Richard T. Jones has joined the cast of The Sarah Connor Chronicles on Fox.
He'll play an FBI agent who is tasked with tracking down Sarah Connor and her son, John on the drama, says The Hollywood Reporter. The show is based on the character from the Terminator films.
Production on The Sarah Connor Chronicles is currently going on; filming is set to begin soon.
The network's 10 drama pilots -- the same number as last year -- include the big-budget "The Sarah Connor Chronicles," a follow-up to the "Terminator" movies. The thriller, directed and executive produced by David Nutter, is shaping up "to be one of the biggest action pieces out there," Gold says.
Sarah Connor Chronicles
Production Co.: Warner Bros. TV/C-2 Pictures
Production Team: Josh Friedman, David Nutter, James Middleton, Mario Kassar, Andrew Vajna, Joel Michaels
Based on the characters from the "Terminator" franchise, it follows Connor (Lena Headey) and her son John (Thomas Dekker) in present-day Los Angeles as they fight attackers from the future in a battle for survival of the human race.
Hmmm I'm looking forward to this I must say. I'm guessing it will split the fans, which T3 did, (Cameron lovers), as to whether its any good or just plain bad. Whether it's any good (and let's pray it is!) will be decided once it's on our TV screens.
Lena Headey, who stars in the the Fox SF drama pilot The Sarah Connor Chronicles, told SCI FI Wire that the show will begin with a confrontation between Headey's title character; her son, John Connor (Heroes' Thomas Dekker); and two new Terminators: a female model, played by Serenity's Summer Glau, and a male one, which she called Cromartie, played by Owain Yeoman. One is good and one is bad; she didn't say which is which. (Glau's character is named Cameron, an apparent nod to Terminator franchise creator James Cameron.)
The pilot, which picks up the story from the end of the feature film Terminator 2: Judgment Day, begins in the desert, and "it ends with them landing in L.A., having run and escaped. Or maybe not," Headey said in an interview at WonderCon in San Francisco on March 3.
"We just finished [shooting]," Headey (300) said. "We were in Albuquerque [N.M.] for a month. And it was very intense, because TV is crazy. I mean, it's long days. It's like boom, boom, boom. You don't get any respite. But ... I think it's going to be great. I don't know if its going to be picked up, because it's only in pilot stage right now. But I learned to shoot many weapons and how to recognize a Terminator. So it was a good experience."
The pilot "begins, and it's them basically running, hiding, trying to live," Headey said. "Trying to carve out a normal life for themselves, but always being watched and trying to locate Skynet, trying to stop [it]. But there are many, many issues in their way."
Was just browsing the Internet for some Terminator gossip and I found this article about the Sarah Connor Chronicles pilot script.
Here are a few words of what "big [Terminator] fan" Keith McDuffee thought/said about it;
"A pilot script for a science fiction series is tough to fully review, as you're left to your own imagination with the effects, which can be a good thing and a bad thing. I will say the script does a great job of selling the show to the reader, giving you a sense of excitement and awesomeness of what you're "seeing" unfold.
One question I had going into this read was whether the show would feature on something other than Terminators entering the scene again. I can tell you that they're definitely in this series in a big way. And much like the movies, we've got both a terminating Terminator and a protecting one, and the protector isn't Arnold -- far from it. In fact -- and here's the spoiler -- it's a hot, female classmate of John's!
"The pilot episode of course features John, Sarah and Terminator trying to flee the big, bad Terminator out to destroy them (all of which, as far as I can tell from the script, are nothing more than T-800/850 models). As I read the script, I started to wonder if this was it -- just another cat-and-mouse chase, only this time lasting 20-some-odd number of episodes.
It's not until the final moments of the pilot that you realize there's going to be more to this series. In a way that I'll leave for you to find out for yourself, Sarah, John and girl Terminator make a time jump from 1998 to 2006 -- naked. It's there where the trio hopes to track down the true source of Skynet's activation and hopefully change the fate of humanity, but don't we already know what happens having seen T3?"
A US TV series based on the Terminator movies is to revamp a key storyline following the Virginia Tech massacre.
The Sarah Connors Chronicles, scheduled to begin next year, follows a mother trying to protect her son - who may be destined to save mankind.
But a scene in which the young boy is attacked in his school will be revised, TV network Fox has confirmed.
The scene was filmed before a student shot dead 32 people at Virginia Tech University in April this year.
