Netflix came one step closer to total entertainment domination today with its announcement of a new deal that will bring additional content from ABC, ABC Family and the Disney Channel to the company’s online streaming service. New shows will now be available on Watch Instantly 15 days after their initial air date.

Some of the new content coming to the service includes Grey’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives and Brothers & Sisters. The deal also brings complete seasons of past shows such as Lost, Ugly Betty and Scrubs.

“TV content streamed from Netflix has proven to be immensely popular with our members,” Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos said in the release. “Adding to our existing Disney-ABC lineup with great network and cable shows, and opening up ABC Family for the first time, are important steps in creating a wide and diverse selection of content Netflix members of all ages can watch.”

Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” service allows DVDs-by-mail subscribers to stream an unlimited amount of TV and movie content to computers, compatible set-top boxes and other devices like Apple’s iPad and iPhone 4. The company also recently made available a stand-alone version without the physical media component for $7.99 per month.

Today’s deal with ABC/Disney is the latest in a series of deals Netflix has put together in an effort to increase the quantity of new content available to its streaming customers. We say keep up the good work and keep the content coming.

Back at Comic-Con, Castle creator Andrew Marlowe spilled the beans on a Nick Fury script he had written for Marvel. Last we heard he was still tweaking it and about to hand it over to the studio, and it looks like that’s exactly what he’s done.

We recently got a chance to catch up with Marlowe in between scenes on the set of ABC’s Castle to discuss his plan for the first agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. and he believes a Fury movie based on his script has great potential.

It’s been in Marvel’s hands for a while. They’re point of view is that Nick has never supported his own comic book. It’s only been special runs or one-shots.

I think that they have questions whether the audience will show up for a character if they spent $150-$200 million on a movie. Crashing the helicarrier? Very expensive.

My script was more along the lines in a Steranko mode. Like the American James Bond. I think with Sam Jackson, they’ve gone in a different direction from my script, but I think that if that character continues to excite audiences, I think that there are ways to do it. I haven’t read The Avengers script yet, but I know they guys at Marvel are smart in terms of the intersection of the creativity, the fun, and the commerce of it all.

Right now, it’s in their very capable hands, and I have faith in them.

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Since the announcement that Disney purchased Marvel Entertainment over a year ago, we the fans have been waiting to see exactly how that would effect us, because really, it’s all about us. We haven’t seen any mega-crossovers like Daredevil the Pooh or Spider-Mouse, but it looks like Disney may just be pulling some weight by bringing a few Marvel titles to your TV screen.

After a presentation on the Disney lot, Marvel has put together a short list of properties that they are looking to bring to TV in the next few years. On the very top of that list is a live action Hulk series, helmed by comic veteran Jeph Loeb, who most know for his work on NBC’s Heroes.

Hulk could go into production over at ABC as early as mid-summer. Next in line, the plan is to work on a series based on the Cloak & Dagger franchise, which would go straight to ABC’s cable network, ABC Family. The story would follow the duo of Tyrone Johnson (aka Cloak, who has the ability to teleport) and Tandy Bowen (aka Dagger, who has the ability to heal and create daggers from light).

Both shows are in very early development, but that hasn’t stopped the studio from poking around a handful of other properties to adapt into the small screen. Heat Vision has the short list.

Executives presented ABC suits with a list of titles they identified as possible series:
• Heroes for Hire (focusing on ex-con Luke Cage offering to take on bad guys for a price);
• The Eternals (a race of superpowered beings live amid humanity in secret, inspiring legends);
• Agents of Atlas, Alter Ego (private investigator Jessica Jones takes on cases involving superhumans);
• Moon Knight, the Red Hood (a low-rent criminal discovers a cloak that gives him superpowers);
• Ka-Zar (a Tarzan-type and his saber-toothed tiger must journey to the concrete jungle to seek justice);
• Daughters of the Dragon (a dynamic female duo, one with a bionic arm and the other a granddaughter of a samurai, open a private-detective agency); and
• The Punisher (one man wages a war on crime; already adapted as two feature films).

Even given Hulk and Cloak & Dagger, this is an incredible list, and could only mean that Warner/DC and Disney/Marvel have decided that the silver screen wasn’t large enough for them to wage war, and they’re now taking over our living rooms. In any outcome, we all win.

You heard that right. Pushing Daisies creator Bryan Fuller is currently working with NBC to bring a brand new Munsters reboot to the airwaves as soon as next season. Just like that, what could be a terrible idea, has been turned around into a potential brilliant idea. From EW.

So far, NBC, with whom Fuller has an overall deal, has ordered only a pilot. But since the potential series is being described to me as “Modern Family meets True Blood,” I have a good feeling about it.

Not only that, but rumor has it no less than Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy) is eyeing a behind-the-scenes role in the project.

