Sci Fi TV News: Weekly digest of the recent news and updates relating to sci fi and fantasy television.
Wheel of Time is making a return to television, but it is not quite what fans hoped for. iwot Studios will be producing an animated series based on the property along with an animated feature film and a new video game, with Thomas Vu (Arcane, League of Legends) helming the project. These will not act as continuations of the cancelled live-action series that fans worked hard to save, but will instead be separate from that. Vu had the following to say about the new direction:
I see tremendous opportunity in expanding The Wheel of Time into fully authentic, integrated, interactive, and animated storytelling experiences. The depth of the mythology provides a foundation for sustained, multi-platform franchise growth.
This pretty much seems to put a nail in the coffin of a revival of the series that ran for three seasons on Amazon, despite notable efforts from fans across the world, but it will at least continue the WoT story in some form. A streaming partner has not been announced yet, but this should draw plenty of interest.
And speaking of crowdfunding, the MST3K Kickstarter has raised $2.7 million for new episodes of the series, well above the modest target of $20,000. To be titled Mystery Science Theater 3000: The RiffTrax Experiments, this is intended as a celebration of the 20th anniversary of Rifftrax. Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett will all be returning to their original roles, along with Mary Jo Pehl, Trace Beaulieu, and Frank Conniff. Series creator Joel Hodgson will not be involved as he sold his ownership share of the property earlier this year. The movies to be covered are Deathsport, Space Raiders, Sting of Death, and a fourth to be announced later. Production is set to begin this Summer.
Hulu announced this last week that its sci fi mystery series Paradise will be returning for a third season. That will also be its last, which follows creator Dan Fogelman’s three-year plan. The Season 2 finale of the show drops on March 30th.
Felicia Day has announced that she will be starting a crowdfunding campaign this Summer to finance a spin-off movie based on her web series The Guild. That self-produced series ran for six seasons from 2007 to 2013, and it followed the gaming group known as The Knights of Good, who spend much of their time playing a fantasy MMORPG video game. It was an important entry in the web series format and one of the most successful, and now Day and the entire cast are making a return to their game-playing ways (you can read more about the show at Cult-SciFi.com). Day had the following to say about the production:
We have the whole original cast back, and we had a reading just the other day. I almost cried. It was so great to see people reading [in] their character voices. And we started bickering exactly like we did the last time we were together shooting. So it’s exactly what I think people who love The Guild would like. I’m excited.
No plot details are available at this point, but those will probably be revealed when the crowdfunding campaign goes live. Stay tuned for more information on that.
The long-awaited third season of AMC’s season-long horror anthology series The Terror has received a premiere date of May 7th. Subtitled “Devil in Silver”, the upcoming season is based on the novel of the same name by Victor LaValle. Following is the official synopsis:
Pepper is a working-class moving man who, through a combination of bad luck and a bad temper, finds himself wrongfully committed to New Hyde Psychiatric Hospital – an institution filled with those society would rather forget. There, he must contend with patients working against him, doctors harboring grim secrets, and perhaps even the Devil himself. As Pepper navigates a hellscape where nothing is as it seems, he finds that the only path to freedom is to face the entity which thrives on the suffering within New Hyde’s walls – but doing so may prove that the worst demons of all live inside him.
Dan Stevens (Legion) will star, and the season will run for six episodes. It will premiere first on Shudder and AMC+ and will air on AMC later in the year.
The popular Black Mirror episode “San Junipero”–about people who upload their consciousness to the cloud after death–will be getting an adaptation in comics. A Kickstarter was launched to produce a graphic novel based on the episode, and it pulled in $61.5K against a $20K goal. It will be produced by Twisted Comics, and that company has plans for an ongoing series based on the show.
Keep up with the latest sci fi TV news and discuss current and past shows at r/SciFiTV and stay up to date on the status of all the current sci fi and fantasy shows with our Cancellation Watch posts.
Sci Fi TV Premieres This Week:
Daredevil: Born Again (Disney+): As Fisk tightens his grip on the city and launches a campaign against vigilantes through an Anti-Vigilante Task Force, Daredevil must gather allies and push back against the growing authoritarian regime. The conflict escalates into a street-level war for the soul of New York, with old friends and new heroes joining the fight against Fisk’s expanding control. Premieres on Tuesday.
Also premiering this week is Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen (Thursday on Netflix) and For All Mankind Season 5 (Friday on Apple TV), and you can see the full schedule at this link.
