Lena Headey, who was running for her life in the prematurely canceled show, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, has a new gig in HBO’s much anticipated TV pilot, The Game of Thrones.

The pilot is based on George R. R. Martin’s novel, A Game of Thrones.

Headey will be playing the role of Cersei Lannister.  Cersei is known for being just as smart & cunning as the men who are in power.

Other roles of note that have been cast are:

• Peter Dinklage as Cersei’s brother Tyrion.
• Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Cersei’s twin Jaime.
• Sean Bean as aristocrat Ned Stark.
• Jennifer Ehle as Ned Starks wife Catelyn Stark
• Mark Addy as King Robert.

I hope this will prove to be a nice break-out role for Lena and if any Game of Thrones fans were also TSCC fans, ya gotta be happy!  As you can see, if you haven’t been following the bits and pieces of news, the cast is developing along nicely also.

I don’t have any doubts, but let’s keep those fingers crossed that the pilot cranks out some great ratings so HBO will commit to a series based on Martin’s books.  Filming begins in late October.

Source:  Chicago Tribune

• George R.R. Martin’s ‘Game Of Thrones’ Greenlit By HBO
• Weekly TV Wrap Up – August 6th, 2009
• Weekly TV Update – April 23rd, 2009
• Red Carpet Premiere for ‘Public Enemies’
• The Caprica Marketing Never Stops
• BSG ‘The Plan’ Air Date Delayed

Today’s Weekly TV Wrap Up has some news about the Syfy channel picking up a show called Alphas, news on Chuck air dates, plus renewal news on In Plain Sight and other USA shows.

I’m also chatting about some Ghost Whisperer bits, Futurama voice casting news and some news about Medium on CBS.  I’ve also found some casting news on Game Of Thrones.

.

Syfy Picks Up Alphas

Syfy has picked up a 90-minute action-adventure pilot called Alphas.

Alphas is about a team of ordinary citizens who possess hyper-developed neurological abilities.  Each person has a slightly special feature about them, but as a team, they combine to have extra-special skills.  It’s to be written by Zak Penn (X-Men: The Last Stand), Michael Karnow and BermanBraun Television.

For whatever reason, NBC and ABC passed on Alphas while Syfy, having the opportunity, jumped on this superhero genre show.

Source:  Hollywood Reporter

.

In Plain Sight

USA renewed In Plain Sight for its third season. Along with this show, they’re also looking to renew Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

It’s been noted that with these 2 shows, plus Burn Notice and Royal Pains, the network picked up all the shows that were slated for renewal.  In the industry that’s a pretty rare event, especially for a cable network!

Source:  Hollywood Reporter

.

Medium

This new season of Medium, starring Patricia Arquette, will be paying tribute to Night of the Living Dead.

The tribute episode, which airs the night before Halloween, will have Arquette inserted into footage of the George Romero classic.

On a light note, keep in mind that Medium has moved to CBS after NBC didn’t renew the show.

In a joking fashion, executive producer Glenn Gordon Caron said that CBS has already aired more promos than NBC did in all 5 years the show aired on that network.

Other things coming up for Medium include storylines about how Allison’s brain tumor affects her abilities.  Her oldest child Ariel will rebel while the youngest, Marie, (Marie is played by twins!) will come into her own.

Of course, now that Medium shares a network with Ghost Whisperer, fans keep wondering about a cross-over.  So far, no one is saying yes, but it’s noted that if the right quality script were to cross everyone’s desk, well, who knows.

Sources:  TV Guide, Sci Fi Wire

.

Speaking of Ghost Whisperer

The new season of Ghost Whisperer will start with the birth of Melinda’s baby, and then will jump 5 years into the future.

The reason for this is that her child will have abilities a wee bit beyond Melinda’s and they can’t have an infant talking to ghosts!

CBS will be starting up a web series based on Ghost Whisperer, which will play parallel to the show.

Source:  Comic-Con Panel

.

Thrones Casting News

Jennifer Ehle has been cast for Thrones, HBO’s adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s fantasy book, Game of Thrones.  She’ll be playing Catelyn Stark, Ned Stark’s (Sean Bean) wife.

Source:  THR

.

Futurama Voices To Stay

It was reported earlier that Comedy Central was looking to recast some of the voice power behind the Futurama characters.

No need to fret folks: The original cast of John DiMaggio, Billy West, Katey Sagal, Maurice LaMarche and Tress MacNeille have all signed on the dotted line with 20th Century Fox TV to reprise their roles.

Thank god.  The show would not have been the same without them.

Source:  Variety

.

Chuck Air Dates

Despite announcements at Comic-Con, Chuck is not coming back any sooner than next spring.

NBC’s primetime president Angela Bromstad, said that Chuck’s reported early airing dates have been a bit optimistic and that the season 3 run of 13 episodes will start in March.

