TNT, the network known for its legal/detective dramas (including endless reruns of Law & Order), is now venturing into Sci-Fi with Steven Spielberg and Dreamworks on a series that will star Noah Wyle and Moon Bloodgood. The series, despite not yet having a name, has a pilot directed by Carl Franklin (Devil in A Blue Dress, Out of Time) — who is also working with Spielberg on episodes of the forthcoming WWII television mini-series The Pacific — and a story written by Saving Private Ryan scribe Robert Rodat.
Noah Wyle, who has become quite familiar with TNT through his numerous The Librarian TV Movies, will star as a professor that winds up in the rebellion against the alien invaders. Bloodgood, who really seems to have a taste for the genre with her past roles Terminator: Salvation and the “canceled too-soon” series Journey Man, will play a therapist that works with surviving children of the invasion.
Other names of cast members include Seychelle Gabriel (The Spirit, and M. Night Syamalan’s The Last Airbender), Jessy Schram (Life, Crash: The Series) and Drew Roy (Greek, Lincoln Heights). According to reports, the series opens shortly after aliens have wiped out most of humanity. The aliens are now rounding up the few people left, but they are met with strong resistance from a group of soldiers and civilians who fight for their survival – all while struggling to maintain their humanity.
With Black Friday sales behind us but with Christmas right around the corner, there’s still time to get some great movies on DVD and Blu-ray this holiday season. To help, here’s a list of some of the new movie and TV shows coming to DVD and Blu-ray this week that we’re looking forward to seeing. Also, there’s some classic, and not-so-classic, movies hitting Blu-ray for the first time.
Of all the new releases, we’re particularly interested in the Blu-ray versions of movies and TV shows such as The Wizard of Oz, Gremlins, Snatch, Ben 10: Alien Swarm and the Blu-ray debut of McG’s Terminator: Salvation (shown above with Christian Bale and Sam Worthington).
Check them out:
A Christmas Tale (The Criterion Collection) (Blu-ray)
Ben 10 Alien Swarm ~ Ryan Kelley, Nathan Keyes, Alyssa Diaz, and Galadriel Stineman (DVD and Blu-ray)
Better Off Ted: Season One ~ Jay Harrington, Portia de Rossi (DVD and Blu-ray)
That Joss Whedon is a funny guy and one heck of a writer. His shows, including Firefly, Buffy, Angel and Dollhouse, are among the most favored by fans and, of course, we love his work here at The Flickcast. Now, with the Terminator franchise apparently up for sale (again) Whedon has made a modest proposal of his own to buy the entire thing in an open letter to those selling the franchise.
Among the items covered in this open letter are how much he offers for the franchise and what he would do with it if he got it. Its a funny and, in some cases, inspirational attempt at humor from a man who knows how to bring the funny.
Although, maybe he’s serious and thinks he would do a good job with the franchise? And, thinking about it a bit more myself, I think he would do a great job with Terminator also. Interesting thoughts indeed.
Take a look at the full text of the letter after the jump, courtesy of the fine folks at Whedonesque. Once you read it, give us your thoughts on the idea.
It looks as if another franchise could end up being a victim to the economic recession. The rights to the lucrative Terminator movie series are up for sale yet again. The LA Times reports Derek Anderson and Victor Kubicek, who acquired the science-fiction franchise in 2007 for $25 million and produced Terminator: Salvation, are looking to sell the rights as they work through a Chapter 11 reorganization.
But fans shouldn’t get too worried about never seeing their favorite Terminator model on the silver screen again. There’s a long history of franchise rights changing hands over the years.
At the time of release in 1984, production company Hemdale Films owned a 50% interest and director James Cameron sold the other half to producer Gale Anne Hurd for $1. Carolco Pictures, owned by producers Mario Kassar and Andrew Vajna, bought Hemdale’s stake in 1990 for $10 million, but filed for bankruptcy in 1997.
Kassar and Vajna then created C2 Pictures, which bought their old company’s stake for $8 million and the remaining 50% from Hurd for $7 million. In 2007, Kassar and Vajna sold the rights to current owners, Anderson and Kubicek.
No word yet on how the potential sale will effect Terminator 5 and 6, which Terminator: Salvation director McG is working on, but if box office receipts and ownership history are any indication of what the future might hold, the potential owner is sure to find some way to keep the story going.
Not to beat a dead horse, but Terminator: Salvation kind of sucked. We reviewed the film last week, and it wasn’t much to rave about. The one part in particular that seemed to stick out the most in the haystack of crap was how similar the film looked to Michael Bay’s Transformers.
The trailer mash-up masters over at Black20 felt the same way, and now you can see the havoc that is brought on by The Transforminators.
Memorial weekend is a time primarily held for big budget films that will pave the way for the summer blockbuster season usually lasting until late August. This weekend has been held by such movies as Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, X-Men: Last Stand, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, each grossing over $100 million for the weekend. The last time the box office did less than $100 million that weekend was 2005 with the animated Madagascar.
