Starz has cancelledAmerican Gods, its fantasy TV show based on a novel by Neil Gaiman, after three seasons, citing declining ratings.
The TV show, based on Gaiman's bestselling 2001 novel, has had a raucous and uncertain behind-the-scenes production. Original writer-showrunner Bryan Fuller drove the first season an astonishing $30 million over budget before clashing with executives over the budget for the second season. He was fired and replaced with Jesse Alexander, with Gaiman himself stepping up for an increased, unofficial role in the second season. Alexander exited the show before Season 2 aired, being replaced by producing director Chris Byrne and line producer Lisa Kussner on an interim basis. Charles Eglee replaced them for the third season.
The show also experienced a high cast turnover, with Gillian Anderson and Kristin Chenoweth departing after Season 1 and Pablo Shreiber and Orlando Jones departing after Season 2 (the former after being cast as the lead in the Halo TV series), although the core cast of Ricky Whittle, Ian McShane, Emily Browning, Crispin Glover, Bruce Langley and Yetide Badaki remained intact.
Although the show was applauded for its performances and rich visual style, it was heavily criticised for stretching a single 500-page novel out across at least four seasons, resulting in a somnambulantly glacial pace. Its critical acclaim significantly dropped after the first season and ratings tumbled, with only around a third of the Season 1 audience sticking around for a third season.
Production company Fremantle are now in talks for a TV movie to wrap up the story (Season 3 ended barely 40 pages from the end of the novel, allowing for a relatively speedy wrap-up), although Starz are reportedly lukewarm on the prospects.
Gaiman is currently producing an adaptation of his Sandman graphic novel series for Netflix.
The troubled production of the second season of American Godshas somehow managed to get even more troubled.
To rewind a little, Fremantle Studios bought the rights to Neil Gaiman's 2001 novel American Gods several years ago. After developing the project at HBO with Gaiman involved as head writer, HBO chose not to proceed (surprisingly late in the day). Fremantle took the script to Starz. Starz greenlit the project, managing to win the services of the much-in-demand Bryan Fuller and producing partner Michael Green to work as showrunners and head writers on the project. Gaiman continued to be involved closely as an active producer.
Early tensions apparently emerged when it became clear that Fuller and Green had their own vision for the project, which was not quite in keeping with Gaiman's. Gaiman wanted a close adaptation of his novel, whilst Fuller and Green wanted something slower-paced and more like a magic realist fable, with complex visual dream sequences and flashbacks, some incorporating elements from Gaiman's other stories in the same setting and others completely original. Starz, who were funding the project to the tune of $7 million per episode, sided with Fuller and Green, and Gaiman and Fremantle's preferences were shut out. Executive producer Stefanie Burk, however, was able to keep the two factions talking to each other.
Despite this tension, the production of the first season of American Gods went relatively smoothly until fairly late in the day, when Starz began to get alarmed over the rising costs. They slashed two episodes from the season's length in an effort stop the overruns. Once filming was concluded, they allowed Fuller and Green to complete post-production, at which point it became clear that the season had gone $30 million - the equivalent of over four full episodes - over-budget. This may rank as one of the biggest overspends in television history, but fortunately Amazon swept in and saved the day by spending a huge amount of money on buying the international broadcasting rights to the series, dwarfing the overspend and putting Starz back into profit.
Apparently a meeting was held where Starz agreed to keep Fuller and Green on board, with the firm understanding that such a cost overrun could not happen again. A second season was ordered, this time for 10 episodes, and the budget was increased to $10 million an episode, making American Gods the third-most-expensive show on air (after only Game of Thrones and The Crown). Not long after this agreement, however, Fuller and Green presented the scripts for the first six episodes of the season to Starz and it was clear this budget was going to be insufficient. With Fuller and Green refusing to make needed cuts, they were fired from the show.
Jess Alexander was brought in to replace them as showrunner and head writer. Alexander was a close friend of Neil Gaiman's, but had also worked closely with Fuller on Star Trek: Discovery and Hannibal. Although he wouldn't be on-set (as he was showrunning the Good Omens project in the UK), Gaiman agreed to take a more direct involvement on the second season, making bigger decisions. The general feel was that Gaiman and Alexander would hew the TV show closer to the novel whilst maintaining the spirit and feel of the first season but without breaking the bank. To this end, they also dumped Fuller and Green's scripts for Season 2, preferring to start from scratch.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, trying to wear all these caps simultaneously proved impossible. Actors complained of the quality of scripts compared to the first season, with actor Ian McShane apparently coming up with better dialogue by himself on set (leading to alleged "screaming matches" with Alexander). Starz demanded hefty rewrites to Alexander's scripts. To make things worse, actress Gillian Anderson had quit over Fuller's firing and producer Stefanie Burk had left the company altogether, removing a key moderating influence on set.
