Surprising absolutely no one, The CW has confirmed to the Chicago Tribune that it has renewed Supernatural for a sixth season — something that has been hinted at all year long. Better still, creator Eric Kripke will remain at the helm.
“We’re climaxing that story this season,” executive producer Sera Gamble said of the current “apocalypse” storyline. “We’ve been working on the Season 6 storyline for quite some time, and we’re very excited about it. We have lots of ideas, and are grateful for the chance to keep the show going.”
Kripke had previously spoken about his “five-year plan” for the show and hinted that he would not continue after that — although his comments about ending the series had become far more ambiguous in the last year.
The CW has also announced that it is renewing The Vampire Diaries for a second season, which is also no surprise, since the show has been a solid hit for the network.
Surprising absolutely no one, The CW has ordered a full-season pick-up for their teen vampire drama The Vampire Diaries. The show had the network’s most successful series premiere ever (with 4.9 million viewers), and it has proved to be a solid performer ever since, averaging 3.9 million viewers.
“When you have a love story that’s this powerful, and then you throw this genre element into it, with the great guy across the room who’s moody and brooding and sexy and dangerous, and also happens to be a vampire, then you end up with stories you can tell for days!” Diaries co-creator Julie Plec tells TheTorchOnline.com.
Regarding upcoming storylines, which are taken from a series of books on which the TV show is based, Plec says, “I like to say that if you look at the gross content of the books, we’re following it incredibly closely. But if you look at the timeline, it’s varying quite a bit. We’re telling some of the stories a lot faster, some of them a lot slower. But the core relationships are very specific, and very much what we’re playing with. We’ve got about five books that we’re hopefully turning into many, many seasons. The lead character in the books is actually dead by book three, she’s a ghost. It might take us a bit longer to do that!”
Meanwhile, Shrek the Musical, the Broadway musical adaptation of the hit film, announced that it will close on January 3rd. The musical has been troubled ever since its opening on December 14, 2008. The show, which cost an eyebrow-raising $24 million to mount, saw mixed reviews (see our review) and spotty ticket sales. It’s since grossed $37.7 million.
The show was the first production of Dreamworks Theatricals, a division of the movie studio, and has been the subject of much speculation over the course of its run, with many wondering if Dreamworks was keeping a money-losing production going in order to avoid the embarrassment of a flop.
Back again for another highly opinionated — some might even say downright cranky — look at the week in fantasy. You’ve been warned!
LET THE VAMPIRE BACKLASH BEGIN!
No, seriously. Let it begin. Because if it doesn’t start soon, I’m going to kill myself.
Unfortunately, the evidence so far suggests that it’s not coming any time soon.
Earlier in the week, I touched upon how discouraging it is to see a show like The Vampire Diaries get massive ratings (setting a record on the network), while Supernatural, which followed it, lost most of that lead-in.
If you’re following my articles, you know I don’t think that Diaries is a terrible show — it’s pretty good for what it is.
But it’s basically a soap opera with vampires. It just doesn’t hold a candle to Supernatural it terms of quality or complexity (IMHO).
And yet audiences — or hoards of teenage girls, at last — seem to want nothing but more vampires.
A reader tells me (and Publishers Weeklyconfirms) that angels may be the next vampire-like craze, at least in publishing. But trust me, there are a zillion more vampire projects coming too.
It’s hard to tell Hollywood not to follow the vampire herd given the insane, phenomenal successes of, in quick succession, Twilight, True Blood, and now The Vampire Diaries.
But I still say it’s like the housing market. When vampire “securities” fall, they’re going to fall hard, and a lot of people are going to lose a lot of money.
Or so I keep saying! Maybe if I say it often enough, it’ll finally come true.
USE THE FORCE, OBI-BAMA!
So you gotta love the picture, above, of Obama with a light saber, taken during the announcement for Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympic games. (Hat tip, /film.com)
MORE ON OLIVIA DUNHAM’S CONVENIENTLY TIMED AMNESIA
So in my review of last night’s season premiere ofFringe, I mentioned in passing something that bugged me: the fact that Olivia Dunham, having returned from the “alternate dimension” of last season’s finale, is back in the “real” world … but she doesn’t remember what happened there, or what “really important” thing she has do to prevent some big catastrophe.
