Category Archives: News

Korra Gets 26-Episode Bump

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Take that, Game of Thrones.

It turns out that if you have a wildly successful animated show that manages to beat out Game of Thrones in ratings, your hosting network may want more episodes of said wildly successful animated show. According to EW, Nickelodeon has ordered an additional 26 episodes to be added to The Legend of Korra’s run.

It’s official: The Legend continues! Nickelodeon has picked up a second season of the animated adventure series The Legend of Korra, EW has learned. After averaging 3.8 million viewers for Season 1, Book 1, which concluded June 23, the Avatar: The Last Airbender sequel is receiving a second-season order of 26 episodes that presumably will be divided into two parts called Books 3 and 4, bringing the total number of episodes to 52.

Who says an action show centered around a well-crafted female lead can’t be a winning product?

‘Catching Fire’ Casting Updates

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Remember when we talked a lot about The Hunger Games on the blog and podcast? Good news, we’re talking about it again!

Academy-award winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman has been confirmed to play Head Gamemaker Plutarch Heavensbee in Catching Fire. While that’s the only official casting calla t the moment, the web seems abuzz that Jena Malone of Sucker Punch fame has been offered the key role of Johanna Mason.

Via 

Bloomsbury Hints At New ‘Potter’ Box Set

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A friend of mine found this buried in a Reuters article about Bloomsbury profits over the last fiscal year.

Bloomsbury, the publisher of the “Harry Potter” series by author JK Rowling, also said it was counting on a new Rowling three-book box set tied into the Potter series, and a non-fiction account of spies in World War II to support sales in the coming year.

This is the first I’ve heard of any three-book box set of new content in the Potter-verse. What this could be I have absolutely no idea, but deep down I’m hoping it’s a set of Marauders-era stories. A man can dream. Chances are, it’s something more along the lines of a collection of Potter universe lore stories (Tales of Beetle Bard) or the Potter Encyclopedia Rowling has said she’s working on.

Live Action ‘Star Wars’ Series Still In The Works

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You can be forgiven if you’ve written off the live-action Star Wars television series.

Rick McCallum says that the project is still on the table and scripts have been written. The issue remains the cost of production. There’s an incredible amount of visual effects they want to work in, more than any of the films they’ve done in the past. Sadly, I think that this series just isn’t going to happen unless Lucasfilm is willing to scale back on the effects. Fans aren’t looking for a visual masterpiece in a television series, they’re looking for regular  installments of story and characters. You don’t have to squeeze blockbuster-grade visuals into a 45 minute television episode.

Perhaps the showrunners should call up Ron Moore for a consultation.

Via Club Jade

Avengers Sinks Universal’s Battleship

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(Shane insisted we use that title)

Marvel’s The Avengers is still flying high at the box office, claiming the top spot for a third straight week and smashing all challengers into a fine pulp. This week, it seems, it didn’t have to work very hard.

Rotten buzz and superheroic competition sunk Universal’s “Battleship” over the weekend. Costing over $300 million to make and market, Peter Berg’s “Battleship” managed to sell about $25.4 million in tickets in its first weekend in North American theaters – a second-place finish behind “Marvel’s The Avengers” (Disney), which took in an estimated $55 million for a three-week domestic total of $457 million.

While it’s been a year of incredible blockbuster successes (Hunger Games, Avengers), it’s also been a year of embarrassing flops. Battleship joins John Carter as an expensive film that has not only stumbled, but faceplanted and rolled straight off a cliff in its domestic opening. At least John Carter can claim horrific marketing as part of its problem, though it was still a mediocre film. Battleship was marketed heavily to court the summer popcorn crowd. Unfortunately, moviegoers decided that they would rather see the eye-popping and well-written Avengers for a second or third time rather than another critically panned film based off of a Hasbro product.

Carol Danvers Is Getting A Promotion

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As you may have heard on the latest podcast, we’re happy to endorse a new comic this July: the all-new Captain Marvel.

This July, Carol Danvers, once known as Ms. Marvel, will take on the legacy of a legendary hero in CAPTAIN MARVEL, a new ongoing series by writer Kelly Sue DeConnick and artist Dexter Soy.

“My pitch was called ‘Pilot’ and the take can pretty much be summed up with ‘Carol Danvers as Chuck Yeager,’” says DeConnick. “Carol’s the virtual definition of a Type A personality. She’s a competitor and a control freak. At the start of our series, we see Carol pre-Captain Marvel, pre-NASA even, back when she was a fiercely competitive pilot. We’ll see her meeting one of her aviation heroes and we’ll see her youthful bravado, her swagger. Then over the course of the first arc we’re going to watch her find her way back to that hungry place. She’ll have to figure out how to be both Captain Marvel and Chuck Yeager—to marry the responsibility of that legacy with the sheer joy being nearly invulnerable and flying really [expletive] fast.  Sporting a revamped costume to compliment the codename, Danvers not only faces unfamiliar dangers and challenges, but also delves into her own history as well as that of the late Kree soldier Mar-Vell, the first person to operate as Captain Marvel.”

