Gunslinging Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens may be running out of time, according to FX President Nick Grad. Just days after the well-received fifth season premiere of Justified (check out our take here), Grad has revealed that the show, based on novels by the late Elmore Leonard, is likely to end its run after its sixth season next year.
My second most-anticipated new series of 2014 (after HBO's True Detective, which lands this Sunday) is FX's The Strain, a modern-day vampire thriller based on the trilogy by horror maestro Guillermo del Toro and bestselling novelist Chuck Hogan.
One of the more curious major network series currently in the works is NBC's upcoming miniseries adaptation of Rosemary's Baby. Though Roman Polanski's 1968 horror film starring Mia Farrow is the work that springs to mind for most people when considering the story, the Peacock Network's four-hour version will actually take its cues more from the original 1967 novel by Ira Levin. NBC green-lighted the project last month, without any actors attached, and today, Entertainment Weekly revealed that the series has finally found its Rosemary: Avatar actress Zoe Saldana.
Coming off the final season of AMC's brilliant drama series Breaking Bad, Bryan Cranston has already earned the respect and admiration of every critic and viewer out there. As chemistry teacher-turned-meth kingpin Walter White, Cranston commanded the small screen with shattering force and, throughout five wonderful seasons, developed one of the most complex antiheroes in television history. As that show concluded, fans mourned not only the loss of Breaking Bad as a whole but also Cranston's incredible performance. Many questioned whether we'd ever see the actor as anything other than Walter White again.
After helming Marvel's Captain America: The First Avenger to widespread acclaim, director Joe Johnston is returning to his sci-fi roots for an upcoming alien invasion thriller. Johnston, who got his start as an effects artist and arts director on the original Star Wars trilogy, has signed on to helm Extinction, a sci-fi thriller about a man trying to save his family in the face of an alien invasion.
If you've been missing your weekly fix of Rainn Wilson ever since the conclusion of NBC's immensely popular The Office last May, Fox has got you covered. The network just picked up thirteen episodes of Backstrom, a one-hour drama from Bones creator Hart Hanson and 20th Century Fox TV, which will star Wilson as the offensive, hot-tempered Det. Everett Backstrom, whose increasingly self-destructive decisions begin to interfere with his career as he leads the Serious Crimes Unit through Portland's most sensitive cases.
All eyes were on Marvel this past fall as the studio made the leap to the small screen with their first 'event' television series, Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. The show, which returns to ABC tonight for its first episode after a brief winter hiatus, premiered to huge ratings in late September, though recent episodes have shown a slightly worrying decrease in viewership. However, smaller ratings weren't enough to deter ABC from ordering a full, 22-episode season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. last October. Now, we have confirmation that the series will get some added star-power in an upcoming episode, from none other than comic-book mogul Stan Lee.
Between the modern masterpiece that is The Matrix and the ambitious, sprawling Cloud Atlas (which ranked among my favorite films of 2012), the Wachowskis have more than earned their reputation as science-fiction royalty. So, I'm understandably excited for their next big-budget venture into the genre, this July's Jupiter Ascending. Starring Mila Kunis and Channing Tatum, the film tells the tale of Jupiter Jones (Kunis), a young janitor whose genetic similarity to the all-mighty Queen of the Universe makes her the target of multiple interplanetary assassins.
Even when Oren Peli's Paranormal Activity spearheaded a resurgence in the found-footage horror genre back in 2009, not even the film's most admiring fans could have guessed that the series would still be going strong five years later. And yet, the latest installment in the series, spin-off Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, grossed an estimated $18.2 million at the box office last week and has been receiving some of the most favorable reviews of the entire franchise (check out Matt Donato's positive write-up here).
After earning an Oscar nomination for her role in the Coen Brothers' Western True Grit, then training to battle aliens in last November's Ender's Game, Hailee Steinfeld appears to be taking a page out of fellow teen star Chloë Grace Moretz's book for her next leading role. In the action comedy Barely Lethal, she'll play a teenaged assassin named Megan (à la Moretz's Hit-Girl from Kick-Ass), who attempts to live a normal life and attend high school after faking her own death to escape from the boarding school that trained her.
