Slice of SciFi News Briefs

The writer’s strike may have one good outcome for viewers. Networks are currently going through their archive of completed, but rejected scripts and reconsidering them for broadcast. As most folks know, TV execs aren’t the brightest bulbs in the stage lights, so many projects they have rejected are actually pretty good ideas. It will be interesting to see what comes of this.

Actor Tim Roth will star as the villain Abomination in the new Incredible Hulk film that will have Edward Norton as the lead character.

Eva Green (”The Golden Compass”) is wrapping up on the film “Franklyn,” a futuristic SF thriller that explores religious themes.

China has banned the release of American films until February 2008, but official government sources have indicated the clamp could continue as late as May 2008.

One question….why are the world’s nations, in particular the United States, still buying Chinese goods? Isn’t it time the big money countries like America, Japan, and the EU clamped off that well?

Actor Dennis Quaid, who almost saw his two newborn twins die as a result of a hospital’s misuse of drug on his children is suing the drug maker, Baxter Healthcare Corporation for negligence over how they packaged and labeled the medicine known as heparin. The drug is used as a blood-thinning agent.

The Quaids’ twins, Zoe Grace and Thomas Boone, were mistakenly given the wrong dosage and wound up in critical condition. Both babies are now doing much better after a very close call.

An ancient Roman wood and ivory throne has been unearthed at a dig in Herculaneum, Italian archaeologists said on Tuesday, hailing it as the most significant piece of wooden furniture ever discovered there. The throne was found during an excavation in the Villa of the Papyri, a private home of that belonged the father-in-law of general Julius Caesar, who became Rome’s first Emperor and was later murdered by members of the Roman Senate.

Samuel L. Jackson will star as a hospital administrator in “Unfinished Country,” a “Training Day”-style thriller that will shoot on location in South Africa.

In a effort to shore-up programming during the writer’s strike CBS network execs are looking hard at taking a Showtime original and turning it into a weekly show on the eye network. “Dexter,” about a killer who loves his work just a little too much, may also be seen on CBS, but with a bit of editing that will take out all the really good juicy parts for conventional viewing. They have to keep the FCC happy.

A new Star Trek: Deep Space Nine novel is out called “Fearful Symmetry.” It occurs in the Mirror Universe and is being touted as one of the best and most intriguing Trek novels in quite some time.