Last year JJ Abrams signed a massive deal with Warner Bros to become the new home of Bad Robot. Today the first projects to come out of that have been announced. Two of the three are using pre-established Warner Bros IP - expect a lot of that from JJ over the next few years.
Project one: Overlook
"Overlook," is a horror-thriller series inspired by and featuring iconic characters from Stephen King's masterpiece The Shining. "Overlook" explores the untold, terrifying stories of the most famous haunted hotel in American fiction. The project reunites Bad Robot, King and WBTV, who previously collaborated on the acclaimed psychological-horror series "Castle Rock" for Hulu.
Last year Warner Bros released one of my favourite films from last year - the criminally under-seen Doctor Sleep, which was a sequel to The Shining. But back in 2012 Warners were developing a prequel film that was focused around the events at the Overlook Hotel before The Shining. It would be interesting to see if any material from that ill-fated film makes its way into the new show.
Project two: Justice League Dark
Details are scant on this, but it is expected that this will be a dark, supernaturally-tinged superhero drama based on the team from the comics that has included John Constantine, Swamp Thing, Deadman, Zatanna, and Etrigan The Demon.
Like Overlook, JLD was being developed as a film previously with Guillermo del Toro and Doug Liman both, at one stage, attached to direct it.
Justice League Dark has also featured comic books greatest character: Detective Chimp.
Project three: Duster
This is the only original series of today’s announcements.
The first series "Duster," is to be co-written by J.J. Abrams & LaToya Morgan. Set in the 1970's Southwest, the life of a gutsy getaway driver for a growing crime syndicate goes from awful to wildly, stupidly, dangerously awful. Morgan is currently a writer on "The Walking Dead".
Read the WarnerMedia media release: The Futon Critic
It’s unusual for a streaming drama to take a hiatus mid-run, but The Good Fight is off the air for a week after just two episodes. The break in release is to allow for post-production to catch up due to the stupid virus shutting everything down. As per Deadline, the series will run just 7 episodes this year - short three episodes of its intended run.
Read: Deadline
Hulking character actor Brian Dennehy has died at the age of 81. It seems unfair that Variety lead its headline with his role in the disposable comedy/VHS classic Tommy Boy.
Read: Variety
Netflix is now valued higher than Disney.
Netflix’s stock, extending its three-day rally, closed up 3.2%, to $426.75 per share. That gives Netflix a current market capitalization of $187.3 billion, putting it just over Disney’s $186.6 billion, after the media conglomerate’s stock finished down 2.5% amid a broader market decline Wednesday. Previously, Netflix’s all-time high closing stock price was $418.97 on July 9, 2018.
Source: Variety
Noel Murray takes a look at Bosch for Mel Magazine and does a solid job in selling it. The strength of the show is that it is a reliable episodic drama (with novelistic, season-long arcs) that delivers classic police detective stories in a Los Angeles setting that draws upon the city’s rich, lurid past.
But recently at least, there’s been nothing quite like Bosch — except for maybe some of the imports from overseas, where the Europeans have been pumping out dozens of grim, bloody mystery miniseries each year. Even those shows, though, have a different feel and flavor. They tend to be chillier and more despairing, suffused with the fog of moral ambiguity. They also often lack Bosch’s sense of connection with a complicated place and its long, troubled past.
It’d be a stretch to argue that Bosch is one of the best dramas of its era. It’s not Better Call Saul-level great, or as phenomenal as Succession, Pose, The Good Fight or The Leftovers. The writers and directors aren’t doing anything especially daring with the visual style or the narrative approach. They’re working within familiar, mainstream storytelling modes, wherein a detective chases down promising leads and dead ends until he eventually finds himself engaged in some kind of life or death struggle with the prime suspect.
Bosch returns for a 6th season this weekend on Amazon Prime Video. I’ve seen the first five episodes and there’s certainly more action sequences than we’ve seen in the show previously, but it still feels like the same show. It continues to be rather good.
Read: Mel Magazine
Trailer Park
Anna Kendrick stars in a new Quibi series debuting next week about a woman who finds her boyfriends sex doll starts talking to her.
The 21 June is when we’ll see Perry Mason back on screen. A full-length trailer has been released:
The launch of US streaming service Peacock this week brings with it a whole bunch of new trailers.
Let us start with what is (sadly?) the most anticipated show coming to Peacock: Saved By The Bell.
Brave New World is based on the Aldous Huxley novel. This adaptation has legendary comics writer Grant Morrison as part of the writing team.
The Punky Brewster revival series is actually becoming a thing.
The Peacock show I’m most interested in is a mini-series based on LA icon (famous for being on a billboard) Angelyne. The show stars Emmy Rossum and is written/directed by her husband Sam Esmail (Mr Robot).
What’s next?