On an odd yet good note, NBC may extend the episode orders to let the show run into summer season. They haven’t decided yet, but if they did that it would give NBC and Chuck some great exposure since summer is the weak time of year for most networks and programming.

It would be daring, but I think it would be a good move.

Source:  TV Guide

.

TV Ratings From Last Week

On the network side of things,

Nielsen rated shows from the Top Twenty amongst all viewers for the week ending July 26, 2009 includes the usual fare of shows, all repeats.  As you can see, CBS really dominated the scripted drama world – as usual.

Of the top 20 shows, here’s how the scripted dramas did.  Note:  They are all repeats.

3:  NCIS (CBS) – 9.7 million viewers.
4:  The Mentalist (CBS) – 9.6
7:  CSI: Miami (CBS) – 8.5
11: CSI (CBS) – 7.8
12: Law And Order: SVU (NBC) – 7.5
15: CSI: NY (CBS) – 7.3
17: Criminal Minds (CBS) – 6.5

On the cable side of things, out of the top 10 rated shows:

1: The Closer (TNT) – 7.5 million viewers.
2: Burn Notice (USA) – 6.6
3: Royal Pains (USA) – 6.4
8: NCIS (USA) – 4.2
9: Law & Order: CI (USA) – 4.2

Source:  TV By The Numbers

.

There it is for the week that was. Screen Rant readers’ comments are always welcome.

• Weekly TV Wrap Up – July 23rd, 2009
• Weekly TV Wrap Up – July 30th, 2009
• Weekly TV Wrap Up – June 11, 2009
• Weekly TV Wrap Up – June 25, 2009
• Friday Night Ratings: Dollhouse & Smallville
• Weekly TV Wrap Up – May 21st, 2009

It is Thursday yet again. How’s your week been so far? We’re doing good here at Screen Rant.

Today we’re chatting a little about CBS’s season finales, also  A Game Of Thrones, Supernatural, Fringe, Burn Notice, BSG, Dexter, Kings, and a bit on Ugly Betty.  We’ve also got a video preview of True Blood season two, and a few other bits and pieces.  Oh, and of course, I touch on some ratings from the week that was.

Game Of Thrones

The HBO pilot for George R. R. Martin’s A Game Of Thrones will begin filming in Northern Ireland in the 3rd quarter of 2009.

Economically speaking, Northern Ireland is excited about the production coming their way.  Emotionally speaking, this is great news for the fans of the book series.

The First Minister Peter D. Robinson said: “This is the first time that a TV production of such vast size and scale has been filmed in Northern Ireland.”

Source: Northern Ireland Executive

Supernatural

Supernatural is all new this week. With the new set of episodes comes the much-heralded meeting between Dean, Sam and their younger brother! Yep. The younger winchester brother I hinted at way back in February, will be played by Jake Abel (Threshold).

And for one more detail to keep in mind, the season finale of Supernatural takes place on May 14th!

Fringe

Everyone is presuming that Fringe will be getting a second season even though it hasn’t been officially announced yet. With that second season will come an interesting move of filming locations.

Fringe has been filming in New York City, but due to something or other about poor tax breaks for television productions, they’re moving to Vancouver.

So the big question is, can they make Vancouver look anything like Boston? I presume so. I’m betting if they actually said they were in New York City, things might have been different, being how cities love to be talked about. They claim it draws tourism.

Source: TV Guide

Prison Break

Prison Break kicked it back in gear last week. Was it me, or did it just not pull you in? I guess it could be that it’s been so long since Fox actually gave up on showed it that I forgot everything. It pulled me back in at about the halfway mark.

But that still doesn’t detract from the 32% ratings drop in viewers on… oh, wait, another show slapped into Friday night! I’m shocked. The show pulled in only 3.3 million viewers. Fox must not care since it’s ending in a few weeks.

The finale is scheduled for a double-episode that airs on May 8th. As far as that stand-alone, 2-hour episode that’s been filmed, no one knows what Fox plans to do with it yet. If it doesn’t air, it better be on the DVD.

The 2-hour movie takes place in a 4-year flash-forward.

Source: TV Guide, TV Guide

Burn Notice

Here’s a confusing note: Burn Notice is going to have a guest star in a season 3 episode.

The actor guest starring will be Michael Weston, from House and Six Feet Under. Weston (The actor) will play a character named Spencer who’s a little imbalanced.

He’s an MIT grad who uncovers a plan to sell the names of spies. Aside from the seriousness of the issue, he believes aliens are behind it. Hmm, they do say imbalanced.

Source: EW.com

Battlestar Galactica

If you’ve been waiting for the chance to purchase season 4.5 of Battlestar Galactica on DVD or Blu-ray, it became available for pre-order. It will be shipping on July 28th.

