The Dark Lord Sauron - Now in the living room
Have you read the Lord of the Rings series? Have you seen all the movies? Amazon paid a quarter of a billion dollars for the rights to Tolkien's books, promising something never before seen on television
"The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" (2/9, Amazon Prime Video)
The great battle against Westeros of "House of the Dragon" comes all the way from the Middle Earth created by the English writer J.
R.
R.
Tolkien and the most expensive television production ever.
After a few series that were embraced by critics such as "The Wonderful Mrs. Maisel", "Transparent" and "The Boys", Amazon decided to raise a significant gear in a blatant attempt to finally get on the wave with a real schlager, and paid a whopping quarter of a billion dollars for the television rights to the series Tolkien's books, which in the first decade of the millennium were adapted into the Oscar-winning movie trilogy of the New Zealand director Peter Jackson.
The Lord of the Rings, photo: Amazon Prime
Almost five years have passed since the deal was signed in which Amazon Studios executives committed to producing five seasons with a total value of at least one billion dollars, and according to reports, $465 million has already been invested in the first season.
At the end of the week, the first two intriguing episodes, which began to be filmed even before the outbreak of the corona virus and were entrusted to the Spanish director Juan Antonio Buona ("The Impossible", "Jurassic World: Fall of the Kingdom"), appeared on the Prime Video service worldwide.
The plot takes place in the days of the second age in the fictitious history of Middle-earth, thousands of years according to the events of Tolkien's books "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit", and around the rise of the dark lord Sauron, the fall of the kingdom of Númenor and the alliance between the humans and the human-like elves, who will of course star alongside characters More fantasy creatures.
"Amazon actually handed us the rights to 10,000 years of Middle-earth history and said, 'Come on, guys, show us what you have to offer'—and we felt amazing!" said John D.
Payne, who co-created the new series with Patrick McKay during a panel at Comic-Con a few weeks ago, moderated by Light Night host Stephen Colbert, a die-hard Tolkien fan.
"This is Tolkien's great untold chapter, the story of the creation of the Fellowship of the Rings and so many great scenarios that will be squeezed into a canvas of 50 hours of television that we are creating from the ground up, and we are making sure that the whole business is worth it. The whole early plot of the young generation's uprising in the kingdom feels very topical for all cultures today in the world, all the divisions and social tragedies we experience. But with all the pain and mistakes that are made, I believe that there is something to help and maybe even learn something from watching the series."
Last week, one of the producers of the series, Lindsay Weber, commented on the competition with "Dragon House" and claimed that "it's only about headlines in the media, and the crew and actors don't feel that way at all. They know how hard they work to produce series like this."
But in practice, Amazon's public relations press is racing, and the company even initiated free premieres in theaters to generate buzz.
Why is it so dark here?
Netflix wanted a horror series for Halloween, so they brought in Guillermo del Toro to make sure it was scary
"Guillermo Del Toro Presents: Room of Wonders" (10/25, Netflix)
Ahead of Halloween, the holiday of horror and ghosts, which is celebrated in the western world at the end of October, the streaming giant has put its trust in the Oscar-winning Mexican director Guillermo del Toro ("The Shape of Water") with one of its projects for the coming Halloween in a new eight-episode anthology series.
All the episodes are original and unusual short horror stories for the genre, each of which examines in its own way the world of mystery and fear as we know it.
It is worth noting that technically only two of the episodes are del Toro's pen, and he actually did not direct any of them, but his main credit is the creator of the series.
room of wonders,
"Dreams in the Witch House", "Rats in the Graveyard" and "Postmortem" are some of the names of the episodes, which will star actors such as Andrew Lincoln ("The Walking Dead"), Ben Barnes ("The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian") and Rupert Grint ( "Harry Potter" films).
"We intend to present in the series the reality outside the normal world, everything that is unusual and intriguing. We have curated a group of stories from supernatural fiction, from outer space or simply from our minds, each of which gives a glimpse full of fantasy into the wonders of what exists beneath the world we know," Del Toro said during Promotion of the series.
Who cursed her family?
The great Tim Burton also joined Netflix with a macabre version of The Addams Family, which keeps falling apart
"Wednesday" (October/November, Netflix)
Netflix brings another ace to the Halloween scene in the form of another director known for his eccentricities and unique interpretation of the horror genre, Tim Burton - who broke out thanks to films like "Beetlejuice", "Edward's Scissors" and the first "Batman" film with Michael Keaton.
