As was briefly reported in a recent Slice of SciFi News Brief, the SCI FI Channel has signed up actress/writer Rosario Dawson (“Sin City”) to develop “True Believer,” the pilot for a proposed series based on a comicbook she co-created. This was just one of many highlights from the cable channel’s upfront presentation Tuesday night at New York City’s Morgan Library delivered by David Howe, president of the network. “True Believer” focuses on a comicbook nerd who hires a down on his luck superhero, with the duo pairing up to become crime fighters.
Also only mentioned by name in Slice of SciFi’s scoop story was the cabler’s development of a scripted pilot called “The Stranded,” the first project of a joint venture created last year by SCI FI and Virgin Comics to put together comicbooks with TV potential. Scribe Mike Carey of “X-Men” and “Ultimate Fantastic Four,” “Faker,” “Crossing Midnight” and “The Re-gifters” fame has been tapped to write the series. “The Stranded” will center on five ordinary people living on Earth who are really aliens from a world called Standfire. Their past has caught up with them and now their lives are in great danger and they’re stranded and alone on planet Earth.
Howe did give a timetable for the “Battlestar Galactica” prequel shoot date of “Caprica.” Production for this highly anticipated new series that will continue the BSG sage begins in just a few weeks in Vancouver, Canada.
Howe reiterated his first prouncement since becoming the new network boss, taking the reins from Bonnie Hammer, that SCI FI’s goal is to keep its momentum going through a calibrated mix of scripted original series, first-run reality series, commissioned low-budget movies, reruns of successful conventional network series such as “Lost” and “Jericho,” as well as theatrical movies and the occasional miniseries.
On the reality TV front SCI FI has hired “30 Rock” comedian Tracy Morgan to be the new host of its returning stunt-reality series “Scare Tactics.”
Some other projects under consideration are a new dramedy titled “Deputized,” about an Everyman who accidentally gets special powers that he uses as a member of an intergalactic police force. Writer-director Nick Willing and his exec producers Robert Halmi Sr. and Jr., the team behind SCI FI’s runaway-hit miniseries “Tin Man,” based loosely on “Wizard of Oz,” have agreed to tackle Alice in Wonderland next as the source of another potential miniseries tentatively titled “Alice.”
Am I the only one who, when thinking about the “Deputized” premise immediately thinks “Green Lantern”?
Nope. That was my first thought as well.
Bonnie Hammer is gone?!! Hooray! Hopefully, the channel will be better now. Some of the new shows actually sound interesting.
Hammer is gone from SCI FI but is still a bigwig at NBC Universal which owns SCI FI and the person that Howe, as president of SCI FI, still has to answer to.
Wait! Why is Jericho listed as a “successful” show if CBS has just nuked it?
Successful in that it succeeded where other canceled shows like Dresden Files, Journeyman and Firefly failed…..as a result of fan’s love for the show CBS brought it back. That, by any definition of the word, is a success story.
“that SCI FI’s goal is to keep its momentum going through a calibrated mix of scripted original series, first-run reality series, commissioned low-budget movies, reruns of successful conventional network series”
Good ol’ bonnie might be gone, but as long as this is their main idea, then their still fraked. How does that Beatnik turtle song “Monkey see, monkey do the opposite”? Yeah,t hats really what scifi should be doing.
I won’t pre-judge these shows…I wont’, I won’t I won’t…..tis really hard though.
Low budget movies…how about some more low budget miniseries? In fact, stop doing movies lol. WWe also need to get the guys from the invibile man and farscape back. We need Joss wheaden!
Come on sicfi, we can do this……..do somthin g right…yeaaahhhh that’d be greaatt