TV
Roku in Talks to Save Quibi’s Shows, Including “50 States of Fright” and “The Expecting”
Quibi may have had all the big Hollywood names, but it still managed to go down in history as one of the most brutal entertainment-related failures ever.
We can debate all day as to what caused the failed launch, but the content itself was never suffering. In fact, Quibi’s “50 States of Fright”, from producer and director Sam Raimi, was one of the best new horror series of last year.
When Quibi announced it was closing its doors, this struck a nerve with some horror fans and ignited a flame under the hot debate of physical media vs. digital. If Quibi were to shut down, what would happen to all their great content? Would it be lost forever or would someone save it?
While there was certainly a world in which we’d never see “50 States of Fright” again, there are reports this Monday morning that Roku is in talks to save Quibi’s content.
“Under the terms the companies have discussed, Roku would acquire rights to Quibi’s library,” the people familiar with the matter told the WSJ, further noting that “financial terms of the proposed deal couldn’t be learned” and that “the deal talks could still fall apart.”
Outside of the anthology series “50 States of Fright”, Quibi gave birth to “The Expecting”, a pregnancy thriller directed by American Psycho‘s Mary Harron, and The Hitcher-inspired Maika Monroe/Dane DeHaan-starring “The Stranger”, among several other genre adjacent thrillers.
There’s a lot going on in the world of Alien at the moment. The original classic is returning to theaters, for starters, and the Xenomorphs will be fighting Marvel’s superheroes in the upcoming mashup comic Aliens vs. Avengers. Of course, the main event for 2024 is Fede Alvarez’s Alien: Romulus, a brand new big screen movie set between Alien and Aliens!
With so much going on, you’d be forgiven for forgetting that Disney is also working on an “Alien” television series, in the works for FX from creator Noah Hawley (“Legion”).
The Alien franchise’s first ever television series is likely to arrive sometime in 2025, set to be the first story in the franchise that takes place on Earth, roughly 70 years in the future.
FX teases, “Expect a scary thrill ride set not too far in the future here on Earth.”
So what’s the latest on the “Alien” TV series? Deadline reports today that filming is underway in Thailand, and Sandra Yi Sencindiver (“Foundation”) is the latest actor to sign on.
According to Deadline’s report this morning, the series is set 30 years before the events of the original Alien – Alvarez’s Alien: Romulus, meanwhile, takes place 20 years *after* the events of Ridley Scott’s Alien – dealing with “the emergence of the story’s infamous Weyland-Yutani Corporation and the race between corporations to create new android life.”
Deadline adds in today’s casting report, “We understand that Sencindiver appears in multiple eps and will play a senior member of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation.”
Sydney Chandler (Don’t Worry Darling), Babou Ceesay (“Guerrilla”), Jonathan Ajayi (“Wonder Woman 1984”), Erana James (“Uproar”), Lily Newmark (“Sex Education”), Diêm Camille (“Washington Black”), Adrian Edmondson (“War & Peace”), Timothy Olyphant (“Fargo”), David Rysdahl (“Fargo”), Essie Davis (The Babadook), Alex Lawther (The End of the F*cking World), Samuel Blenkin (“Black Mirror”), Adarsh Gourav (The White Tiger), and Moe Bar-El (The Peripheral) star in the upcoming sci-fi/horror series.
Sydney Chandler is playing a character named Wendy in the series, said to be “a hybrid, a meta-human who has the brain and consciousness of a child but the body of an adult.”
Sandra Yi Sencindiver in “Foundation”
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