So if fanboys and fangirls weren’t excited enough for Daisies creator Fuller to come on-board, master of twisted horror/sci-fi del Toro is also looking to hop into the mix.

Though it’s sad to believe, a lot of this project’s future rides on whether or not ABC’s newest series No Ordinary Family succeeds. If the TV-watching American audience doesn’t buy into the not-so-conventional family comedies that they used to scoop up in the mid 1990′s, this series could be dead before it’s ever born.

We expect to hear more news soon, but don’t expect anything official until we get closer to NBC’s next Fall Upfronts next year.

Highlights of tonight’s Emmy Awards from our pals at NBC. Enjoy.

Modern Family Gone Mad
Messing with Modern Family’s Emmy-winning formula is a dangerous–and comical–idea.

Jim Parsons
Jim Parsons wins the Emmy for Lead Actor, Comedy Series for his work on The Big Bang Theory.

Jane Lynch
Jane Lynch wins the Emmy for Supporting Actress, Comedy Series for her work on Glee.

Julie Benz appears to have gone from victim to hero in one fell swoop. After leaving behind Rita Morgan after four seasons on Dexter, the actress is primed to portray Stephanie Powell on ABC’s upcoming family show, No Ordinary Family.  No longer the dead body in the bathtub, Powell is a busy professional scientist and researcher who develops super speed following a crash landing in the Amazon on a trip with her family. After deciding to move on from Dexter, Renz related that she was looking for a new challenge and the character of Stephanie was just what she was looking for.

“When pilot season started, my quest was to find a character that was strong female character, a character that is more active than Rita. I was getting offered a lot of parts that were similar to her and I was turning them down because I wanted to find something that was different.”

While there might be the temptation to compare Rita with Stephanie, Benz insists that she didn’t pull inspiration from portraying a mother on a previous show. For one thing, the personalities are incredibly different.

“I think they’re both mothers, but other than that, there’s really no commonality. Rita was not career driven at all, she was very dependent, very damaged with a lot of  vulnerabilities, very emotional. Stephanie’s very controlled, a Type A personality, goal oriented and has a hard time interacting with her own family.”

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In his first TV show since retiring the role of Vic Mackey in The Shield, Michael Chiklis will soon be bounding into your living room as Jim Powell, a police sketch artist who receives the supernatural powers of super-strength, the ability to be bullet-proof and can leap buildings in a…well, you get the idea.

We caught up with Chiklis at San Diego’s Comic-Con and talked to him about his upcoming role and how it is and isn’t a departure from characters he’s portrayed in the past. After all, how do you follow up Vic Mackey by playing another cop?

“Here we have a family show at its core, wrapped in a police procedural, wrapped in a superhero show. That’s something I’ve not seen before. If The Shield lacked any credibility at all, it was the fact that Mackey didn’t have an aneurysm. Seven years of that can wreck havoc on your nervous system and it’s really kind of great and refreshing to do something that I can sit with my family and watch. My eleven year old was starting to question whether I was even an actor. She’s like, ‘dad, do you really act? I can’t see anything you’re in.’”

The concept behind No Ordinary Family will sound familiar to Fantastic Four and The Incredibles fans, but there hasn’t been an adaptation in this vein developed for television in recent memory. Sure, four characters get powers (strength, super speed, telepathy and super intelligence) and yes, it’s combined within a family that is struggling to stay connected and important to each other. But what would you rather see? Superheroes or more Cops?

“I thought it was long overdue. I did the Fantastic Four movies and I’ve been a comic book geek for a long time, since I was a kid. It’s funny though, a bunch of people have said to me, almost as if there’s been tons and tons of superhero shows on television, and to mind, I only can think of one, really in the last 20 years, which is Heroes, which is a decidedly different show.

But I’m thinking, we’re on cop show 475,000 and no one goes, ‘oh really, another cop show?!’ And some people are all, oh you’re going to play another superhero again? Yes! This place (Comic-Con) isn’t getting smaller. Now they’re making more money at Comic-Con than they did at the SuperBowl. This is a genre that’s here to stay. And it’s only natural as a genre to explore the different shapes of it.”

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It’s Emmy time and the nominations were announced this morning in LA at the Academy of Arts & Sciences for the 62nd annual awards show. It was a big day for HBO as it’s show The Pacific received the most nominations with 24.

Other shows nominated for several awards include Fox’s Glee with 19 nominations, AMC’s Mad Men with 17, NBC’s 30 Rock and HBO’s Temple Grandin and You Don’t Know Jack with 15 each, ABC’s Modern Family with 14 and NBC’s Saturday Night Live with 12.

Also nominated in a big way was ABC’s Dancing With The Stars with 9, Showtime’s Nurse Jackie with 8, CBS’ Two And A Half Men with 6, CBS’ Big Bang Theory with 5. HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, CBS’ How I Met Your Mother and NBC’s The Office all tied with 4.

