In a move that should surprise absolutely no one, Star Trek Discovery is delayed, and will not make the previously-announced May premiere date. Keep in mind that this is actually the second postponement of the show, as it was originally slated to premiere this month. The fact that they were dragging their feet on casting convinced me that it wouldn’t make the May date, mainly because I didn’t think they could get the effects done in that amount of time. After all, they first announced they’d cast their lead exactly a month ago. Plus, it still seems like they’re trying to figure out how lead Sonequa Martin-Green is going to juggle roles on both Discovery and The Walking Dead. All I know is that the CBS All Access streaming service is basically dead on arrival, as it’s going to need more programming than just The Good Wife‘s spinoff, The Good Fight. The only way to really gain some sort of foothold would be if they took back the Trek shows from Netflix and made All Access the exclusive North American home of Star Trek (Discovery will already be exclusive to Netflix outside the US), but I don’t know if that’s something all parties would go for. Meanwhile, James Frain has been cast as Spock’s father, Sarek, for the series. I don’t know – the longer the show is delayed, the less I find I care about it.
Speaking of Netflix, they have ordered a reboot of early ’00s makeover show Queer Eye For The Straight Guy. Now, I used to love this show, but I also didn’t know any better. If you never saw the show, 5 gay guys would take some straight schlub and give him a lifestyle makeover to make him a better guy all around. Carson was the fashion guy, and he’d teach you to “zhuzh” your sleeves. Kyan was the hair guy, and he’d teach you how to manage your ‘do. Thom was the decorator, who’d make over your living space. Ted, currently the host of Chopped, was the food and wine guy. And Jai…cute, clueless Jai was the “culture” guy. He’d teach you clever ways to open a CD. No, I’m serious. They never really did find a way to use Jai to his fullest potential. Anyway, the whole show is predicated on the assumption that gays are better than straights in every way. They’re better dressers, eaters, groomers, decorators, and…CD openers. And that’s just a raging ball of stereotypes there. It was an interesting time, as the show kind of helped get gays into households that probably wouldn’t have otherwise accepted them, but there was something minstrelsy about the whole thing. I’d like to think we’ve come a long way since 2003, so the idea of this show being rebooted just sounds like a bad idea to me. Plus, they didn’t contact any of the original guys to come back, so it won’t even have a nostalgia factor to it. So far, everything I’ve read about the reboot seems to agree with me that it’s not a good idea, but what do I know? What do y’all think?
Fox has ordered an X-Men TV pilot, with Burn Notice‘s Matt Nix attached as showrunner. Apparently, it will focus on a family on the run and, based on Nix’s past experience, they’ll probably be assisted by a hot chick who could use a sandwich or three. My biggest problem with the news, however, is that Bryan Singer will reportedly direct the pilot. Yes, he has experience with the X-Men film franchise, but it’s time for new voices. Plus, he shat the bed so badly with X-Men: Apocalypse that I feel like his mutant card should be revoked for a while. He’s been attached to the X-Men franchise for 17 years, but all of his contributions haven’t been great. I’d be fine with him as a consultant or even a producer, but I don’t think he needs to direct this thing. Then again, it’s just a pilot, so maybe it won’t even make it to series. Right now, critics are raving over FX’s Legion, which is loosely tied to the X-Men franchise, so maybe it’ll take center stage and the Nix show will be passed on.
Speaking of Singer’s X-Men franchise, with its wonky continuity, Hugh Jackman has been saying that Logan won’t be set in the common X-Men film timeline that we’re used to. Now, it’s not quite clear how we should take that, seeing as how the films don’t really adhere to a clear timeline, especially after the events of Days of Future Past. At this point, I hardly care. I just want a good movie. I mean, it’s set in the future, and for it to be “in continuity” would effectively be painting themselves into a corner. That’s why futures in comics are always “possible futures” because A) the future (hopefully) isn’t set in stone and B) it’d be bad for storytelling if they set out to say it was THE future. Anyway, we got the final trailer last week, which gave us a much better look at Laura/X-23. I’m really getting excited for March!
