Aug. 25, 2020

Strange New Worlds, Familiar Old Format

Strange New Worlds, Familiar Old Format

On the sci-fi edition, Ewan McGregor’s costly divorce, Strange New Worlds with an old format and we remember actor Ben Cross.   All that and more on this edition of Multiverse Tonight!

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Transcript

Tonight! Ewan McGregor’s costly divorce, Strange New Worlds with an old format and we remember actor Ben Cross. All that and more on this edition of Multiverse tonight!


Hi Welcome to Multiverse Tonight, I’m your host Thomas Townley.



Star Wars

Disney’s Rogue One prequel series has a co-star for Diego Luna, Adria Arjona has joined the Disney Plus series. Arjona is known for Netflix’s 6 Underground and will be in Sony’s Morbius movie. The series still has yet to be granted a title.


And while we’re on the subject of Disney Plus Star Wars series, According to making star wars dot com, production sources familiar with the Obi-wan series production have indicated that the series will start filming next month with exterior shots filmed somewhere in Southern California.


Maybe production is being sped up because of Ewan McGregor’s divorce settlement. According to various sources, The actor has agreed to split his royalties from all the movies and tv shows he made before May 2017 with this ex-wife, Eve Mavrakis. He will also be handing her alimony to the tune of 35, 868 a month, and 14, 934 a month in child support. He will also be giving her five of his cars, their LA home, and half a million dollars in cash.  Ouch.


This Christmas, Disney Plus is gifting us with a new Star Wars Holiday Special, this time instead of a goofy live-action one it will be The Lego Star Wars Holiday Special. The forty-five minute show will feature the animated Legos in the spirit of the original 1978 special. According to executive producer Josh Rimes quote "We wanted to give a wink and a nod to the original," "It's a celebration of the saga. A lot of characters will be interacting with different characters and perhaps even different versions of themselves at different ages."  unquote The story will involve Rey and BB-8 heading out on a quest to quote "gain a deeper knowledge of the Force, but their visit to a mysterious Jedi Temple sends them careening through time and space." unquote The Lego Star Wars Holiday Special will be released on November seventeenth on Disney Plus.


The Clone Wars might be over but there’s still more to be told in audiobook form. The animated cast members are providing their voices to the audiobook edition of Star Wars The Clone Wars Stories of Light and Dark anthology. Returning to reprising their roles are Corey Burton (Cad Bane and Count Dooku), Nika Futterman (Asajj Ventress), Matt Lanter (Anakin Skywalker), Catherine Taber (Padmé Amidala), James Arnold Taylor (Obi-Wan Kenobi), and Sam Witwer (Maul). The book has ten stories retelling episodes from Clone Wars and a new Nightsisters story. The book goes on sale on August twenty-fifth.


Star Trek

If you’re in the mood for more Picard, there are plenty of tie ins to go and things to buy. First off is the Picard season one soundtrack on oldfashioned vinyl.. The limited-edition release is pressed on two 140 gram ‘Transparent Green W/ Splatter’ vinyl platters, and features printed inner sleeves and a gatefold jacket. The vinyl release comes out on October 9th and can be bought for $32.98. There will also be a 2021 calendar so you can mark the time till next season. And the show is coming to Blu-ray, it arrives on October sixth.  In November, we get the book Star Trek The Wisdom of Jean-Luc Picard from Simon & Shusters Adams Press and edited by Chip Carter. The book has 208 pages and will be out on November tenth.


