a byte of sci fi

At WonderCon in San Francisco this past weekend, executive producer of FOX’s Human Target, Jonathan Steinberg, was asked about what he is hearing on the show’s chances of renewal and “Good Things” was his response.  He elaborated on the show’s future prospects:

I feel like FOX, they’ve been a fan of the show from early on. I think they got it. I think they like where the show is. I think that even they are aware of the fact that this was such a difficult launch for us, just being all over the schedule. On some level, I think it’s about, ‘Let’s make a great show and then let’s figure out how to get people watching it.’ I think that that’s kinda how Kevin Reilly thinks and how the network thinks. So I’m hopeful. The show has a lot of room to grow, but I’m hopeful we’ll have a chance to do it and make a bunch more of them.

He did admit that the show had some scheduling challenges early on:

You know what’s the weird thing? The temptation early on is that somebody screwed up, but they kinda didn’t.  It was just a series of really bad breaks — the State of the Union, the Chargers winning — the odds of all of those things happening are so slim and the odds of us surviving them all are even slimmer, so I think for us, the show seems to be doing pretty well creatively and it seems to be received well and we’re still alive. We should have been dead after those first four weeks. So I think those things together are enough to give you an opportunity at a second swing at it.

You can read the full conversation with Jonathan Steinberg at Hitfix.com

Sci Fi Wire recently caught up with Lee Unkrich who is the director on the upcoming Pixar release Toy Story 3.  He had this to say on why it has taken so long (15 years) to bring us a third installment in the beloved franchise:

We actually had an idea for years, but the political machinations between Pixar and Disney prevented us from making Toy Story 3.  Luckily when Disney finally ended up buying the studio, that opened up the floodgate of freedom to finally make the sequel. Interestingly enough, the sequel that we thought we were going to make for Toy Story 3 for all those years is not the movie we ended up making. We started talking about it and really getting deeper into it, and we realized it was a cool concept but it wasn’t a deep enough story to sustain a feature. That panicked us, because we never wanted to make a sequel just for the sake of making a sequel. We wanted to do it because we had a good story, but all of a sudden we found ourselves wanting to make a sequel but not having the story. We felt like we were doing it all backwards. Luckily we pounded away on it for a couple of days and talked about what was really important to us and how we could tap the emotional depth of the stories we had told so far. We came up with what over four years is now Toy Story 3.

You can read the full conversation at this link and see the latest trailer at the movie’s official site.  Toy Story 3 hits the theaters on June 18th.

V returns with new episodes tonight and Sci Fi Wire recently talked with Elizabeth Mitchell who plays FBI agent Erica Evans on the show (and previously appeared as Juliet on Lost).  Following is an excerpt from that conversation and you can read the full interview at this link:

How will this show be different when it comes back?

Mitchell: Well I loved the first four episodes; I thought Scott Peters did a fantastic job. I think that, if anything, it’s a little rougher, definitely a little sexier. And I think that we get a chance to get on our feet and explore the characters more. Whereas before, it was kind of a template for what could be to come, and then we get to get in there. So both Scotts [exiting executive producer Scott Peters and new show runner Scott Rosenbaum] did a pretty amazing job of setting that up. It was a nice and easy transition made so by both of them, so it was good.

What’s Scott Rosenbaum bringing that’s a different point of view? We know him from FX’s The Shield.

Mitchell: The Shield, and he did a little bit of Chuck as well. I, I enjoy him, because I really love the way that he writes. He’s incredibly fluid. And the thing about a TV show is we have to let people know what happened before. … You see a little bit of that in there as us telling the story, but as things keep going, that happens less and less and less, and you actually just get to see how kind of fluid and vicious and kind of sexy his writing is, which it is. And it’s fun to play. I love the stuff he comes up with. He has a very warped and kind of lovely imagination. And I’m all for that.

Read the Full Interview

The Guardian recently interviewed Steven Moffat, the man who has taken the reigns as producer of Doctor Who from Russel T. Davies.  Following is an excerpt from that conversation and you can read the full interview at this link.

Moffat says he doesn’t have an agenda for how his Doctor Who will differ from Davies’s but “these things happen as a matter of instinct” and his instinct led him towards a more “storybook quality”. “For me, Doctor Who literally is a fairy tale. It’s not really science fiction. It’s not set in space, it’s set under your bed. It’s at its best when it’s related to you, no matter what planet it’s set on.”