Source: Universal Studios Home Entertainment

Dexter

Since I’m chatting up DVD’s, let’s talk Dexter. Season 3 of Dexter is available for pre-order, but oddly, no date has been set yet for its delivery. Thought you’d like to know.

Kings

We were asked by a reader if we knew anything about NBC’s Kings. Well, of course we do!

Kings had started out to what NBC considered to be dismal ratings, despite the hoopla they tried to generate about the show. Of course, being originally scheduled for Thursdays, then airing on Sunday’s didn’t help. Then moving it to Saturday, where in theory it was going to do better amongst the world of repeats on Saturday’s, it still didn’t seem to take with the hoped-for audience.

If you were wondering what’s up about the season being finished out, NBC is going to do just that. They’re looking to finish the rest of the season of Kings Starting Saturday, June 13th and running on through to July 25th.

Source: THR

True Blood

For the upcoming second season of HBO’s True Blood, Evan Rachel Wood has been cast as the Louisiana vampire Queen, Sophie-Ann. She’ll be in two episodes near the end of season two and if they go to a third season, she should have a more prevalent role.

Below is a preview of the upcoming 2nd season of True Blood. We already talked a little bit about True Blood’s 2nd season, now let’s show you something about it.

Source: EW.com

CBS Season Finales

The following are season finale dates announced by CBS

Ugly Betty

The season finale of Ugly Betty is due to air on May 21st. Guest stars lined up are Joy Behar and Elisabeth Hasselbeck. They’ll be playing themselves, as View hosts when Daniel is a guest of the show (in the show, not for real. I think I just hurt my brain). I’m sure you’ve heard of the View. It’s the show where the hostess’s get into big rip roaring arguments every 3 to 4 weeks to generate media, and try to pump up their ratings.

One other note: Ugly Betty is coming back on April 30th. That’s one week earlier than it was originally scheduled.

Source: EW.com

Last Week’s Ratings:

I hate repeating myself, so I won’t.  When you get to the chart, you’ll see who dominated the top 2 spots.  CSI moved into 4th with their Science Fiction Convention-based episode, where we saw some guest appearances by several Battlestar Galactica alumni.  Did you catch everyone that was on the show?  There were more than just Moore…

From Last Week

CSI had fewer viewers, but moved up from 7th to 4th.  Mathematically, that confuses me.  Fringe moves up 1 spot to 21st, while the ratings got murdered on Harper’s Island,  and it tumbled from 20th to 34th on the list.  Meanwhile, Heroes pushed up from 48th to 43rd as it approached its season finale.  I included Miss USA 2009…  having to be as thorough as I can, and, um, checking the quality of the programming content for our viewers.  Yeah, that’s it.   Coming in 64th on the list isn’t surprising considering how mundane = the outline they presently have is.  Of course, this year, Ms. California seems to have generated the most notoriety I’ve ever seen for a runner-up (1st loser).  Dudette, move on already.

We had one premiere, Sit Down Shut up, on Fox that debuted in 60th.  Meanwhile, repeat episodes like the perennial performer NCIS still kept the top-20 mixed up.  NCIS just hits all the right buttons.  The appeal of the police drama, combined with the mystery of the top-secret world of the military and the mix of cast / characters is just the perfect hit for viewers.  Good job CBS.

Best Performing Show For Each Network

Fox had American Idol as their bread winner, while ABC’s Dancing with the Stars was their best hit of the week.  Considering the eye-candy, I’m not surprised. (I’ve been told one of the dancers, LT’s partner, Edyta Sliwinska, looks like my wife.)  CBS hit 4th on the chart with their best performing show, CSI.  NBC’s best hit, (on this list) is Southland, hitting 25th on the charts.  The CW shows up near the bottom with their best performer, America’s Next Top Model.

Considering how much we love Smallville and Supernatural, I’m surprised at the numbers of these shows.  Thank god they’re on the CW.  Fox would have taken out their shovel and put them on Friday nights and buried them.  Oops, did I just say that?  Damn keyboard malfunctions all the time.

This is a selected 60 out 92 shows rated.

The “I Hope You Haven’t Eaten Yet” Section

I was entertaining the idea of adding ratings from cable networks to accent my basic network table, but after seeing what constituted the top-10 shows on the cable networks, I don’t think I want to irritate myself:

Just in case you really don’t know, WWE is “wrestling”.  I’m not showing spots 3, 4, 7, 8 or 10 because they’re different episodes or air dates of the same things already noted. I’m not sure what to say about SpongeBob giving WWE a run for its money in spots 1-4.  I can only root for the sea-faring sponge.  Go Bob! Go!  Huh, I’ve never rooted for a sponge before.

I think I will digress on the issue and not pursue this!

