Tag Archives: Starz

Comic-Con: ‘Spartacus: Vengeance’ Trailer and 2nd Season Casting!

Good Lord Comic-Con is just spoiling us rotten so far this year. I know plenty of you have been waiting for something, anything on the Starz original series Spartacus and it’s second season dubbed ‘Vengeance’. Well the wait is over. In the trailer presented we finally get to see Liam McIntyre in live action and speaking some lines! Will it be everything you hoped for? Watch below to find out:

Seems decent enough to me so far, though not a whole lot to be seen in such a short trailer. But I’m sure like me you’ll be checking out the full trailer they advertised at the end on July 29th. The thing that I found most interesting was seeing Oenomaus being whipped by none other than Ashur, who most definitely has a bone to pick with the fugitive gladiators; especially Crixus. Also, I hope that the full trailer will feature a look at Lucretia and how she’s looking for season 2. From what the panel said she’s looking a little ragged. It also looks like we’re gonna see tons of killing according to what the panel is saying. Take a gander below from Deadline:

As for the upcoming Season 2 titled Spartacus: Vengance, the plan “is to kill more people,” DeKnight said. “There’s an episode where we kill a lot of people. This season is just epic. It’s grand scale… It’s just a gigantic, gigantic season.” Also, a power struggle is about to emerge between Spartacus, Crixus and Gannicus.

Not only tons of killing, but Gannicus is confirmed to be in this season as well. Awesomeness. Another interesting tidbit also from Deadline is that we will be getting a nice female warrior to fight alongside Spartacus. A hot chick who fights and wears armor? Starz is just winning on all points with me for this season. Can it really go wrong?

Ellen Hollman (Skateland) has landed the new female warrior role on Starz’s Spartacus, whose upcoming second season will be titled Spartacus: Vengance. Hollman will play the new regular role of Saxa, a beautiful, vicious, intelligent and fiercely passionate woman that could face any man and have a good chance of coming out the victor. She is a force to reckoned with, on the battlefield or in the bedroom.

Spartacus; Vengeance has a lot in store to make me anxious for January to arrive and at this point the blow of not having Andy Whitfield around is finally starting to subside. Hopefully with the return of the show, other cast mates and a new arrival of a fighting hot broad the season will be equal to the first if not better.

Starz & the BBC Team Up For “Torchwood: Miracle Day”

This week (in the U.S., next week in the U.K.) sees the return of Torchwood and of Captain Jack – Harkness, not Sparrow – for a fourth series. Now I’ve been told I need to explain what Torchwood is to our mostly North American readership, so here goes with a really brief summary…

Torchwood is a spin-off series from Doctor Who, about a top-secret British organization called the ‘Torchwood Institute’ – which was set up on the instructions of Queen Victoria after she had a run in with an alien werewolf and the 10th Doctor. It’s lead now by the aforementioned Captain Jack (John Barrowman). He is a handsome, charming, heroic, bi-sexual, immortal, ex-time agent. Was that enough adjectives?

The other main character is Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles). She is an ex-cop with the South Wales Police, and is currently the only other member of Torchwood. They are also joined by her husband Rhys (Kai Owen).

Torchwood is aimed much more at an adult audience, unlike Doctor Who which is more family orientated. The Starz (Spartacus, Camelot) channel is co-producing the new series with the BBC. It’s set mainly in America, and was filmed in Los Angeles – except for two weeks in Wales. The stops have been pulled out, with the budget of each of the 10 episodes being, apparently, over £1 million (roughly 1.6 million in US currency).

The general synopsis of the new series – Miracle Day – is as follows.

One day, all across the world, nobody dies. And the next day, and the next day, and the next day… People age, people get sick, people get hurt, but nobody dies. Births continue though. The population sky rockets overnight. Experts predict that in four months the human race will cease to be viable. CIA agent Rex Matheson (Mekhi Phifer) investigates and discovers a global conspiracy that leads him to a secret British institution. It also features Alexa Havins as Esther Drummond and Bill Pullman as convicted murderer Oswald Danes.

Here’s the trailer:

The series starts on Starz in the U.S. on Friday the 8th of July, and on BBC One in the U.K. on Thursday the 14th of July.

