When we first brought you news of Kiefer Sutherland’s impending return to TV in the Tim Kring created show Touch, it wasn’t a sure thing the show would make it to the air. The show was just a pilot and even with the people involved it had not been officially picked up by Fox.

Now, that’s changed. The show has been officially picked up to series for midseason with a 13-episode order. In case you’re not familiar with Touch, Sutherland plays a father who discovers his autistic, mute son can predict events before they happen.

Naturally, once Sutherland’s character knows what’s going to happen through his son, he’s obliged to take action. What kind of action?

Well, we will have to wait to find out for sure but the smart money is on seeing some 24-like action as Sutherland’s character is forced to take care of business at all costs. Anyway, we’re happy to see this show is going forward because, believe it or not, we kinda miss 24 and all its over-the-top wackiness.

Click through for the full press release from Fox. Look for Touch to hit the air next March.

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When I was growing up it was always ABC’s Monday Night Football with Howard Cosell, “Dandy” Don Meredith and Frank Gifford. Meredith would often sing ‘Turn out the Lights, the partys over” as one team or another dominated the proceedings and Cosell would often clash with Meredith or insult one or more players. It was fun and it seemed like anything could happen at any moment.

That was then, this is now. Monday Night Football has a home on ESPN and has been there since 2006. Now, it seems, ESPN is determined to hold on to the venerable franchise and has announced a new agreement to keep it until 2021. The cost? A reported $15 Billion.

The new agreement will cost ESPN 73% more than its previous NFL deal which likely means the Disney-owned sports channel will ask cable and satellite companies to pay more. Some other terms of the new deal kick off immediately.

Today ESPN’s NFL Live expands to an hour from a half hour. A discussion show based on fan-submitted questions, Audibles, also joins the Thursday night line up. This weekend Sunday NFL Countdown will run three hours, up from two.

On Tuesday ESPN2 will introduce a weekly, hour-long show NFL 32, followed on Friday by another weekly hour long show NFL Kickoff. Click through for all the details from the official ESPN press release.

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If you’re as addicted to Instant Netflix as the rest of us, you’re probably glued to the New Releases feed to see what the benevolent Netflix gods will bring you to enjoy from the comfort of your bed/couch every night. One company who has helped aid in their vast streaming library is Starz, which expands to original series and films that make it to their movie channels.

It looks like that deal won’t last much longer, as it’s been announced that Starz will choose to discontinue their deal with Netflix and Instant Netflix, pulling their content from the servers. Here’s the press release from Starz.

ENGLEWOOD, Colo., Sept. 1, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Starz, LLC, President and Chief Executive Officer, Chris Albrecht, issued the following statement today regarding the status of affiliation agreement renewal discussions with Netflix.

“Starz Entertainment has ended contract renewal negotiations with Netflix. When the agreement expires on February 28, 2012, Starz will cease to distribute its content on the Netflix streaming platform. This decision is a result of our strategy to protect the premium nature of our brand by preserving the appropriate pricing and packaging of our exclusive and highly valuable content.”

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This one comes directly from what we like to call the “Meh” department. Sure, some people may be huge fans of the Captain Planet and the Planeteers cartoon show, believe in its positive message and think it should be made into a live action feature film. And really, that’s fine. Positive messages are good.

However, some others, and a few around The Flickcast offices, see this news as yet another in a series of developments where it just seems like Hollywood has compleely run out of ideas and is now grasping at anything that even remotely seems to have the smallest chance of being made into a film. Yes, that’s a long sentence but you get the idea.

I supoose it could have something to do with the producer of the proposed live action Captain Planet adaptation: Don Murphy. In case you’re not familiar with his work he produced, most recently, Transformers: Turn off the Dark (or whatever its called). Obviously, the fact that his last movie made a butload of cash probably has something to do with his being able to get most anything (even a Captain Planet movie) greenlit.

Says Mr. Murphy: “We are extremely excited about bringing the good captain back to life. [The Captain's] adventures are known worldwide and he is recognized across generations.”

Ah hell, what do I know? I’m sure it will turn out to be the greatest movie since, well, the last Transformers. Although, that’s not much to live up to.

