Trek TV, Invisible Depp, and Player One Flinches

A lot of interesting news nuggets popping up this week.

In what you’ve got to count as a very smart move, CBS has hired Hannibal/Pushing Daisies/Dead Like Me creator Bryan Fuller as showrunner for their new Star Trek series. He’ll produce the show with Alex Kurtzman, and Fuller’s definitely got the cred, having started out writing for Star Trek: Deep Space Nineand Star Trek: Voyager early in his career. We don’t know much about “the who and the when” of this new Trek series yet, but it’s set to debut on CBS’s new digital subscription service, after launching on network broadcast in January 2017. Fuller’s also currently serving showrunner duties on the Starz adaptation of American Gods, from Neil Gaiman. Fuller’s a long-time, self-professed Trek fan, who’s got a solid understanding of the canon and unbridled enthusiasm for the concept, with a solid, creative background in episodic TV. He’s said to have some very specific ideas for a new Trek premise, so with a premiere date less than a year away, expect plenty of additional news to break very soon.

Johnny Depp has signed up to be The Invisible Man, as part of the “shared universe” reboot of the Universal Monsters franchise, shepherded by Alex Kurtzman and Chris Morgan. Having already landed Tom Cruise as the (non-titular) lead in their reboot of The Mummy (June 9th, 2017), Depp’s casting cements the notion that this new series of interconnected films will have a strong star power component. Ed Solomon (Men in Black) is tackling The Invisible Man script. I’m intrigued by this concept while not being entirely sold, but Universal had a pretty spectacular and shrewdly executed year, with films like Jurassic World, Furious 7, Minions, Pitch Perfect 2 and Straight Outta Compton. Somebodysure knows what they’re doing over there, and they’ve been particularly strong at marketing. 

You didn’t have to be a genius to see this one coming, but Warner Brothers has blinked, moving Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One out of the way of Star Wars: Episode VIII, because Steven Spielberg is nobody’s fool. Ready Player One will now debut on March 30th, 2018, staking a claim on the less populated Easter timeframe. It’s possible it will now lock fangs with one of those new Universal Monster flicks, as The Wolf Man is thought to be coming out then, in addition to an as-yet unannounced DC picture, belived to be The Flash. Warner Bros. has a couple of additional untitled “event” films slated for March as well, which will hopefully do better for them than this years’ crop of tentpoles, as films like Pan and In the Heart of the Sea pretty much tanked. 

Things are definitely getting busy out there. Remember that Toy Fair blasts off on Friday, and The Walking Dead returns this Sunday in a big way. 

So check back for more news and raised eyebrows over the coming days.