To try to salvage things, Starz have slashed the episode count (again) to eight and have reportedly now sidelined Jesse Alexander after being hugely unsatisfied with his script for the season finale, promoting supervising producer Chris Byrne and line producer Lisa Kussner to the showrunning position as an interim measure (to put two junior producers into such a role is extraordinary).
Exactly how Starz will get the show back on track remains to be seen. They have, however, indicated that the media reports are overblown and are promising to drop a trailer for Season 2 in a few weeks to restore some faith in proceedings. Star Ricky Whittle, meanwhile, has also said that reports of chaos on set are in error.
American Gods is expected to return to the screen in early 2019, one way or another.
Shadow Moon is released from prison but finds his life is not what he thought it was: his wife has been killed in a car accident, driving with her lover. Strange things are happening across America and at the centre of it is the old man enigmatically known as “Mr. Wednesday.” When Mr. Wednesday offers Shadow a job, Shadow accepts and finds himself drawn into a struggle older and weirder than he can possibly understand.
Based on Neil Gaiman’s 2001 novel, American Gods is a lush, eight-part drama which adapts roughly a third of the book. Given the book is only about 500 pages long, this is fairly generous and results in the first season have a relaxed, even languid pace. This is one of the show’s strengths but also its Achilles heel.
There is much to enjoy about this series, including the absolutely fantastic cast. Everyone, from seasoned hands like Ian McShane and Gillian Anderson to relative newcomers, are exceptional. The direction is also unusually striking to behold. Visually, American Gods may be the most gorgeous-looking television show ever made. There’s some stirring and powerfully effective imagery, whilst the colour grading, the framing of the shots, the movie-worthy cinematography and the generous and frequent use of CG to enhance the story are all stunning, as is the clever and imaginative opening title sequence. The show’s use of music, both original and licensed, is remarkable and often inventive (also occasionally bombastic and sometimes drowns out the dialogue, most notably during the major climactic moment of the finale).
The writing and pacing is where the show falters. Many modern shows make the mistake of trying to be relentless and constantly in a rush to get anywhere, often falling short (especially if you’re a Marvel show on Netflix trying to stretch 6 episodes’ worth of actual plot across 13 hours) or achieving that at the expense of character development or atmosphere. American Gods goes the other way, devoting an entire hour to the backstory of one of the major characters, visiting major episodes from their life and establishing their backstory in admirable depth. However, later on it dedicates a second episode to the backstory of that character’s great-great-great-great (etc) grandmother, in a well-written and enjoyable segment which doesn’t seem to add much to the overall storyline. It’s nice that the show can take time out to do this sort of thing, but it saps the show of momentum and energy. Compared to most “binge-worthy” shows, I felt no need to consume American Gods quickly and instead watched it over the course of several weeks. Not every show needs to be a sitting-on-the-edge-of-your-seat or nail-biting thriller, but American Gods goes in the opposite direction and is so laidback that it keeps falling asleep.
The narrative structure is also unsatisfying. Adapting one-third of a novel means that the show has a great opening, but it constantly interrupts the story of Wednesday, Shadow and the other protagonists to pursue tangents (most of them interesting, some consequential, others not) and then peters out at the end. There is a major climactic moment, but it’s more of a pause than a cliffhanger. Fortunately, there will be a second season (probably airing in mid-2019) with a major creative and writing reshuffle that will hopefully address some of these problems.
Still, it’s hard to argue with a show that gives an actor as great as Ian McShane such fantastic material to work with and one that confirms Ricky Whittle as one of the rising stars of television (it’s entertaining as a Brit to see how far he’s come since his days on soap opera Hollyoaks). It’s also great to see Crispin Glover, Pablo Schreiber and Emily Browning on such good form as well.
The first season of American Gods (***½) is lush, beautiful to look at, well-acted and atmospheric. It’s also slow, occasionally so slow as to approach inertness, and lacks tension. This is a fine wine to enjoy slowly and surely rather than a relentless sprint to the finish, and a slightly confusing show which inspires many mixed metaphors. The first season of American Gods is available now on DVD (UK, USA) and Blu-Ray (UK, USA), and is also available on Amazon Prime Video in the UK.
Starz's adaptation of American Gods has gotten a new showrunner in the form of Jesse Alexander. Alexander worked alongside outgoing producer-showrunner Bryan Fuller on both Hannibal and Star Trek: Discovery and Starz seem to be hoping he can keep some of Fuller's magic on the show. More encouragingly, Neil Gaiman is taking a more hands-on role on Season 2 of the show, apparently with the plan (backed by Starz) of getting the show to hew closer to the novel.
The Hollywood Reporter also has the skinny on why Fuller left the show between seasons. Season 1 went a mind-boggling $30 million over-budget. American Gods was already one of the most expensive shows on television, with a budget well north of $7 million per episode, so this overrun must have caused massive consternation at Starz. On top of this overrun, Fuller was also demanding a substantial budget increase for Season 2 above the extra $2 million per episode (taking the show to $9 million per episode, potentially making American Gods the third-most-expensive show on-air, behind only Game of Thrones and The Crown) already agreed with Starz. Apparently there was a logjam exacerbated by the possibility that Season 2 might not air until two years or more after Season 1.
