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.
The first Star Wars movie (later retconned to the fourth Star Wars movie, but it really was the first) debuted 45 years ago this week, and that was recognized at the Star Wars Celebration in Anaheim along with a ton of news about TV shows related to the franchise.
A new TV series has been announced titled Skeleton Crew about “a group of kids who are about ten years old who gets lost in the Star Wars universe” but it’s not a kids show according to director John Watts (Spider-Man: Homecoming). If any Ewoks show up, I’m out! Jude Law (Fantastic Beast, Sherlock Holmes) will star, and Christopher Ford (Spider-Man: Homecoming) will be penning the scripts and it will take place in the same timeline as The Book of Boba Fett and The Mandalorian. Expect it to arrive sometime in 2023.
The Rogue One prequel series Andor has a premiere date of August 31st and a trailer as well. The first season will consist of twelve episodes and a second season of twelve episodes has been confirmed. Premiere windows for two more shows were announced with the High Republic-based series The Acolyte arriving at some point in December and The Mandalorian Season 3 targeting a February 2023 premiere. There is still no word on a second season of The Book of Boba Fett.
In non-Star Wars related news from Disney, the long (long, long) awaited sequel series to the George Lucas 1988 fantasy film Willow finally has a premiere date. That show–which sees Warwick Davis reprise his role as the title character–will have its bow on Disney+ on November 30th and you can see the trailer at this link.
In sci fi TV development that practically nobody asked for, a live-action Speed Racer series is in the works at Apple TV+. That comes from J.J. Abrams who many believed ruined both the Star Trek and Star Wars franchises and maybe he will do the same for that retro-Anime from the ’60s. Though it will be hard to come up with something worse than the 2008 live-action film from the Wachowskis. (More sci fi TV development news at this link.)
It appears that people were actually watching the second season of the time-bending series Russian Doll even though it did not show up in the Netflix Top 10 for its premiere week. Nielsen tracked it for the week of April 18th to 24th with an estimated 308 million minutes of viewing. But with the Netflix Red Queen hollering “Off With Their Heads!” on a regular basis these days, I’m not sure that is enough to keep the show around for a third season. More on the streaming and linear ratings for sci fi TV shows at CancelledSciFi.com.
Next week kicks off the Summer schedule and it does so with a couple of pretty big premieres. The long (long, long) wait is over for The Orville Season 3 (subtitled “New Horizons”) as that one has its premiere on Hulu June 2nd. That show will release one episode per week. Also premiering is the third season of Amazon’s The Boys which arrives the very next day on June 3rd. That one will also release one episode per week. Tom Swift also has its premiere on The CW on Tuesday, but that one is probably trying to stay under the radar seeing as the Network Executioner has been quite active at that network the last few weeks. You can see all the premieres for June and beyond at this link and you can see the Weekly Listings here.
There were several trailers released last week including the ones mentioned above. You can see all of those at this link.
Did I miss anything? Probably because I re-upped my Apple TV+ subscription and have been trying to catch up (Severance is looking good so far), so let me know in the comments below.
Be sure to keep up with the news during the week with This Week in Sci Fi TV and r/SciFiTV.
SciFiTVSite.com: Follow our Sci Fi TV Schedule for all the currently airing and upcoming sci fi and fantasy television shows, and keep up with what is airing/streaming each week with our Weekly Listings.
CancelledSciFi.com: Keep up with the status updates of all the currently airing sci fi and fantasy shows with our Cancellation Watch posts. And be sure to follow the Cancelled Sci Fi Twitter Site for breaking news and updates.
