This week, AMC premieres their updated version of the classic sf/ fantasy series, THE PRISONER. We begin our backstage visit to the set by tackling the question of how to approach the story with a 2009 eye and yet still keep at least some of the 1968 charm. Producer Trevor Hopkins gives his frank answers, plus the cast of NBC tells us what they really think about the JAY LENO situation and Warren Ellis sells more stuff to the movies!
Don’t forget that you can now enjoy THE POINT 24 hours a Day – 7 Days a week!. Updates on all parts of pop culture, special programming by some of your favorite personalities and the biggest variety of contemporary music on the net.
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It’s our COMIC CON SPECIAL!Join us as we share just a few of the great people and even greater stories we grabbed over the weekend, including:
ERICA DURANCE (SMALLVILLE’sLois Lane) explains how Season 9 sees her ending one relationship and beginning two more
AMC’s THE PRISONER promises a wealth of new inhabitants of The Village including JAMIE CAMPBELL BOWER(yes, is is in TWILIGHT:NEW MOON, too)
CAPRICA’s head writer JANE ESPENSON explains how the series will have light moments
Series star DAVID TENNENT and Executive Producer JULIE GARDNER tell us just when we get to see the “Final Three” chapters in the life of the current DOCTOR WHO
TOBY WHITHOUSE, creator of the new BBC series BEING HUMAN, explains how he will keep his characters grounded in humanity
TAYLOR LAUTNER almost lost the riole of Jacob in TWILIGHT:NEW MOON and shares the story of the tranformation that helped him keep the role of Jacob the werewolf
V is coming back to TV in a big way, and actress ELIZABETH MITCHELL reveals just why she jumped on board, plus her theory of how LOST will wrap up
This one’s a keeper! PRESS THE BUTTON to Get The Point!
Don’t forget that you can now enjoy THE POINT 24/7. Updates on all parts of pop culture, special progarmming by some of your favorite personalities and the biggest variety of contemporary music on the net.
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN LIVE FOR FREE or go to GetThePointRadio for more including a connection for mobile phones including iPhone & Blackberrys
Jim Cavalziel (The Passion of the Christ) suffers a whole
new kind of persecution when he stars as Number Six in the six-episode remake
of Patrick McGoohan’s classic 1960s show The Prisoner, which is set to air on
AMC in November.
Today’s SDCC panel on The Prisoner reboot featured Jim
Cavalziel as well as Prisoner co-star Lennie James (Jericho), AMC VP Vlad
Wolynetz, and miniseries writer Bill Gallagher. Alas, Sir Ian McKellan, who
takes on the role of Six’s nemesis, Number Two, was not present.
Gallagher characterized the remake as a “response,” and not
a duplication of McGoohan’s concept. (We don’t have to worry about Cavalziel
being overly influenced by McGoohan’s take on the role of Number Six; according
to a Wired interview, he’s never even seen the show. Maybe that’s worrying in a
whole different way.)
The panel premiered nine minutes of footage from the new Prisoner, embedded below for your viewing pleasure, and of course, your judging. According
to official AMC tweeter, ThePrisoner_AMC, “The crowd … [went] wild after rover is
revealed in #ThePrisoner panel at Comic-Con.” Presumably, that was out of appreciative
nostalgia, not fear, because the Village’s security device is still a decidedly
unintimidating, giant white balloon. Watching the footage, it’s clear that the
premise has shifted quite a bit, although several scenes and bits of dialogue have
carried over and sound a bit odd voiced in American accents. The setting has
also moved thousands of miles from the cool, green precincts of Wales to a
considerably hotter, more arid enclave in Namibia.
Marvel Comics and AMC have also
collaborated on a Prisoner comic, which is being given away at San Diego.
Go to MoCCA’s Benefit Advance Screening of Watchmen on March 5th dressed as your favorite Watchmen character and get a ticket to the benefit, including the advance screening, VIP reception and after party for only $20! (That is $80 off the general ticket price.)
Tickets are limited, so order right away. Call today to order your tickets: 212-254-3511. Tickets available for Advance Purchase Only.
This once-in-a-lifetime evening begins with a reception at MoCCA for The Art of Watchmen exhibition, continues with an advance screening of Watchmen at AMC 19th St., and concludes with an author signing of Watchmen: Portraits by Clay Enos.
5pm: VIP Reception & SILENT AUCTION at MoCCA
7pm: SCREENING at AMC 19th Street 890 Broadway
10pm: AFTERPARTY back at MoCCA with special guests and a signing of Watchmen: Portraits by Clay Enos
Tickets are $100 | $75 for MoCCA members | $20 for Masked Heroes
Tickets may be purchased on-line at www.moccany.org, in person at MoCCA or by phone, 212-254-3511, Tues. – Sat., 12-5pm.
All proceeds from this special event go to support MoCCA programming.
There was never a TV show before like The Prisoner. You could say that there hasn’t been a show like it in the forty-two years (!) since.
What? You’ve never seen it? Dude. I mean, dude. Seriously.
Luckily, now you can see them all. I don’t guarantee that you’ll understand them, but you can see them.
To promote its new reinterpretation of the show which just wrapped shooting and scheduled to premiere in November, AMC is now streaming the original series in full screen. This marks the online debut of all seventeen episodes of the classic British series starring Patrick McGoohan, which originally aired in England from 1967-1968.
