like it.

  • GalaxyJane

    Since the CW is all abouts the sexy, I want to see their take on “A Man for Emily”.

    Interestingly, they have actually got the original Tomorrow People creator from the 70s (Roger Price) on board, which could have potential, given that some of the earlier and more serious serials (“The Blue and the Green”, “The Doomsday Men”, “The Dirtiest Business” all come to mind) were actually pretty good stories, even if the acting and *ahem* effects weren’t even up to snuff by then-current Doctor Who standards.

    The above is entirely an example of the triumph of hope over experience. It is going to be one more damned oversexed, overhyped, underthought remake of a British export ala the Syphilis Channel’s version of Being Human. So far my watching limit for any given CW show before being compelled to turn it off and swear to be a better person in future, was almost 15 whole minutes for an episode of Vampire Diaries.

  • “Guy With Kids” — wait, this was an actual show and not some joke title Ken made up? Boy, they put a lot of thought into that one, didn’t they?

    And that Sleepy Hollow thing? Oyyyy. There are times I think someone should make a movie in which all the dead authors of great stories butchered by Hollywood come back as zombies, descend on TInseltown in a vengeful horde, and devour the brains of everyone involved in their humiliation. Now that’s one zombie flick I’d watch.

  • “All we need now is a Quatermass movie starring Nicholas Cage and all my nightmares will have come true.”

    It could be worse, you could get a Dr. Who movie starring Cage as the Doc and directed by Seltzer & Friedburg.

  • And OT but looking at the Adult Swim stuff makes me wonder, has AS ever lampooned or sent up that new ‘My Little Ponies’ cartoon? I vaguely remember something about Mad TV doing so, or am I mistaken?

  • Petoht

    Robot Chicken did a fake ad for My Little Pony: Apocaylpse Pony, but that was before Friendship is Magic existed. I can only assume some humor-crippled git has made fun of it somewhere, though. Sadly, modern parody is pretty anemic, so I wouldn’t bother looking.

  • Cullen Waters

    “The Blue and the Green” was about the last story I was able to sit through before quitting re-watching the series. I seem to recall thinking it decent enough, but something about the next story sort of knocked me out.

  • Mad did the short My Little War Horse, which was hilarious (yes, to bronies as well).

  • “Rake, which stars Greg Kinnear and basically looks to answer the question, “What if House were a lawyer?”

    Do you have a source using that comparison? Because it’s not quite how I would have described the Richard Roxburgh version.

  • Ken_Begg

    “Elijah Wood played a cannibalistic serial killer in “Sin City”, so this is actually not that much of a shock…”

    Well, Sin City was a pretty big movie, with numerous stars. And that was before Lord of the Rings. Starring in a low budget remake of perhaps the most infamously sleazy slasher movie of the ’80s still doesn’t strike me as great news for him. (And wasn’t that film best known for Tom Savini’s incredibly gruesome practical effects work? I wonder how much CGI got used for the remake?)

    Never seen Adventure Time, but I’ve only heard good things. I should see if its on DVD. I must admit, I thought Adult Swim was a subdivision of Cartoon Network, more than a separate entity.

  • Ken_Begg

    No, and I wasn’t aware it was (yet another) revamp of a Brit show. However, the stuff I’ve seen advertising this show indicates they are at least trying to foster that connection.

  • The Rev.

    Yeah, his effects are probably Maniac‘s claim to fame. I thought it was a pretty interesting slasher film, in that most of them don’t let us delve so deeply into the slasher’s psyche. Of course, that’s not a pretty place to be, so it’s not an easy movie to watch at times.

    Much like the Last House on the Left and I Spit on Your Grave remakes, I really see no point; the originals are products of their time, and are movies that try to brutalize the audience. I doubt the remakes have any interest in trying to meet or surpass them on that level, so why not just modify them into an original story? The only people who’d recognize the name value are probably going to be the people who don’t bother watching a remake anyway as they’ve already seen the originals. It just mystifies me.

  • Australian. Which, I would argue, has a worse track record (Kath and Kim, Thank God You’re Here)

    I guess it could be worse – I’m really hoping they’re not turning this into a House meets Perry Mason thing.

  • fish eye no miko

    “Well, Sin City was a pretty big movie, with numerous stars. And that was before Lord of the Rings.”

    No, “Sin City” was after LotR.

  • Ericb

    “Sleepy Hollow is a modern-day retelling of Washington Irving’s classic. Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison) is resurrected and pulled two and a half centuries through time to find that the world is on the brink of destruction and that he is humanity’s last hope, forcing him to team up with a contemporary police officer (Nicole Beharie) to unravel a mystery that dates all the way back to the founding fathers. “

    In other words this has nothing to do with the Washington Irving story other than the name of the character. So I guess this is going to be basically a standard police procedural occasionally spiced with a paranoid story arc ala The Da Vinci Code.

  • Ken_Begg

    Wow, OK, I really screwed the time line on that.

    Even so, I suspect Maniac didn’t co-star Bruce Willis et al.

  • Gamera977

    Wasn’t that the basic premise of the original Anthony ‘Buck’ Rogers story – ‘Armageddon 2419’ where our hero wakes up far in the future to save the world? Only here it was the Mandarin Chinese who had taken over everyone.

    I love the remake of the ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ movie- I guess just making this a new adventure in the D&D world would be too simple eh?

  • As long as they use the Disney song “Ichabod, Ichabod Crane” as the theme, then I will be thrilled seeing the ultimate non-hero that is Crane in action. I mean seriously. Did anyone even read the story? It’s not that long. And BROM BONES is the hero.