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.
Despite all the cancellations at Netflix, the streamer is keeping up its Anime slate and has ordered a series based on the acclaimed manga Pluto by Naoki Urasawa. That is a reinterpretation of Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy, and it takes place in a futuristic world where robots coexist with humans. It follows the humanoid robot Gesicht, a member of Europol’s anti-robot crimes division, as he investigates a series of murders that target the most advanced robots in the world. The series will be produced by Genco with animation by M2Studio and is set for release later in 2023. Netflix posted a sneak peek with the announcement.
In casting news, we have a remix of familiar sci fi faces as several genre alums will be joining current and upcoming productions. Brandon Routh (Legends of Tomorrow, Superman Returns) will be joining NBC’s Quantum Leap revival as Commander Alexander Augustine (Addison’s father) and it is unclear at this point if that will be a recurring role. HBO Max’s upcoming The Batman spin-off The Penguin will have Shohreh Aghdashloo (The Expanse), Michael Kelly (Person of Interest), and Deirdre O’Connell (Outer Range) joining the cast. And Lindy Booth (The Librarians) will be coming onboard the Apple TV+ Metropolis series in the role of Maria. That one comes from Mr. Robot‘s Sam Email.
Fans of The Expanse may have wanted at least one more season from that show (especially since it left some storylines hanging), but they will be getting the next best thing with the upcoming Boom! Studios comic book series The Expanse: The Dragon’s Tooth written by Andy Diggle (no relation to John Diggle that I am aware of) with art by Rubine. The television series ends at about the same place as the sixth book and then there is a thirty-year time jump with the seventh book. The twelve-issue comic series fills in the gap and will apparently tie up some of the loose ends left by the series. It is available for pre-order now through Kickstarter and the books should start hitting the stands in April 2023.
Paramount+ is the latest streamer to be going through behind-the-scenes issues as they will be writing down as much at $1.5 billion with the upcoming merger of Showtime (which begs the question of why they are doing it). And how do they plan on making that up? Increasing your subscription costs! The Premium plan which will be including Showtime will jump up to $11.99, while the base plan without Showtime and with ads will increase to $5.99. I guess Star Trek fans will have to shell out a little more if they want to keep up with all the new shows.
And speaking of Paramount+, there was one cancellation this past week and it came from that streamer. The Indiana Jones meets National Treasure series Blood & Treasure will not be continuing to a third season, an announcement which comes as no surprise. That was an expensive show to produce and it went on an extended hiatus between its first and second seasons due to the COVID-related production shutdowns. The cast and crew had been released from their contracts, so the prospects of a third season seemed slim at best.
In the streaming rankings, HBO’s The Last of Us placed at Number 3 in the Nielsen chart for acquired shows for its HBO Max run the week after its premiere with an estimated 837 million minutes viewed. That covered viewership for the premiere episode and the short time that the second episode was available on Sunday evening, and those are pretty impressive numbers. Not surprisingly, that show has been renewed for a second season. Keep up with the renewal/cancellation status of all the current sci fi TV shows at CancelledSciFi.com.
Apple TV+ has announced a March 17th premiere date for Extrapolatons, a dramatic anthology looking at the future impacts of climate change. You can see the trailer at this link. There are no sci fi/fantasy shows debuting this coming week, but you can see all the premieres for February 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.
