Update: We’ve added new video clips from both Fringe and Dollhouse.
We reported a couple days back in Page 2 that both JJ Abrams‘ Fringe and Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse were picked up by Fox. We have new information and the first batch of marketing materials including posters, photos and trailers for both shows. So let’s take a look into the future of geek television.
Official Plot Synopsis
FRINGE: From J.J. Abrams (”Lost”), Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, the team behind “Star Trek,” “Mission: Impossible III” and “Alias,” comes a new drama that will thrill, terrify and explore the blurring line between science fiction and reality. When an international flight lands at Boston’s Logan Airport and the passengers and crew have all died grisly deaths, FBI Special Agent OLIVIA DUNHAM (newcomer Anna Torv) is called in to investigate. After her partner, Special Agent JOHN SCOTT (Mark Valley, “Boston Legal”), is nearly killed during the investigation, a desperate Olivia searches frantically for someone to help, leading her to DR. WALTER BISHOP (John Noble, “Lord of the Rings”), our generation’s Einstein. There’s only one catch: he’s been institutionalized for the last 20 years, and the only way to question him requires pulling his estranged son PETER (Joshua Jackson, “Dawson’s Creek”) in to help. When Olivia’s investigation leads her to manipulative corporate executive NINA SHARP (Blair Brown, “Altered States”), our unlikely trio along with fellow FBI Agents PHILLIP BROYLES (Lance Reddick, “The Wire”), CHARLIE FRANCIS (Kirk Acevedo, “Oz”) and ASTRID FARNSWORTH (Jasika Nicole, “Law & Order: Criminal Intent”) will discover that what happened on Flight 627 is only a small piece of a larger, more shocking truth.
WRITERS: J.J. Abrams, Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman
DIRECTOR: Alex Graves
CAST: Anna Torv as Olivia Dunham, Joshua Jackson as Peter Bishop, John Noble as Walter Bishop, Lance Reddick as Phillip Broyles, Kirk Acevedo as Charlie Francis, Mark Valley as John Scott, Blair Brown as Nina Sharp, Jasika Nicole as Astrid Farnsworth
DOLLHOUSE: Joss Whedon, creator of groundbreaking cult favorites “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Firefly,” returns to television and reunites with fellow “Buffy” alumna Eliza Dushku for a thrilling new drama, DOLLHOUSE. ECHO (Dushku) is an “Active,” a member of a highly illegal and underground group who have had their personalities wiped clean so they can be imprinted with any number of new personas. Confined to a secret facility known as the “Dollhouse,” Echo and the other Actives including SIERRA (Dichen Lachman, “Neighbours”) and VICTOR (Enver Gjokaj, “The Unit”) carry out engagements assigned by ADELLE (Olivia Williams, “X-Men: The Last Stand,” “Rushmore”), one of the Dollhouse leaders. The engagements cater to the wealthy, powerful and connected, and require the Actives to immerse themselves in all manner of scenarios romantic, criminal, uplifting, dangerous, comical and the occasional “pro bono” good deed. After each scenario, Echo, always under the watchful eye of her handler BOYD (Harry Lennix, “Commander in Chief,” 24), returns to the mysterious Dollhouse where her thoughts, feelings and experiences are erased by TOPHER (Fran Kranz, “Welcome to the Captain”), the Dollhouse’s genius programmer. Echo enters the next scenario with no memory of before. Or does she? As the series progresses, FBI Agent PAUL SMITH (Tahmoh Penikett, “Battlestar Galactica”) pieces together clues that lead him closer to the Dollhouse, while Echo stops forgetting, her memories begin to return and she slowly pieces together her mysterious past. DOLLHOUSE revolves around Echo’s blossoming self-awareness and her desire to discover her true identity. But with each new engagement, comes a new memory and increased danger inside and outside the Dollhouse.
PRODUCTION COMPANIES: 20th Century Fox Television, Mutant Enemy Inc.