I’ve long had a low tolerance for “amnesia” storylines, mostly because they seem like a writers’ cheat — a way to reset a plot without having to use any actual thought or creativity — but I guess every show needs to be allowed one case of amnesia.
But when I was writing that review, it occurred to me that Fringe already has the biggest “amnesia cheat” in the history of television in the character of Walter Bishop.
Walter was involved in, apparently, every science project ever conceived … until he went insane 17 years ago and has to be institutionalized. Now, whenever the plot calls for it, he “remembers” a key pierce of information from his previous research — often in the final act, so the other characters can then “solve” the mystery of the episode.
Sure, whatever. This isn’t the first show to use nonsensical “science-babble” to set up a plot, or as a sort of deus-ex-machina to resolve that plot. But now for Fringe to do the exact same thing they did with Walter with Olivia?
The more I think about this, the more annoyed I become.
THE TINDER BOX TAKES ON THE IDIOT BOX
What can we look forward to on television this week, fantasy-wise? Clive Barker’s Book of Blood, a miniseries based on some of Barker’s short stories, turns up on SyFy this Sunday (9 PM/8 C). It’ll be out on DVD the following week.
Trailer for Clive Barker’s Book of Blood
In other TV news, Heroes is back with its two-hour season premiere on Monday (NBC, 8 PM/ 7 C); Eastwick, a remake of The Witches of Eastwick, debuts on Wednesday (ABC, 10 PM/9 C); and Smallville is back for its ninth season on Friday (The CW, 8 PM/7 C).
I’ll have my review of the premiere of Flash Forward(ABC, Thursday, 8 PM/7C) up early next week, but nutshell? It’s a good show.
THE TINDER BOX AT THE BOX OFFICE
Two fantasy-esque movies open this weekend in theaters: Jennifer’s Body, a movie about a girl possessed by a demon that’s being panned, and the animated flickCloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, an adaptation of a children’s book that is getting raves.
Just as with Supernatural and The Vampire Diaries, I have this sinking feeling that one is going to be a big hit and the other not-so-much. But again, I suspect the one that’s going to be a hit (*cough* Megan Fox *cough*) won’t be the one that deserves to be.
Well, this week’s flame has sputtered out, but join me again next week when I promise I won’t be nearly so cranky.
A teenage girl falls in love with a vampire. Hmmm, where have I heard this story before?
Okay, okay, way too much has already been written about how The Vampire Diaries only exists because of the insane popularity of the Twilight books and movie — despite the fact that the new CW series, debuting this Thursday at 8 PM, is based on a series of books that pre-dated by the Twilight ones by more than a decade.
Here’s the set-up: four months after her parents were killed in a car accident, 17 year-old Elena is barely keeping it together in the small Virginia town of Mystic Falls. Then a mysterious new student comes to town, Stefan, and even distraught Elena can’t help but be drawn to him. Alas, Stefan has three big flaws: (1) he’s a vampire (albeit a “good” one), (2) he’s in love with Elena because of her resemblance to his true love, who died ages ago, and (3) his brother, with whom he has an ancient feud, is a “bad” vampire, and he’s suddenly shown up to do everything he can to get between Stefan and Elena.
The Vampire Diaries is created by Kevin Williamson, the influential screenwriter of the Scream movies and the creator of Dawson’s Creek, along with his long-time collaborator, Julie Plec.
It shows. The pace is fast, the angst is thick, and the dialogue is snappy (and, thankfully, much more realistic than the ridiculous Dawson’s Creek).
Meanwhile, the cast is pretty, if a little vapid (although Ian Somerhalder is quite effective in the scene-chewing role of the “evil” vampire brother).
But let’s get something very clear: despite the fact that the CW is pairing this show with Supernatural on Thursday nights, The Vampire Diaries is simply not in the same league as that show, either in terms of Supernatural’s gritty realism or its transcendent themes.
Then again, The Vampire Diaries isn’t trying to be. Even the show’s creators admitted in my recent interview with them: it’s simply a serialized teen soap opera set in a supernatural world.