I know I’m excited for this. I’m still a relative newcomer to the world of comics, but one character that has quickly become a favorite of mine is Carol Danvers. Great backstory, compelling, lots of depth. Just the kind of female character that fandom needs. And now she’s getting one heck of a (very deserved) promotion to Captain Marvel.

If you’re looking to support a great female character written by a great female author, pick up the new Captain Marvel this July.

Happy Mother’s Day (and some news)

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It being Mother’s Day in the U.S., our intrepid bloggers have been spending some quality time with some very patient women who raised some really geeky kids with great grace. (I count myself doubly lucky because I not only get my mom, but I get to enjoy Shane’s mom too!)

As for today’s news, here’s what we’ve come up with.

Lucas gets revenge on Marin County residents.  When those who live in Marin County finally stopped the project to build the movie studio on George Lucas’ land, George Lucas decided to get back at them by using the land for something else: low-income housing.  From the article at Movies.com:

He’s working with the Marin Community Foundation to instead construct affordable housing for either low-income families or seniors living on small, fixed incomes.  In order to smooth along the development, he’s already given them all of the pricey technical studies and land surveys Lucasfilm spent years conducting.  And we thing that’s just great.  Because if there’s one thing rich people will hate more than having movie magic made in their backyard, it’s poor people moving in.

I’m not sure that The Great One’s motives are the purest here, but if it’s going to do something good for the community, I can’t knock it.

In other geek news, my brother sent me this link today: Buildtheenterprise.org.

Yes, you read that correctly.  It’s a site outlining the plan to build a working spaceship, based on the greatest ship ever conceived, the U.S.S. Enterprise, and is trying to show the feasibility of doing so.  Do be patient–six days into the site, they’ve had to purchase a new server because they’ve gone from 100 visitors a day to lover 60,ooo, so the site is moving a bit slow right now, but it’s worth it.

Edited to add: Also, the box office receipts are in for the weekend, and The Avengers just pulled in over 100 million for its second weekend.  That’s what most movies hope to make in their entire run.  This now brings the total for The Avengers to over 360 million dollars in two weeks.

 

‘Harry Potter’ Will Be Free in Amazon’s Kindle Lending Library

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For those of you who have Amazon Prime, your Kindle just got a little bit more magical. Time Online reports that Harry Potter will soon be available for for free as part of the Kindle Lending Library, a service offered to Prime customers that allows them to one book per month.

Today Amazon announced that it’s adding all seven of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books to the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library.

That means if you have an Amazon Prime membership (available for an annual fee of $79) you can “borrow” any of the Harry Potter books for free. Amazon Prime members can borrow one book per month with no due dates, plus they get free two-day shipping on most products sold directly by Amazon and the ability to stream certain movies and TV shows for free.

As if the free two-day shipping wasn’t enough to entice you to the Amazon Prime service (I swear my account pays for itself every Christmas thanks to that). The books will be available in the lending library starting June 19th.

Allston, Zahn, Stackpole, Young, and Spendlove Team Up For Origins Exclusive Anthology

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Heading to the Origins Game Fair in Columbus this month? You may want to check out a nifty little project Expanded Universe author Aaron Allston announced yesterday.

Time-Traveled Tales is an experiment by GAMA, the organization that runs Origins — it’s the first fiction anthology produced as a souvenir for that convention. Similar anthologies produced for events like the World Fantasy Convention tend to become collector’s items. We’re hoping that the same will come true of this book, and that it will persuade GAMA to produce more in the future.

You can help them with that decision, of course, by buying one…

Time-Traveled Tales is being produced in a limited print run. In the event that the print run does not sell out at the convention, individual authors may have copies for sale in the future. But picking up a copy early at the Origins Game Fair, or asking a friend to pick one up for you, is the only way to be sure of getting a copy. At this moment, we have no idea whether the anthology will be reissued in the future.

Wish us luck with this experiment, and I look forward to seeing you at Origins.

Just who is involved with this project? There’s Allston, of course. Authors and all around cool people Janine Spendlove and Bryan Young have entries in the paperback. Then there’s Tim Zahn and Mike Stackpole, who you just might be familiar with.

I’ll definitely be looking out for a copy when I head down to Columbus later this month. For more information, visit Aaron’s blog.

Timothy Zahn’s ‘Icarus Hunt’ Coming To Ebook Readers

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Let’s hear it from the man himself!

Over the past few months several of you have asked about ebook versions of The Icarus Hunt. I’ve just learned that it’s going to be released for Kindle and Nook (and possibly other platforms — my information source was a bit vague) on May 23.

Thanks to all of you who pushed for this for your help in making it a reality.

If there is one non-Star Wars novel of Zahn’s that you absolutely must read, it’s The Icarus Hunt. Nanci, Emily, and myself fully endorse it and if you need a bit of persuasion, you can read my spoiler-free review of the novel here. Or you can just take our word for it and pre-order your copy from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.