sf/f TV development news - 2013

[TheSeeker]

Oops. Must have missed that post. It's the first time I've seen it.

 

[sojourner]

Temis has been MIA for a couple months.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

Hope she's okay. Not like her to miss the announcements of next season's schedule.

 

[RJDiogenes]

Rumor has it she's been active on Facebook, so perhaps she has just (wisely) broken the TrekBBS habit.

 

[Mistral]

Rumor has it she's been active on Facebook, so perhaps she has just (wisely) broken the TrekBBS habit.

I think the TrekBBS would be a sadder place w/out Temis...I don't always agree with her-but I love reading her takes on things.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

Rumor has it she's been active on Facebook, so perhaps she has just (wisely) broken the TrekBBS habit.

That's good to hear.

 

[RJDiogenes]

^^ That's what somebody in Misc said, so I hope it's true.

I think the TrekBBS would be a sadder place w/out Temis...I don't always agree with her-but I love reading her takes on things.

I agree. I don't agree with her always, either, but it's an honest kind of disagreement.

 

[Enterprise is Great]

Billy Campbell cast as lead in SyFy's Helix

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

Patrick Rothfuss' Kingkiller Chronicles trilogy has been optioned for television. Deadline Hollywood has the story here.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

Here's a teaser trailer for Helix and some reporting from Comic-Con on what Ron Moore and some of the other producers and writers had to say about the show.

Mark Stern, Syfy's President of Original Content, said the following at the Comic-Con panel for Helix (via io9 again):

We are returning to more scripted shows. You'll see new scripted series and miniseries over the next two years. We're really embracing our science fiction roots. And we're acquiring more scripted pilots, and going back into the big miniseries department again. We've signed more series [like Helix], a drama with meaty science fiction hook. It fits with Being Human, which is how we'll air [Helix] at the beginning of the year.

 

[Christopher]

That's good to hear -- I hope they stick with it. At the moment, with Defiance and Warehouse 13 done with their seasons, every scripted drama currently airing on Syfy is an import from Canada or England. And W13 is ending next year. True, they've still got Being Human and Haven, neither of which I watch, but the original scripted shows have been getting a bit thin on the ground. So this is just what I wanted to hear from Syfy -- more scripted shows, embracing their science fiction roots. Hopefully that means a space show or two sometime in the next couple of years.

 

[JD]

Very happy to hear about that. Isn't Syfy doing Brian Fuller's Moon show, or did that not get picked up?

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

Isn't Syfy doing Brian Fuller's Moon show, or did that not get picked up?

High Moon was ordered to pilot in April. We should hear casting news pretty soon.

 

[RJDiogenes]

Good talk. Now let's see if they walk the walk.

 

[JD]

Isn't Syfy doing Brian Fuller's Moon show, or did that not get picked up?

High Moon was ordered to pilot in April. We should hear casting news pretty soon.

So would that make it a show for next summer or next fall?

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

So would that make it a show for next summer or next fall?

Probably summer if it gets picked up.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

Syfy is developing an adaptation of 12 Monkeys as a potential series. From The Hollywood Reporter:

Feature film producers Chuck Roven and Richard Suckle of Atlas Entertainment -- one of the production companies on board the Universal film -- submitted the pitch, which is being eyed as a 90-minute backdoor pilot that would eventually lead to a straight-to-series order in a fashion similar to Syfy's Battlestar Galactica. Terry Matalas (Nikita, Terra Nova, Star Trek: Enterprise) and Travis Fickett(Nikita, Terra Nova) will pen the script, with 24's Jon Cassar on board to direct the project, which hails from Universal Cable Productions.

Syfy's Mark Stern spoke to THR about their plans in general:

"We're looking at short orders, maybe eight to 10 [episodes] as opposed to 13," Stern said. "Some may be [split runs of] 10 and 10. Our goal is to do five or six original scripted series a year and a big tentpole event miniseries that could also possibly serve as a backdoor pilot to a series as well, the way that Battlestar Galactica did. It's an exciting time for us."

"We're really trying to figure out what our next year is going to be," he added. "We have Helix in January; we're trying to figure out what our summer series is going to be. We have a lot of different options. We know that Defiance is going to come back in the summer, and the last six episodes of Warehouse 13 are going to be back along with Defiance. Then there's this big gray zone after that of what follows. We definitely have a miniseries we want to try to do for December of 2014 -- Jamie Foxx's is a series of half-hours we might do for Halloween of 2014. We're looking to do a big four-hour miniseries -- a tentpole mini -- at the end of 2014, and we're trying to figure out what that's going to be."

"We have a half-dozen scripts that are all pretty amazing in their own way," Stern said of Syfy's development pipeline. "It's a return to our roots in terms of science fiction: cool, interesting push-the-genre science fiction. Some we're looking at doing straight to series, because you really want to give them the flexibility and do a closed-ended, arced run. Some of them are going to be traditional pilots, and then we'll decide and they may be a bit more episodic."

 

[RJDiogenes]

Sounds good, but we'll see what the payoff is.

 

[JD]

Yeah, if they do actually do this it could be cool. It would be nice to see more scripted Sci-Fi/Fantasy on Syfy.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

Irish actress Ruth Bradley has been cast as the lead in Horizon, Gale Anne Hurd's sci-fi pilot for the USA Network. Meg Steedle has been cast in a supporting role. Here's the description of the show:

Set during the height of World War II, Horizon centers on a secretary at the FBI who discovers that her husband might have been killed in a battle with a spaceship in the South Pacific. Obsessed with learning the truth, she becomes the only person standing between Earth and an alien invasion.