Personal Thought

I’m straying off the beaten path of my known realm of TV but I have to say that after I saw the short film that the upcoming Tim Burton-produced film, 9, is based on, I was moved at how much could be conveyed in a 10-minute, silent animated short.  We are shown back story, present plight and future hopes all in 10 minutes.

I think 9 creator Shane Acker is abso-freakin-lutely genius and I can’t wait for more from him.

If you haven’t checked it out, this link will show you Kofi and Ross’s articles written about 9. Even if you don’t think that silent animated skits are your thing, maybe you can join the “Totally Surprised” section I’m sitting in right now.

I’m Done, I’m Shutting Up

If anyone has anything to add, help or have questions – you can leave a comment and we’ll do our best to answer them in the subsequent weekly article.

Thanks for coming by.

• Weekly TV Wrap Up – August 13th, 2009
• Are Smallville And Supernatural Ending Next Season?
• Weekly TV Wrap Up – March 19th, 2009
• Weekly TV Wrap Up – April 30th, 2009
• Weekly TV Wrap Up – July 23rd, 2009
• Weekly TV Wrap Up – July 2nd 2009

We had a Screen Rant reader request inquiring if we could find any information on a possible television series that may spring up on HBO, based on the book series called A Song of Ice and Fire. The book series has become a TV project and it looks like they’re starting from the beginning as the TV project is called Game of Thrones.

I can imagine this makes the community of George R. R. Martin fans pretty happy.

A Sparse Outline On The Book Series

A Song of Ice and Fire book series is written by American novelist and screenwriter George R. R. Martin. It takes place in a fictional realm on the continent of Westeros and other surrounding lands. The characters are mostly human who deal with “others” from the north or fire-breathing dragons from the east.

The series touches on a dynastic civil war for control of Westeros, rising threats from outside of Westeros and an exiled daughter of a once murdered king, as she looks to return to Westeros to claim her rightful throne.

The three story lines are said to be well interwoven upon each other.

Taking place in a fictional land helps, as the series is said to be inspired more by medieval history.  Medieval times is an awesome time period for fantasy and romantic premises. There’s lots of room to create new and different origins without the restrictions that come from the reality of it all!

I think one of the draws of the books is the comparison to Rome and Deadwood, with its underlying adult themes of crafty writing alluding to sex and the obvious violence surrounding the three story lines. It seems to be a popular mix of plot delivery as the book series has been placed as the number 2 rated series at the Internet Book List as of March 10, 2009.

Is There Any News On The Television Series?

In January of 2007, fans of the series found a little bit of hope. It was reported that HBO acquired the rights to the books with the intent of creating a dramatic series. (At least they beat Sci-Fi to it.)  Of course a studio optioning rights can sometimes mean they’re going to sit on them for 10 years sometimes, and Martin even cautioned against too much optimism at first.

As it stood, the plan laid out by HBO was that the series would be written and exec produced by David Benioff (Troy, X-Men Origins: Wolverine) and D.B. Weiss (Halo draft, prequel to I am Legend. Oh!  Did I just say prequel?). They were hoping to shoot in Europe or New Zealand.

The next bit of news then came around November of 2008 with a few new developments.

The project is now called Game of Thrones, as in the title of the first book.  The co-executive producers lined up were reported to be former HBO entertainment prexy Carolyn Strauss, Guymon Casady, Vincent Gerardis and the book series author himself, Geroge R. R. Martin. I always like seeing the author of the inspiration for a show on the creative team. It increases the chance of the project having a bit more of the original authors vision, or voice in the project.

I came across some unsubstantiated information that they will begin filming later this year in Ireland.  But I saw only reference to this in a bulletin board and so the warning label!

This project is one of a dozen projects that HBO is looking at in hopes of increasing their number of original series over the upcoming 2-year period. Which is a nice change of pace from the reality noise we keep having to put up with.  Crap… I may actually have to get HBO? They do pump out some nice, gritty content that captures our imaginations.

Screen Rant Is On The Case

Now that I’ve started investigating this new series, whenever we see new information, we’ll be sure to update you.

So now I’m curious.  With you, the expert fans, what are you hoping for with the show?  Are you looking for the dark, flawed characters or kicking some dragon butt?  What actor / actress would be perfect for the different characters?  Let us know what you think!

Sources: Wikipedia, IB List, Winter Is Coming, Variety; Cover Art Image: GeorgeRRMartin.com

• HBO Series Game Of Thrones Cast Lena Headey
• Weekly TV Wrap Up – August 6th, 2009
• Weekly TV Update – April 23rd, 2009
• Live-Action ‘Where’s Waldo?’ Film Headed to Theaters
• ‘Dinotrux’ Being Adapted By DreamWorks Animation
• The Dark Tower Film Update