Disney Force Fail: The Acolyte Fandom Fallout
The recent Star Wars TV shows, with the exception of the first season of The Mandalorian, have been met with criticism from fans, with some attributing it to review bombing, while others point to issues with the writing and unfamiliarity with the franchise among the show’s creators. This raises concerns for the future of the franchise and the need to balance fan expectations with creative freedom.
Jonathan Frakes: Our Champion Scifi Alum?
Jonathan Frakes, known for his role in “Star Trek”, is set to direct the sci-fi series “Arthur C. Clarke’s Venus Prime” and has joined the producing team, with writers David Cormican and Dwayne Hill also serving as producers and showrunners for the six-episode series which is set to go into production in Canada at the end of this year, based on the books which were acquired by Claxson and Navajo and will also have Arthur C. Clarke collaborator Paul Preuss as a consultant while being produced by Navajo Entertainment in association with Claxson, Washington Square Entertainment, Palatin Media, Julijette, Karma Film, Fun Republic Pictures and virtual production studio / film financier Volume Global, with series producers Anand Ramayya and Juliette Hagopian, and executive producers including Volume Global’s Christopher Rush Harrington and Michael Hamilton-Wright, Claxson’s Roberto Vivo, Palatin Media’s Bernd Schlötterer, and executive producer Lucas Vivo Garcia Lagos, with Paradigm’s Babacar Diene, Bill Douglass, and Wilson Rubinoff negotiating Frakes’ deal with Fun Republic Pictures’ Cormican, and Palatin representing international sales worldwide excluding Latin America which Claxson will represent.
Paul Allen Innovation Legacy Up for Auction
The Living Computers museum in Seattle, opened to the public 12 years ago and featuring interactive displays of vintage computing systems, will permanently close as its entire inventory is being auctioned off at Christie’s, including items from the Paul G. Allen Collection, after the museum and associated educational facilities were forced to close due to the pandemic in 2020, leaving it as the only major vintage computing museum in Washington State.
Apple TV+ and the Neuromancer Hype Machine
The long-awaited adaptation of William Gibson’s Neuromancer is finally coming to Apple TV+ as a series, with Callum Turner and Briana Middleton cast as the co-leads and creators Graham Roland and JD Dillard expressing their excitement about the project.
Japan Olympic Uniforms’ Anti-Perv Technology
Japanese manufacturer Mizuno has developed a new fabric for the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics that is nearly wholly opaque to both visible and infrared light, in order to protect athletes from potentially voyeuristic images taken by infrared cameras that can be circulated on pornographic sites, after complaints were made by athletes in 2020 about their images being shared on social media.
Disney Strikes Back on Blogger Star Wars Rant
Disney filed a copyright claim against a four-hour YouTube video by Jenny Nicholson, a prominent nerd culture YouTuber, in which she gave a critical review of the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser hotel, leading to a discussion about the impact of such claims on content creators and the eventual closure of the hotel.
Unfilmable Sci-Fi Books That Stump Hollywood
While some science fiction novels, such as Dune and Foundation, have recently been successfully adapted, there are still many novels, like Ancillary Justice, Culture Series, Dhalgren, Dawn, The Genesis of Misery, The Left Hand of Darkness, Stranger in a Strange Land, and This is How You Lose the Time War, that are considered impossible to adapt due to their philosophical, trippy, and introspective themes that may not translate well onto the screen.
FAA’s Space Data Integrator program – space traffic jam fixer?
The FAA announced that three more companies, Firefly, Virgin Galactic, and Sierra Space, have joined SpaceX in using the Federal Aviation Administration’s Space Data Integrator, a tool designed to track and integrate data from space vehicles in near-real time to improve safety and efficiency for air traffic controllers and commercial flights in the National Airspace System.
Robotic Noir: Mars Express Dystopian Scifi
Mars Express is a French animated film with a film noir tone and structure, inspired by classic detective movies and featuring a female private investigator, set in a futuristic world where robots are being hacked and a conspiracy threatens to upend human-robot civilization, with influences from both Japanese animation and classic cinema.
Fancy Cleantech Air Storage Plant Creates 700 Jobs!
Work has begun on a £300m energy plant in Carrington, near Manchester, which will store surplus electricity from wind and solar farms in liquid air and have the capacity to power 480,000 homes, creating over 700 jobs and providing long-term clean energy storage for the UK grid.