Your the A&E network and you want to start competing with the other networks like AMC and FX with their series Mad Men, The Walking Dead, Sons of Anarchy, The Americans and Breaking Bad. But where do you go to find new shows?

Well, if you’re A&E, you might go to one of the masters: Alfred Hitchcock. That’s right, A&E is soon to release a new show that series producer Carlton Cuse describes as “One part Friday Night Lights, one part Lost, [and] one part Twin Peaks.” That show: the Psycho prequel Bates Motel.

Intrigued? We are too. Fortunately, we get to be a bit more than intrigued as the first six minutes of the show have been released by A&E.

Bates Motel stars Freddie Highmore as Norman Bates and Vera Farmiga as his mother and debuts March 18th at 10 PM.

A&E is setting up a new series that will serve as a prequel to Hitchcock’s classic Psycho. The new show, Bates Motel, will attempt to tell the tale of how young Norman went from mama’s boy to psychopathic killer and the show has just cast its Norma Bates.

The news comes from Deadline which is reporting that academy award nominated actress Vera Farmiga is set to take on the role:

[Bates Motel] examines the twisted relationship between serial killer-to-be Norman Bates and his mother Norma. Farmiga will play Norma Louise Bates who is described as passionate, and compelling, a smart, multidimensional character who is always capable of surprising us. The Universal TV-produced Bates Motel has a 10-episode straight-to-series order for a 2013 premiere.

Between Bates Motel and Hannibal, it looks like TV execs are very interested in using the TV format to explore the unexplored pasts of some of cinema’s greatest killers. Hopefully the long form nature of a TV series will provide a better venue to tell these tales as opposed to prequel movies that have thus far been very uninspired.

The good news is A&E does have faith in the show as they already ordered it straight to series with out the need for a pilot. So it will have more of a chance to tell its tale sans the ratings pressure that Hannibal will feel over at NBC.

Keep tuned to The Flickcast for more news from the impending series as it gears toward production.

In 2009, director Duncan Jones made a splash on the indie scene by bringing us a smart, trippy sci-fi film called Moon. The film was warmly received by critics, but fell short of being a commercial success.

Despite the fact that Source Code has all the trappings of a studio film (bigger budget, bigger stars, bigger advertising campaign) Jones has remained remarkably faithful to his indie roots. The result is the rare mix of a smart thriller with wide audience appeal. We’ve seen that audiences don’t always shy away from smart films (case in point, Christopher Nolan’s Inception); maybe we are finally starting to see the studios warm to the idea that smart and commercially viable are not necessarily mutually exclusive concepts.

Source Code proves that the two can concepts can co-exist in perfect harmony. Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Captain Colter Stevens, who finds himself on a train in Chicago one day and is completely panicked to find out that he has no idea who the woman sitting with him is, and he doesn’t know how he got on the train. Before he can put the pieces of the puzzle, the train blows up.

Colter finds himself waking up in a pod-type device, listening to the soothing voice of Colleen (Vera Farmiga), a military officer who explains that he has been sent back in time (before the train exploded) to find out who placed the bomb on the train. They believe that another attack is planned, and the only way to stop it is to find the perpetrator of the attack on the first train.

It’s time for us to officially get excited for this year’s SXSW film festival.  We’ll be heading down March 10th and will have writers in Austin for the duration of the festival.  The first few nights of the festival always feature some great film premieres, and this year is no exception.

The opening night feature will be Source Code, a trippy mind-bender featuring Jake Gyllenhal, Michelle Monaghan, and Vera Farmiga. This is the eagerly awaited follow-up to Duncan Jones’ Moon, a film that debuted at the festival in 2009 to high praise from audiences and critics alike.

In case you’re not familiar with the film, here’s the synopsis:

When decorated soldier Captain Colter Stevens wakes up in the body of an unknown man, he discovers he’s part of a mission to find the bomber of a Chicago commuter train. In an assignment unlike any he’s ever known, he learns he’s part of a government experiment called the “Source Code,” a program that enables him to cross over into another man’s identity in the last 8 minutes of his life.

With a second, much larger target threatening to kill millions in downtown Chicago, Colter re-lives the incident over and over again, gathering clues each time, until he can solve the mystery of who is behind the bombs and prevent the next attack.

Source Code will have its world premiere on Friday, March 11 in Austin. It will open in theaters everywhere on April 1. Click through to check out the trailer.