And for what it’s worth, in that respect, it’s much better than Gossip Girl (although the fangs are arguably much sharper there!).
Anyway, keep in mind that this is what my four-torch review is based on: The Vampire Diaries is simply a teen soap opera riding the current very popular vampire wave.
Given that’s what it set out to be, it pretty much succeeds.
Let’s face it: with Twilight’s teen angst and fresh-faced actors, it was only a matter of time until a Twilight-like TV series ended up on the CW — home of Gossip Girl and Smallville.
This Thursday, that show, The Vampire Diaries, finally debuts.
At the same time, the CW could have done a whole lot worse in who created the show than Kevin Williamson, the screenwriter behind the Scream movies — projects that completely redefined the horror genre simply by including characters who had seen all the horror movies, and knew all the cliches.
A few years after Scream, Williamson struck gold again, creating Dawson’s Creek, a TV show with more hyper-aware, hyper-literate teens.
In short, Williamson was pretty much the perfect person to bring The Vampire Diaries to life.
Kevin’s co-creator on The Vampire Diaries is Julie Plec, who he first met on the set of Scream and who has since worked with him on many projects, including the Scream sequels and Dawson’s Creek.
“I was [director] Wes [Craven's] assistant on Scream,” Plec says. “It was [Kevin's] first movie that ever got made. My first movie. I was 22, just out of college. We were two kids in a candy store, up in Santa Rosa, California, on location, making a movie.”
Recently, I got a chance to sit down with both of them and talk about The Vampire Diaries — how they almost didn’t make it because of the success of Twilight, how the show is, and isn’t, different from that project, and how vampire stories are really all about sex.
TheTorchOnline: Just how sick are you of the comparisons to Twilight?
Kevin Williamson: We’re not sick really, but we don’t know what to say. We can give you the studio answer, which is that they’re based on these books that were released in 1992 or whatever.
Julie Plec: The comparisons are difficult only in that you never want anyone accusing you of ripping something off. But because we have the source material that pre-dates Twilight so significantly, we feel confident that the story we’re telling is our own. But there is going to be a lot of that.
TheTorchOnline: How did the project come about?
Kevin Williamson: In the beginning when I read it, I didn’t want to be involved with it, because I felt like it was sort of a Twilight rip-off, no matter what came first. The premise was the same: girl falls in love with a vampire. But Julie kept saying, “Keep reading, keep reading!”
And then you realize that this is [much more] a story about a small town, about the underbelly of a small town, and what lurks under the surface.
TheTorchOnline: In the beginning, were you told, “Give us a project about vampires,” and then you searched for something that spoke to you?
Julie Plec: We were talking to [executives at the CW] about vampires and how much we love them, and one of us said, “We’d love to do a vampire show, but nobody’s going to do another vampire story.”
Kevin Williamson: And we don’t want to be the one that comes after.
Julie Plec: And they said, “Actually, we have a property that we’ve been dying to do. We absolutely want to do a vampire show, and we’d love for you to look at it, so we did.”
TheTorchOnline: It does seem like the perfect CW show, that if it didn’t exist, it should exist.
Kevin Williamson: That’s what we all thought.
Julie Plec: That’s why when people say, “Are you treading ground that is too familiar?” we say, “Specifically, on our network, it’s the perfect amalgamation of what they’ve been doing, that takes all the genres they’ve been dabbling in and combines them into one show.”
Kevin Williamson: It’s also different from the Buffy and Smallville and Supernatural model in that they’re sort of monster-of-the-week shows, and we’re not that. This is actually closer to Gossip Girl than that. In the sense that it’s a serialized ensemble teen soap with a supernatural element. It’s more about characters and romance.
TheTorchOnline: What do you think accounts for the ongoing fascination with these vampire stories?
Julie Plec: Bandwagon! [laughs]
For me, in a weird way, it’s less about vampires than it is about love. And when you’re telling a love story, the great love stories of all time are always about people who are attracted who are polar opposites. It’s about, “Who is that person who caught my eye across the room, and what is it about that person, why do they seem so different and why do I find myself so drawn to them? What is it about them that fills me up from the inside?”
When you have a love story that’s this powerful, and then you throw this genre element into it, with the great guy across the room who’s moody and brooding and sexy and dangerous, and also happens to be a vampire, then you end up with stories you can tell for days!
