“Falling Skies” had the strongest cable debut of 2011, and TNT rewarded the show’s performance last week with a renewal order after only three episodes.

The series, starring Noah Wyle, has averaged 6.4 million total viewers in its first three episodes and is attracting strong ratings in overseas territories. The network has ordered 10 episodes for Season 2, which is slated to air in summer 2012. [Deadline]

As I’ve said before, there’s some pretty good action in “Falling Skies” if you can get past the cloyingly sweet family touches that are so obviously shoehorned into the show by Steven Spielberg. That’s what makes the show perfect for DVR: if you see a child onscreen, hit fast-forward and keep fast-forwarding until you don’t see any dumb wiener kids. I’ll rescind this rule of thumb if — and only if — the aliens tear a child’s limbs off or vaporize a kid on a skateboard. C’mon, Spielberg. Do it, you pussy.

Hold on to your dinosaur butts: the Steven Spielberg-produced sci-fi show “Terra Nova” will make its debut over two nights in May, and the Super Bowl mid-game shows (the commercials) gave us our first look.

For the longest time, my joke for the worst, most Joe Sixpack idea for a screenplay ever was “swat teams fighting dinosaurs.” Then came 2005′s A Sound of Thunder, which added Ed Burns to the joke to make it one of the worst movies ever made. Of course, I had no idea that it was based on a short story from thirty years before I was born, so this terrible idea has been around forever.

The new version jumps headfirst (like Pete Rose) into FOX’s Friday Night Sci-Fi Red Ring of Death with a new twist on the plot. In 2149, all life on planet Earth is threatened with extinction, so a group of scientists and a random family head back to prehistoric times and start shooting dinosaurs with machine guns. You can watch the teaser commercial below, which makes it look like Avatarosaurus, but I’m guessing the dinosaur fights happen maybe once an episode, meaning “Terra Nova” is closer to “The Walking Dead” than Avatar. Are you ready for some boring discussions about fate? I am!

Read the rest of this entry »

People have been buzzing about Steven Speilberg’s upcoming TNT series “Falling Skies” for a little while now, based on the simple math equation, Spielberg + aliens +/- Noah Wylie= ZOMG EPIC LOL ETC. Well the first sneak peek and trailer are out and it looks… explosiony? Alientastic? I’m bad with buzz words. But it does look pretty cool, even with Noah Wylie making his, “No seriously, I know George Clooney. We were on “ER” together. Don’t believe me? I’ll call him right now,” face (pictured at right). If you’ve got Spielberg, aliens, CGI, pyrotechnics, and sexy survivor girls in ripped tank tops, all in a summer series, then brother, you got yourself a viewer right here.

So yes, this looks pretty awesome.  And I am glad that we’re getting back to alien-based television shows.  I’ve just about had it with vampire and zombie centered entertainment.  Seriously, we all know those kinds of creatures are purely fictional creations, made up by writers years ago for the commercial purposes.  Aliens, on the other hand, are clearly real, and are certainly watching us, waiting for the ideal time to strike.  (*puts on tin foil hat*)  I like to think these kinds of programs dissuade aliens from attacking because they think we have a plan in place.  They’re doing a public service in that way.

All that said, this trailer is missing something.  I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I’d know it if I see it…

Read the rest of this entry »

Bill Murray and Harold Ramis “cross the streams” in the classic WWII comedy Japbusters.

We are now only twelve days away from the debut of “The Pacific,” the Steven Spielberg- and Tom Hanks-produced HBO miniseries about love and flamethrowers that has been marketed as “Band of Brothers, but with Marines in the Pacific Theater of WWII.” It’s the most excited I’ve been about an HBO miniseries about Marines at war since… well, “Generation Kill.” I didn’t expect that comparison to be so recent.

Anyway, I recognize that some people don’t like reading reviews because it can shape their opinions, so if that’s the case, stop reading now. Everyone else, join me as I play air guitar to some highlighted sections of badassery.

Read the rest of this entry »

“‘C’mon, I have to BELIEVE you want to eat plants. Now once more, with feeling.”

Despite Roger Corman’s inroads with Dinocroc, the Carnosaur trilogy, and now Dinoshark, Steven Spielberg remains Hollywood’s leading authority on ass-kicking dinosaur epics. So there’s understandably some excitement about the possibility that Spielberg will sign on as a producer for “Terra Nova,” a dinosaur series that Fox is presently considering.

Spielberg and Peter Chernin are in negotiations to board the drama project “Terra Nova,” which is described as following a family from 100 years in the future who travel back in time 150 million years to the strange and inhospitable environs of prehistoric Earth.

The 20th Century Fox TV project, which is said to have drawn special attention from Fox Entertainment chairman Peter Rice, would involve such elaborate sets and vfx that there’s been talk of greenlighting it directly to series production rather than a pilot because it would be too expensive to shut down and start up again during the downtime between pilot and episodic production. [Variety]

Tough call here. On the one hand, it sounds pretty unoriginal. On the other, DINOSAURS!!!! Sounds like it’s gonna get greenlit to me. If I know anything about Hollywood, all-caps and exclamation points trump “unoriginal” every time. It’s called the Michael Bay Principle.