Movies
TV: SyFy: New Supernatural Series Joins ‘Ghost Hunters’
The SyFy Channel is killing it this year announcing project after project. This past Tuesday the NBC Universal cabler touted plans for a Thursday night block of reality shows: “Paranormal Investigators,” which aims to build on the net’s success with “Ghost Hunters,” and “Mary Knows Best,” revolving around a radio psychic and her family. Both shows will bow July 15. You can read more about the slate and future plans below. I need a bigger DVR.
Syfy prexy Dave Howe tub-thumped the new slate, including oddball superhero show “Three Inches,” and he talked up a series of vidgame initiatives such as a dedicated gaming website and a massive multiplayer online game set to launch simultaneously with a weekly series.
Other series pickups include “Ghost Hunters Academy” (a competish show with a supernatural theme), a skein about imaginary creatures called “Beast Legends” and fresh seasons of “Warehouse 13,” “Eureka,” “Ghost Hunters,” “Destination Truth,” “Caprica,” “Stargate Universe” and “Sanctuary.”
Previously announced selections for the upcoming season include scripted series “Haven” (based on the Stephen King novella “The Colorado Kid”), a U.S. version of the BBC supernatural hit “Being Human,” and “Three Inches,” a scripted comedy about a telekinetic who can move things in three-inch increments.
After months of enduring jokes about its transformation last summer from Sci Fi Channel to Syfy, the cabler had laugh at its own expense as part of its presentation to buyers who mingled amid the drawings, paintings and photographs by “Alice in Wonderland” helmer Burton. (Syfy is one of the exhibit’s sponsors.)
Howe aired a clip from “The Colbert Report” ribbing the cabler about the name change. Howe got the last laugh, however, as he noted that Syfy’s increase in original programming has made the channel competitive with the top echelon of basic cable, behind only USA, TNT and TBS in some key measures.
“It’s great to be able to build on success,” Howe told Daily Variety. “If we don’t fail big at this point, we’re not trying.”
Howe’s presentation was bare-bones and brief. The aud got a big laugh out of a vidclip featuring “30 Rock” star Tracy Morgan, who is also host and exec producer of the Syfy skein “Scare Tactics.”
“My fear of modern art has kept me from being with you today,” Morgan said.
Movies
’28 Years Later’ – Ralph Fiennes, Jodie Comer, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson Join Long Awaited Sequel
Danny Boyle and Alex Garland (Annihilation, Men), the director and writer behind 2002’s hit horror film 28 Days Later, are reteaming for the long-awaited sequel, 28 Years Later. THR reports that the sequel has cast Jodie Comer (Alone in the Dark, “Killing Eve”), Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Kraven the Hunter), and Ralph Fiennes (The Menu).
The plan is for Garland to write 28 Years Later and Boyle to direct, with Garland also planning on writing at least one more sequel to the franchise – director Nia DaCosta is currently in talks to helm the second installment.
No word on plot details as of this time, or who Comer, Taylor-Johnson, and Fiennes may play.
28 Days Later received a follow up in 2007 with 28 Weeks Later, which was executive produced by Boyle and Garland but directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo. Now, the pair hope to launch a new trilogy with 28 Years Later. The plan is for Garland to write all three entries, with Boyle helming the first installment.
Boyle and Garland will also produce alongside original producer Andrew Macdonald and Peter Rice, the former head of Fox Searchlight Pictures, the division of one-time studio Twentieth Century Fox that originally backed the British-made movie and its sequel.
The original film starred Cillian Murphy “as a man who wakes up from a coma after a bicycle accident to find England now a desolate, post-apocalyptic collapse, thanks to a virus that turned its victims into raging killers. The man then navigates the landscape, meeting a survivor played by Naomie Harris and a maniacal army major, played by Christopher Eccleston.”
Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer) is on board as executive producer, though the actor isn’t set to appear in the film…yet.
Talks of a third installment in the franchise have been coming and going for the last several years now – at one point, it was going to be titled 28 Months Later – but it looks like this one is finally getting off the ground here in 2024 thanks to this casting news. Stay tuned for more updates soon!
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