• It’s not the Broadway musical, which will certainly still get its own theatrical adaptation, but Wicked, the novel upon which the musical is based, is coming to ABC as an eight-hour mini-series.
  

• Apparently, sci-fi author Orson Scott Card suffered a mild stroke over the holidays.

• This now-hilarious 1993 tutorial video explained the TSR game DragonStrike, which was a boardgame intended to introduced D&D to a wider audience. “It’s like a video game that uses the most powerful micro-processor in the world: YOUR BRAIN!” (h/t: i09.com). Have sensibilities and special effects really changed this much in less than 20 years?:

• Remember Friday’s rumor that Elijah Wood will reprise his role as Frodo in The Hobbit, despite not appearing in the book? Apparently, it’s true! (Spoiler alert for details on where he appears!) Rumor is that Orlando Bloom may be back too (along, of course, with Cate Blanchett, Ian McKellen, and Andy Serkis).

• The networks all passed on David E. Kelley’s new Wonder Woman TV series. I was all set to write that I was sure that some cable network will step up to produce it, but EW is specifically reporting that the high cost makes that very unlikely.

• Everything you’ve heard about Ghostbusters 3 is apparently wrong. Again, I ask: does anyone care?

• I’m currently at the Television Critics Association conference in Pasadena, and there are three minor pieces of fantasy news to report from here: HBO’s A Game of Thrones has a premiere date now (Sunday, April 17th), and Spartacus will definitely have a second season (though the title role has still not officially been cast). Meanwhile, Torchwood: The New World still has no official air-date, either on Starz (where it’s airing in the US, in a co-production) or on BBC One (in the UK). What’s the series’ premise? (Spoiler alert!) Humans stop dying.

• Eric Stoltz is brutally honest about Caprica: it was probably ill-conceived from the start (I agree). He says the cast (especially him) lived in fear of cancellation from early on.

• Goliath, a new retelling of the David and Goliath story, will have a sensibility like that of 300 and The Bourne Identity. This actually sounds like a story from The Onion.

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