This week in TV news includes an update on The Office‘s streaming home, the latest big video game TV adaptation, some San Diego Comic-Con plans, Lena Headey’s post-Game of Thrones TV plans, and more.
(Photo by NBC)
Say goodbye to your Netflix Office binges, because The Office will soon have a new streaming home. The NBC sitcom isn’t leaving the internet for good, it’ll just be moving to NBCUniversal’s own, yet-to-be-launched streaming service in 2021. That means you have around 18 months left to binge the series on Netflix to your heart’s content.
The Office was streamed for more than 52 billion minutes in 2018, and in April 2019, it was viewed nearly twice as much as the next-viewed program on subscription video on demand services.
“The Office has become a staple of pop-culture and is a rare gem whose relevance continues to grow at a time when fans have more entertainment choices than ever before,” said Bonnie Hammer, Chairman of NBCUniversal Direct-to-Consumer and Digital Enterprises, in a statement announcing the news. “We can’t wait to welcome the gang from Dunder Mifflin to NBCUniversal’s new streaming service.”
Another major video game is getting a TV adaptation: Final Fantasy is coming to the small screen via the production company responsible for Netflix’s upcoming adaptation of The Witcher, Deadline reports. The project will be written by Ben Lusting and Jake Thornton, and “will tell an original story set in the fantastic world of Eorzea, based on Final Fantasy XIV, the franchise’s blockbuster online role-playing game. …Inspired directly by the world and characters of the title’s fourteenth installment, the project will explore the struggle between magic and technology in a quest to bring peace to a land in conflict. Filled with iconic hallmarks of the title’s revered mythology – magitek and beastmen, airships and chocobos – the forthcoming series will feature a mixture of new and familiar faces. Those will include the live-action debut of Cid – one of the games’ central and most beloved characters who has appeared in almost every installment of the franchise to date.”
The major series headed to San Diego for splashy Comic-Con panels include a goodbye to Game of Thrones, the first look at His Dark Materials, Supernatural‘s farewell to Hall H, Warner Bros.’ DC TV shows (Batwoman and the rest of the Arrowverse, plus Batman prequel Pennyworth), the new Veronica Mars, Archer, What We Do in the Shadows, and activations for HBO’s Watchmen and Amazon Prime Video’s Carnival Row, The Boys, and The Expanse. That’s as of June 27. The annual convention takes place from July 17 to 21, and the full schedule will be listed here.
Dust off a very large space on your bookshelf for the ultimate Game of Thrones box set — which could only be improved with a ticket for an all-expenses paid trip to a Westworld-like Westeros experience. Limited edition Blu-ray set Game of Thrones: The Complete Collection will be available on December 3, and features a wooden shadow box illustrated by Robert Ball, along with a two-part reunion special with the cast hosted by Conan O’Brien. Other bonus content includes deleted and extended scenes, animated histories, behind-the-scenes featurettes, audio commentaries, and the documentary Game of Thrones: The Last Watch.
(Photo by Marvel; David James/Lucasfilm Ltd.)
Black Panther star Letitia Wright and Star Wars’ John Boyega lead the all-star cast of Steve McQueen’s upcoming anthology series Small Axe, which is currently filming in London. According to Variety, the series will air in Britain on the BBC and the U.S. on Amazon Prime Video, and follows the West Indian community in London from the late 1960s through the early 1980s. The six-episode series will tell five different stories. Malachi Kirby, Shaun Parkes, Rochenda Sandall, Alex Jennings, and Jack Lowden also star.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon will serve as the showrunner of the new CBS All Access series Star Trek: Picard. The author, who won the Fiction award in 2001 for his novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, will run day-to-day production on the series alongside Akiva Goldsman and Alex Kurtzman.
“Star Trek has been an important part of my way of thinking about the world, the future, human nature, storytelling and myself since I was ten years old,” Chabon, who was previously announced as a writer on the series, said in a statement announcing the news. “I come to work every day in a state of joy and awe at having been entrusted with the character and the world of Jean-Luc Picard, with this vibrant strand of the rich, intricate and complex tapestry that is Trek.”
(Photo by Amazon Prime Video)
Former Project Runway gurus Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn are headed back to TV for their new, globe-spanning fashion competition called Making the Cut. Hosted and produced by the two powerhouses, the Amazon Prime Video series will feature “12 entrepreneurs and designers from around the globe who are competing to take their fledgling brands to the next level in becoming the next big global phenomenon.” Looks from the series will be shoppable on Amazon, and the winner will take home a $1 million investment in their brand. The first runway challenge filmed earlier this week in front of the Eiffel Tower, featuring judges and guest judges including Naomi Campbell, Nicole Richie, Carine Roitfeld, and Joseph Altazurra.
