Hannibal, the upcoming TV show from Pushing Daisies creator Bryan Fuller that traces the early days of FBI Agent Will Graham and the serial cannibal Dr. Hannibal Lecter, has seemed like a dodgy proposition. The show explodes in detail the events that we’ve seen recounted in other forms (the novel and film Red Dragon, and possibly a bit of the film Hannibal Rising), and for the most part has sounded so far like an easy exploitation of Lecter’s iconic status.
But things just got a lot more interesting. Some time ago Hugh Dancy was cast as Graham, and now his advisor and eventual adversary has been cast as well. Mads Mikkelsen, who just won Best Actor at Cannes for his work in The Hunt, and who will be the villain in Thor 2, has just been cast as Hannibal. Read More »
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As TV series take over some of the former territory of movies — strong dramatic storytelling, high-caliber casts, increasingly high production value — the television landscape is proving to be a possible home for projects that could otherwise have been films. And we’ve seen an increasing number of movie-based shows in development.
In theory, then, TV is a great home for Scream. While Wes Craven once theorized that a fifth film could materialize in the next couple years, the relative under-performance of the fourth movie could have doomed that prospect. Enter MTV, which is potentially coming to the rescue of Scream by developing a TV show based on the film. Read More »
Briefly: When Lionsgate bought Summit, we heard that there could be a continuation or re-do of the Twilight series at some point in the future, and one of the possibilities seemed like it could be based on TV.
Now we can add a few more possible film-to-TV developments to Lionsgate’s list. In a conference call today, CEO Jon Feltheimer said that two properties acquired in the Summit buy, Red and Step Up, are in consideration for TV development alongside The Expendables. While Deadline notes that the Stallone action films weren’t explicitly mentioned by Feltheimer today, the site has been told that’s on the list as well.
Developing The Expendables would seem to hinge on what talent could be corralled for the show. Maybe Chuck Norris could make this his coda to Walker, Texas Ranger. Or Terry Crews could make it his own. Since the film series is all about the big collection of name actors, doing the show without that cache doesn’t seem to have much of a point. Red is in a similar position, as the name actors in that film (one of whom, Bruce Willis, is also part of The Expendables) were the biggest draw for many audiences.
Briefly: Bryan Fuller is doing a TV show for NBC called Hannibal, in which Hugh Dancy plays FBI Agent Will Graham in stories that act as prequels to Jonathan Demme’s 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs. And now there is also a TV show in development to explore the early days of Clarice Starling, the character played by Jodie Foster in The Silence of the Lambs. TV Guide (via Vulture) says that Lifetime is putting together the show, which is in the early stages of development, and that it will “follow the exploits of a young Clarice Starling soon after she graduates from the FBI academy.”
And that’s a little… weird. Because until Clarice meets Hannibal Lecter, she’s a good agent, but is her story really any different than one we might find in any other cop/FBI procedural? Probably not, and that could be exactly the point. Clarice gets the recognizance of being related to the classic thriller, but doesn’t really have to do anything other than be a regular old cop show. Win/win for Lifetime!
Earlier this month, it was revealed Star Wars Weekends at Walt Disney World provided fans a chance to buy a custom made toy of themselves in Carbonite, just like Han Solo. That’s now underway and, after the jump, you can see some video and learn more about that process.
There’s also a new video interview with LucasFilm producer Rick McCallum where he sets the record straight, again, about the Star Wars TV show and dashes some hopes for a Joe Johnston-directed Boba Fett movie. Read More »
Posted on Monday, May 21st, 2012 by Angie Han
Three sequels, two threequels, and a TV show spinoff feature in today’s Sequel Bits. After the jump:
- Mandy Moore talks about Tangled 2 and Tron: Uprising
- A German screening of Men in Black 3 breaks a world record
- Fan Bingbing and Yang Mi join Andy Lau in Iron Man 3
- Robert Rodriguez drops hints on Machete Kills and Sin City 2
Read More »
Tomorrow is the upfront party/presentation for Adult Swim, and the company is unveiling a serious development slate. For fans of animation, weird high-concept shows and other esoterica, there might be a lot to dig into in the new set of projects being developed by the Williams Street gang.
But there are two worth highlighting for our regular readers. One is an animated series based on the Harold & Kumar movies. The other is a new half-hour animated show co-created by Community mastermind Dan Harmon. We might not see Harmon return to his signature show, but a new effort from him could be a great consolation prize.
All the details we have at this point are below. Read More »
There are more Stephen King film and TV adaptations than most people could count — only the most die-hard fan or serious film and TV trainspotter would be likely to remember them all. But there is a small subset of King’s fiction that has remained largely untapped: fantasy.
The author doesn’t have a lot of books that fit into the fantasy column. The Dark Tower series is primary among them, and then there is the Peter Straub collaboration The Talisman, in which a young boy makes a cross-country journey by flipping back and forth between our world and a parallel fantasy one.
Those are big books, and have resisted adaptation so far. (The Dark Tower might make it to screens soon.) One of King’s other fantasy efforts is more slight, and perhaps more suited for adaptation: The Eyes of the Dragon, a fairy tale he originally created for his daughter, and eventually published in 1987. If Syfy has its way, the book could end up on screens soon. Read More »
