News
“Bates Motel” Renewed, “The Returned” Won’t Be Doing So…
A&E has been handed “Bates Motel” (read our reviews) a two-season renewal, while cancelling freshman thriller “The Returned” (reviews), Variety writes.
“Bates Motel” will be coming back with Season 4 and Season 5. Both 10-episode seasons will air in 2016 with production beginning later this year.
“The vision of our incredible creative team has exposed the steady breakdown of the relationship between Norman and Norma Bates,” said Rob Sharenow, exec vice president and general manager of A&E and Lifetime. “We are thrilled to bring fans two more seasons to witness the next stages of Norman’s transformation into the most notorious psychopath in cinematic history.”
The critically-acclaimed series is a contemporary prequel to the film Psycho and shows how Norman Bates (played by Freddie Highmore) unravels through his teenage years. Vera Farmiga plays his mother, Norma Bates.
In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war, but it was a cheerful illustrator from England who helped to define the terrifying war-torn imagery that inspired what we now know as Grimdark (a hybrid genre combining horror with sci-fi/fantasy).
Unfortunately for fans of Warhammer 40,000, Trench Crusade and countless other sources of Grimdark thrills, veteran artist John Blanche passed away this week after struggling with health issues for the past few years.
While the artist retired back in 2023, he leaves us with an enormous legacy of iconic artwork that continues to inspire gamers and storytellers around the world to this very day.
The news is especially gloomy as it was only last year that Daniel Lowman and Napoleon Dynamite himself Jon Heder released The Grim & the Dark: The Search for John Blanche, a documentary following Heder’s exploration of the Grimdark genre culminating in a heartwarming encounter with Blanche in his own home.
Below is one of my favorite pieces by Blanche, his highly influential depiction of Warhammer 40k’s God-Emperor of Mankind on his Golden Throne.
We send our deepest condolences to John Blanche’s family, friends, and fans.
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