sf/f TV development news - 2013

[RAMA]

Christopher wrote:

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^It's still in development, as far as I know.

Not a good sign, I lost track of this too...

Bryan Fuller’s “High Moon” Coming to SyFy

6 August 2012 11:23 AM, PDT | FamousMonsters of Filmland | See recent Famous Monsters of Filmland news »
A day after SyFy secured M. Night Shyamalan’s first foray into TV, the network has snapped up the rights to Another Bryan Fuller series. Bryan Fuller has become very familiar on FM of late, as he’s in charge of two NBC shows, Hannibal and Mockingbird Lane, taking two properties very near to our heart and updating them for today’s audiences. Here comes another.
This time, High Moon comes from John Christopher’s The Lotus Caves, and he’s working with Jim Danger Gray. The 90 minute pilot will shoot in Vancouver this fall and “centers on a future where the countries of the Earth establish colonies to mine the Moon’s resources, only to see chaos erupt when new forms of life are discovered” according to the Hollywood Reporter. Gray and Fuller have teamed up before, on the short lived but much beloved Pushing Daisies.

..but I can easily find information on it and it says it's being shot. Defender was announced atthe same time and it disappeared.

[RJDiogenes]

I hope it hasn't died. Defender is the project that I am most looking forward to.

[Temis the Vorta]

Some interesting casting tidbits.

Pouty hot guy cast in Delirium (that's the one where luuuuuv is illegal, angst angst).

Tricia Helfer joins the Texas Rangers.

The nagging jealous boyfriend from Smash (which I'm sure you all watched) is cast as the Fox Mulder of Gothica, one of the shows about Dracula, Frankenstein, et al in development. He's named Harker, wink wink. Now they need to cast his sexy but skeptical colleague, Abigail Van Helsing.

[Temis the Vorta]

Orlando Jones joins Sleepy Hollow.

A modern–day supernatural thriller based on The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow, the project, from 20th TV and K/O Paper Products, follows Ichabod Crane as he partners with Sleepy Hollow’s local female sheriff to solve the mysteries of a town ravaged by the battle between good and evil. Jones, repped by Paradigm and New Wave, will play Lt. Frank Williams, the serious and sternly professional detective transferred to Sleepy Hollow to investigate a double homicide.

They should have cast Jones as the lead, who says Ichabod Crane needs to be a white guy? And Jones certainly has the gangly look associated with the role...

[Enterprise is Great]

Nicole Beharie Lands Female Lead In Fox’s ‘Sleepy Hollow’


http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/liv...orlando-422867

In the script, Ichabod is described as a captain in the Revolutionary War who has been to hell and back. The former history professor finds himself catapulted to present day Sleepy Hollow, where he's indicted for the murder of a police officer and forced to prove not only his innocence but make a wary detective believe he's a traveler from the 18th century.

Robbie Amell Lands Lead in CW's The Tomorrow People

[RJDiogenes]

Did we have that information before? Him being a time traveler makes it a lot more interesting, although I don't like the idea of him being a captain in the Revolutionary War.

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Temis the Vorta wrote:

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Tricia Helfer joins the Texas Rangers.

She's got a wicked fastball.

[Temis the Vorta]

RJDiogenes wrote:

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Did we have that information before? Him being a time traveler makes it a lot more interesting, although I don't like the idea of him being a captain in the Revolutionary War.

That's news to me, I figured he'd be a modern-day character with no real connection to the historical character (or his great great great great grandson). I'm impressed that they cast a black woman as the female lead, and another black actor in a major role. Usually there's only one black character: the best friend/foil.

I do like the time travel angle (or did he just go back to sleep?) Anything that makes this less vanilla is fine by me. I'll put this pilot alongside S.H.I.E.L.D. and JJ Abrams' robot cop show in the list of ones I'm rooting for to go to series.

[Christopher]

The time-travel angle is a bit surprising; I was expecting an updated, modern Ichabod Crane, Sherlock/Elementary-style. It's been a while since we had a "person from the past transported to the present" series. There was a supporting character like that in Primeval a couple of years ago. Some of the cast of The 4400 was from decades in the past, but the show never really delved that deeply into that aspect of its premise. There was a supporting character from the past in Primeval a couple of seasons ago. And in the other direction, we've got Continuum with a lead character from the future. But the last show I can think of where the lead character or characters time-travelled from the past into the present (not counting shows about immortals like New Amsterdam, Highlander, and vampire shows) was the Rod Taylor series Outlaws from 1986.

Temis the Vorta wrote:

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I'm impressed that they cast a black woman as the female lead, and another black actor in a major role. Usually there's only one black character: the best friend/foil.

