Roundup: SDCC Day 3 – Television
Our reports on Day 3 of San Diego Comic-Con continue with the wrap-up of the television news coming out of the weekend.
ARROW
Producer Marc Guggenheim says that besides Damien Darhk, the show will introduce Mr. Terrific as a close friend of Felicity’s, and we’ll also see Anarky. DC Comics Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns said that more characters are coming throughout the season, and some will be bigger than Damien Darhk.
When asked how she felt about finally suiting up as Black Canary, Katie Cassidy said, “I feel like it’s been a long time coming, but it absolutely was worth the wait, and I think it was great the way the writers took the character and the way they wrote for me was fantastic, and it made it that much more legitimate and that much more realistic, and it made me that much more excited about it.”
John Barrowman was sporting a replica ring of Ra’s Al Ghul at the panel, and producers confirm he’ll be back in the “Dark Archer” outfit for episode three.
And addressing the recent MTV win for the Olicity ship, Stephen Amell said, “It really does mean a lot. Like… not quite an Emmy, but it really means a lot.” He credited a number of factors in the choice — the longevity of the show and the support of the fans among them.
THE FLASH
The “big bad” is going to be Zoom. Faster than the Flash. Faster than the Reverse Flash. In addition, we’ll see Jay Garrick (played by Teddy Sears), a new partner for Joe in Patty Spivot (Shantel VanSanten) … and Wally West.
Producers say Garrick in integral to the Flash mythology, and they felt it was time to introduce the original Flash into the show. They also note that by coincidence, we first saw Jay Garrick’s helmet in episode 123, and the first meeting between the two Flashes was in Flash #123.
Andrew Kreisberg said we’ll see the Rogues — including more about the Snart family dynamic — as well as Grodd. But they’re really excited about Zoom.
In answer to a fan question as to whether we’d see Vibe in season two, Geoff Johns referenced his run on the Vibe comic he wrote with Kreisberg and Sterling Gates. Carlos Valdez calls it “dope”.
LEGENDS OF TOMORROW
The first few episodes of The Flash and Arrow will do what Marc Guggenheim calls “table setting” — placing the characters into position for them to be assembled for Legends of Tomorrow to begin mid-season.
Andrew Kreisberg says time travel is going to play a big part of the show, along with the question “How do you fight Vandal Savage?” The choices made by the team will have consequences, perhaps even from one timeline to another — suggesting that the multiverse may also come into play in the show.
Ciara Renee hinted at the possibility of seeing different versions of her character with the mention of her interest in the reincarnation aspects of the Hawkgirl character. Johns also confirmed that Hawkman will be in the show as well.
_______________
GOTHAM
Looks like the show is going to fully invest in the crazy with the character of Barbara Kean. Could they be setting her up to be a recognizable villain from the Batman mythology?
The second season will definitely build on the “rise of the villains” that ended the season. Bruno Heller says the first season gave them a chance to really explore the mafia aspects of Gotham City, and the story universe gets to open up into the larger and darker aspects of the classic villains.
The Q&A was crashed by Cameron Monaghan dressed as the Joker, who asked the panel (before being “dragged away” by security), “How high is your pain tolerance?”
IGN has an interview with Ben McKenzie, Robin Lord Taylor, and Bruno Heller about season two and what we can expect.
_______________
SUPERGIRL
Producer Sarah Schecter says “There is only one Supergirl, and that’s Melissa Benoist.” After seeing thousands of women audition for the role of Kara Zor-El, the producers went back to the very first one they saw. And Benoist says, “I remember leaving my first audition being, like, ‘Oh my gosh, that was horrible. I just blew it.'”
On putting on the suit: “It’s kind of hard to articulate the way that that feels. You know, I’m putting on tights, and it feels like I’m putting on something like I use to [wear] when I took dance class. But then … you get the cape, and I turn around and I look in the mirror and I see the S, and something clicks inside. It just really does transform internally. It’s hard — it’s impossible not to feel empowered and to feel hope and strength and… brave when I’m wearing it. I feel like a different person.”
In addition to Maxwell Lord, the show will also have Live Wire and Reactron, who first appeared in The Daring New Adventures of Supergirl #8 (June 1983), written by Paul Kupperberg and drawn by Carmine Infantino.
Andrew Kreisberg confirms something we discussed on Rogues Gallery, that the tone of Supergirl takes its cue from the Richard Donner set of Superman films starring Christopher Reeve.
See the full video of the panel for all of the Warner Bros. television shows here:
_______________
COLONY
Show runner Carlton Cuse calls it an “espionage thriller with science fiction elements” centered around Will (Lost‘s Josh Holloway) and his wife Katie (The Walking Dead‘s Sarah Wayne Callies). The basic premise is that the United States was invaded in a single day, and walls were erected around cities, cutting off family members from each other. A puppet government was installed, and now Will faces the challenge of getting his son back through the layers of security.