Star Trek Strange New Worlds will be a different format than Picard and Discovery, one that’s more familiar to older Trek fans. Episodic. Alex Kurtzman participating in the Deadline Emmy Contenders panel updated everyone about the new series taking place on Pike’s Enterprise quote I think Strange New Worlds, under the guidance of Henry Myers and Akiva Goldsman, it’s going to be a return in a way to TOS [Star Trek: The Original Series]. We are going to do stand-alone episodes. There will be emotional serialization. There will be two-parters. There will be larger plot arcs. But it really is back to the model of alien-of-the-week, planet-of-the-week, challenge-on-the-ship-of-the-week. With these characters pre-Kirk’s Enterprise. I think what people responded so much to in all three characters is this kind of relentless optimism that they have. And that they are at the young phase of their careers. unquote, He also spoke about Pike keeping his optimism despite having knowledge of his fate learned during his time on Discovery. Quote That Pike, who has experienced this extraordinary trauma, which he is famous for. It is how he knows how he is going to die. The idea is, how does a character who knows how he is going to die live optimistically from that point on and lead a ship? It’s a great question. I have never seen a show where a character knew that already. You have to have an inherent optimism in your world view in order to say, “I am going to get up every morning knowing how it is going to end for me.” And still, lead everybody to be the best versions of themselves. Unquote  


Alex Kurtzman in an interview with Gold Derby noted that writing is ahead of schedule on the Trek Productions at the moment. The Discovery writer’s room has already started on season four of the series and that Strange New Worlds is scheduled to begin production next year. He told them quote "We’ve been running all of our writers’ rooms on Zoom, and the silver lining is that we’ve been actually been able to get quite ahead on the scripts for upcoming seasons of Discovery, and Picard, and Strange New Worlds, which is going to be shooting next year, and Section 31." unquote He also talked about how the pandemic slowed post-production on Discovery, including having the musicians recording their instruments individually and having Jeff Russo having to mix it all together. Season Three of Discovery starts on October fifteenth.


Next year might see more Trek and a new name for CBS All Access. A new profile on Financial Times about ViacomCBS Chairperson Shari Redstone reports that the media conglomerate has a shortlist for a new super streamer and the leading contender is Paramount Plus. The apparent motivation for rebranding CBS All Access is that management believes that the CBS name skews older and that the Paramount name might have a broader appeal. After all, they did rebrand the SpikeTV channel into the Paramount Network.


David Tennant, during a Reddit AMA session, said that he would like to have a part in the Star Trek Universe. This wouldn’t be too far to go for Tennant after all he’s been Doctor Who, he’s been a part of the Marvel universe on Jessica Jones and a part of the Harry Potter universe as well.  Maybe they can make him a part of Discovery, Picard, Strange New Worlds, or a part of Section 31.   Anywhere they could put him, he’d probably be great.


Nichelle Nichols’s family has launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise money to help sue her former caretaker who they allege financially abused her while pretending to protect her interests. All funds raised will pay for the legal fees and has a goal of 100,000 dollars, right now it’s about 64 percent to its goal. For more information about it look up the Shields Up, Nichelle Nichols! GoFundMe campaign or click on the link in the show notes. https://www.gofundme.com/f/shields-up-nichelle-nichols


Well while we’re on legal news, we have a final judgment in the Star Trek Discovery Tardigrade case. If you’ll recall in my past episodes, I talked about how Tardigrade video game Anas Abdin claimed that the Tardigrade story in the first season of Star Trek Discovery was similar to the story in his video game Tardigrades. The US District Court in the Southern District of New York dismissed his claims back in September, it was appealed to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and they have come back affirming that CBS and Netflix did not infringe on the work of Mister Abdin because the works aren’t similar enough and that the use of Tardigrades aren’t enough saying quote “Abdin’s space-traveling tardigrade is an unprotectable idea because it is a generalized expression of a scientific fact—namely, the known ability of a tardigrade to survive in space,” the court said. “By permitting Abdin to exclusively own the idea of a space-traveling tardigrade, this Court would improperly withdraw that idea from the public domain and stifle creativity naturally flowing from the scientific fact that tardigrades can survive the vacuum of space.” The court also found that the elements of the Tardigrade game were uncopyrightable stock themes from scifi and that his human characters weren’t similar enough to the Discovery ones. https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/cbs-beats-copyright-claims-over-star-trek-discovery



The next Star Trek novel is up for preorder, Greg Cox brings us Star Trek A Contest of Principles, the book sees the crew of the Enterprise split between competing missions. While Captain Kirk is observing elections on a newly democratic planet, while Spock is searching for Doctor McCoy after Bones is kidnapped from a nearby planet and is being forced to study a deadly sickness. Here’s the blurb quote "An epic new Star Trek saga by New York Times bestselling author Greg Cox set during the original five-year mission!


