Trio Ticks to 24
Jack Bauer is enlisting the help of a Gossip Boy.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, Eric Lively, Gil Bellows and Tony Todd have signed on to star in Fox’s two-hour TV prequel to 24, set to air this fall in advance of the seventh season premiere.
Lively is an L Word alum and, more importantly to a certain prized demographic, the older brother of Gossip Girl star Blake Lively. On the upcoming season, he is set to play the son of the president, who is inaugurated as Kiefer Sutherland’s alter ego takes care of international incident-type business in Africa.
Bellows, meanwhile, a TV vet best known for his role on Ally McBeal, will play a State Department officer who must serve Bauer with a Senate subpoena.
Chuck regular Todd is set to appear in both the prequel and the seventh season, signing on to play the African dictator General Juma.
Let the countdown begin.
Ten Things to Know About Battlestar Galactica's Razor
Note from Kristin: When a coworker receives a copy of Battlestar Galactica: Razor and shrieks as if she's won the lottery and that John Krasinski delivered the check, shirtless, you gotta let her be the first to see it, right? Such is the case with WWK's resident cult TV expert Jennifer Godwin, who devoured the two-hour movie (I'm guessing more than once), and has this to report back…
Thank gods! Battlestar is back!
Battlestar Galactica: Razor, a two-hour TV movie premiering Nov. 24 on Sci Fi, is meant to tide us over until Battlestar Galactica the series returns in February 2008, and it absolutely delivers the BSG glories we've come to expect, with a little streak of Alien and Terminator 2 thrown in for good measure.
Preview copies were distributed to the press last week, and while we're not at liberty to disclose the entire story, I did feel it was my duty as a fellow fan to check it out and share what I could.
So, for your previewing pleasure, I've distilled Razor down to a list of the top 10 things you need to know. Enjoy!
- Setting: Razor switches back and forth in time between Lee Adama's leadership of the Battlestar Pegasus and Admiral Helena Cain's (Michelle Forbes) leadership of the Pegasus immediately following the original Cylon attack.
- Winks at the Audience: Gina's (Pegasus Six) last name is Inviere. Inviere is Old Gemenese for resurrection. Oh, those wacky Cylons and their name games.
- Characters: Stephanie Chaves-Jacobsen—who plays the heroine of our story, Kendra Shaw—is a star of tomorrow. Casting directors, have your phones at the ready.
- Mythology: DNA is sooo cool. Just like on Heroes these days, everything is about missing links, evolutionary dead ends and hybrids. Also, maybe a few zombies.
- Cast: Razor features lots of Lee, Kara, Adama and Gina/Pegasus Six; a smattering of Roslin; Tigh and Sharon in passing; and no Baltar, Tyrol or Helo.
- Pacing: The first 15 minutes are unforgivably slow.
- Quote to Remember: "All this has happened before and will happen again."
- Foreshadowing: Kara Thrace gets another prophecy. Girl's the most heralded thing since Buffy, I'll swear.
- Themes: Cain, for all her robust leadership, is best understood as a "Don't."
- Effects: Here's to the creation of the 12 humanoid Cylons for the reimagined series. It was an inspired choice, because as Razor reminds us, the original-recipe toasters really are kind of clunky and dumb.
Feel free to weigh in with your thoughts on Razor below, and send any BSG-related questions. So say we all!
The Saint is coming back to TV
Hello! The Saint is rising again. The venerable character, who was created by writer Leslie Chareris in novels in the 1920’s, will be back on television in a contemporary setting, and actor James Purefoy (Rome) has been in talks to play Simon Templar, the suave, British “good guy” thief. Aside from Purefoy, the Hollywood Reporter writes that the production team includes first class talent: Homicide’s Barry Levinson and Tom Fontana (Oz), writer Jorge Zamacona, Bill Macdonald, and the original TV Saint himself, Roger Moore, and his son Geoffrey Moore.
Mr. Levinson will direct the two-hour TV movie, which will be the pilot for a proposed series. TNT had been interested, but has since backed off from the deal. Now, the film will be produced independently and then shopped to the networks. Producer Macdonald had previously worked on a Saint project in 1991, when acquired the rights to the books for producer Robert Evans. In 1997, they created a big-screen version of The Saint starring Val Kilmer. It was not deemed a hit and failed to produce a sequel.
The man with the previous, successful connection to The Saint in this new version is Roger Moore. Before becoming James Bond in the 1970s, Moore starred as Simon Templar for seven years on TV. His imprint on the role is more famous that any of the actors who’ve played in on screen, including George Sanders, Louis Hayward and Hugh Sinclair, who all were Simon Templar at one time or the other. It’s hoped that Moore’s involvement — along with his son — will bring some of the charm from his Saint to this new one.
Simon Templar (ST - the Saint) is a character who’s been described as a Robin Hood type, stealing from the rich and doing good deeds along the way, all the while being dogged by Inspector Claud Eustace Teal, the Interpol agent determined to catch Templar red-handed. For this new incarnation, they’re also casting Patricia Holm, a romantic interest/assistant, Patricia Holm, and an enemy-turned-partner in crime, Baldwin Aleppo.
At one point, Macdonald, Zamacona and the Moores interested TNT in The Saint as conceived, but they passed. Zamacona, who had his first writing job in the business on Homicide: Life on the Street, which Levinson and Fontana created, turned to them and they became attached to the project, too.
“One of the things we lost a little bit of in the movie but want to bring to the TV series is that Simon Templar is very funny character with great lines and situation humor, and I don’t think there is anybody better than Levinson to tackle that,” Macdonald said.
24 prequel TV movie set for fall
Fans of 24 will have to wait until January 2009 for the seventh season to commence, but in a move that’s likely to be met with cheers all around, Fox has announced that the producers of the Keifer Sutherland action drama are creating a 24 two-hour TV movie which will be a prequel to the next new season. The story will cover the two years between the end of season six and the beginning of season seven. The actors are being cast now, presumably the essential members of the team who survived the previous 24-hours of a nuclear disaster, terrorism, lies, betrayals, shootings and tragedies.
What is known about the upcoming full season of 24 is that it will introduce the first female President of the United States. Tony-winning actress Cherry Jones will be playing Madame President. This would suggest that President Wayne Palmer (D.B. Woodside) didn’t survive his injuries from the assassination attempt in season six, although his fate could be a storyline in the prequel TV movie. There’s a lot more than that to be addressed, too, Chloe, Morris, Bil, Audrey, Valencia, California…did I mention Jack Bauer?
Since each season of 24 takes place in real time over a 24-hour period, it’ll be interesting to see if the TV movie veers from the formula and shows the two-year lapse in another way, even if it’s a traditional storytelling style. Whatever the format, it will surely whet our appetites for lucky season seven!