Sci-Fi is the new action in 2011 as one of the bigger films, Duncan Jones’ Source Code has gotten it’s second, and International trailer. This is Jones’ second major science fiction release after last year’s thriller Moon. The film follows a pretty simple premise…for sci-fi nerds.

When decorated soldier Captain Colter Stevens wakes up in the body of an unknown man, he discovers he’s part of a mission to find the bomber of a Chicago commuter train. In an assignment unlike any he’s ever known, he learns he’s part of a government experiment called the ‘Source Code,” a program that enables him to cross over into another man’s identity in the last 8 minutes of his life. With a second much larger target threatening to kill millions in Downtown Chicago, Colter relives the incident over and over again, gathering clues each time, until he can solve the mystery of who is behind the bombs and prevent the next attack.

A little bit Twelve Monkeys, a little bit Quantum Leap, with the charm of Jake Gyllenhaal and the unique guerrilla directing style of Duncan Jones. Check out the new international trailer after the jump, and catch Source Code in theaters on April 15th.

Duncan Jones passed the writer’s strike test and managed to put out an amazing sci-fi thriller called Moon back in 2009. Now that things are back on an even(ish) playing field, Jones is getting another attempt to bend the minds of moviegoers with his newest psychological thriller, Source Code. Here’s the studio’s extensive synopsis.

When decorated soldier Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) wakes up in the body of an unknown man, he discovers he’s part of a mission to find the bomber of a Chicago commuter train. In an assignment unlike any he’s ever known, he learns he’s part of a government experiment called the “Source Code,” a program that enables him to cross over into another man’s identity in the last 8 minutes of his life.

With a second, much larger target threatening to kill millions in downtown Chicago, Colter re-lives the incident over and over again, gathering clues each time, until he can solve the mystery of who is behind the bombs and prevent the next attack. Filled with mind-boggling twists and heart-pounding suspense, Source Code is a smart action-thriller directed by Duncan Jones also starring Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, and Jeffrey Wright.

From what we can see, consider this film Twelve Monkeys meets Quantum Leap, with a few Inception elements thrown in. Check out the full trailer after the jump, and catch the film in theaters on April 15th.

In the utterly enjoyable Up in the Air, George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a corporate down-sizer.  Like a gun for hire, Ryan is kept on retainer to deliver pink slips instead of bullets; though some might argue there is little difference. Ryan has no personal relationships, rarely sleeps in the same city two days in a row, can fit everything important to him into a carry-on and he could not be happier.

Midway through the movie, Ryan explains that he is on the road traveling over 322 days of the year. That may sound awful to most of us, but to him “that means 43 miserable days at home.” That statement is perfectly indicative of how Ryan sees the world.

He doesn’t like attachments of any sort, human or material. He has a better relationship with the airline ticket agent than his own sisters, and prefers the tidiness and order he finds in all the rituals of traveling to anything authentic. He has the perfect job that by nature requires a skilled detachment.

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 this week as well.

Of all the new releases, we’re particularly interested in the Blu-ray versions of movies and TV shows such as Battlestar Galactica: The Plan, Night of the Creeps, the original Stargate, The Sam Fuller Collection, Orphan and the complete The Prisoner series starring and created by Patrick McGoohan (pictured above).

Check them out.

Movies

Battlestar Galactica: The Plan ~ Edward James Olmos, Tricia Helfer (DVD and Blu-ray)

42nd Street Forever 5: Alamo Drafthouse Edition ~ Charlton Heston, Robert Englund (DVD)

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs ~ Ray Romano (DVD and Blu-ray)

Into Temptation ~ Kristin Chenoweth, Jeremy Sisto (DVD and Blu-ray)

Writer David Leslie Johnson is pretty new to a lot of people, but he plans to be making a name for himself this Friday, as his film Orphan hits theaters across the country. The film is about a married couple who go through an abortion and decide that adoption is their last chance at having a child.

They meet Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman) who, on the outside, seems perfect, but later shows herself to be something “different.” We got a chance to sit down with David right before the hoopla at San Diego Comic-Con and talk about a few things.

The Flickcast: Given the premise of Orphan, would you call it more of a supernatural horror or more like a suspense thriller?

David Johnson: It has horror elements but it plays more like a suspense thriller. My mother actually compared it to films like Fatal Attraction and Cape Fear.

TF: So more of the human condition?

DJ: Yes, absolutely.

TF: A movie like this seems to stem from a history of horror and suspense thrillers, did you pick up a lot of influences from other films for the script?