Burton produces and directs a black comedy series, which is actually a remake of the macabre series "The Addams Family" from the 1960s.
It was created based on a satirical comic about the events of a gothic and grotesque family dealing with death and suffering, the absolute antithesis of the traditional American family unit.
Wednesday, photo: Netflix
The plot this time centers on the eldest daughter, Wednesday Addams, played by up-and-coming young actress Jenna Ortega ("Jane the Virgin," "You") as a darkly eccentric high school student at a private academy, where she learns to perfect her supernatural abilities in order to defeat a planned monstrous threat on the residents of the town and decipher a mysterious curse that has been hanging over her family for years.
The series will also feature Catherine Zeta Jones as Mother Morticia, Luis Guzman as Father Gomez, Gwendoline Christie ("Game of Thrones"), and Christina Ricci, who played Wednesday in two films from the early 90s.
A final release date has not yet been announced, but it is likely that the series will be launched on Wednesday of the week.
The light side of the dark side
Disney Plus threatens to overtake Netflix and comes out with a new series, which reboots the plot of "Star Wars"
"Andor" (9/21, Disney Plus)
A little less than three years since it was launched, the Disney Plus service is beginning to overtake Netflix with a total of 221 million subscribers worldwide, according to the company's quarterly report published three weeks ago. One of the safe stocks of the service from its first day is the "Star Wars" corporation of G George Lucas, with the first original series launched in November 2019, "The Mandalorian", which has already won 14 Emmy Awards in the technical categories and was nominated for an Emmy for Best Drama Series.
After the corporation expanded to solo series about the bounty hunter Boba Fett and recently Obi-Wan Kenobi (who was played again by Ewan McGregor), in about two weeks a new series will be released, signed by the screenwriter of "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" Tony Gilroy.
In fact, the series is about one of the heroes from that movie, Cassian Andor, who is played by the Mexican actor Diego Luna ("And your mother too", "Milk").
The plot takes place five years before the events of the film and unfolds the background story of Endor around the formation of the Rebel Alliance against the Empire.
"It's great to return to the character precisely because it's not the movie version, and so we can be asked all kinds of questions and what led to the events of Rogue One," said Luna at the "Star Wars" conference last spring.
"I'm happy to portray a character in such a way that I'm given the opportunity to present it in other circumstances, with less knowledge. It's a reminder that each of us is capable of changing and creating miracles."
Alongside a third season of "The Mandalorian" in early 2023, a new sub-series starring Rosario Dawson in the role of the Jedi warrior Asuka Tano, who was mentored by Anakin Skywalker, who later turned to the dark side and became Darth Vader, will be released.
The next great dwarf
Lucas Studios revisited Willow and the Princess, a cult film from 1988, and turned it into a series of witches, trolls and demons
"Willow" (11/30, Disney Plus)
The Disney-owned Lucas Studios arm has another project in the pipeline outside of the Star Wars franchise.
This is a television version of the dark fantasy film "Willow and the Princess" from 1988 directed by Ron Howard ("Apollo 13", "Wonders of Reason").
Although the film was not as successful as Lucas had hoped, it remained a cult among his fans.
Willow,
Now it has been decided on a continuation plot for the stories of the dwarf Willow Upgood (Warrick Davis, the films "Harry Potter" and "Leprechaun").
According to the description offered by Disney at the event to promote the project, the new adventure will take place in a magical world of wizards, trolls and other mystical creatures in a dangerous journey of heroes far from their homes, and when they must confront demons to save their world.
Rambo and Tony Soprano
For $1 million per episode Sylvester Stallone plays "The General", a New York mobster who is released from prison
"The King of Tulsa" (11/13 in the US)
At the age of 76, Sylvester Stallone is making his first television role in a new drama series created by one of the hottest names in Hollywood in recent years, screenwriter Taylor Sheridan.
After coming up strongly on the radar of the major studios in recent years thanks to his scripts for "Sicario" and the crime western "In Fire and Water", for which he was nominated for an Oscar, in 2018 Sheridan created the series "Yellowstone" with Kevin Costner, which became a ratings hit in the US and gave A comeback for the old movie star.
Along with a spin-off to his upcoming hit that will soon star Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren, it's now Stallone's turn to win Sheridan's magic touch and get back to business without relying on corporations like "Rocky," "Rambo" and "Unforgettables."
king of tulsa,
Stallone, who earns a million dollars per episode, plays in the action drama a New York mobster named Dwight Manfredi known as "The General", who is released from prison after 25 years in prison for a crime he did not commit but was forced to remain silent and bear the punishment.