The gunman, 23-year-old Cho Seung-hui, later turned his weapon on himself.
Josh Friedman, an executive producer on the Fox TV show, has defended the scenes which see 15-year-old John Connor come under attack in his classroom.
He believed the incident was central to the show's theme, Fox Entertainment chairman Peter Liguori told the US Television Critics' Association.
"This woman is charged with protecting and preparing her son to be the future leader of the resistance," Liguori said.
"The one single place a parent has to give up control of their child is school."
Friedman was the first to acknowledge the scenes should be changed in the wake of the deaths in Virginia, Liguori added, but he was unable to say how the story would be changed.
This isn't going to effect the show as a whole. The season will be a long one, so I'm sure it will not matter whether or not certain scenes are being re-written.
Fox is debuting their new action series, "The Sarah Connor Chronicles." "300's" Lena Headey plays the title character, which is an origin franchise for her role – before her Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines demise. The series picks up after "T2"; Sarah and John Connor find themselves as fugitives from the law, and are running from their enemies.
Now all the fans are hoping writer and executive producer Josh Friedman can deliver the goods from the film series. "When we first started this, people said, 'This takes place between T2 and T3.' As far as I'm concerned, this is T3; this is the continuation of what I would call the Sarah Connor trilogy. I think anything that happens after T2 is fair game for us., and I think the ending of T2 – the exploding killing Cyberdine, killing Miles Dyson – sort of changes the timeline for anything in the future."
The big draw from the pilot episode was the special effects; director David Nutter mentioned how they'll be keeping up the intensity. "I think there's been a lot of research and development from the people doing the special effects, Zoic. And a lot of times, once they've done a lot of this research and development, a lot of the stuff isn't really as expensive to do. So there will be just as many effects and large-scale things alongside many of the episodes."
Picking up the pace from Arnold and Kristanna Loken is Summer Glau (Serenity, "Firefly") as the new Terminator, Cameron. This time, she's a teen girl in the role helping to save the world. But Summer says she's ready to kick ass in the new series. "I spoke to Josh a lot about how he wanted my Terminator to be, and I think we're going to make my Terminator the most advanced model so far. It's her human traits; she's going to be the most human Terminator so far, so that's what I'm striving for. I was just so excited to play this kind of character because in a way she's much like River (Tam) in that she's isolated. And she's different in how she relates and how she communicates; but she's very strong and she can't genuinely feel emotion. I was excited that Josh gave me the opportunity to try this role and that's something that is going to be the most challenging part about her. I want people to be able to relate to her and in some way, see themselves in here just like I try with all my characters."
Now for Lena, transforming herself out of the shadow of Linda Hamilton is something she can't wait for – but going to the gym? We'll have to wait for that. "I'm in training right now and just doing regular workouts; this series is going to develop and, I think, along with that, so will her physicality because we find them at a different point."
What can fans expect for the time travel aspect? Friedman notes, "I believe the end of 'Terminator 2' is '97; the decision to leap forward is both an aesthetic one and story-wise will turn out to be an important one. There's reasons to come to this specific time, this specific place; it's a show that's about time travel, but it's not a time travel show. I think certainly we will see characters, both human and less so, returning from the future to the present. But there are no plans right now to jump anyone to the future.”
Just to point out the time period for the series, Summer mentioned her character was born in the year 2027, and she and John Connor are attending high school.
Producer James Middleton weighed in on the time travel issue as well. "I think it's really a core thing about our show. Our characters operate and a fight a battle every episode based on faith that they can prevent Judgment Day - now, they're going to do everything that they can to do that. But the odds against them are formidable, they have a formidable enemy; so how they operate every day is to fight the fight they best hey can in each episode."
Now everyone knows, Eddie Furlong did such a great job as John Connor in the movie series, Thomas Dekker ("Heroes") has some mighty big shoes to fill (ok, you can stop laughing now). "I grew up really hooked on these films, so it's very ironic I'm getting to do this," the actor says. "I know for the younger generation, and for myself, John was equally important to me as Sarah was. I know a lot of people I hear from really care about John, and I felt I knew that character. In the series, Jon's life is constantly evolving, and it evolved a lot from where it was in the films; he's having to hide, he's having to keep his head down. In the beginning of T2, he's able to keep his head up; he's carefree and I think he's had to close down a lot more. He's a little quieter and he's a little more pensive; he's having to wake up to the fact that this won't go away, and he has to really step up to the plate. So I'm trying to incorporate the main characteristics and emotional core of what was there in the films, while adjusting it to his current time and place that we're seeing in the series."