The planet Vok is holding its first free elections after years of oppressive military rule. Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the Starship Enterprise have been dispatched by Starfleet to serve as impartial observers, but remaining neutral proves a challenge, as Kirk confronts a tangled web of scandal, conspiracy, and assassination plots—with the stability of an entire sector at stake.To make matters worse, Dr. Leonard McCoy has vanished while on a mission of mercy to Braco, a nearby planet only a system away. With Kirk unable to abandon his vital mission on Vok to hunt for his friend, it's up to First Officer Spock and Christine Chapel to lead a team in search of the missing doctor, even if it means risking whatever fate befell McCoy.


Unknown to his friends and crewmates, however, McCoy has been spirited away to another world, Ozalor, where he's expected to find a cure for a mysterious ailment plaguing a member of the planet's ruling family. Torn between his Hippocratic oath and his desire to escape, McCoy finds himself at the center of deadly palace intrigues—and a struggle for power that may ultimately consume all three worlds! Greg Cox is the New York Times bestselling author of numerous Star Trek novels and short stories. He has also written the official movie novelizations of War for the Planet of the Apes, Godzilla, Man of Steel, The Dark Knight Rises, Daredevil, Ghost Rider, and the first three Underworld movies, as well as books and stories based on such popular series as Alias, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, CSI, Farscape, The 4400, Leverage, The Librarians, Roswell, Terminator, Warehouse 13, Xena: Warrior Princess, and Zorro. He has received three Scribe Awards from the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers, as well as the Faust Award for Life Achievement."


Star Trek: A Contest of Principles goes on sale on November 10th.


Geek

Oscar-nominated director Garth Davis will be directing the second sequel to Tron. The movie has been languishing in development hell since 2017 with Jared Leto attached to star. Mr. Leto on Instagram posted quote "I’m struck with such gratitude for the opportunity to bring this movie to life, especially as both the original video game and the film affected me so deeply as a young child," "The fact that I get to be a part of this new chapter is mind-blowing." unquote  Tron Legacy made 400 million and enough interest to make a sequel. No expected release date yet.


Netflix has bought a trilogy of Fear Street movies from Disney. The movies are based on the RL Stine teen horror series. The movies are already complete having been produced by Fox and originally intended for release this past June, but they were pulled due to the pandemic. The Fear Street books are based in a fictional Ohio city. No word on when they will be released.


The Nutty Professor is getting a reboot, Project X Entertainment’s James Vanderbilt, William Sherak and Paul Neinstein have landed the rights to it, they previously rebooted the Scream franchise. No studio is attached to it yet.


Hey, there’s actually a box office to report on. Let’s start at number 9. Back to the Future with 140,000. 8 is Jurassic Park with 180,000 7. Peninsula with 210,000. 6. Star Wars Episode V The Empire Strikes Back with 230,000. Number five Cut Throat City 240,000. Number four the Goonies with 260,000. Number 3 Words on Bathroom Walls with 462,000, number two The SpongeBob Movie Sponge On the run with 550,000 and number one with a bullet Unhinged which comes in with four million 60 thousand.


Tonight we remember actor Ben Cross, who passed away after a battle with cancer on August eighteenth from cancer. He will best be known for movies like 1981’s Chariots of Fire, 1995’s First Knight, 2004’s Exorcist The Beginning, and his role as Sarek in 2009’s Star Trek. His television credits include The short-lived remake of Dark Shadows in 1991, appearances on the 80’s Twilight Zone, The Ray Bradbury Theater, Tales from The Crypt, Poltergeist The Legacy and Twelve Monkeys. He is survived by his wife and two children from his first marriage. He was 72.


And that brings us to the end of the scifi news. *Show Ender*

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Thanks for watching the SciFi edition of Multiverse Tonight,  we will be back in two weeks with the comic book edition. Now please exit the universe in an orderly fashion. Good Night!  Multiverse Tonight is a production of Half-Baked Genre Productions. Copyright 2020  All Rights Reserved.