Fuller has moved on and is now in talks to helm a TV adaptation of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. Gaiman and Alexander's remit now seems to be getting American Gods done within the confines of its already-generous budget and on a much more frequent timescale than had previously been planned. All going well, Starz hope to air the second season of American Gods in January or February 2019, providing there are no further setbacks.
The first two episodes of Star Trek: Discovery have aired in the US and are now available on Netflix in most other countries. Here's my thoughts after watching both episodes.
CAUTION: SPOILERS FOR BOTH EPISODES
First up, the first two episodes, The Vulcan Hello and Battle at the Binary Stars, are a single two-hour episode, and really should have been presented as such. Dividing the two episodes doesn't help either half (and shutting the second episode behind a paywall in the US is a really bad idea). Secondly, the two episodes combined are a prologue to the rest of the series. We know that the premise of Star Trek: Discovery is that it will cover the adventures of the USS Discovery during a time of renewed Federation/Klingon hostilities, ten years before the events of the original series. These first two episodes establish the reason for the renewal of hostilities, but the Discovery itself and Captain Lorca (Jason Isaacs) are both MIA, which is a weird choice. At the end of these two hours we may have gotten to know a couple of the characters but we really don't know how the series itself will play out week-by-week.
Instead the two episodes focus strongly on Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green), a Starfleet officer who had been been raised on Vulcan after her parents were murdered in a Klingon border skirmish. Burnham is a mass of contradictions, her human emotions straining against Vulcan logical training and conditioning, which leads to a couple of bad choices which stain her reputation. Burnham is the executive officer of the USS Shenzhou, serving under Captain Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh), who has mentored Burnham extensively and considers her now ready to step up as a captain in her own right, just before a crisis gives her an opportunity to show those skills...and she fails. The two-parter ends with Burnham being court-martialed for mutiny and imprisoned.
There's a lot to unpack here and a full review will have to wait until the season (or at least the first half, which is airing as a discrete mini-season with a break over Christmas) is complete. It's a brave idea to show such a flawed central character in Star Trek and have them disgraced and having made several bad calls before the pilot is over. It's even odder to have them making those decisions for stupid reasons. Sarek reveals that the Vulcans would attack Klingon ships on sight, attacking with overwhelming force until they had earned the Klingons respect. With the Shenzhou already outgunned and then, seconds later, massively outnumbered by the Klingon reinforcements, this option - logical under other circumstances - is clearly not viable, but Burnham pursues it regardless of the change in circumstance. I'm hoping this is a well-thought out character flaw - Burnham's need to win Vulcan respect results in her pursuing courses of action through dogma which even Vulcans would reject - rather than bad writing, but I am not hopeful on that point.
Performance-wise, the episode is a strong success. Doug Jones is exceptional as Lt. Commander Saru and Martin-Green gives an excellent performance, especially compared to her less-developed role on The Walking Dead. Michelle Yeoh is, of course, utterly superb. The Klingon actors fare less well: the new Klingon makeup is incredibly restrictive and inhibits emoting. The need for all the Klingons to speak Klingon all the time also massively restricts their performance. Whilst the TNG-era Klingons could be theatrical and OTT, they at least got across their passion and the actors could go to town with the roles. The Klingon actors here might be doing exceptional work, but with both the make-up and language choice constraining them, we can't really tell. This is something they need to address moving forwards, otherwise the Klingons are going to be a pretty tedious enemy.
Effects-wise the show is quite impressive, with tons of ambitious tracking shots and full-on space battles. Things aren't as hectic and nonsensical as with the Abrams movies and some of the shots are breathtaking. However, there's less attention paid to things like strategy in the space battles, which devolve into lots of ships flying around firing at things randomly. Ship design could also be better: the Shenzhou is derivative of earlier designs (particularly the NX-01 Enterprise and Akira) and the Klingons are a baffling mish-mash of random designs which don't follow very logically on from established Klingon designs.
Discovery's connections with the rest of the Star Trek canon are questionable: Spock having an adopted human sister he never once mentioned ever seems...unlikely. The Shenzhou looks more advanced than Picard's Enterprise-D, let alone the Constitution-class Enterprise which (according to the timeline) is already in service at this point in Star Trek history (with Spock on board) under Captain Pike. And the less said about the awkward new Klingon design the better.
As the two-parter draws to a close, it has certainly set up an interesting paradigm that is worth exploring further. In terms of effects, casting and performances the show is very promising, but the writing needs to be better, the characterisation more coherent and the show really needs to start paying attention to the canon and stop trying to change things just for the sake of change (if you're going to do that, why even make a Star Trek show in the first place?). Based on this evidence, Discovery still has it all to play for and The Expanse is in no danger of losing its title as "Best Space Opera Show Currently on Air" just yet.