We know you’re excited about all the cool E3 and Apple news this week and don’t worry, there’s more to come. Let’s pause, however, and take a look at some news from Hollywood, shall we?

According to reports, Sony is moving forward with a sequel to the Angelena Jolie action vehicle Salt which came out last year. Writer Kurt Wimmer has begun working on a script and Jolie is reportedly hot to reprise her role as Evelyn Salt, a CIA agent who is accused of being a Russian spy but eventually ends up saving the day.

For those of you who missed Salt the first time around it’s a solid action thriller with some good twists and competent direction from veteran Phillip Noyce, whose previous film include Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger and The Bone Collector. You can check it out on Netflix Instant if you’re curious.

Sony could do worse making a sequel to Salt. I’m sure they would love to continue the series of films and establish a solid franchise. The company could probably use some good news these days.

When you’re in the news business and things move as fast as they do these days (i.e at the “speed of the Internerts”) sometimes a story will slip through the cracks. This is one of those stories.

A few days ago French video game publisher Ubisoft announced it is launching Ubisoft Motion Pictures to adapt its game franchises for film and TV. Heading up this new venture will be Jean-Julien Baronnet, former CEO of Luc Besson’s EuropaCorp., producer Didier Lupfer is in charge of production and development and Jean de Rivieres, former head of distribution at Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures France, will handle marketing and international sales.

Some of Ubisoft’s titles that could be movies include Assassin’s Creed and Splinter Cell. You also may recall Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was recently brought to the big screen by Jerry Bruckheimer, with Jake Gyllenhaal in the lead. Yeah, we kinda tried to forget that one too.

With this new division it will be interesting to see if the company can do a better job with turing its games into films than others have done. My guess is they probably won’t have much luck. Turning games into movies is very difficult, just ask all the people who’ve tried to do it.

You can put this in the “Why?” file but it seems somebody at least wanted to buy the Blockbuster video rental chain even as that business is going in the toilet. That somebody is Dish Network who, pending approval at a hearing on Thursday, will acquire Blockbuster Inc. following an auction that took place this week.

Dish Network’s winning bid was approximately $320 Million but the acquisition is expected to end up costing more like $228 Million in cash, taking into account Blockbuster’s inventory, available cash and other adjustments. Blockbuster was put up for sale at auction on Monday following its recent bankruptcy filing, and several companies competed for control of Blockbuster’s business and assets.

Dish’s winning bid topped several other bidders including Cobalt Video, a group of hedge funds lead by Monarch Alternative Capital and billionaire investor Carl Icahn. Also, I considered bidding as well but then the feeling passed after I turned on Netflix, started streaming a movie and realized having a video store these days is a pretty dumb idea.

However, Dish Network doesn’t seem to agree. “Blockbuster will complement our existing video offerings while presenting cross-marketing and service extension opportunities for Dish Network,” said Dish Network’s EVP of sales, marketing and programing, Tom Cullen. Okay, if you say so.

Click through for the full press release from Dish Network. And no, it doesn’t really explain the ‘Why?” either. Really, I can’t remember the last time I went to a Blockbuster and rented a movie. Can you?

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Love Netflix but not always completely satisfied with the number of first run movies the service offers for streaming? Same here. Fortunately, it seems the company is taking steps to remedy the situation in the form of a new content partnership agreements.

Back in August, Netflix closed a deal with Epix, a a joint venture between Viacom, Paramount, MGM and Lionsgate. And now, as of yesterday, the company entered into another agreement with new partner with producer/distributor FilmDistrict. Under the terms of the deal Netflix will license movies from FilmDistrict during what’s knows as the “pay TV window,” or the period of time when the films would have normally appeared on premium cable TV channels such as HBO or Showtime.

The first two movies to come to Netflix as a result of this partnership will be Drive, starring Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan, and Lockout, starring Guy Pearce and Maggie Grace. Both films are set to be released early next year.

This is good news as other services like Google TV seem to be struggling a bit to make content deals. Netflix offers a good service for a decent price and I, for one, hope they can continue to do so. They do need more first run movies, however, and these deals do seems like steps in the right direction. Lets hope they can keep it going.

