Giant Freakin Robot

Gremlins is one of the most beloved movie franchises from the ’80s, along with Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, and Indiana Jones. A sequel to Joe Dante’s Gremlins 2: The New Batch has been in development since 1990, but we won’t be getting Gremlins 3 after all. Instead, Warner Bros. is working on a remake.

According to Bleeding Cool, Warner Bros. and producer David Katzenberg has hired screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith to pen the script for a Gremlins remake. Seth Grahame-Smith is guy behind the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter best-selling novels (he also wrote the screenplay for the latter’s big-screen adaptation). In the movie world, he also wrote the screenplay for Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows remake and the upcoming Fantastic Four reboot for Chronicle-director Josh Trank. Grahame-Smith has also been attached to a potential Bettlejuice remake with director Tim Burton.

A few months ago, Steven Spielberg was in the final negotiations with Warner Bros. to make a new Gremlins film. An Amblin Entertainment film cannot be remade, sequelized, or rebooted without Steven Spielberg’s participation and clearance. Although it’s unclear how much Spielberg will participate in the Gremlins remake, it seems he is on board with the project.

It’s hard to believe that Star Trek Into Darkness is finally almost here in the States. We’ve been writing about this movie for several years now, and I can’t even speculate how many words we’ve dedicated to dissecting the hints and rumors and rumors of hints. For those of us here at GFR, it seems almost doomed to be anti-climactic, but the early word from overseas has been largely positive, and at this point I’ll buy a ticket just to watch Benedict Cumberbatch chew the scenery. And for the Abrams haters out there, think of it this way: there’s a very good chance that Into Darkness is the last Star Trek movie you’ll ever see Abrams direct. See? Silver lining!

If you couldn’t care less about the latest big-screen Star Trek outing, fear not. There’s still plenty of other sci-fi goodness happening this week. We’ve got new episodes of Defiance, Revolution, Warehouse 13, Doctor Who, and Orphan Black. The Wachowskis and Tom Twyker’s divisive Cloud Atlas hits home video, and it’s worth watching if you haven’t seen it. You may love it, you may hate it, but it will likely provoke a strong reaction one way or another.

Here’s what’s new This Week in Science Fiction!

I don’t know if any of you guys caught the season finale of Community last week, where the writers capped off an awful season by nearly destroying the darkest timeline by bringing the darker characters into the normal world. It’s a good example of the perils of having actors play against themselves via technical wizardry. In Orphan Black, I have to actively remind myself that Tatiana Maslany is the only actress playing these completely different clone characters. And while it’s obvious from scene to scene as the focus switches over from Sarah’s story to Cosima’s story, whenever Maslany shares the screen with herself, it’s a treat to watch and consistently blows my mind.

The best example in “Parts Developed in an Unusual Manner” is the dive diner lunch date between Sarah and the clone-killer Helena, who marvels at the niceness of the restaurant as she pours sugar on top of her Jell-o. Sarah is hard-boiled and no nonsense, while Helena is childlike in her inability to appear normal around grown-ups. She grew up in a Ukranian convent that saved her from abandonment  She’s now under the rather harsh care of whoever Tomas ends up being. He continues trying to convince Helena she is the original, and I’m not sure if it’s just to give her a superiority complex or what.

Instead of going for the ramped-up situational drama that last week’s episode zigged and zagged through, this episode’s pacing is guided by the editing, which stitches together a bunch of smaller scenes that bring everything together in the end. And while there’s a lot of info-dumping and talking, much of it is important information.

We may only be part of the way through the inaugural season of Syfy’s new series Defiance, but that didn’t stop the network from reupping for a second season.

The order for a 13-episode second season follows on the heels of the second-highest-rated premiere in the network’s history. Defiance debuted to an audience of more than four million viewers. In the weeks following the unveiling, the numbers have remained strong, averaging in excess of two million viewers per week, and winning its Monday night timeslot for the show’s key demographic.

Set in a future world, Defiance tells the story of a world where aliens have landed on Earth, looking for a new home. After a long, destructive war with the human race, they have begun to integrate into human society. You can imagine that this might be a bumpy ride, as different species attempt to learn to get along with each other in post-apocalyptic frontier. The bulk of the series takes place in the ruins of St. Louis, renamed Defiance, and follows Jeb Nolan (Grant Bowler) and his adopted alien daughter, Irisa (Stephanie Leonidas).