Star Trek: Discovery airs every Sunday on CBS All Access in the States and every Monday on Netflix in most of the rest of the world.
Starz have released a full trailer for the first season of American Gods, based on Neil Gaiman's 2001 novel of the same name.
The eight-part series debuts on Starz on 30 April. The first season will cover approximately one-third of the novel, with the rest (and possible adaptations of the novel Anansi Boys and the short stories "Monarch of the Glen" and "Black Dog", as well as the unwritten American Gods II) to follow in succeeding seasons.
Bryan Fuller has stepped down as the senior executive producer and showrunner of Star Trek: Discovery. The surprising news has broken amidst reports of growing concerns at CBS about the production schedule for the show.
Originally Star Trek: Discovery was due to start filming early last month to air in January. This schedule was already ambitious, so when it was announced that the debut date was being dropped back to May 2017, it was hardly surprising. However, more surprising was the news that shooting has been delayed until November and the lack of any casting announcements. It has since transpired that many secondary and supporting roles have indeed been cast and set construction in Toronto is well underway, but Fuller and his team have struggled to find a lead actress.
The news cites Fuller's simultaneous showrunning work on American Gods for Starz. This was supposed to have wrapped up a few weeks ago, allowing Fuller to focus on Star Trek whilst his co-producers on American Gods oversaw post-production. It instead appears that Fuller has remained very hands-on with that show. And on top of that it's also been announced that Fuller is going to be helming a relaunch of Amazing Stories for NBC.
Producers Alex Kurtzman, Gretchen Berg and Aaron Herberts are stepping up as co-showrunners. Fuller will continue to be involved as a producer and writer.
Fuller had previously said that helming a Star Trek show would be his dream job, which may leave some fans questioning why he didn't commit to it fully and instead took on a new, full-time project as well.
CBS now hopes to make casting announcements for Star Trek: Discovery soon and begin shooting in the next few weeks.
Taking the top prize for "least surprising news of the year", CBS have announced that Star Trek: Discovery's premiere date is going to be delayed from January until May next year.
Given they haven't announced any casting or started shooting yet, and showrunner Bryan Fuller is still wrapping up work on his other show, American Gods, the January date was more than slightly ambitious.
Star Trek: Discovery takes place ten years before the events of The Original Series and revolves around a new cast of characters on board the USS Discovery. The first season will consist of a 13-part, tightly serialised story. The series will air on CBS All Access in the United States, SPACE in Canada and Netflix in most of the rest of the world.
Nerd World Report have a lengthy interview with Bryan Fuller, the producer/showrunner behind both Starz's American Gods and CBS's Star Trek: Discovery.
Fuller packs in a fair bit of info from both shows, including:
American Gods
The first, nine-episode season will cover roughly a quarter of Neil Gaiman's novel. A major and infamous event involving the goddess Bilquis will be in Episode 1.
Bryan Fuller read the novel of American Gods about a year after it was originally published, so was a fan of the book a long time before the TV show was conceived.
Star Trek: Discovery
The show opens with a two-part episode. Part 1 is co-written by Bryan Fuller and Alex Kurtzman and Part 2 is written by Nicholas Meyer.
The main character is nicknamed "Number One" in honour of Majel Barrett's character from the original Star Trek pilot, The Cage, but isn't exactly the same character.
It's not fully decided yet if the show will have a totally new score or will pay tribute to music from previous series.
Originally the series was conceived as being able to take place in either the original (or "Prime") timeline or the Abramsverse (aka "Kelvin Timeline"). Kurtzman and Fuller settled on the Prime timeline because it meant they didn't have to track what was going on in the movies and vice versa (although I suspect the legal issues played their part as well).
Both shows are being shot in Toronto, with American Gods wrapping up production shortly and Star Trek: Discovery now in pre-production. Both shows are expected to air in early 2017.
Executive producer and showrunner Bryan Fuller has confirmed that Star Trek: Discovery will be set about ten years before the time of Kirk, Spock and company. It will be a time when the Federation is still exploring new parts of the galaxy, when the Klingons are still hostile and when no-one's heard from the Romulans for ninety years. Other Trek staple species like the Cardassians, Ferengi and Borg are still decades away from being contacted.
Great, I guess? Discovery will be the third Star Trek project in a row - after the 2001-04 TV show Star Trek: Enterprise and the new alternate-continuity movies launched in 2009 - to go back in time and be a prequel or alternate take on stories we've already seen. And it's getting a bit stale, to be honest.
