Well this is an interesting development… During a Pledge Drive on Seattle’s KCTS, it’s rumoured Robert Llewellyn (aka Kryten) announced that BBC Worldwide has commissioned a 1hr Red Dwarf special to be filmed in October 2008! It’ll star the original cast and Doug Naylor is currently finalizing the script.

Hour special filming in October, sounds like they’re aiming to use it as a Christmas Special for 2008. It’s an interesting turnaround, given BBC2 pretty firm rejection about doing anything new with Red Dwarf late last year. I’m glad the Beeb have finally decided to do something for Red Dwarf 20th (albeit a bit late!), rather than skipping the anniversary year altogether.

Stargate: Universe, Opening 2009

As the old saying goes, ‘When one Stargate closes, another one opens’…

After yesterday’s news that Stargate: Atlantis wasn’t getting picked up for a 6th season, according to hollywoodreporter, SCIFI have greenlit a 3rd Stargate series Stargate: Universe which will lanch with a 2 hour season opener in 2009.

After unlocking the mystery of the Stargate’s ninth chevron, a team of explorers travels to an unmanned starship called the Destiny, launched by The Ancients at the height of their civilization as a grand experiment set in motion, but never completed.

What starts as a simple reconnaissance turns into a never ending mission, as the Stargate Universe crew discovers the ship is unable to return to Earth, and they must now fend for themselves aboard the Destiny.

The crew will travel to the far reaches of the universe, connecting with each of the previously launched Stargates, thus fulfilling the Destiny’s original mission.

Challenges will arise though as the ship comes into range of Stargates placed centuries ahead of the Destiny, but only for a brief period of time before carrying on with its pre-programmed navigational schedule. If someone is left behind, there is no way to go back for them, adding to the drama of encountering new races, enemies and adventures.

Stargate: Voyager anyone (Ooh, or Stargate: The Littlest Hobo… *maybe tomorrow, i’ll want to settle down, maybe tomorrow, i’ll just keep movin’ on…*)

Still, it’s an interesting new direction for franchise. MGM are said to be looking for a ‘known actor’ for the lead (like they did with Richard Dean Anderson on SG-1). They’re also not looking to shift characters from Atlantis or SG-1 over, which makes sense, given they want to keep both those shows running on DVD. The whole point of SG:U is you can’t just nip back to the SGC (which kinda would make it hard for any existing cast to suddenly pop up in a DVD movie if they’re supposed to be stuck billions of light years away on an uncontrollable ancient starship!)

Glad to see Stargate is coming back to TV sooner rather than later!

Kinda surprised by this… After 5 seasons, Stargate Atlantis has been canned, despite being one of the best performers for US Sci Fi channel.

Sci Fi have however commisioned a 2hr Atlantis tv/dvd movie, so it’s possible they’re just finding the shows too expensive to shoot, and recent SG-1 movies (Ark of Truth and Continuum) have shown it’s more cost effective to make the 2hr specials.

There’s also no word yet on what this does to the pitched 3rd series, Stargate: Universe. On the plus side, they said they’d only want to start it after Atlantis finished. On the minus, if money is an issue, surely that’s still an issue with a new show…

There’s an official press release due from MGM sometime in the next 24hrs, so hopefully we’ll have more answers then.

With the MMORPG Stargate: Worlds due out next year, i can’t see the Stargate brand vanishing totally anytime soon.

And so it came to pass, thousands upon thousands of eager Warhammer fans that weren’t lucky enough to get into beta rejoice as Youtube fills with Warhammer Online Beta videos!

Although we got pulled back to Azeroth temporarily after the whole Conan fiasco, we will be heading for the realms of WAR in September to check out what maybe WoW’s toughest competitor yet. Still not sure what to play, but looking at Dwarf Engineer for Empire, and Squig Herder for Greenskins…

Warhammer Online Character Creation

Warhammer Online: Dwarf Engineer

Click here for Dwarf Engineer part 2

Warhammer Online: Goblin Squig Herder!

There’s a whole bunch more stuff floating around out there, so go have a look!

The excellent Robot Chicken: Star Wars gets a DVD release this month, and to celebrate, the nice folk over at Robot Chicken have given us some goodies to give away in a competition! For those that haven’t seen Robot Chicken: Star Wars, here’s a clip:

We have 2 sets of Robot Chicken Star Wars Limited Edition DVDs and Robot Chicken Star Wars t-shirts to give away!

HOW TO WIN

Just answer this Star Wars question:

Q: Han Solo boasts the Millenium Falcon made the Kessel Run in what time?

Competition is now closed!

The answer was Han Solo boasts the Millenium Falcon made the Kessel Run ‘less than 12 parsecs’.

Thank you for all the hundreds of entries! We will randomly draw 2 winners over the next few days, and contact the winners via email. Each lucky winner will get a Robot Chicken Star Wars Limited Edition DVD and Robot Chicken Star Wars t-shirt!

The Rules

The competition closes on 1st September 2008 and is open to UK residents aged 18 or over. Winner will be drawn at random in early September. Employees of the promoter, its agents or anyone professionally connected with the promotion, and their families, are excluded from entering this competition. The editor’s decision is final and no discussion will be entered into. Only one entry per person. No multiple, bulk or third party entries accepted.

Don’t usually post fan art, but this is a pretty awesome bit of work for a Batman 3 teaser poster (i’d credit it, but i’ve no idea who’s done it!)

The poster’s creator is obviously pushing Riddler as the villain for 3, which would be an interesting choice. Especially if used more in his current DC Universe guise, where he’s playing private eye (maybe using one detective to catch another?..)

I’d also vote for the Mafioso business man (as oppose to the Tim Burton freak of the sewer) version of Penguin which i think would fit into Chris Nolan’s Batman.

Who would you like to see?