And when you’re done with that, go buy the DC Comics trade paperback, which hits the flavor of the original series and yet somehow provides an ending. It was one of the first things I got to work on as a production guy at DC, and it impressed the hell out of me.
Michael Ausiello writes at Entertainment Weekly, "Good news: A Sci Fi source confirms to me exclusively that the last half of season 4 premieres on Friday, January 16, at 10 p.m. Which, by my calculations, puts the series finale (boo-hoo!) at Friday, March 20." This means the network will not skip the three-day weekend i nFebruary as they normally have in the past, which is good news for one and all.
CBS has given a full season order to The Mentalist starring Simon Baker. The freshman series has garnered good ratings and positive reviews encouraging the Eye Network.
NBC has ordered three additional scripts for its midseason drama Medium. The peacock network may be forced to add the series to its schedule before the end of the year given some weaker than expected ratings for its lineup.
AMC has ordered a third season of the wonderful Mad Men. Creator Matthew Weiner and Lionsgate, though, are still talking contracts with the studio hoping to sign the creator/producer to a two year deal which would encourage AMC to green-light a fourth season sooner than later. Regardless, the second season of the award-winning drama will reach its conclusion October 26.
Brian Cox has been cast opposite Katee Sackhoff in the NBC pilot Lost and Found. He will play her character’s fractious partner Burt Macey, described by The Hollywood Reporter as "a foul-mouthed, racist dinosaur of a cop who does things the old-fashioned way: with blunt force and bigoted rants." The two are assigned to the worst possible cases after Sackhoff’s Tessa pisses off her Los Angeles Police Department superiors. Cox has also been cast for a multiple-episode story arc for the network’s midseason replacement, Kings.
The Hollywood Reporter details AMC’s plans to develop Red Mars, a new science fiction series based on the novel of the same name. Jonathan Hensleigh, writer of Armageddon and The Punisher, is on board as writer/executive producer. Michael Jaffe, Howard Braunstein, Vince Gerardis, Ralph Vicinanza and Eli Kirschner will also executive produce.
"[Red Mars] fits in with our bigger vision of wanting series that feel like cinematic one-hour movies," says Christina Wayne, AMC’s senior VP of original series and miniseries. "We’re always looking for big genres but to do them in slightly different ways so they feel fresh and new."
Red Mars, which AMC is touting as character-driven, is based on a 1992 novel by Kim Stanley Robinson. It chronicles the inhabitants of the first human colony on the planet. Robinson wrote two sequels to the novel, titled Green Mars and Blue Mars, as well as several short stories published in The Martians. AMC will certainly have a lot of material to mine for their series.
This is not the first time that Red Mars has threatened to invade television. James Cameron once held the rights to the Mars trilogy, hoping to develop it as a five-hour miniseries to be directed by Martha Coolidge. He eventually passed on the option. Gale Anne Hurd later planned a similar Mars miniseries for the Sci-Fi Channel, but that too never took flight. It remains to be seen whether AMC’s version will follow in the series’ already ill-fated track record.
In addition to Red Mars, AMC is currently developing a separate sci-fi miniseries, The Prisoner. The miniseries is a remake of the 1960s sci-fi series of the same name, with Jim Caviezel and Ian McKellen set to star.
I know, I know, no fanboy out there in the land of Heroes, Star Wars, Star Trek and the like even watches soaps on daytime television.
Sure you don’t.
Well I do and I have done so for over 20 years. That among other reasons is why I, fanboy, have a lovely Asian goddess in my life while you identify at 30 with the kids from Superbad.
So make fun of me all you want, I don’t have to visit the “Love You Long Time” website to get my kicks. Part of that is because I watch soaps and I am sensitive.
Yes, sensitive.
I know that mostly women watch soaps but I have learned a great deal about women from watching soaps. What have I learned? Well that’s another column which I’m writing (called The Fanboy Guide To Girls) but I will give you one example of what I have learned about women from watching soaps. If you are on the phone they will pick up the extension and listen…guaranteed.
The one and only soap I watch is All My Children. I LOVE THAT SHOW!
Or I did…
What follows is an open letter to the head of ABC Daytime or the Executive Producer of All My Children who ever is responsible for turning the best show on TV into the reason I am thinking about joining a cult. For all you readers who don’t watch the show (sure you don’t) I will try and explain some of the goings on by way of AMC facts*
Dear Sir/Madam or Satan,
I am a black man born and raised in the mean streets and housing projects of New York City. I have seen people shot, been shot at, been beat up, robbed etc. In fact just about any thing your writers can come up with on the show that happened to Jessie (You remember Jessie don’t you? No? Well Jessie was that black street kid that Jackson Montgomery adopted who simply disappeared from the show.) Well, I’m the real life Jessie.
I have been watching All My Children for over 20 years. I have been a fan for that long. I own All My Children trading cards, Erica Kane Barbie dolls, and hard cover books on the series. Let me tell you something, when you are a 6’2” black man with a Erica Kane Barbie on your mantel, that’s a fan. No matter what happened to me during my day on the street I could always look forward to coming home grabbing a Cherry Coke and losing myself in the lives and loves of the citizens of Pine Valley.