Star Trek is fundamentally about pushing things forward and doing new things. No-one is going to argue that the triple punch of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager (aka the 24th Century series) did exhaust an enormous amount of story possibilities as well as building up some complex continuity over the course of fourteen years, but a new Star Trek series set twenty or fifty years after them - effectively a Next Next Generation - would dispense with such issues as well as tipping its hat at what came before and allowing bold writers to chart out completely different concepts. Bryan Fuller's Star Trek: Federation concept, which depicted a faltering and weak Federation about to collapse and being reinspired by the adventures of a new USS Enterprise commanded by a distant descendant of James T. Kirk, was cheesy as hell but at least it allowed for the possibility of exploring new worlds and doing new things.
This isn't to say that Discovery will be a bad show. I'd be surprised if it was, with the likes of Fuller and Nicholas Meyer writing episodes, and the 13 episode run should allow for tighter storytelling with less filler and space-anomaly-of-the-week episodes. But it's also going to be constrained in its storytelling by concerns over continuity and we know that nothing is really going to get shaken up. It'll be Star Trek boldly going exactly where it's been before and that's really not cutting it anymore. But hopefully, if Discovery is a big success, we'll see another show that takes the much-needed leap forwards into the 25th Century and delivers to us something that really is fresh, interesting and new.
More interesting is the idea that the "main character" will be a lieutenant commander on the Discovery and the main cast focus and dynamic won't be the traditional bridge crew setup. Fuller also confirmed there would be more aliens, the show would feature robots and would also be inspired by a key event referenced in the original series but not shown. The only incident which might apply is the destruction of the USS Farragut, when a young Lt. Kirk escaped from a space monster that killed his captain and most of his crew. However, that seems to contradict Fuller's stance that there won't be any original series characters in Discovery, at least to start with.
Star Trek: Discovery debuts in January 2017 on CBS All Access in the United States, on SPACE in Canada and on Netflix in most of the rest of the world.
Star Trek: Discovery, the new Star Trek TV series that will launch in January, has already started generating a profit for CBS. Which is pretty good going considering not a single frame of footage has been shot for it yet (discounting some CG test shots released at the weekend).
Hollywood accounting is bizarre and obscure at the best of times, but this is an extreme example. CBS has pre-sold the show to Space in Canada and to Netflix in pretty much the rest of the world. Combined with a recent bump in subscribers to CBS All Access (where the show will debut), taking it over two million subscribers, this has made the show profitable. It is currently in pre-production in Toronto with filming next expected to start until September.
As part the announcement, CBS also confirmed that Season 1 of the show will consist of thirteen episodes.
CBS have confirmed that their new Star Trek series will be called Star Trek: Discovery. The new series will follow a mission involving the USS Discovery (NCC-1031), a Federation starship, and will be set in the "Prime" timeline (i.e. the same timeline and continuity as the original series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager).
Executive producer Bryan Fuller would not confirm precisely when in the timeline the show would be set. He previously shot down a rumour that the show would be set between Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and Star Trek: The Next Generation and suggested that characters and actors from the previous shows could appear in later seasons of the new series, hinting at a post-Voyager timeframe. However, the USS Discoveryis a deliberately retro design (drawing on Ralph McQuarrie's 1970s concept art for Star Trek: The Motion Picture) and its early design number suggests it's an old ship, predating even the original Enterprise. Fans have already speculated that it's an old ship pulled back into service for some reason, or the vessel is carried forwards in time as part of the new storyline.
Little else is known at the moment, save that filming starts in September, the series will consist of between 10 and 13 episodes and the show will debut in January on CBS before moving onto CBS All Access in the States. Space will air the show in Canada and Netflix will broadcast the series in most other territories.
In January 2017, CBS will air the first new television episode of Star Trek in twelve years. It will be just over twenty-nine years since Star Trek: The Next Generation debuted, and just over fifty since the franchise started in the first place.
A new Star Trek TV show has been on the cards since Enterprise was cancelled in 2005, but development was delayed by the divorce between CBS and Paramount that saw the Star Trek rights split between the two companies. When Paramount began releasing its new Star Trek movies under the oversight of J.J. Abrams, CBS was also uncertain how to respond. It did not have the rights to make a TV show set in the Abramsverse and relations between the two companies were cool enough to make it unlikely they could get them.
A few things changed CBS's minds. One was the re-release of the original series and then The Next Generation in high definition. Although neither was the smash success they were hoping (and the prospects of a remastering of DS9 and Voyager now seem unlikely), both did reasonably well in international sales and performances on platforms such as Netflix. CBS were planning to set up their own platform, CBS All Access, and saw Star Trek as a potential vehicle to help get it off the ground.
In November 2015 CBS announced that it had commissioned a new Star Trek TV series, to debut on CBS proper with an event premiere in January 2017 but then to be followed by new episodes released exclusively through CBS All Access. International sales would be through more traditional channels.
Star Trek fans were initially disheartened by the news, feeling that locking Star Trek away behind a paywall for a minority service (the chances of CBSAA effectively challenging Netflix and Amazon are non-existent) in its fiftieth year was massively disrespectful to the legacy of the franchise. The news at Alex Kurtzman, who had worked on Star Trek(2009) and Star Trek Into Darkness, was the prime mover behind the series was also greeted with scepticism, although he is generally better working in television (such as on the excellent Fringe) than on film (such as the less-excellent Transformers movies).