Moffat is reluctant to plunder Who’s history without good reason – “The more you back-reference, the more it feels like a sequel and the sequel is never as good as the original” – but that isn’t to say that the past is another galaxy. “Old favourites can return, provided you can do something new and exciting with them. There are no past characters coming back in this series, but I imagine that kids would love to see Captain Jack meet the new Doctor.”

“Every time it cleaves towards that, it’s very strong. Although it is watched by far more adults than children, there’s something fundamental in its DNA that makes it a children’s programme and it makes children of everyone who watches it. If you’re still a grown up by the end of that opening music, you’ve not been paying attention.”

Read the Full Interview

The Fifth Season of Doctor Who Begins April 3rd on the BBC and April 17th on BBC America.

The Guardian recently ran a profile on Matt Smith, the actor who will take over for David Tennant as the lead in Doctor Who, and they talked to him about how he has approached the role.  Following is an excerpt from that conversation and you can read the full piece at this link:

When asked how Smith is going to make the Doctor his own, he answered:

“He’s a little reckless. He’ll walk into a room and have a million things to do. And, as opposed to knowing exactly how to get out, he’ll take it up to the precipice: don’t know, don’t know, don’t know, and boom, there’s the idea. And it’s a bit mad and reckless. It’s very doof, doof, doof. And he’s got a companion who I think is the hardest to handle. And she’s quite mad. But the Doctor’s quite mad as well. So together…”

Is he going to be one of those melancholy doctors like Christopher Eccleston, weighed down by his traumatic history? “I think it’s impossible to escape that with the Doctor. He’s lost so many people and devastated so much… bad or good, he’s brought whole empires down. He’s seen a lot, and that’s part of his personality. But that’s also what gives him such joy and effervescence.” (Read the Full Article)

The Matt Smith episodes of Doctor Who will begin airing on April 3rd on the BBC and on April 17th on BBC America.

Buy Doctor Who on DVD from Amazon.com:

i09.com recently talked with the two men who penned the script for the remake of Ray Harryhausen’s The Clash of the Titans, Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi.  Following are some bytes from that conversation and you can read the full review at this link.

io9: How did you update this movie for the new millennium?

Hay: All those signature creatures are there; we wanted to do that. I think the way the action is pulled off is different. A lot of the new stuff revolves around the characters, who Perseus [Sam Worthington] is.

Manfredi: We focused on the interactions between the men and gods, and the journey of Perseus. He’s a demigod – a man and a god. And he’s trying to figure that out at a time when man is questioning his relationship to gods who have ruled with an iron fist. Our feeling is that he resists the god side of him. He chooses the side that is a man.

Why do you think Hollywood was interested in doing this remake now?

Manfredi: Honestly I’m surprised that there haven’t been more movies with Greek mythology in them. Especially since it’s the root of superhero movies clearly. 300 is sort of in this vein, and though it’s not about gods there’s a connection to what we’re doing obviously. And as movies like Lord of the Rings make clear, there’s a huge interest in fantasy.

Read the Full Interview at io9.com

TV.com recently interviewed Craig Horner who heads the cast of the sword and sorcery series Legend of the Seeker.  Following are a few bytes from that discussion and you can read the full interview at this link.

Looking back over the evolution of the show, it seems it took a real emotional turn with Season 1 episode 8, the debut of Denna and the Mord’Siths.
That was one of my favorite episodes, that and episodes one and two. They had a real journey for Richard; meaty yeah? We really went there, you were just in a dungeon, just two characters playing out scenes—it was powerful wasn’t it? But that’s kind of the question: Do you make a show that’s just a frenzy of fast-moving images…or do you just make solid acts, keep them self contained, sort of. I wish we could do that more.

At the end of Season 1, Kahlan says to Richard, “No one can blame you if you want to go home.” And Richard says, “I am home.” How long do you see Legend of the Seeker being your home? Do you want a third season? A sixth season?
There are so many pros about this job, and a couple of cons—being away from friends and family in Australia to shoot for nine months of the year, and the shooting is grueling. I want to live all aspects of my life, not just acting.

But this is a project that could go on for years. I mean, we’re not just sitting around in a medical room, talking about this or that disease. I get to ride horses, fight with swords, fulfill my Indiana Jones dreams, my Conan and Star Wars fantasies. And it’s always, you know, the end of the world, losing your father, your son, your mother (laughs). So if there’s a character I could keep playing, it’s Richard.

Read the Full Interview at TV.com