The Screengrab : thomas dekker

Fox Pulls the Plug on "Terminator" TV Series

Phil Nugent — Wed, 20 May 2009 14:30:00 GMT

Fox has canceled Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the expensive TV series spun off from the now 24-year-old movie franchise, after two seasons and a mere 31 episodes. The series was "created" by Josh Friedman, a screenwriter and blogger who, strangely enough, is best known for his association with movies that he didn't work on. (Friedman was co-credited, with David Koepp, with the script for Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds, based on a script he'd written based on the H. G. Wells novel before Spielberg and Koepp got involved, and he got the ball rolling on Snakes on a Plane as an Internet punch line.) The series, which got off to a fast start when it premiered mid-season in January 2008, starred Lena Headley of 300 in the role made famous by Linda Hamilton and Thomas Dekker as John Connor, the role created by Edward Furling in Terminator 2, picked up by Nick Stahl in Terminator 3, and about to become, as of this coming Friday, the now-exclusive property of Christian Bale. The cast also included the dancer-actress Summer Glau, whose picture now belongs in the dictionary next to the term "hot poker-faced killer robot babe." It is an unwieldy term, but clearly it or something with the same meaning belongs in the language.

The series, which ended with a cliffhanger designed to make viewers sit up and yell at their sets, "Oh, like this wasn't already confusing enough!", recently won 53% of the vote in the TV channel E!'s annual Save One Show poll, in which viewers select their favorite among a selection of programs said to be in danger of imminent cancellation. (Ironically, the shows that came in second and third in the rankings, Chuck and Dollhouse, have both since been renewed.) For his part, Friedman has issued a public letter thanking fans for their support, saying, "Every network wants a big fat hit, especially one with a brand name behind it, and Fox was/is no different. They supported the show, they supported my vision of the show, and they gave it plenty of time to find an audience." Of course, for the movie industry, the big question is whether this bodes ill for the relaunch of the brand name as a big-budget movie franchise, when Terminator Salvation opens. If the movie fails to live up to its makers' hopes, they may have something to point to now besides Bale's much-disseminated video rant.

Morning Deal Report: Blade Running?

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 14:30:00 GMT

We’ve always had a “truth is stranger than fiction” motto here at the Morning Deal Report. The most ridiculous projects in development are generally going to get top billing here, because we never tire of shining a spotlight on just how stupid people in Hollywood can be. Of course, some of these projects need to be taken with a bigger grain of salt than others, and such is the case with the hotly rumored Blade Runner 2. Slashfilm ran an exclusive report yesterday based on an email from a reader who was in attendance at a Q &A by the screenwriters of Eagle Eye. That email read, in part, “During the Q&A, the writer said that he and whomever it was that helped him co-write the Eagle Eye screenplay were in the process of writing a sequel to Blade Runner, and had already contacted the producers of the original, etc., etc.” So some guy is spending his free time down in the basement figuring out whatever happened to Deckard? Hey, that’s good enough for us! I’ll let you all know when I’ve finished my script for Deliverance 2: Still Squealin’.

On the other hand, we apparently have to take the dubious notion of a Fame remake seriously. Thomas Dekker of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles “is gunning to play Marco, a working-class kid with some gnarly acting chops who is competing with thousands of other hopefuls to get into and survive an elite New York public high school for the arts,” per The Hollywood Reporter. All together now: What a feeling!

Bugmaster is coming! The live-action adaptation of a Japanese manga comic “stars Joe Odagiri as a natural healer with power over mysterious creatures called Mushi,” Variety reports. The North American rights have been acquired by FUNimation Entertainment. Sounds like FUN!