However, in the months since then there has been a steady stream of good news. CBS announced that the showrunner for the new project would be Bryan Fuller. Fuller cut his teeth with several Deep Space Nine scripts before becoming a writer-producer on Voyager. He then worked on original, critically-acclaimed (if not massively popular) shows like Wonderfalls and Dead Like Me before working on the first season of Heroes, where he wrote several of the most popular episodes. His departure before Season 2 was cited as a key reason why the show's quality dramatically declined. His later work was highly acclaimed, particularly Pushing Daisies and Hannibal. Whilst developing Star Trek he was also working on the TV adaptation of Neil Gaiman's novel American Gods for Starz, which is now shooting. Fuller brings a tremendous depth of experience in creating quality television with a deep knowledge and love of the Star Trek franchise.
Even more impressively, if that was possible, CBS announced that they had recruited Nicholas Meyer to provide support, advice and scripts. Meyer is the director of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, as well as co-writing both movies and Star Trek IV: The Voyager Home. Those are the three most critically-acclaimed films in the history of the movie franchise. Meyer was also clever enough to take breaks between the films and only come back to work on the franchise when he was inspired by new ideas. Bringing Meyer on board was a very canny move, designed to appeal to old-skool Star Trek fans. Rod Roddenberry, the son of the late Gene Roddenberry, was also involved in the series as an advisor.
The premise of the new series is not known, although it is generally believed that the new series will not be set in the "Abramsverse" of the new movies, as CBS do not have the rights to it and there has been no formal announcement of a deal between CBS and Paramount to allow it. Based on comments from Fuller and alleged leaks from CBS, the new series may be set in the 71-year-gap between the opening scenes of Star Trek: Generations and Star Trek: The Next Generation, but with a new ship and crew (not the Enterprise-B and C which were active during that period). The new series will apparently consist of 13 episodes telling one long, serialised story. There is also a strong rumour that the new series may adopt an anthology format, with future seasons able to move between time periods of Star Trek history and allow it to tell all-new stories or involve characters from prior series where appropriate.
Update:Bryan Fuller has shot down some of these rumours, denying both the pre-TNG timeframe and the anthology format. However, he has confirmed that the series will look to revisit previous Star Trek characters further down the line. It sounds extremely likely that the new show will still be set in the original timeline and probably post-TNG, post-DS9 and post-Voyager. Official confirmation of that has still not arrived, however.
We do know that the new series will shoot in Toronto between September and the start of 2017, and that the series will debut in January 2017. Casting should be announced in the next few weeks.
Fan reaction to the rumours and to the news of Meyer and Fuller's involvement was overwhelmingly positive, but soured a bit when CBS (and Paramount) took legal action against several Star Trek fan series that were in production. The Star Trek fan community had been producing films and even web series for more than a decade, such as Phase II, New Voyages and Of Gods and Men. Remarkably, these had become popular enough to allow them to include veteran Star Trek actors such as Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols and George Takei.
In 2015 a fan film called Axanar crossed a red line when it sought to raise funds from crowdfunding sites and use the money to pay professional editors, writers and actors. CBS and Paramount initiated legal action. Axanar won support from many fans and Star Trek Beyond director Justin Lin, as well as J.J. Abrams. However, an attempt by Lin and Abrams to get the motion dismissed backfired, with CBS and Paramount instead issuing guidelines that effectively made any fan films of feature length impossible. Some fans had regarded the Axanar project with scepticism and were unhappy with the allegedly profiteering nature of the project, but others decried what they saw as an attack on the fan community that had kept Star Trek alive in the long years between series. Star Trek returns to television screens in 2017 and it remains to be seen in precisely what format and how well it does. But it does show that there remains an appetite for the venerable SF franchise fifty years on from its origins, and there is still interest in exploring strange new worlds and seeking out new life and civilisations.
Starz have confirmed that Gillian Anderson has joined the cast of American Gods, its TV adaptation of Neil Gaiman's 2001 novel about forgotten deities trying to survive in modern America.
Anderson will be playing the new goddess Media, who takes the form of celebrities and lives off the attention people give to their televisions, computer screens and smartphones.
American Gods recently began filming and will likely air in early 2017 on Starz. The series also stars Ricky Whittle as Shadow and Ian McShane as Mr. Wednesday.
CBS's new Star Trek show is currently in development, with scripts being written and shooting due to start in August or September. The question that is now starting to arise is about casting.
The current rumours are that the new show will take place between the events of the original movies and The Next Generation, that is the seventy-one year gap between Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (which took place in 2293) and the events of Encounter at Farpoint (which took place in 2364). According to rumour, the show will adopt an anthology format and will swap ships, crews, characters and premises every season whilst still taking place in a shared universe, similar to Fargo and True Detective.