Kevin Williamson: I also think sexuality has something to do with it. We’re living in an age where Twilight is being read by thirteen year-old girls. There’s a sophistication to readers today. Subconsciously, they’re reading about sex, but they don’t know it. They’re reading about sex and sexuality, their awakening, and it’s all through the guise of this very safe vampire who goes and bites your neck and does nothing else. It’s a very safe form of releasing sexual tension.
There are those who say that you go to a horror movie so you can be scared and release all your hormones, so you don’t go out in the world and do “it.”
TheTorchOnline: You look at Buffy and Anne Rice, and it seems like a big part of most of these vampire projects is that they take on big moral issues. Is that something you plan to do with this show?
Kevin Williamson: We do deal with morality in the sense of right and wrong and control and betrayal and trust and friendship — all the great themes of coming of age will be told, but with life-and-death stakes.
Julie Plec: You look at Twilight, for example, and they notoriously are an abstinence metaphor, which is a really beautiful and ironic idea when you consider that vampires throughout literature have been a sexualized object.
Kevin Williamson: The seducers.
Julie Plec: We’re not saying we’re going down the abstinence road.
Kevin Williamson: At all!
Julie Plec: But it’s more about the idea of self-control, and finding your inner core, the morality that exists in you: “I have a choice here, I can take this very dark road and be a predator and I can be evil. Or I can fight those darker instincts, and choose to live my life on a clearer, stronger path.”
Kevin Williamson: Which is not his natural instinct. His natural instinct is to kill, and he’s fighting that every day. For the love of a woman!
TheTorchOnline: How closely are you following the books?
Julie Plec: I like to say that if you look at the gross content of the books, we’re following it incredibly closely. But if you look at the timeline, it’s varying quite a bit. We’re telling some of the stories a lot faster, some of them a lot slower. But the core relationships are very specific, and very much what we’re playing with.
We’ve got about five books that we’re hopefully turning into many, many seasons. The lead character in the books is actually dead by book three, she’s a ghost. It might take us a bit longer to do that!
There is a core fan-base for the books. And they’re mad that the lead character is not blond. So when you start there, there’s not a lot you can do.
TheTorchOnline: In Scream, the characters have all seen all the horror movies. In The Vampire Diaries, do the characters live in a world that’s familiar with fictional vampires? Are they aware of Twilight?
Kevin Williamson: A little bit. Look, this isn’t going to be Scream dialogue, or Dawson’s Creek heightened psychobabble. It’s going to be its own show. It’s based on a book, and we’re going to stay true to that book and those characters.
But yes, the characters live in the real world. They go to the movies, they turn on the TV at night. We actually wrote the scene yesterday when one of the characters finds out [the show's star] Ian Somerhalder is a vampire, her first question is, “Why don’t you sparkle [like in the Twilight books]?”
Julie Plec: And Ian says, “Because I live in the real world where vampires and sunlight don’t mix!”
It should, because, incredibly, the schedule is made up almost entirely of remakes.
There’s Eastwick, a remake of the movie The Witches of Eastwick. And there’s Alice, a remake of Alice in Wonderland (to go along with the feature film version they’re also currently filming).
Don’t forget about V, a remake of the 1980s miniseries. And while The CW is pretending that The Vampire Diaries isn’t a rip-off of Twilight because it’s based on a series of books from the 1990s, everyone knows they’re lying (and Twilight is, of course, itself a rip-off of Anne Rice and Buffy).
At least Flash Forward is something new — although the network seems to be pushing it as the next Lost.
Things are scarcely any better on movie screens. TheTorchOnline.com has written previously about the slate of movies in development based, ridiculously, on old 80s cartoons, and another group of movies that will be remakes of most of Universal’s horror classics such as Frankenstein and The Wolf Man.
And don’t get me started on our current superhero rut, where were get interchangeable superhero movie after superhero movie (followed by the inevitable, even lamer sequels).
Then when a superhero franchise has been reduced to complete ridiculousness, Hollywood waits a few years, and then relaunches the “brand” with a new “origin” story. Incredibly, we’re on the third Batman franchise and the fifth Superman one in my lifetime.
