Sci Fi TV Week in Review: Johnny Jay’s irreverent, snarky, and caffeine-fueled look back at the past week in sci fi TV in five minutes or less.
There were quite a number of new production announcements this last week, so this will be the special sci fi TV development edition of this column. Last week, I mentioned that new Stargate and Robocop TV shows are in the works at Amazon while HBO has given the greenlight to a Game of Thrones spin-off based on the Dunk and Egg novels (with the rather wordy title of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight). The prior week it was announced that another GoT spin-off is on the way that will focus on focus on Aegon I Targaryen and also that a reboot of the Harry Potter books is heading to HBO Max (soon to be retitled Max). This week brings four more development announcements.
Never give up, never surrender because the Galaxy Quest TV series will happen eventually. The project has been put back into development, this time at Paramount+, though there are not many details at this point. There have been multiple attempts to produce a series based on the property, most recently in 2015 when Paramount partnered with Amazon Studios. That would have brought back most of the original cast, but when Alan Rickman passed away in 2016 the project was put on hold. The new version has the film’s producer Mark Johnson attached, but there is no word yet on whether any of the original cast members will be onboard or what the show will be about.
Netflix has given the greenlight to the new supernatural mystery The Boroughs which is created by Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews (The Dark Crystal: The Age of Resistance) and executive produced by Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer. Deadline gives the following description for the project:
The eight-episode drama is set in a seemingly picturesque retirement community in the New Mexico desert, where a group of unlikely heroes must band together to stop an otherworldly threat from stealing the one thing they don’t have: time.
It is unclear at this point if the show is intended as a mini-series or if it could run multiple seasons (assuming Netflix does not cancel it after one).
Michelle Yeoh will be returning to Section 31 as promised, but it will be a Paramount+ exclusive movie instead of a television series. This will be part of what is referred to as Phase 2 for the Star Trek franchise and will involve a new movie every two years. Yeoh recently won an Oscar for her performance in Everything Everywhere All at Once and Alex Kurtzman realized her time would be limited with more movie offers coming in. So the Section 31 movie fulfills the prior plans but will require less of a time commitment from the actor.
AMC will be expanding its Anne Rice Universe with a new series that will focus on the Talamasca. Following is the description provided by Variety:
[The series] is set in the world of the Talamasca, a secretive organization featured in a number of Rice’s iconic novels that is devoted to studying the supernatural world and keeping mortals safe from its darkest elements.
John Lee Hancock (Snow White and the Huntsman) will be the lead writer and showrunner for the series. Interview with the Vampire and The Mayfair Witches have performed well for the network, but is it possible the new series could saturate the franchise that just got started in Fall 2022? We will have to see how that plays out when the new entry arrives in late 2023 or early 2024.
In the streaming ratings, Netflix’s Shadow and Bone spent a second week at Number 2 in the Nielsen Top 10 for originals and again pulled in over one billion minutes of viewing. The show has also had a solid run in the Netflix charts as well, so it should be on track for a third-season renewal, but nothing is guaranteed with that streamer. You can keep up with the viewership numbers and the renewal/cancellation status of all the current sci fi TV shows at CancelledSciFi.com.
Next week brings two premieres as Netflix’s fantasy series Sweet Tooth returns for its second season on Thursday, and Amazon’s new spy fi series Citadel has its premiere on Friday. After that, it looks like premieres will slow down for a while as there are currently only four genre entries set to make their bows next month. You can see the premieres for May and beyond at this link and you can keep up with the current schedule at this link.
Be sure to keep up with the news during the week at r/SciFiTV.
SciFiTVSite.com: Follow our Sci Fi TV Schedule for all the currently airing and upcoming sci fi and fantasy television shows, and you can see the premieres for all the upcoming genre entries at this link.
CancelledSciFi.com: Keep up with the status updates on all the airing, returning, and upcoming sci fi and fantasy shows for the current season with our Cancellation Watch posts. And be sure to follow the Cancelled Sci Fi Twitter Site for breaking news and updates.