So the question to ask, is who will play the first captain on the new show? Let's throw some names out there.
Nathan Fillion
For: After the recent and rather abrupt cancellation of Castle, he's free. He's the right age (45) and has some starship-captaining experience (from Firefly). He would, of course, attract tons of viewers and fans just on name value alone. The geek audience would be very happy.
Against: I'm not sure if it's a strike as such, but it's a very obvious and safe choice. CBS and the creative team might be wanting something a bit less obvious. Fillion himself might be looking for a longer-term gig to fill in after Castle.
Rosario Dawson
For: She's a good actress (most importantly) and she's also a firm favourite of showrunner Bryan Fuller, who named her and Angela Bassett (see below) as his favourite candidates for the role long before he got the showrunner gig.
Against: Nothing too bad, but she is signed up to star in The Defenders for Netflix (although that isn't due to start shooting until early 2017) and guest-star in Iron Fist and the second season of Jessica Jones before then.
Stephen Dillane
For: He's got that middle-aged, slightly grumpy but heartfelt British thing going on that Patrick Stewart had. He'd bring in some Game of Thrones fans. He's a bloody good actor.
Against: He doesn't seem to be the biggest fan of genre work, and was downbeat on his Game of Thrones role, although that might have more been the show rather than the genre.
Angela Bassett
For: She's a great actress with tremendous and impressive range. She was Bryan Fuller's #1 pick for the job back in 2013.
Against: She's already a regular on American Horror Story, although that would still leave her some spare time. However, she recently specifically ruled herself out of the running (although noting it'd be cool) because she didn't want to take more time away from her family life.
Michelle Forbes
For: She's a supremely talented actress with fantastic form on multiple genre series, including True Blood, Orphan Black and Battlestar Galactica...not to mention a little show called Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Against: She had recurring role across three seasons as Ro Laren on Star Trek: The Next Generation. That was long enough ago not to necessarily rule her out of a new role on a new series, but it may be more interesting to hold back until a later season and maybe explore what happened to Ro twenty-five years after we last saw her. Forbes herself was lukewarm about the idea of becoming a regular on The Next Generation, remaining only a recurring guest star, and later turned down a regular, starring role on Deep Space Nine, so might be reluctant to return to the franchise, even if it was just for a short-term gig.
Gina Torres
For: She's got SF form from Angel and Firefly, and she's a favourite of Fuller's from both Pushing Daisies and Hannibal. Her current gigs are mostly in animation and voiceover work, so she might be free for this.
Against: Not really seeing anything major against her, apart from her ongoing role in Suits.
Tony Todd
For: Well, he's the only actor we know who's auditioned for a role on the series, although not which role. He's an established Star Trek performer, having played both Worf's brother Kurn on The Next Generation and the older version of Jake Sisko in Deep Space Nine. He's a very accomplished actor with a much larger range than he may be known for from his signature horror character, Candyman.
Against: At 61 he may be considered a little too old for the role, but he's in great shape for his age. CBS may prefer to go for a bigger or at least more "current" name.
David Tennant
For: It's fricking David Tennant. Imagine the craziness of a former Doctor Who becoming Captain of the USS Whatever It's Called (NCC-TARDIS).
Against: The filming dates sound like they might clash with the filming of the third and final season of Broadchurch, but wouldn't rule him out for appearing in subsequent seasons.
George Takei
For: The crowd would go wild. Sulu is one of the more popular and under-explored Original Series characters. Depending on where in the timeline exactly the series is situation, Takei would be the right age to play a much older Sulu, possibly promoted to Admiral and after he's moved on from captaining the Excelsior. Against: At 79, we'd assume that Sulu would have been promoted out of the captain's chair, so he probably wouldn't be the lead character. But having him, Walter Koenig or Nichelle Nichols show up in a role would be a very nice gesture in the show's 50th anniversary year.
CBS have unveiled the first teaser trailer for the new Star Trek series...which hasn't actually started shooting yet.
So we get the new logo and confirmation that it's coming to CBS and CBS All Access.
According to credible rumours, the new series will be in an anthology format with each season taking place with a different cast at different moments in the Star Trek timeline. Apparently this will be the original or prime timeline as CBS does not have the rights to use the JJ Abrams timeline without making a new deal. Allegedly, the first season is taking place somewhere in the seventy-one year gap between Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (and Star Trek: Generations, which takes place the same year) and the start of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Apparently the first season, which will be between 10 and 13 episodes long, will be heavily serialised and set on a starship, but not on an Enterprise.
None of this has been concerned, but the "NEW CREWS" (plural) part of the teaser does hint that the anthology idea may be spot-on.