Now he is sent by his boss to the town of Tulsa in Oklahoma to build a new infrastructure there that will expand the scope of his criminal activities.
But the general feels alienated from the happenings in the big city after being thrown into a small town, and he begins to assemble a team to build a new empire, realizing that his boss may not necessarily have his best interests at heart.
The series was created by Sheridan together with screenwriter Terence Winter ("The Sopranos", "The Wolf of Wall Street").
Is it still allowed to say gigolo?
42 years since the famous film with Richard Gere was released, a series that recreates the hero in today's Los Angeles
"American Gigolo" (9/9 in the US)
42 years after director Paul Schrader's film, which made Richard Gere a movie star and a desirable sex symbol, comes the television adaptation of "American Gigolo" starring the Jewish-American actor John Bernthal, who is known for series such as "The Punisher" and "the walking Dead".
In the new drama series, which plays out a scenario similar to the movie, Bernthal plays Julian Kaye, a wanted dater who gets into trouble when he develops feelings for one of his clients.
The plot begins after a case is sewn up on him and he is sent to prison for a murder that was not committed, until it turns out that he is not guilty and he goes free to find the one responsible for the injustice caused to him and tries to renew the romantic relationship, for which he was ready to sacrifice everything.
The project has been in development since 2014 and has passed through the hands of several producers, and the person responsible for it, among other things, is the screenwriter-producer David Hollander, who previously worked on the dark drama series "Ray Donovan", and already in the first episodes a similarity between the two series can be pointed out.
The plot claims to give a glimpse into the sex industry and the night life of the prostitution business in Los Angeles, and also returns to the background story of the main protagonist, who grew up as a boy in a slum and was picked up by a rich European baroness, who groomed him to become an escort boy in her service.
Now, out of prison, Julian is back in business with a tough, young boss.
Hi, I met your father
HBO produced a series with The Weekend about the dark side of the industry • Johnny Depp's daughter and Vanessa Faraday star
"The Idol" (unknown date, HBO)
The dragons of the Targaryen family may be at the top of HBO's list of priorities right now, but for the rest of the fall, the veteran cable network has a new drama that is already generating a lot of curiosity from the teasers that have been released.
After previous collaborations with the legendary rocker Mick Jagger, who together with Martin Scorsese created "Vinyl" which did not survive, and the rapper Drake who was one of the producers of the successful American adaptation of the Israeli "Euphoria", the next bet is on the Canadian musician De Weeknd, who created the series "The Idol" is about a dark and mysterious plot behind the scenes of the music industry, and will star in it.
Lily-Rose Depp,
Lily-Rose Depp, the daughter of Johnny Depp and the French singer Vanessa Farady, who is considered one of the hottest names in Hollywood, will play Jocelyn, a young pop star who is swept into a ramified relationship with a charismatic guru, who is known as the owner of a nightclub in Los Angeles but Also the leader of a modern cult, and who will be played by De Weekend.
The series will feature young singers such as Troy Sivan and the Korean rapper Jenny Kim, a member of the girl group Black Pink, in a nod to the Tiktok generation, as well as the actress Anne Haish, in the last role she managed to film before her tragic death following a car accident last month.
Do you wander here a lot?
CBS is bringing back the classic "Love Ship" - this time in a reality version, with people looking for true love
The True Love Ship (5/10 US)
And you can't do without the reality genre, which after two decades seems to be here to stay.
Next month, CBS will air a matchmaking reality version inspired by Aaron Spelling's light and beloved series "The Love Ship", which ran for nine seasons in 1977-1986, not including five TV movies and a remake from the late nineties that didn't last long.
For years, CBS has been considered the most watched national television network among American viewers, and with a significant foothold in reality with at least two huge hits, "Survival" and "The Race to the Million", which have been broadcast for more than 20 years on the standard of critical anchors in the broadcast schedule every fall.
In fact, "The True Love Ship" was slotted together with them on the same broadcast night.
The True Love Ship, photo: CBS
It is a joint American-Australian production that is filmed on a luxury cruise ship in the Mediterranean Sea.
The idea is in the atmosphere of all those romantic plots that were associated with the original series, except that here real people will try to find love with the help of all kinds of permanent characters of workers on board - Isaac Haberman is already on the way.
One couple, who will manage to find true love despite the turbulence in the shadows and heart murmurs, will win a cash prize and a separate pleasure cruise.
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