Even more outrageously, sometimes if a superhero movie doesn’t do as well as expected, as with Ang Lee’s 2003 movie Hulk, Hollywood will simply pretend that the movie never existed, and just immediately remake it again.
Now that’s craven.
But this fall’s television season marks something of a milestone in Hollywood shamelessness.
That’s right: we’ve finally reached a point where Hollywood is making virtually only remakes of previous movies and TV shows, at least with its genre programming. At the gathering of the Television Critics Association in Pasadena last week, The CW president Dawn Ostroff openly crowed that that network is eagerly encouraging more such remakes.
Let me be clear: some of these TV shows and movies are pretty good. Talented writers and directors really have “reimagined” some of these stories in fresh new ways.
And there’s nothing inherently wrong about the retelling of stories. Almost all of William Shakespeare’s oeuvre was, of course, based on stories first told by others — and how many times have the Greek myths been rewritten, not to mention the stories of The Brothers Grimm?
But Hollywood isn’t remaking old properties because they include classic archetypes, or because they’re inspired by the timeless storytelling.
They’re doing it because they think it’ll make them money.
Publicizing any media property is enormously expensive, especially in an era of “media clutter,” where there’s so much information out there that it can be difficult to break through to create audience awareness.
Remakes supposedly have an advantage because most people have already heard of the story in question. “Oh, it’s the story of Little Red Riding Hood — but she’s got a red hoodie instead!”
Audience familiarity may be even more important for genre projects, because elaborate costumes and sets typically require higher budgets.
So are these remakes harmless? Not hardly.
It was bad enough that Hollywood has long insisted that every story have a “high-concept” — a simple, catchphrase-like storyline that the audience immediately understands. Now they’re saying that it literally has to be a storyline that the audience has heard before.
Every time Hollywood greenlights yet another tired vampire story, that means there’s one other, fresher story that won’t be seen. And if Hollywood continues to insist that every TV series have “built-in audience awareness,” that means audiences are never going to see anything truly new or different.
In short, we’re never going to write the next generation of classic stories — we’ll just keep repeating the old ones forever and ever.
Talk about the dumbing down of America. At least there’s HBO, Showtime, and AMC where, it seems, complicated, challenging drama is occasionally still welcome.
For decades, people have been written how Hollywood has become completely soul-less, no longer caring about creativity and inspiration at all, but rather caring solely about money.
But given this fall’s season of genre television, it’s worth writing one more time.
This doesn’t have anything to do with anything, since it’s definitely not raining fantasy programming on television this fall
Still, when you throw in sci-fi programming (which we figure our readers might also be interested in), there is a smattering of interesting shows.
And on Thursday nights, we do have something approaching a downpour, with four — Flash Forward, The Vampire Diaries, Supernatural, and Fringe — fantasy/sci fi shows (often at the same time, running against each other, naturally).
Let’s take a look at each in turn — and also get the take of TheTorchOnline’s resident, all-knowing Oracle on each show:
The Vampire Diaries (The CW)
What It’s About: Teen vampires, from Kevin Williamson, the creator of Dawson’s Creek and the Scream movie franchise.
When It’s On: The show premieres Thursday, September 10th at 8 PM (The CW).
The Oracle Speaks: Yes, it’s a Twilight rip-off (although the network and the producers claim it isn’t, since the series is based on a series of YA novels from the 1990s). But the Oracle has seen the pilot, and it’s better than you think. “The premise is the same, you know, girl meets vampire,” Williamson says of the similarities to Twilight. “When I read the first book [in the series], I was like, ‘No way, this is Twilight.’ But with second book, you start to realize, ‘Boy, this is a fork in the road.’ It really does separate. So we’re getting to that fork in the road really quick.”
Supernatural (The CW)
What It’s About: Brothers who probe the supernatural.
When It’s On: The fifth season bows on Thursday, September 10th at 9 PM (The CW).
The Oracle Speaks: The show’s last season was its best ever, ending with a cliffhanger where Sam mistakenly releases Lucifer from hell.Incidentally, earlier this year, creator Eric Kripke was making noises about making this the last season, but all indications are that Kripke and company will return for a sixth season.