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER/WRITER/DIRECTOR: Joss Whedon
CAST: Eliza Dushku as Echo, Olivia Williams as Adelle, Tahmoh Penikett as Paul, Fran Kranz as Topher, Dichen Lachman as Sierra, Enver Gjokaj as Victor, Harry Lennix as Boyd
Time Slots
Fringe will premiere this fall on Tuesday Nights at 9:00pm after House (following American Idol starting in January)
Dollhouse will premeire in January on Monday Nights at 8:00pm in the Sarah Connor Chronicles timeslot, right before 24.
Production Photos
Dollhouse
Fringe
Trailers
Video Clips
Fringe
Dollhouse
Posters
Expect to start seeing billboards for this show immediately.
My Thoughts
I’m a huge fan of Abrams, although I’ll agree that both of the filmmakers are probably overrated in the geek community (Whedon more than Abrams, especially when it comes to directing). The premisses to both of the shows sound intriguing, yet the fact that both have stars from the 1990’s who have seen better days is a little worrisome. Many people are calling Fringe an X-Files rip-off, and some of the photos and poster art also give off that impression. One thing is for sure, I’ll be watching both series when they premiere.
sources: tvweek, dollverse, multipleverses, NYTimes, USAToday, Future On Fox Blog
May 15th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
I Can’t wait for these shows. I love all of Joss Whedon’s work (except Aliens 4) and jj Abrams has done a few things I’ve liked (Lost, Cloverfield, Alias). seems like fringe is gonna be kinda like x-files. but thats not necessarily a bad thing.
May 15th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Whedon is extremely overrated, so is Abrams. They just cast second rate supporting actors from bad 90’s teen televison as leads.
May 15th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
I’m digging the dollhouse scenario, but the trailer is horrible. That background music/rock song does not at all match the show’s premise. You could practically swap that song with any other cancelled Fox show (Drive?).
Is it just me, or was the font in the beginning of the trailer the same used for Firefly/Serenity?
May 15th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
@sue. they probably are pretty overrated. to me it’s just that I’ve gotten a lot of enjoyment out of the programs i mentioned. i think that is probably the most important thing to me when rating a piece of work or a creator of works. thats why i like them.
May 15th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
Abrams: “Get me Richard Grieco stat!”
May 15th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Ah, nice photos! I love that Dollhouse set, looks like the set from Angel Season 5, which made for some great one-shots and walking dialog.
May 15th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Charmin bathroom tissue: So soft it’ll wipe your soul.
May 15th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
Why does the headline for this article say “TrailerS”? Plural? I, for one, feel cheated. (Both shows look great, though.)
May 15th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
Funny, all the people coming here just to saw Whedon and Abrhams are overrated.
Curious, what do you think is good?????
May 15th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
@ Mikey
As far as dramatic television is concerned I like pretty much all of HBO and Showtimes programming (exlcluding Entorauge). As well as some BBC stuff like State of Play which I just finished which was amazing.
May 15th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
Fringe really really is an X-Files rip-off, they’re even using the Hand-image from the X-Files intro for promotional poster art!
May 15th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
Isn’t every show more or less a “rip-off” of something else though? Let’s just be thankful we’ll get some quality and move on.
May 15th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
Dunnnhaaaammmmm. Just dosnt sound as cool as Scuuullllyyy.
There’s JJ, doing what he does best copy other peoples work, change it a little and get paid for it.
May 15th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
I like Whedon and Dollhouse has an interesting premise, but placing a whole show on the shoulders of a rubbish actress like Dushku doesn’t fill me with optimism.
May 15th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
So you are saying that Joss Whedon is to geeks what PTA is to film snobs.
I sir, choose to disagree. I would say that abrams is the more over rated for the simple reason that he never delivers. He sucks you in with his mystery box but it never lives up to the hype. This isn’t to say I don’t like abrams but I must say he frequently leaves me felling “that’s it?”. Where as whedon can come out of nowhere with with a story without dialog and make it work.
Watch the buffy episode Hush and re-evaluate the mans directing chops.
May 15th, 2008 at 9:35 pm
Is Star Trek 11 the next Speed Racer?
