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Doux News: February 8, 2015

This week: Zelda on Netflix -- The Holloway Curve -- Agent Carter and the ratings -- This week in casts -- This week in cats and dogs

Netflix, in collaboration with Nintendo, is developing a live action television series version of The Legend of Zelda. I don't know anything about the game, so I asked Doux Reviews contributor Samantha M. Quinn about it. She told me,

The Legend of Zelda is a classic game. It came out for the original Nintendo Entertainment System back in 1986. It's about a boy or young man named Link who goes on a quest to rescue the mysterious princess Zelda and retrieve the mystical Tri-force of power from evil. There has been several incarnations of this story (each game has a different but similarly named hero and heroine), with the conceit being that they are reincarnations and are all part of the same world, just set in different times/alternate dimensions.

A live action television series comes as both surprising and exciting for fans who have been anxiously waiting for any news of a Zelda live action movie. The question now comes, what will this series be? It is currently being labeled as Game of Thrones for a family audience. Let's just hope the people who end up producing the show understand the property, and give the fans what they deserve to see.


Another interesting bit that caught my attention this week is that Lost executive producer is now working on an alien invasion drama called Colony that will star Josh Holloway (Lost) and Sarah Wayne Callies (The Walking Dead). I would love some more serious sci-fi on television so I hope it's much better than Intelligence, a show I watched longer than I probably should have chiefly because of Holloway. (In the comments on Josie Kafka's review of the pilot episode, we called it "grading on a Holloway curve".)

Agent Carter and the ratings

Agent Carter isn't doing too well with the numbers. That's sad, because I want everything Avengers-related and Whedon-related to do well, Hayley Atwell is awesome and Agent Carter also has Enver Gjokaj, an amazing actor who needs a good long-lasting series. I'm still watching the show, but I'll admit that the forties setting and the constant over-the-top sexism is turning me off. And yes, I get that Peggy is constantly forced to fight sexism in order to do her job, but does it have to be so overt and ubiquitous?

I asked our Agent Carter (and Agents of SHIELD) reviewer Mark Greig for his opinion on the ratings. He says,
Predicting a show's future is difficult in this day and age because there are now so many different factors to consider. As well as overnight ratings, there are now DVRs and online streaming. For example, DVR figures for the first three episodes added an extra 3 million viewers to the original overnight ratings. I think ABC will wait until the entire series has finished airing and look at how it has performed across all platforms before making a final decision about its future. However, if the overnight ratings do continue to decline and go below 4 million and stay there then I think it is almost certain that the show will not return for a second series. And I do think that would be a shame, because I really do enjoy this show and would like to see it continue.

Renewals

NBC has renewed The Blacklist (what a non-surprise), Grimm, Chicago Fire, Chicago P.D., and Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, which has apparently been running since the 1980s.


This week in casts

-- Carrie-Anne Moss has been added to the AKA Jessica Jones series.

-- Milo Ventimiglia will be taking on a continuing bad guy role on Gotham. Ventimiglia was pretty much my favorite cast member on Heroes.

-- Luke Mitchell has joined the cast of Agents of SHIELD.

-- Interestingly, and this isn't really casting news but I don't have anywhere else to put it, I just noticed this bit on Marvel.com about their latest Avengers shake-up, the all-female "A-Force", to debut in the comics this May.

Geeking out about Pluto

Years ago, I read a short story about Pluto that stayed with me. In it, astronauts finally reach Pluto and discover that it's a big steel ball, and inside it are the plans to the solar system. (Does anyone know the title and author? I've completely forgotten.)

Anyway, in 156 days, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft will be at its closest to Pluto. It's likely that when we finally get a good look Pluto will turn out to be an unexciting chunk of rock, but there's just something about us getting close enough to see it that fascinates me. Do other sci-fi fans go nuts about this stuff the way I do?

This week in cats and dogs

Wired.com posted an article this week on the two logical reasons why cats love boxes: hiding, and warmth. My cat Fox loves to hide and often does, but I think that's mostly because of his traumatic childhood as a feral street kitten in Los Angeles.

This isn't Fox, but this cat in a box video is adorable.



In the interest of equality, here is this year's voted "most successful" Superbowl ad, which was Budweiser's extremely cute "lost dog" commercial. But just think of how much better it would have been if it were a cat?



---
Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.

7 comments:

  1. the Pluto story is called Construction Shack by Clifford D. Simak.

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  2. Oh cool. Milo will rock Gotham. I'm kinda hooked on it anyway.
    SVU has "only" been running since the late nineties. Even Law and order(now cancelled) dates back to 1990 or so.
    Oh bother, I can't stay away from SVU anyway. I'm too fond of Raul Esparza. '

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  3. The Budweiser ad was my favorite, but then I love puppies as much I love kittens.

    SVU may just have been renewed, but their are rumors circulating that the original L&O may come back. Not sure how I feel about that.

    http://tvline.com/2015/02/06/law-order-limited-series-nbc-chris-noth-sam-waterston/

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  4. Sam Smith, thank you so much! I remember now.

    mazephoenix, I was kidding about SVU. :)

    ChrisB, I've never watched a single episode of L&O.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Oh gotcha. Well it feels like it's been going on that long.

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  6. I've been looking forward to both the Pluto and Ceres missions for years. Can't wait for close up pics of both planets (that's right, I said it). Hopefully there are some good surprises in both places.

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