Click through for the full press release announcing this latest content deal.

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I can understand the fascination with bringing video games to the big screen. After all we’ve seen so many successful translations of games to Hollywood blockbuster that it only makes sense to keep doing it, right? Sure it does.

Anyway, you can count the classic game Myst as yet another attempt by Hollywood to cash in on the Billlions of dollars video games generate each year. The top-selling computer adventure of all time, Myst has been has been optioned by Producers Hunt Lowry and Mark Johnson with partners Adrian Vanderbosch and Isaac Testerman.

“Our aim with this project is to stretch the genres it operated within, much like the source material did,” Vanderbosch said in the article. “It is such an innovative property and by utilizing the novels as our primary resource, we have the opportunity to offer audiences the essence of MYST without being limited only to the famous island of the first game. Our focus has always been on creating an entirely new visual experience driven by engaging characters and an epic narrative.”

In addition, Johnson, the producer of the upcoming The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, hopes is to bring the fantastic world of Myst to life as was done with Narnia. One focus of the film will reportedly center around a human who comes to the world of Myst and inadvertently brings down the civilization.

The project is currently out to potential writers and once a suitable script is done the next step is to find a director and get the project set up at a studio. We’ll keep you posted.

In what Deadline is describing as a “major deal’ IFC Films has picked up the rights to James Gunn’s latest film Super. The deal happened late last night during the currently running Toronto Film Festival and is reportedly of the seven figure variety.

In the film, Rainn Wilson plays Frank, a man who’s wife (Liv Tyler) leaves him for a seductive drug dealer (Kevin Bacon). Because of this, Frank decides to don the guise of a superhero called Crimson Bolt to wreak havoc on villains everywhere.

With his trusty sidekick Boltie (Ellen Page) Frank takes to the streets to stop evil doers and in the process tries to regain his self-respect and the affections of his wife. Plus, he uses his plumber’s wrench to good effect and crushes a few bad guys skulls in the process.

No word yet on IFC’s release plans for the film but we’ll bring it to you when we know. In the meantime, for more info on this deal check out the full press release from IFC after the jump.

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I will have to admit that I’ve not watched the FX series Damages very much. In truth, I’ve only seen the first few episodes. However, that hasn’t stopped the show from being a hit with many fans.

Unfortunately, that number of fans wasn’t enough for FX to keep the show on the air another season and it was officially canceled. But wait, there’s good news if you love the show. According to Deadline, the ratings-challenged show has been rescued by DirecTV. What does this mean? Well, count on Glenn Close, Rose Byrne and other major cast members being on board for two more seasons (20 episodes) of the Emmy-nominated show.

In addition, the satellite company is also picking up the rights to air seasons one through three so fans will get a chance to experience the series in its entirety all on one network. This deal will be different than DirecTV’s previous pickup of NBC’s canceled Friday Night Lights in that, unlike that show, Damages will only air on the satellite network and not on NBC as well.

Expect more episodes of Damages to being airing on DirecTV next year.

Apparently, director Sam Raimi isn’t straying too far from comics now that his tenure with the Spider-Man film franchise is done. According to Variety, Raimi is now attached to direct Radical Comics’ Earp: Saints for Sinners. The film will be a co-production of Dreamworks, Radical Studios, Mandeville and Star Road, Raimi’s production company.

In case you’re not familiar, the story of the project is described as “a modern-day re-imagining of Western hero Wyatt Earp fighting outlaws in a ravaged society where the only boomtown left is Las Vegas.” Co-creator/writer Matt Cirulnick will adapt the graphic novel for the big screen.

There’s no word on how this new project will fit into Raimi’s already busy schedule which includes directing World of Warcraft, based on the popular MMO, and Oz, the Great and Powerful, a prequel to the The Wizard of Oz. However, according to reports, this will be his next film after WOW.

With Raimi’s undeniable talent and love for material such as this the combo of Raimi and pretty much any comic property should be cause for happiness among fans. Now that his directing of the adaptation is set, we can turn to other important things like what part Bruce Campbell is going to play.