May 15th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
The thing people don’t credit Buffy and Angel with is that all the demon and fantasy stuff was secondary to the characters. There wasn’t a character on that show who didn’t experience some kind of interesting metamorphosis during the course of the show.
Buffy went through all the trials of school (and their monster analogies) and dealt with losing her mother and finding a sister, having to kill the love of her life, entering an abusive relationship, and ultimately rising above it all to be the heroine she was purported to be since the beginning.
Willow discovered/accepted her lesbian side, allowed a taste of power to influence her in negative ways, and managed to overcome it.
Xander went from comically useless to… almost not useless.
Well, you get the point.
May 15th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
FRINGE is a ripoff of X-FILES…. which was a ripoff of KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER. So what if the cycle continues - they’re all good.
May 16th, 2008 at 12:20 am
And Kolchak was a rip-off of The Quatermass Experiment.
May 16th, 2008 at 12:30 am
X-files a rip off of Kolcheck the Night Stalker?
Not even. :-o
Kolcheck was a newspaper reporter. X-Files is an FBI case file show. X-Files was allmost purely original. That’s why it kicked ass!!!! And night stalker lasted about 20 episodes…..
May 16th, 2008 at 8:17 am
Has Fox cancelled these yet?
May 16th, 2008 at 10:15 am
I’ll definitely give these shows a chance since I’m a fan of both. However, The Dollhouse trailer is painfully awful; I wonder who decided that would be a good bit to promo the show.
May 16th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
gotta throw my two cents in
Whedon is fucking awesome Im sorry if a few of you out there believe he is overrated but I personally think you’re crazy.
Buffy and Angel are two of the best television shows out there especially since they have the magic/demon aspect to it, which usually makes a show corny and bad, but Whedon is able to always do even the most overused idea and do it the best way possible.
I haven’t checked out much of Abrams stuff but I loved MI3 and Cloverfield and I do not think either of those are “overrated”
In fact I think the word “overrated” is “overrated”; just because you don’t dig something as much as a lot of people you know does not mean that something is not good.. just not your thing; there is no reason to bash it.
Firefly is also an awesome show and I believe it would have even been better had it been given the chance of at least a whole season. With that said - Serenity is one of my personal favorite science-fiction movies ever.
Now one more thing before I declare peace - Eliza is FAR from a rubbish actress - you really shouldn’t judge someone until you have seen them in something more than walk-on role. There is an episode of buffy where her character and Sarah’s change bodies; that episode alone shows the acting capabilities of both actresses
Sorry if I ranted a little bit there but I need to bash back a little..
May 16th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
“I would say that abrams is the more over rated for the simple reason that he never delivers”
So with you there. I always get sucked in with, OMG, I can’t possible imagine the answer to this amazing mystery. Problem is, neither can he.
May 16th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
@joe
Nicely said, you said everything I was thinking. I hold Buffy and Angel up there in my favorite shows of all time. I thought Cloverfield was a great movie and Alias was a good show as well. I for one will be watching both these shows this fall.
And Eliza is was great on Buffy as well as Tru Callings
May 17th, 2008 at 2:00 am
The trailer for Fringe can be found on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpwNAXjQLBM
May 18th, 2008 at 10:04 am
Go get em, Enver. He plays Victor in Dollhouse. Can’t wait to see this show you’re in. I hope it all goes well for you and your cast.
Your long time cousin from L.A.
May 27th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
I’m really a looking forward to both of these shows. I’m glad I found people to discuss them with.
I have heard that Amy Acker also signed to do Dollhouse, has anyone seen a trailer with her or know anything about the role she will have?
May 27th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
@Riley - Amy Acker is part of the Dollhouse cast, but I’m not
positive about her role…I’m assuming she’s one of the
assassins. I think I’m more excited to see her as part of the
cast than Eliza.
June 4th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
I from Argentina, i love Buffy and Angel. Joss Whedon is the best!!! Sarah y Eliza are twos of my favorites actress. I adore a Eliza in Tru Calling!!!! I can’t wait for watch Dollhouse!!!!