Tag Archives: AMC

TV

Walking Dead Season 4 Tease Last Night Makes Us Ask If It’s October Yet

Leave a comment

Last night during Low Winter Sun, AMC took the opportunity to tease us with a short scene from The Walking Dead season 4.

The clip doesn’t reveal much in the way of story, but we do get a glimpse at the beefed up prison defenses as well as fan favorite Michonne (Danai Gurira) riding a horse and then getting into a tussle with some walkers as she tries to get back into the prison. A hatless Carl (Chandler Riggs) and Maggie (Lauren Cohan) also appear in the clip as they run to her assistance.

the-walking-dead-season-4-new-photo-of-michonne-preview

Season 4 picks up several months following the Governor’s failed attack at the end of season 3, after which he turned on his own people and disappeared into the distance with his remaining loyal grunts. The Governor is still out there and Rick and his group, now including Tyreese (Chad Coleman) and the remaining Woodbury survivors they took in, are preparing in case he returns as well as any new threats that are on the horizon.

New showrunner Scott Gimple recently warned fans at the San Diego Comic-Con not to get too comfortable with the nature of the threat the walkers or the Governor impose. “They might get a little comfortable, but then things might get a little dangerous,”. We will see the walkers “evolve” and will get a more determined Governor hell-bent on bringing down Rick and the group.

the-walking-dead-1024x576

The Walking Dead the TV series is known for taking the comics only as inspiration in terms of themes and season 3 only just started to touch on the levels of depravity and sick natured acts that the Governor displays in the comic series. It will be great to see season 4 continue to amp up the threat of the Governor following his final step into madness at the end of season 3 and cement his place as one of the greatest TV villains. In case you need reminding, The Walking Dead returns Oct. 13 on AMC. Mark them calendars.

TV

The Walking Dead: Behind the Scenes of Season 4

Leave a comment

Fans of The Walking Dead, there is a new video out from AMC! It shows the cast behind the scenes of season 4. It seems there is much to look forward to, such as farm lands, larger hoards of walkers, and an immense threat on their newly home-sweet-home-like prison.

Season 4 picks up as season 3 did, after winter has passed. In that time, the prison has changed quite a bit, which you can preview in the video. Oh yeah…. spoiler alert! Glen and Maggie get it on!

The Walking Dead

Season 4 episode 1 airs on AMC, October 13th at 9PM.

TV

AMC Prepares for ‘Area 51’, Boots Out ‘The Killing’

Leave a comment

AMC acknowledges that times are going to get pretty tough soon. Mad Men is heading into its swan song final season. Breaking Bad is about to end. They botched The Killing which resulted in the show being canceled, and Walking Dead is not on 24/7. So they have decided to go back into the well and tap the executive producer of Walking Dead (and The Terminator and Aliens), Gale Anne Hurd, and commission a new series about cult event: Area 51. Yes, you may get excited.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, AMC has decided to add Aliens to its zombies, ad men, and drug lab population. They got the rights for Annie Jacobsen’s best selling book, Area 51, which was just recently published in May. The book is about the never confirmed military installation in Nevada, and looks into the area and the people around that have their thoughts on what is truly going on. The author interviewed several people that served on the base as well others that have been employed at famous secret facility. Obviously there is a lot of potential considering that this was culled from actual servicemen and people’s reports so it will make for a good conspiracy show that will explore into what is or truly isn’t out there in the desert or the great beyond in the sky. The series will take place in the 1950s-1960s, most likely dealing with the Roswell incident as well as how the base came to be and the lengths to keep it on the down low.

I really dig this because AMC just puts out great stuff (how dare you cancel Rubicon!) and their track record on just going after shows that are not typical of network television, and pushing the envelope makes me excited. If anything, it has the potential to remind of the X-Files and the conspiracy and the mythology of aliens that we lack on television today. Between this and Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman’s new comic adaptation Thief of Thieves, we might have a few viable replacements in the near future.

One of them, however, will NOT be The Killing. AMC has decided to cancel the show due to falling viewership and lack of interest according to EW. This really is not a shocking move considering the gimmick of the show was to find out who killed Rosie Larsen and they could not answer that in the first season, thus pissing off viewers that felt like it was drawn out unnecessarily. They did at least reveal the end of that story by the end of the second season, but it was too late. Ratings went from 2.7 million viewers when the series premiered, to 1.8 million for the second season premiere, and down to 1.4 million for the last season (series) finale. [Ed. Note – For the record, I feel like this is more of an indictment on the audience in the Law & Order/CSI world we live in. This is the same formula used by Twin Peaks 20 years ago and that show is still praised to this day…]

There is still hope however as Fox Television Studios, who makes the show, plans on shopping around to other networks so who knows, maybe we will see the show given new life on FX or TNT. Granted, this would also require someone to actually care, but I never watched the second season so I cannot judge whether it was good or not. [Point.] Thoughts people? Should it be saved or was there reason to abandon the show after they botched their relationship with viewers? Also, for Area 51, is it too much to ask for a shot of Will Smith punching an alien saying, “Welcome to Earf!”? Maybe while performing Summertime? Just saying, you were thinking about it too…

TV

Breaking Bad/AMC Being Dropped By Dish Network!

Leave a comment

Breaking Bad is arguably the best show on television right now, and along with its stellar cast, directing, writing and acting, it’s one of the most engaging stories I’ve ever seen. So engaging, that it’s only a week and change away from debuting its new season, and that still feels like an incredibly long time. Unfortunately, the wait could be even longer for Dish Network subscribers, who are SOL when it comes to getting AMC this year.  Dish is another satellite TV provider that has at one point or another, failed to make a deal with a popular cable network, and the drama spills out into the public, and fans of that channel have to get involved themselves.

“Dish has not discussed rates with us at all,” AMC said in today’s statement. Dish customers have lost some of their favorite shows because of an unrelated lawsuit which has nothing at all to do with our programming.”  [Ad Age]

Basically, Dish says that AMC is charging too much for its channel with its shows with low ratings, (Walking Dead, Mad Men, ) and AMC says that Dish is dropping them because of an unspecified 2008 lawsuit that would lose Dish money, to the amount of $ 2.5 billion. A similar thing happened with FX/DirecTV a year or so ago, and years before that DirecTV and G4, only G4 is such a terrible channel DirecTV decided to not accept their deal and now DirecTV is G4-less. That’s ok though, because G4 has never had anything close in quality to the worst show on FX or AMC combined, and that includes reruns of Two & A Half Men. How this keeps happening, I don’t understand. Perhaps there’s just a constant cycle of lawsuits that are on hold indefinitely to stymie cable and satellite providers, and some great TV Pope declares who will get what network approval every 10 years.

So the Great TV Pope has declared that unless Dish and AMC can come to some agreement, AMC, IFC and We TV will be dropped from Dish. How will they get their dose of Zombies, Meth Drama, Men in Suits, Experimental Indie Cinema and Women’s Programming now?

On an interesting side note, FX was originally going to pick up Breaking Bad, until the president of FX thought that Walter White would make one male anti-hero too many for their channel.

“We had three dramas with male antiheroes and we looked at that script and said, ‘Okay, so here’s a fourth male antihero,’” Landgraf recalled. “The question was: ‘Are we defining FX as the male antihero network and is that a big enough tent?” [EW]

I suppose this means that no matter what, at some point every Satellite TV customer, would have to have worried about not getting their fix of Breaking Bad. What with FX’s fans’ main rallying cry being to save It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, in some alternate universe somewhere it very well may have been “Save Breaking Bad! Tell FX you love meth!” Mostly, I’m just glad I have DirecTV right now…