Okay, I know what you're all wondering – will Arnold make a cameo? Well, it sounds unlikely. "We've talked a lot about it," says Friedman. "But the reality is, as governor, he's incredibly busy. And as a star, he's incredibly expensive."
Will the T-1000, the character played by a then-unknown Robert Patrick in “Terminator 2: Judgement Day”, make his comeback on the small screen? Well, it’s a possibility, says “Sarah Connor Chronicles”’ consulting producer James Middleton to IF Magazine.
“We absolutely thought about that,” says Middleton. “We love Robert Patrick. We studied his performance as a Terminator and think he’s a fantastic actor and we have talked about him a lot. We don’t know what we have for him, but love him as an actor. We have talked about having echoes of the films in a lot of ways, including actors from previous movies.”
There's more, and even some mention on T4. Read the full article here
The top guys over at TheArnoldFans.com have a review of the first episode from TSCC.
Here's the highlights:
"Actress Lena Headey from "300" fame now plays Sarah Connor, who's character has decided to attempt to settle down at a regular life and living with a serious boyfriend. However after one-to-many repeated nightmares of a Terminator attack, she knows her love-life is doomed and protecting John, her son, must be her only mission in life.
We have the ugly terminator male face off with the hot, sexy one. It's almost as if we have scene this battle before however as it's a combination of the T2 hallway scene and T3's TX vs T-850 brawl. Still, it was executed very well with good effects and intensity. Later , having temporarily escaped the Terminator, we see Cameron and the Connor's sitting by an evening's fire. Cameron is picking shrapnel out of her metal collar bone with her shirt off and topless. While John stares at her breasts, Sarah asks Cameron to "holster those". Cameron understands and put's her bra on. Good laughs by all.
In act three, as if it couldn't get better than a naked Cameron, we get a fantastic finale involving what appears to be a bank robbery. So why does Cameron insist that the bank worker lock her and the Connor team inside of the vault? To hear more with spoilers, read on.
Without getting into too many secrets, let's just say that later time travel is involved and all three are teleported to a new time: the present of 2007. All arriving nude, this is the year when Sarah must stop the machines from rising to power.
I tell you, for me, my friends and from the sound of the entire auditorium, this was a hit and has potential to be an incredibly good television show. Keep in mind this review is coming from a guy who likes Comic Con and nerdy programs like Buffy, Firefly, Heroes, Smallville and now the Sarah Conor Chronicles!"
For the full review and 'bad' points about the episode click here
Also click here to read an interview by iF Magazine with The Sarah Connor Chronicles' Consulting Producer James Middleton.
Interesting - especially with the mention of the original T3 draft and news on T4.
For example:
"We developed the first draft of the screenplay to include her character and we were going to have a great thing to her character arc,” says Middleton. “However, Linda Hamilton declined to be in the movie for her own reasons, partly because I think she would only do it with Jim Cameron directing and that was not going to be the case with TERMINATOR 3. So we had to develop a screenplay where she was not involved.”
And what would that storyline have entailed?
”She was going to face Skynet in a huge way and sacrifice herself,” teases Middleton. “In the end, I’m very happy with how T3 turned out and happy we were able to resurrect the Sarah Connor character for this TV show. I like T3 and it was very successful. It did a lot of for us for this show, because it reintroduced the franchise to the public, which made my job of selling the show easier. It made the franchise relevant. However, our mythology gives us the ability, because of time travel, to set up new timelines. We’re very happy to use that to explore an entirely different version of Sarah’s mythology on the show.”
Plus...
"While BATTLESTAR GALACTICA certainly paid homage to the past by bringing Richard Hatch on to the new series, Middleton says he wouldn’t be averse to bringing back former TERMINATOR players for the TV show either. Could we suggest Robert Patrick for starters?
“We absolutely thought about that,” says Middleton. “We love Robert Patrick. We studied his performance as a Terminator and think he’s a fantastic actor and we have talked about him a lot. We don’t know what we have for him, but love him as an actor. We have talked about having echoes of the films in a lot of ways, including actors from previous movies.”
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Jan 27th, 2007 08:32 AM