Related:
OST: "Blade Runner"
Akira Goes Live Action

New "Terminator" Trilogy on Tap: Christian Bale to Play John Connor, Times 3

Phil Nugent — Thu, 22 May 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Christian Bale is turning out to be quite the franchise monkey. (We say it with love.) Having already done well following in the footsteps of Adam West, Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer and George Clooney, he'll be seen next year playing John Connor, savior of mankind in its battle against our mechanized tyrants, a job that calls for him to go where Edward Furlong, Nick Stahl, and (on TV) Thomas Dekker have gone before. Bale and director McG are currently shooting Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins, which is due to arrive in theaters on May 22, 2009. Now the BBC has reported that the producers of the current production, Halcyon, intend to make three Terminator movies, and Bale has agreed to come back for all of them. "He read the script and he loved it," said Derek Anderson, "so he's signed on for all three." His partner, Victor Kubicek, who calls Bale "really an actor's actor," adds that Bale "was our first choice and he's a big fan of The Terminator, so we're very lucky."

The Terminator series sure has come a long way since James Cameron cobbled together a surprise sleeper hit that, sneaking into theaters in the fall of 1984, blew more expensive, long-awaited sci-fi movies such as Dune and 2010 out of the water and, to the industry's slack-jawed amazement, made a bona fide movie star out of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was already fairly famous but regarded as a steroid freak with a funny accent, a useful guy to have around if you had a leading role that needed to be played in a loincloth. O. J. Simpson, famously was rejected for the role by producers who didn't think audiences would accept him as a villain, and by the time the first Terminator sequels rolled around, it was felt that Schwarzenegger wouldn't be accepted as a bad guy anymore either--or, at any rate, that he didn't want to play one--which meant that the scripts and special-effects people on those movies had to perform terrific feats of contortion to make it seem that the reformed Arnold-model robot might be plausibly vulnerable when pitted against the products of superior but skinnier technology. (Terminator 2 and the twelve-minute theme park attraction T2 3-D: Battle Across Time are the only Terminator spin-offs that Cameron has had a hand in besides picking up a check for the use of his characters.) The last Terminator movie, Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines, had made it look as if the franchise was pretty well played out--ready for a TV series, in fact.

Who knows how hard the makers of the still-ongoing TV show The Sarah Connor Chronicles and the upcoming film trilogy will work to make sure their plotlines match up, but the really daunting task for the filmmakers may be proving that there's a big-screen audience for this material without Schwarzenegger. (Terminator 3 proved that there's considerably less of an audience for it with the Schwarzenegger of 2003 than there was for it with the Schwarzenegger of 1984.) The casting of Bale signals that the John Connor character is now the de facto headliner; whereas on the TV show, where his mom gets top billing, the humans are regularly upstaged by the quizzical mechanical hottie played by Summer Glau. The producers of the new franchise are purposefully vague about whether Schwarzenegger, who does have a state to run, will have any participation in the new movies. (His only film appearances since Terminator 3 have been cameos in the Jackie Chan-Steve Coogan bomb Around the World in 80 Days and in The Rundown, where he good-naturedly passed the action-movie sceptre to Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.) Theoretically, there's no reason that the Terminator series can't go on forever and a day, because its time-travel gimmick is built around the idea that the characters who are on the verge of being vanquished can always return to the past and change things. The down side is that there must be a point where even the most stubbonly devoted fans have to get fed up and want to see something stick.

Tribeca Film Festival Review: "From Within"

Phil Nugent — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 21:00:00 GMT

From Within is a good, nasty little horror picture about a mysterious rash of apparent suicides in a small town setting. The ingeniously twisted script, by Brad Keane, involves an occult spell that is used to punish some judgemental fundamentalists for the consequences of their superstitious paranoia, which is just the kind of logical inconsistency that makes for classic nightmares. The direction, by Phedon Papamichael provides some rude jolts but is more heavily paced than it needs to be and could stand some leavening of humor; Elizabeth Rice is very appealing as the rational-minded teenage heroine, but movie's tone is very much in sync with its young male lead, Thomas Dekker, who (as in the Terminator TV series) is so monotonously, grimly intense that you'd almost pay to see him tickled by professionals. Still, the picture holds you, and its vicious streak is played all the way out to the end, which delivers a surprising kick. From Within will be best appreciated by those who like their horror movies without milk, cream, or sugar.