A recap of the last season:
Robin Hood (BBC America)
What It’s About: Duh.
When It’s On: The show returns for its third season on Saturday, September 12th at 9 PM (BBC America).
The Oracle Speaks: Is Marion really dead? Sadly, yes, and it’s up to Brother Tuck, making his first appearance on the show, to convince Robin that England is still worth fighting for.
Fringe (Fox)
What It’s About: J.J. Abrams’ series about two paranormal investigators picks up from last spring’s cliffhanger, where Olivia confronted the fact that there really are parallel universes — and guest star Leonard Nimoy lives in one of them.
When It’s On: The show returns for its second season on Thursday, September 17 at 9 PM (Fox).
The Oracle Speaks: The Oracle was a big fan of this show, especially the second half of last season and the terrific season finale. Leonard Nimoy already appears in at least one more episode, and the producers would love for him to come back for more. “We want him back as much as he wants to come back,” says executive producer Jeff Pinkner. Meanwhile, star Anna Torv tells TheTorchOnline.com, “I love that Olivia was a bit more masculine [than other shows]. This second season is shifting a bit, and the character of Peter is becoming a lot more proactive.”
Heroes (NBC)
What It’s About: Ordinary humans develop superhero-like abilities.
When It’s On: The show returns for its fourth season on September 21st at 8 PM (NBC).
The Oracle Speaks: After a disastrous second season, the producers furiously tried to get their groove back last year (with some success). Still, first season writer Bryan Fuller (Pushing Daisies), brought in to revitalize the series last year, has now left to pursue other projects. Additions to this year’s cast include Robert Knepper (Prison Break’s T-Bag) as an “earth-mover” and Ray Park (Star Wars‘ Darth Maul Toad, G.I. Joe’s Snake Eyes) as a super-fast henchman with a knack for knife-throwing.
Here’s the season preview:
Smallville (The CW)
What It’s About: Superman “before he was famous.” But does anyone still watch this show?
When It’s On: The show returns for its ninth season on Friday, September 25th at 8 PM (The CW).
The Oracle Speaks: No, seriously. Does anyone still watch this show?
Eastwick (ABC)
What It’s About: A TV adaptation of the 1987 movie (and the John Updike novel), The Witches of Eastwick.
When It’s On: The show premieres Wednesday, September 23rd at 10 PM.
The Oracle Speaks: Frankly, the Oracle is confused as to exactly what genre this project is. Some sort of supernatural chick lit? As in the movie, three beautiful women are brought together by the arrival in town of the mysterious Daryl Van Horne, who brings out in each of them witch-like powers. But there’s a catch. “You know, there are many different kinds of devils,” says Paul Gross, who plays Van Horne. X-Men nemesis Mystique, Rebecca Romijn, plays one of the witches.
Flash Forward (ABC)
What It’s About: The entire world loses consciousness at the same time for just over two minutes, during which they all have a vision of their lives six months in the future.
When It’s On: The series, which is based on a novel by Robert Sawyer, premieres on Thursday, September 24th at 8 PM (ABC).
The Oracle Speaks: With its ensemble cast and an over-arching central mystery, everyone is comparing the show to Lost — something the producers aren’t exactly shying away from either. But pilot is quite good, setting up the all-important question for the season — namely, can the future be changed? Best of all, the producers promise no convoluted Lost-like non-answers. “By the end of the first season, most of the questions raised in the pilot will be answered,” says creator David S. Goyer.
A video preview:
The Ghost Whisperer (CBS)
What It’s About: A woman who isn’t Haley Joel Osment, but who still sees dead people.
When It’s On: The returns for its fifth season on Friday, September 25th at 8 PM (CBS).
The Oracle Speaks: The Oracle has tried several times to watch this show, but unlike Jennifer Love Hewitt’s character on this show and dead people, it just doesn’t speak to him.
Medium (CBS)
What It’s About: A woman who has bad, but uncannily accurate dreams.
When It’s On: The show returns for a sixth season on Friday, September 25th at 9 PM (CBS).