Oh, there are certainly exceptions to that these days. Eureka had Salli Richardson, Joe Morton, and Tembi Locke. White Collar has Marsha Thomason and Sharif Atkins as regulars (Atkins was only bumped up to regular billing this season, but was a regular in all but name for years before then) and Diahann Carroll in a recurring role. And so on. I see a lot of shows today with nicely diverse casting, though there are still exceptions.

I do like the time travel angle (or did he just go back to sleep?)

Wrong Washington Irving character. That's Rip Van Winkle.

[JD]

I heard about the time travel aspect of Sleepy Hollow earlier today. I must admit that has made me a lot more interested in this than I had been before.

[Christopher]

I've realized there are actually several current shows with African-American (or Afro-Canadian) female leads. The groundbreaker, premiering last year, was Scandal, starring Kerry Washington as the lead character. It's been followed this season by Deception, with Meagan Good as the central character, and the just-premiered Cult, with Jessica Lucas as the co-lead along with a white male lead.

There are also at least two current shows with Asian-American female leads: Beauty and the Beast, with Kristin Kreuk as the lead character (and actually playing a half-Asian character this time, unlike on Smallville where she "passed" as Caucasian), and Elementary, with Lucy Liu as the second lead.

[Temis the Vorta]

Overall, American TV is still very white. Reading Deadline on a regular basis and noticing the casting choices for pilot season makes that clear. Of course, you can always cherry pick exceptions.

But I'll bet minorities other than blacks are the ones that are really underrepresented, since they don't even benefit from the "token best friend" phenomenon.

EDIT, I googled "racial diversity on TV" just for kicks and found a lot of squawking about it...like this.

Things are looking pretty “token” for lack of a better word.

...with a whopping 46% of shows in the (C) category, it is clear from the data that for most networks, racial diversity often means having just one token minority. Once again, CBS and CW find themselves in the lead in that category with 29% and 19% respectively of their shows.

That's why a show with two major black characters really stood out for me - the usual pattern is to be content with one major nonwhite character.

And NBC being the standout of diversity is a mixed bag because that network is really imploding in the ratings now, while llywhite CBS is still doing the best.

[Christopher]

I'm not "cherry-picking," and I don't understand why you'd feel it necessary to use such an unkind characterization. I'm just pointing out that it's not unprecedented. Obviously there's still a long way to go, but there is evidence of progress.

As far as other ethnic groups go, I'm seeing an upswing in the representation of South Asians on TV. Sendhil Ramamurthy is staying steadily employed. Last week's Arrow episode guest-starred both Janina Gavankar (as the lead character's current romantic interest) and Rekha Sharma (as a fence), neither of whom was playing a character who was specifically written as Indian. The same episode's cast included two African-American actors (regular David Ramsey and recurring player Christie Laing), two Asian actors (Chin Han and Kelly Hu), and a part-Maori actor (Manu Bennett). More generally, the show's recurring cast includes Colin Salmon as the protagonist's stepfather. I've really been quite pleased with the diversity of the show's cast. Same with Beauty and the Beast, whose regular and recurring cast currently includes four central nonwhite performers (Kristin Kreuk, Nina Lisandrello, Brian J. White, and Nicole Gale Anderson) and is about to be joined by Ramamurthy and Edi Gathegi. The CW is doing quite a good job with inclusive casting, despite the inaccurate claims of that infographic you linked to.

[Temis the Vorta]

it's not unkind, it's accurate - if you want to get an overall sense of the situation, you need to look at the copious studies being done that address the whole picture, which are easily found since this issue has been studied to death and discussed extensively for years now.

I could cherry pick, too, by talking selectively about shows where the casts are all white except for that one token character, but what's the point? The research has all been done, you can google it just as easily as I can.

[Temis the Vorta]

Just to help prove my point, yet another white guy gets cast in a show in the last five minutes. Henry Ian Cusick joins The Hundred.

Well he's a good actor, I don't mind that at all, but I think I'm seeing a real gender as well as race bias in the roles Deadline is reporting (they just report major roles being cast, so the lesser-token roles don't even show up on their radar.)

EDIT: ANOTHER white guy! And I'm just reporting the genre shows. I swear, way more than half of the casting news is not just white actors but white guys. Well as long as they're cool like Mark Pellegrino, I won't complain but it's getting pretty weird...is Hollywood just giving up on anything more than token diversity?

Pellegrino, repped by Domain and Framework, will play Dr. Jedikiah Price, an evolutionary biologist committed to containing the threat posed by the “Tomorrow People,” whom he believes to be a grave danger to the human race. He recurs on the CW veteran series Supernatural and on Syfy’s Being Human.