This past weekend, two relatively large films opened up: the follow up to 2006’s Night at the Museum, and the fourth film in the Terminator franchise, Terminator: Salvation. ‘Night’ ended up taking the weekend with an estimated $70 million over ‘Salvation’s $53 million. Though Terminator opened on Thursday and technically took in $67 million for the four days, the weekend itself was won by the Ben Stiller vehicle. Though, Terminator losing wasn’t much of a surprise if you read our review here on the site.
No word on what this could mean for the box office and the rest of the summer, seeing as how there are plenty of big budget films on the way, and the highest grossing weekend this year goes to Wolverine at $85 million. Does this mean we could see a weak financial year for studios? Have people run out of money after seeing Dark Knight 36 times in the theater? Only time will tell.
Due to the long holiday weekend we, like other sites out there, won’t be posting quite as much stuff. Hey, ever our writers need time off sometimes (but not too much). Still, that doesn’t mean we won’t be putting up anything.
Case in point, this new Terminator-inspired music video made by Matthew Belinkie, the guy responsible for other fan films like The Dark Bailout andIndy Shot First.
Even thought the production quality isn’t the greatest (it is a fan film, remember), the video is still fun and the song is pretty decent as well. Enjoy.
Even with our own Matt Raub’s less-than-stellar review, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Termnator: Salvation hit the ground running and so far has done well at the domestic box office. With a first-day total of $13.3 million, including some Wednesday midnight performances, the film is expected to gross close to $70 million through the Monday holiday.
The first-day tally for the film fell short of any significant record, but that could be the good news for Warners if it’s to outpace Fox’s big opener, Night at the Museum 2, for weekend bragging rights. Weekend rankings will be based on Friday through Monday grosses and, according to the reporter, some had suggested a huge Thursday gross might sap the Terminator of sufficient boxoffice strength to take the top spot for the weekend.
Paramount’s Star Trek continued to perform well and was second among Thursday’s top grossers earning $3 million to make its total $161.6 million so far. Sony’s Angels & Demons was third with $2.6 million, pushing the Tom Hanks starrer beyond $160 million.
I guess you should never underestimate the power of Christian Bale, explosions and robots that kill.
Before you sit down in that dark theater this weekend to see Terminator: Salvation, if you are a fan of the Terminator franchise, this movie is not for you. The very first words out of my mouth after walking out of the theater were “This was a terrible Terminator movie, but a pretty good Transformers movie.” Truer words haven’t been said abut this film. We at The Flickcast had our doubts about this film, between Bale’s outburst on set and McG slowly stepping out of the limelight, but none of us expected the film to be this bad.
Even going into this without expectations, it’s pretty hard to salvage a good movie from the two hours or so you’re in the theater. With bad accents and love story subplots, this movie forces fans of the franchise into a blinding rage by the time the credits role. I had the luck of being in a packed house with fans who were hooting and screaming when the first titles came on the screen. Their demeanor changed pretty quickly as the movie went on.
What makes this film a better Transformers film than a Terminator film? How about the complete lack of anything “time travel”. It’s understood in Terminator canon that they don’t find a time travel device until the fall of SkyNet, but how can you continue a franchise and not even address one of it’s biggest plot points? That would be like making a sequel to Back to the Future all about how peaceful and trouble free the McFly’s are in 1996. The closest they came to this plot point was the voice of Sarah Connor on a tape recorder giving John instructions from the past (not Linda Hamilton, by the way).
Sure, you could wait until this Friday to see Terminator: Salvation, the latest film in the Terminator saga. You could also ignore the other clips and bits of info we’ve shown you in the past about the film and just go in cold. But really, what fun would that be?
Instead, why not take a look at another clip from the film, courtesy of MTV’s Movie’s Blog, featuring Sam Worthinton and Star Trek’s Anton Yelchin as Marcus Wright and the young Kyle Reese.
This clips has a bit of cool Terminator action as well as a line of dialog you may be familiar with — that is if you’ve ever seen any other Terminator films. Of course, if you haven’t seen any other Terminator films, you’re probably not reading this right now. For better or worse, Terminator: Salvation opens this Friday. Meantime, enjoy this clip. . . or not.
TNT, the network known for its legal/detective dramas (including endless reruns of Law & Order), is now venturing into Sci-Fi with Steven Spielberg and Dreamworks on a series that will star Noah Wyle and Moon Bloodgood. The series, despite not yet having a name, has a pilot directed by Carl Franklin (Devil in A Blue Dress, Out of Time) — who is also working with Spielberg on episodes of the forthcoming WWII television mini-series The Pacific — and a story written by Saving Private Ryan scribe Robert Rodat.
That Joss Whedon is a funny guy and one heck of a writer. His shows, including Firefly, Buffy, Angel and Dollhouse, are among the most favored by fans and, of course, we love his work here at The Flickcast. Now, with the Terminator franchise 
It looks as if another franchise could end up being a victim to the economic recession. The rights to the lucrative Terminator movie series are up for sale yet again. The 
Memorial weekend is a time primarily held for big budget films that will pave the way for the summer blockbuster season usually lasting until late August. This weekend has been held by such movies as Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, X-Men: Last Stand, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, each grossing over $100 million for the weekend. The last time the box office did less than $100 million that weekend was 2005 with the animated Madagascar.
Even with our own Matt Raub’s 
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