I'm just going to leave this here https://t.co/3eylHKtbMt
— Emily St. J. Mandel (@EmilyMandel) June 26, 2019
Maniac‘s Patrick Somerville will run two new series for the upcoming streaming series WarnerMedia: Made for Love and Station Eleven. The first series is based on the novel of the same name by Alissa Nutting, about a thirtysomething woman who leaves her ten-year marriage to an unstable tech billionaire and soon discovers he’s implanted a monitoring device in her brain that allows him to track, watch, and know her thoughts and feelings. S.J. Clarkson will serve as director and executive producer. The second is a “postapocalyptic saga spanning multiple timelines” following the survivors of a devastating flu, based on the book by Emily St. John Mandel. Atlanta’s Hiro Murai will serve as director and executive producer.
(Photo by Acorn TV)
British TV fans using Apple TV, Roku, and Amazon Prime Video will be happy to know that Acorn TV is expanding its reach with a new Apple TV app, a premium subscriptions purchasing option on The Roku Channel, Android Smart TVs, and a new add-on availability through Amazon Prime Video in Canada (it was already available in the U.S.). The series brings British and international television series to North American fans, as well as original series including Agatha Raisin, London Kills (pictured), and Queens of Mystery.
Lena Headey will star in a new pilot for Showtime called Rita, an adaptation of a Danish series about a “headstrong, unconventional teacher and single mother who takes on every kind of authority—as well as her family—in a messy and unfiltered way,” according to the official description.
Ryan Murphy’s film adaptation of the Broadway musical The Prom for Netflix has already attracted an A-list cast, Deadline reports. Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, James Corden, Ariana Grande, Awkwafina, Keegan-Michael Key, and Andrew Rannells are set to star, and filming is scheduled to begin in December.
Sigourney Weaver to voice The Myth-Speaker in #DarkCrystal Age Of Resistance! FIRST LOOK at 5 more just-announced actors/chars: Lena Headey as Maudra Fara, Benedict Wong as The General, Awkwafina as The Collector, Hannah John-Kamen as Naia & Dave Goelz as Baffi (clockwise L to R) pic.twitter.com/esboAJnDsX
— See What's Next (@seewhatsnext) June 26, 2019
The star-studded cast of Netflix’s The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance is getting even more wattage with Lena Headey, Sigourney Weaver, Benedict Wong, Awkwafina, Hannah John-Kamen, and Dave Goelz as voices in the epic prequel series based on the cult-favorite 1982 Jim Henson film The Dark Crystal. The series premieres Aug. 30.
The new stars of The L Word reboot Generation Q include Arienne Mandi, Leo Sheng, Jaqueline Toboni, and Rosanny Zayas, who join original stars and new series executive producers Jennifer Beals, Katherine Moenning, and Leisha Hailey in the drama, set to film in Los Angeles this summer and premiere this fall on Showtime.
Showtime’s upcoming series Penny Dreadful: City of Angels has added Mad Men’s Michael Gladis as a series regular, and Lorena Izzo, Adam Rodriguez, Dominic Sherwood, Ethan Peck, and Thomas Kretschmann will recur.
(Photo by Kristin Callahan/Everett Collection)
Short-form streaming service Quibi’s newest star: Liam Hemsworth, who will head up an action thriller in which he plays Dodge Maynard, a man “desperate to take care of his pregnant wife before a terminal illness can take his life. He accepts an offer to participate in a deadly game where he soon discovers that he’s not the hunter… but the prey.”
Also coming soon to the streaming service: a new series executive produced by Lorne Michaels and Seth Meyers from former SNL writer Paula Pell. Created by and starring Pell and John Lutz, Mapleworth Murders is a comedic crime procedural about a murder-mystery writer who solves homicides in her quaint hometown.
Season 2 of the Facebook Watch series Sacred Lies, titled The Singing Bones, will star Juliette Lewis and Ryan Kwanten in a story inspired by the Brothers Grimm story The Singing Bone, and begins production in Vancouver in July.
Paramount Network has ordered ten episodes of the drama series Coyote, starring Michael Chiklis as a former border patrol agent who begins questioning his worldview, ideology, and loyalties after being exposed to the other side of the U.S.-Mexico border. Breaking Bad’s Michelle MacLaren will executive produce as well as direct the pilot. The series will debut in 2020.