Camelot Cancelled By Starz

Camelot left me and many others with mixed feelings. Was it a good show or wasn’t it? I enjoyed it more at the beginning and the end than I did in the middle where I thought the series started to falter. I was willing to forgive and forget the shortcomings of the first season and look on with eager eyes for season 2. After all they finally established the young Arthur as king in the now cleaned up Camelot, had him weilding Excalibur, and making an enemy of his sister who now carried his future nemesis Mordred inside her. Season 2 was supposed to be a ‘cut the pleasentries and get down to business’ season of a show that had plenty of potential, but now we’ll probably never know what might have been. Starz has reached the decision not to renew Camelot. Check out the announcement from IGN:

The only reason given for now? “Significant production challenges.” It looks like Starz might have, once again, run into the problem they faced with Party Down, where “scheduling conflicts with some of the actors were part of the problem for the Ireland-shot costume drama.” Which would probably mean that Starz neglected to lock these guys into a save-the-date contract.

While we’re not sure which actor or actors had the conflict, it had to be one of the key roles. It’s possible that it’s star Jamie Campbell Bower, who plays Arthur, as he just recently signed to star in The Mortal Instruments.

Man if it’s just a case of Jamie Campbell Bower having other obligations then by all means replace that turd with a new leading man. Hell, they’re doing that with Spartacus already albeit under different circumstances: Those being that Andy Whitfield has Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. But at least I loved Andy Whitfield as the main character, with Bower I could care less if they replaced him. So now there are maybe a couple possibilities vague though they may be. The first is that another network picks up the show and the second being that Starz decides to pick the series up down the road sometime. As for another network picking up Camelot, we’ve seen how that theory has panned out with other canceled shows.

So what does everyone think of this news? Are you sitting there crying for Camelot, or are you like me just biding time until Game of Thrones Season 2 comes out? I know the main thing I’ll miss is Eva Green…

Camelot Review: Episode 7 – The Long Night

Just when I thought Camelot couldn’t get any worse…. it didn’t. Which is good because if this episode had been as terrible as the last one I’d have stopped watching completely. Lord knows it’s much classier neighbor, A Game of Thrones, comes on two nights after and is better in every aspect.

As I said above, the show wasn’t any worse. I would say it even got a little better with some action and a plot development that could prove interesting in the upcoming episode or two. The story starts with Morgan throwing a feast in honor of her brother Arthur to promote friendship and an alliance. That means an open invitation to everyone including Arthur, Merlin, Kay, Leontes, Guinevere, Gawain and Igraine. Of course Morgan has some sort of scheme behind the whole thing. Would you expect anything less?

Continue reading Camelot Review: Episode 7 – The Long Night

Camelot Review: Episode 6 – “Three Journeys”

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I need something big to actually happen on Camelot. It seems like we’ve had too much set up and not enough pay off. I for one don’t really care about a story of Merlin, Leontes, Gawain and Kay on a mission to retrieve Kay’s father’s books from their old home. But that is what we were treated to and it sucked epically. I don’t mind the character development one bit and I really enjoyed the scene where Leontes and Merlin had a civil debate about their different ideologies. But the whole episode just felt like filler.

Continue reading Camelot Review: Episode 6 – “Three Journeys”

Spartacus Season 2 Update: Naevia Recast!

It’s been a long time since we’ve heard anything about the forthcoming second season of Spartacus, which is tentatively titled, Spartacus: Vengeance. Well, now we have some news. After the saddening news of actress Lesley-Ann Brandt leaving the show to pursue other work, we were left wondering who would now replace the second departing cast member. She played Naevia, fellow slave and love interest of the gladiator Crixus.

Lesley-Ann-Brandt
Lesley-Ann Brandt

Now we have our answer in the form of Cynthia Addai-Robinson. Cynthia is a relatively unknown actress unless you watched the now-canceled ABC TV series Flashforward. She seems suitable to play Naevia in the next season of Spartacus, but I suppose we won’t know until it premieres. I’m more worried about Liam McIntyre filling in on Spartacus, that fella has some gargantuan shoes to fill.

The New Navia.
The New Naevia

Please comment below about this newest casting, and stay tuned for our big Spartacus Season 2 rundown of everything we know for the upcoming season!

Spartacus

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Images: Starz