No details on the occupying force or their motivation for invading. Cuse and co-executive producer Ryan Condal said they got the idea after watching WWII footage of Nazi-occupied Paris. “Almost every country on earth has either been a colonizer or a colony,” Cuse said. And while they weren’t forthcoming with details, they did note that they’d been working on the story structure for two years, and that they’d know how to pay off the mysteries building in the show.
Colony will run on USA, starting in October.
_______________
12 MONKEYS
The big thing: Cassie’s now a time traveler.
THE EXPANSE
Based on the novels by James S.A. Corey (the pen name of Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck), The Expanse has been generating a lot of buzz over the past few weeks. Given that it’s set in space, looks like it has a decent budget, and is on Syfy, the expectations are tempered with a little experience that includes disappointment with Ascension.
The show is a 10-episode series set 200 years in the future. Mankind has colonized the solar system, and the case of a missing young woman brings together a detective (Thomas Jane) and a spaceship captain (Steven Strait) in a race to expose a conspiracy.
Blastr caught up with members of the cast at SDCC and got a little insight into what makes them tick:
https://youtu.be/E2f_S87msh4
Syfy has also launched a virtual reality app in connection with the show. Available for both iOS and Android systems, the app allows users to take a 360-degree tour of the spaceship Canterbury, with additional content available in the months ahead of the show’s premiere in December 2015.
“At Syfy, we’re constantly looking for innovative ways to let fans experience and interact with our content, so virtual reality has been on our radar for a while,” said Matthew Chiavelli, SVP, Syfy Digital. “The Expanse, with its incredibly detailed, vast world, offers many environments for us to mine and bring to life, and made for the perfect project to launch in this space. We are thrilled to be the first series to utilize Google Cardboard in this way, and have been lucky to work with top-notch teams from IM360 and Digital Domain, as well as at NBCUniversal Media Labs, to premiere this first-to-market activation.”
_______________
GRIMM
“We’re finally going to explain the damn key,” executive producer David Greenwalt said in the Grimm panel, which was sparse on detail for the upcoming fifth season, which hits the air October 30.
Star David Giuntoli says Nick will be focused on being a dad after the season finale death of Juliette at the hands of Trubel. Nick will have to go through the challenge of losing something, but he didn’t elaborate on whether that means losing Juliette or something else as the new season plays out. He will be in an odd place having to co-parent with Adalind. “He lost his girlfriend, he lost his mom … and the baby is kind of the reason for him to keep going,” Giuntoli said. Expect to see a lot of revenge, too.
Asked if there’s a chance Juliette can be revived, Greenwalt quickly answered with a definitive “No.” Although he then said, “Anything could happen, but no.”
Co-star Russell Hornsby was surprised to find out his character, Hank, will find “true love” this season.
And expect to see more of Monroe and Rosalee. Bree Turner teased more skeletons from Rosalee’s past coming back to make the marriage difficult. “Rosalee came onto the scene very guarded, dealing with a past of addictions, and that’s been shelved for good reason. … I think her addictions come back into the story.”
Meanwhile, the Royal Family won’t be as much of a factor in season 5, either, according to Sasha Roiz. He says the show is getting back to the mythology of season one.
Full panel video here:
https://youtu.be/T8FC9Ybuwbc
_______________
ONCE UPON A TIME
Merida is coming to the show, along with Merlin, King Arthur, and Guinevere.
And Ginnifer Goodwin has a new hairdo.
Scottish actress Amy Manson, recently part of the BBC series Atlantis, will join the show as the Brave transplant. Elliot Knight will play Merlin, Joana Metrass appears as Guinevere, and Andrew Jenkins will play Arthur’s most trusted knight, Percival.
“There’s always pressure to make it great. We had that pressure with Frozen with the whole world watching; we still have pressure from day one when it was Snow White, Geppetto and Pinocchio and the Evil Queen,” said co-creator Edward Kitsis. “For us, every year we just want to make it better than the year before.” Merida, it seems, will join the show in the 100th episode, which will kick off the second half of the season in the spring.
The fifth season will center around the search for Merlin, who is the only one powerful enough to save Emma from being lost to evil forever as the new Dark One. It was also revealed that Camelot exists in its own reality, a separate timeline.
Full panel video:
_______________
CONTAINMENT
“One of my favorite moments of the pilot was working with the consultants,” star Claudia Black said of working with real CDC workers. “It’s 100 percent plausible,” she said of the show. this is exactly how this kind of virus would mutate.”
Containment hits the CW mid-season, and the plot focuses on a quarantine in Atlanta as a result of a mysterious death. The subsequent virus outbreak is “not science fiction, it’s science-fact,” says George Young, who plays Dr. Victor Cannerts.
Black plays Dr. Sabine Lommers, who’s brought in to manage the containment. And “The virus is pretty deadly pretty fast,” executive producer Chris Ord says, so beyond the pilot expect things to get worse before they get better?
The show was developed by Julie Plec, based on the Belgian show Cordon.
https://youtu.be/qE983cTD4Mg
_______________
MINORITY REPORT
https://youtu.be/fN-VDScTkE4
_______________
This is by no means a complete report, and we’ll be following up with individual stories as more details emerge closer to the fall season.