And while we’re talking about March movies, we FINALLY got the full trailer for Power Rangers, and it looked pretty good. To a lot of my friends, I’m “The Power Rangers Guy”, so they’re kinda curious to know what I thought about it. Let’s just say I’m cautiously optimistic. There’s a lot to hate in what we’ve seen, and I hated how most of the reveals we got came from the lackluster toyline than from actual footage. Now that we’ve seen footage, however, I think this could be something good. I still don’t think it’s going to beat Beauty and the Beast or anything, but it could turn out to be a pretty good popcorn movie. I like the design of Cranston as Zordon, I liked Bill Hader as Alpha, and the action looked pretty good. Still not sure about Goldar, and I’m actually kinda worried about Elizabeth Banks as Rita. Every time we’ve seen her, she seems to be chewing the shit out of the scenery, in an almost Divatox kind of way. But I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how it all shakes out.
It’s like they’re trying to completely throw away the West Year Ever honor I gave them, as DC Entertainment made some questionable moves. First up, it’s reported that they’re going back to square one on their Flash adaptation, so look for a delay to be announced any day now. Since losing director Rick Famuyiwa, Warner Bros has decided to take the film in a new direction while star Ezra Miller gets ready to film the sequel to Fantastic Beasts. Meanwhile, they announced that The Rock will star in a Black Adam movie, separate from the planned SHAZAM film, in which he’ll portray the villain. From day one, I’ve said that Johnson was a terrible choice for Black Adam because he’s the villain of the story, and there’s no one in Hollywood at the moment who’s charismatic enough to go toe to toe with him and have the audience root for him. Everyone LOVES The Rock, so who’s going to want to see him lose? If anything, he should’ve been cast as Captain Marvel himself, and then some lesser star could bulk up to play Black Adam. Right now, I feel like this movie is going to sit on a shelf until the fates align and Hollywood’s next It Guy reveals himself. Zac Efron? Could he be Captain Marvel? Could he successfully share the screen with Johnson? We’ll soon find out in Baywatch, but I worry that the film is never going to come together due to imbalanced casting.
Things You Might Have Missed This Week
- Scarlett Johansson split from husband of two years, Romain Dauriac. I still haven’t forgiven her for hurting Ryan Reynolds. Then again, I haven’t forgiven him for hurting Alanis Morissette. They all mean so much to me.
- Speaking of Alanis, her former manager admitted to stealing close to $5 million from the singer
- Former star of Disney Channel’s Jessie, Debby Ryan, is rumored to have been cast as Dagger in Freeform’s Cloak & Dagger series based on the Marvel characters of the same name. Meanwhile, relative unknown Noah Gray-Cabey is rumored to have been cast as Cloak
- Miles Morales, and not Peter Parker, will be the focus of the upcoming animated Spider-Man film. Know what would’ve made this news more awesome? If it was live action instead of animated. Oh well…
- In a move that I’m sure was surprising even to its cast, ABC renewed The Middle for a 9th season. This is a bold move for a show that really seemed like it was packing up about 3 years ago.
- Speculation abounds, as it was revealed that the next installment in the Star Wars film series is subtitled The Last Jedi
- Now that SuperMansion is on Adult Swim, nobody is ever watching Crackle again since Jerry Seinfeld just inked a $100 million deal to move his Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee series to Netflix
- Breakout new series of the season, This Is Us, scored a 2-season renewal from NBC
- Speaking of NBC, after much back and forth, it was finally confirmed that Will & Grace will be returning with a 10-episode order.
This is going to be something of a “drive-by” West Week Ever. You see, I don’t really want to get political on here, as there’s enough of that online. That said, I think it’s going to be pretty hard not to be political in the near future. All I’m going to say is that I think the biggest pop culture “news” story of the week was the Women’s March on Washington. America Ferrera, ScarJo, and others spoke, while Madonna made a few controversial statements of her own. A lot of folks feel like performers should just perform and not have political views, but I think those people are going to be sorely disappointed for the foreseeable future. Personally, the march was good to me as it brought a lot of cool folks to town – many of whom I haven’t seen in quite some time. I’m not going to get into the particulars of it, as there are other places you can go for the full story. What I do know is that it set a record for Metro ridership, and the crowd dwarfed that of the inauguration that took place just a day prior. So, with that in mind, the Women’s March on Washington, as well as the various “sister marches”, had the West Week Ever.