The Oracle Speaks: This “comfort food” show has never been particularly cutting edge, but the Halloween episode definitely sounds intriguing: the producers are inserting star Patricia Arquette into footage of the original Night of the Living Dead movie, to create sort of a landscape of her dreams. “I love a good monster movie,” Arquette says. “Here I am in a monster show. I’m the monster, but it’s exciting.”
Dollhouse (Fox)
What It’s About: Joss Whedon’s latest, about programmable humans-for-order.
When It’s On: The show returns, improbably, for its second season on Friday, September 25th at 9 PM (Fox).
The Oracle Speaks: The Oracle was phenomenally disappointed with this show when it debuted last spring: the plots were shockingly simplistic, and Eliza Dushku simply didn’t have the acting chops to portray a different “character” every week. The show got marginally better in the second half of the season — but only marginally. Still, Joss Whedon honestly believes in the show, and has been hinting lately that some of its suckiness may have come from network interference. So perhaps its worth another look.
V (ABC)
What It’s About: Aliens comes to earth — but are they friendly, as they claim, or do they have more nefarious ends? A remake of the 80s mini-series and series.
When It’s On: The show premieres on Tuesday, November 3rd at 8 PM (ABC).
The Oracle Speaks: The pilot is flat-out terrific: both surprisingly faithful to the 1980s original, but also seeming very contemporary. “There was a huge awareness of the original,” says creator Scott Peters. “There are a lot of people who haven’t seen it, but by the time we get to air, we feel like [the alien's true intentions are] not the big surprise that everyone is going to gasp over. We really want to tell that story that is sort of already known out there so that we can leap forward in very quick manner. … Hopefully, we do it in an artful way and in a twist-filled way that will make folks who haven’t seen the show before jump a little bit.”
Alice (The SyFy Channel)
What It’s About: From the folks who brought you Tin Man, the 2007 retelling of the Oz stories, comes this like-minded mini-series retelling of the Alice in Wonderland story.
When It’s On: December (The SyFy Channel).
The Oracle Speaks: Naturally, the producers say this is nothing like any of the other adaptations of Wonderland you’ve seen — that it’s “racier, tougher, and sexier” — and it’s also nothing like the Tim Burton/Johnny Depp feature film, now in production. “I’ve always wanted to play the Queen of Hearts,” says co-star Kathy Bates. “I’ve always been a fan of the original books. [But] in the original version she’s screaming, ‘Off with her head’ all the time at everybody. And this queen has multi-layers — she has the same evil streak that the queen has in the original version, but for different reasons.”
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Back again for another highly opinionated — some might even say downright cranky — look at the week in fantasy. You’ve been warned!
Here’s the set-up: four months after her parents were killed in a car accident, 17 year-old Elena is barely keeping it together in the small Virginia town of Mystic Falls. Then a mysterious new student comes to town, Stefan, and even distraught Elena can’t help but be drawn to him. Alas, Stefan has three big flaws: (1) he’s a vampire (albeit a “good” one), (2) he’s in love with Elena because of her resemblance to his true love, who died ages ago, and (3) his brother, with whom he has an ancient feud, is a “bad” vampire, and he’s suddenly shown up to do everything he can to get between Stefan and Elena.
TheTorchOnline: Just how sick are you of the comparisons to Twilight?
Julie Plec: That’s why when people say, “Are you treading ground that is too familiar?” we say, “Specifically, on our network, it’s the perfect amalgamation of what they’ve been doing, that takes all the genres they’ve been dabbling in and combines them into one show.”
TheTorchOnline: You look at Buffy and Anne Rice, and it seems like a big part of most of these vampire projects is that they take on big moral issues. Is that something you plan to do with this show?
TheTorchOnline: How closely are you following the books?
There’s Eastwick, a remake of the movie The Witches of Eastwick. And there’s Alice, a remake of Alice in Wonderland (to go along with the feature film version they’re also currently filming).
Even more outrageously, sometimes if a superhero movie doesn’t do as well as expected, as with Ang Lee’s 2003 movie Hulk, Hollywood will simply pretend that the movie never existed, and just immediately remake it again.
Publicizing any media property is enormously expensive, especially in an era of “media clutter,” where there’s so much information out there that it can be difficult to break through to create audience awareness.
When it rains, it pours.