As it often does, HBO led with 101 nominations total. ABC, with 63 nominations, received the most for any broadcast network followed by CBS with 57, NBC with 48, FOX with 47, and mighty PBS with 32.

All in all it seems like quite a diverse group of shows were nominated this year and we congratulate all of the nominees. Plus, it’s nice to see people finally get recognized for their work including Kyle Chandler of Friday Night Lights as well as Betty White with her 20th nomination for hosting Saturday Night Live.

Click through for more nominees and be sure to check out the official Emmy site for more. The 62nd annual Primetime Emmy Awards air on August 29, 2010 on NBC.

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There are certainly a lot of new shows hitting both network and basic cable TV this Summer and Fall. Some that we’re pretty excited for, and some we can’t wait to miss (looking at you, The Cape). One of the shows that looks to have some promise is ABC’s upcoming half-hour comedy Mr. Sunshine.

The show stars Matthew Perry as Ben Donovan, a sports arena manager who goes through a mid-life crisis right after his 40th birthday, all while dealing with the oddball employees and demands that his job presents.

Helping out Perry is a pretty solid cast of TV regulars like West Wing favorite Allison Janney, Las Vegas’s Nate Torrence and James Lesure, Better Off Ted’s Andrea Anders, and even Portia Doubleday for good measure.

While the cast alone should be enough to get us excited, we’re more psyched by the fact that the show is being written by TV veteran Thomas Schlamme and Perry himself. Fans of Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip know that this team is quite impressive when at their peak, so we can’t wait to see more.

Check out two new clips and a sneak preview of the show after the jump, and stay with ABC this October, as Mr. Sunshine makes it’s debut.

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I guess one show about spies isn’t enough for J.J. Abrams. With Undercovers currently going ahead at NBC, the writer-director-producer is now discussing the possibility of bringing back his earlier spy series Alias to ABC.

According to “insider” sources, the rebooted series would have some elements of the original that featured a then-unknown Jennifer Garner. However, it would be a more straightforward action/spy show and wouldn’t contain the mythology involving the Rimbaldi prophecy and subsequent other developments.

While discussion are only in the very preliminary stages, ABC would reportedly make this move in an effort to hold onto the audience they will be losing now that Lost has ended and FlashForward was cancelled. Plus, spies seem like a hot commodity on TV right now with the return next season of Chuck, USA’s Burn Notice still going strong and the upcoming debuts of the CW’s Nikita and the aforementioned Undercovers.

Given all that, it would seem the decision by ABC to reboot the show might be a good one. Still, you have to wonder about TV executives. They lose a show like Lost and the best idea they can come up with to “replace” it as to reboot a series that only lasted five years and towards the end got incredibly convoluted and lost a great deal of its audience?

Well, if a new Alias really does come to pass then my vote for the new Sydney Bristow is Kerri Russell. She was great as a spy (briefly) in Mission Impossible III so I think she would make a great choice. What do you guys think?

This week on The Flickcast Chris and Matt are joined once again by recurring guest host Elisbeth Rappe. This time around the trio takes on a handful of new and returning topics including the Lost series finale, finales of other TV shows like 24, what it takes to produce a weekly television program, news on various upcoming feature film projects and a whole lot more.

The trio also makes some great picks this week including Elisabeth’s pick of Captain Ron, another film featuring Kurt Russell with an eye patch, Matt’s pick of the Michael Cera starrer Youth in Revolt and Chris’ pick of the 1960 Stanley Kubrick classic Spartacus.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques, offers of sponsorship or whatever, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter, at Facebook and MySpace or via email.

Now that this season of primetime TV is coming to a close, we have a few bright spots on the horizon. We’ve been bringing you some of the newest Fall schedules, along with a few previews of upcoming shows we think look cool. Keeping up with that theme we bring you a sneak peak at ABC’s new superhero comedy No Ordinary Family.

From a distance, the story plays out like a live-action version of The Incredibles, but upon closer inspection it actually has a bit more depth. Michael Chiklis plays Jim Powell, a regular husband and father who, alongside his wife and two children, are in an accident that give each of them unique powers. His wife, Stephanie (played by Dexter’s Julie Benz) develops super speed, while his children develop telepathy and other extraordinary mind powers. Jim, however, leads the family with the gift of invulnerability and super strength.

There are some obvious and great connections to former Chiklis projects in the pilot, such as his work as Ben Grimm/The Thing in Fantastic Four, and the fact that he plays a cop again, much like The Shield or The Commish.

The pilot has the potential to be exactly what NBC’s Heroes wasn’t for a lot of fans, and could be a fun, quirky family comedy with a comic book backdrop. Check out the trailer after the jump and be sure to keep an eye (and a DVR) out for No Ordinary Family this Fall on ABC.

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