Giant Freakin Robot

At the end of Joseph Kosinski’s 2010 TRON: Legacy you walk away with the definite feeling that we’re in for more. Most people think of the movie as a total bomb, though it made decent money ($400 million globally, $172 million domestically, against a $170 million budget), so it was only a matter of time before we got more, and after years of rumblings, now this definitely appears to be happening.

A report from VanCity Buzz, a local, Vancouver, BC-based paper, TRON 3, or TRON: Legacy 2 if you want to think of it like that, is getting ready to shoot in Vancouver this fall. After this news started circulating, a number of other outlets jumped all over their sources, and what they’ve heard corroborates this. Cameras are slated to roll on October 5.

Blade Runner 2 is primed and moving ahead with director Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners, Enemy at the helm), and star Harrison Ford set to reprise one of his greatest roles (though you have to wonder if his recent plane crash and injuries will have an impact on the timeline). More immediately, at least if you live in the U.K., Blade Runner: The Final Cut is getting a theatrical rerelease, and just in case you somehow sustained a head injury and forgot how great Blade Runner is, here’s a gorgeous trailer to remind you.

We all knew that since Disney bought Lucasfilm and now owns Star Wars we were going to see that universe grow and expand like never before. There are already books, comics, and an animated series, as well as half-a-dozen movies in the works, but holy crap they are not messing around. Even though the Expanded Universe of novels and other properties that have existed for years has been scrapped, deemed non-canon, that doesn’t mean that Lucasfilm is abandoning that expansive approach, and they have plans to release an avalanche of new, officially canon material.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Disney, along with Worldwide Publishing and Lucasfilm Press, plans to release “at least 20” Star Wars books this year, a series titled Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens. This is all designed to capitalize on the hype surrounding the impending release of J.J. Abrams’ film, which opens December 18, and much of the ground covered falls between the original trilogy and the new films, serving as a link between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens. After all, a lot can happen in 30 plus years.

It’s been 30 years, and Back to the Future continues to have a lasting cultural impact. There’s a new documentary that explores the phenomenon of caused by Michael J. Fox driving a DeLorean through time, and you can help them finish. Take a look at the Kickstarter video for Back in Time to see what the movie is all about and see how you can help their mission.

Syfy has been in the process of redefining itself as a network and reestablishing a commitment to producing original content instead of the glut of schlocky creature features, reality shows, and professional wrestling. Some of their attempts have fared pretty well: 12 Monkeys is decent, Helix seems to have found an audience, as has Z Nation. Others, not as much. One project they had high hopes for, Ascension, didn’t hit quite like they hoped late last year, and it will not move forward as a series.

The network first ordered Ascension as an event series, which I always used to call a miniseries as a kid, their first such endeavor in six years. While it was intended to be a limited thing initially, they always had an eye on turning it into something bigger, working it into an ongoing series, much like they did with Battlestar Galactica years ago. According to Deadline, however, that is not going to happen.

There’s a lot of craziness going down on The Walking Dead right now as the survivors do their best to settle into their new digs and get comfortable, which is not always an easy task considering damn near everyone and everything they’ve encountered over the previous five seasons has tried to kill them in one way or another. But you can forget all about that for the moment, as the long gestating spinoff, maybe called Cobalt maybe called Fear the Walking Dead, has been picked up for multiple seasons and we now have our first look at the upcoming series.

Deadline reports that AMC has given the go ahead for two seasons of the new series, which marks the second consecutive time that they’ve doled out multi-season commitments to shows that have not even aired yet. Recently, they pulled the same maneuver with Breaking Bad offshoot Better Call Saul, and this latest makes sense by the same logic: both are connected to massively popular shows, so why the hell wouldn’t you want to capitalize on that momentum?