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.
Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice . . . The creators of Dark and the recently cancelled 1899 are moving forward with their next project at Netflix. Baron bo Odar and Jantje Friese are working on an adaptation of the Boom! Studios comic Something Is Killing The Children which was started by The Haunting of Hill House creator Mike Flanagan before he jumped ship to Amazon. The following synopsis has been given for the project:
When the children of Archer’s Peak begin to go missing, everything seems hopeless. Most children never return, but the ones that do have terrible stories—impossible stories of terrifying creatures that live in the shadows. Their only hope of finding and eliminating the threat is the arrival of a mysterious stranger, one who believes the children and claims to see what they can see. Her name is Erica Slaughter. She kills monsters.
Odar and Friese will be taking over the project and it should be going into production in the coming months. Vegas is not taking odds yet on its chances of surviving into a second season at cancellation-happy Netflix.
Not moving forward is the reboot/revival of HBO’s True Blood. Riverdale‘s Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa was onboard as exec producer and was working on the script with NOS4A2‘s Jami O’Brien. Original series creator Alan Ball was also involved as executive producer. It is unclear if this was intended as a revival or a complete reboot. If the former, it would have been difficult to explain the aging of the actors playing the vampires. If the latter, it seems completely unnecessary to reboot a show that ended less than ten years ago. HBO CEO Casey Bloys made the comment that “nothing… felt like it got there” so the project was cancelled, which was probably for the best.
Meanwhile, HBO Max has given the greenlight to a prequel series that takes place prior to the events of the It movies. To be titled Welcome to Derry, it will look back at the curse that has taken hold of the town. Andy Muschietti–who directed It and It Chapter Two— will be developing the series along with Barbara Muschietti and Jason Fuchs. Expect it to arrive on the streaming service later this year or early in 2024.
Disney+’s The Mandalorian has not been officially renewed for a fourth season, but series creator Jon Favreau has already written the scripts along with Dave Filoni. And that will tie in with the upcoming live-action Ahsoka series. Favreau has also indicated that he does not have an ending point planned for The Mandalorian yet and hopes that it will continue for several more years. Since it is not on Netflix, maybe it will.
One show that will not be continuing is the anthology series Soulmates. That show had been renewed for a second season, but that will not be going forward. It debuted back in October 2020 and received very little in the way of promotion. It went into limbo due to the COVID-related production shutdowns, and AMC has decided not to go forward with the second season as the network goes through behind-the-scenes shakeups.
In streaming ratings, Netflix’s supernatural drama Lockwood & Co. made it into the Nielsen Streaming Charts for the week of its premiere, but it has dropped out of the Netflix charts after three weeks. That may indicate that it did not achieve the “completion rate” that Netflix execs are looking for and other genre entries that were cancelled following a three-week run in the charts include The Midnight Hour, The Imperfects, and Warrior Nun. Keep up with the renewal/cancellation status of all the current sci fi TV shows at CancelledSciFi.com.
Next week brings the premiere of The Mandalorian Season 3 on Disney+. That show will start releasing one episode per week on Wednesday, March 1st. You can see all the premieres for March 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.