The new series is being helmed by Trek old-hands Alex Kurtzman (who worked on the Abrams movies), Nicholas Meyer (the director/co-writer of Star Trek II and VI, and co-writer of IV) and Bryan Fuller (who worked as a writer on Deep Space Nine and writer-producer on Voyager). No casting information has been announced yet. The show is slated to begin shooting in August or September in Toronto and will debut on CBS in January 2017.
No subtitle has been announced. If it is an anthology, it may follow the American Horror Story precedent of having a different title each season. If it doesn't, things may get rather confusing very quickly, as people discuss Star Trek (2017), Star Trek (1966) and Star Trek (2009). Seriously, I'd accept Star Trek Colon Insert Subtitle Here, Star Trek or Star Trek: Thingy at this juncture.
The Federation's Excelsior-class was its most powerful and impressive starship design during the rumoured timeframe of the new series.
It was assumed in some quarters that CBS would release the entire season in one go, as with the Netflix model. However, CBS have now confirmed that after the first episode simultaneously airs on CBS and the CBS All Access digital streaming service, the rest of the season (currently believed to be 13 episodes in total length) will air once a week only on CBS All Access. CBS All Access costs American viewers $6 a month, but, controversially, still carries advertising. This distribution model will prevent people from subscribing, binge-watching the whole season in a weekend and then unsubscribing, at least not until the season has finished airing.
The exclusivity to CBS All Access, a rather niche and small service compared to the likes of Hulu, Amazon and Netflix, has irritated some fans who didn't want to pay yet more money and add yet another service to the increasingly long list of services demanding their time and money. It's just fortunate for CBS that there's no way for people who don't want to be hooked into yet another service to get hold of the episodes shortly after airing.
It's likely that the new series will air in a more traditional manner in other countries, but CBS have not yet announced any international partners for the series.
The new Star Trek series is currently in pre-production and should begin shooting in Toronto in the late summer for a January 2017 debut. Alex Kurtzman and Bryan Fuller are running the series, with veteran Star Trek movie writer and director Nicholas Meyer also producing and writing. No further details have been revealed, but apparently credible leaks have suggested that this will be a self-contained, serialised story that will be set somewhere in the seventy-year gap between Star Trek: Generations and Star Trek: The Next Generation, in the original or prime Trek timeline, and will involve Klingons as antagonists. The new series will not be set on a ship named Enterprise. It sounds like CBS are considering an anthology model for this series (similar to Fargo), with future seasons able to jump around to different times and places in the Star Trek universe.
The Excelsior-class USS Enterprise NCC-1701-B, previously seen in Star Trek: Generations, will likely be around during the timeframe of the new series, but will not be the setting.
Relatively little has been confirmed about the new series, but rumours hint that it will be an anthology series which will jump between different eras and locations in Star Trek's history from season to season. The first season is rumoured to take place between the events of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and Star Trek: The Next Generation and will not involve a ship called Enterprise.
This is the first Star Trek TV series to shoot in Canada: all five previous live-action shows were shot in and around Los Angeles.
Casting has been underway for the last few months, so hopefully we'll start getting casting news soon.
Details of the new Star Trek TV series have allegedly leaked. Treat this as rumour for now, but it actually sounds quite promising.
First off, the new series will apparently adopt the anthology format of shows like Fargo and True Detective: set in the same universe but each season will be a self-contained narrative. The cast, time period and premise may shift every year. This is actually a great idea, allowing the series to experiment and do new and interesting things each season.
Secondly, the first season will apparently be set in the original "Prime" universe some time after the events of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and the past scenes in Star Trek: Generations, but some time before the events of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The show will not be set on a USS Enterprise (in the show's continuity, this time period would either see the Enterprise-B or Enterprise-C in operation) but will involve another ship and crew on another mission. The series will be "heavily serialised", effectively telling one story over 10 or 13 episodes.
The series will also apparently feature a villainous group of Klingons. In the franchise's continuity, the Federation and Klingon Empire initiated peace discussions during the events of Star Trek VI but a formal alliance did not come into existence until fifty years later, when the Enterprise-C sacrificed itself to save a Klingon colony from Romulan attack. This gives the writers a lot of leeway in where and when they set the show.
Meanwhile, CBS have confirmed they can't debut the series until six months after Star Trek: Beyond, the next feature film, is released on 22 July. That puts the debut date for the series back until the end of January 2017 at the earliest. Casting for the show is expected to be confirmed in the next few months, with shooting to start in the summer or autumn, so that tracks. This also hints at something previously rumoured: that CBS do not have the rights to the "Abramsverse" that the new films are set in, so must either use the existing continuity or set up a completely new one (which would likely be even more confusing).
Bryan Fuller (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Voyager, Heroes, Hannibal, American Gods) and Nicholas Meyer (the writer-director of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and The Undiscovered Country) will be among the writers and producers of the new show, whilst actor Tony Todd (who played both Kurn and the adult Jake Sisko on The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine) has auditioned for an unspecified role.
This is all unconfirmed rumour, just to be clear, but my interest in the project has suddenly skyrocketed.
