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Kevin Bacon (“You Should Have Left”) has joined the cast of Julia Roberts’ “Leave the World Behind” at Netflix, TheWrap has exclusively learned.

Additionally, Farrah Mackenzie (“United States of Al”) has joined the project, rounding out the cast that includes Bacon, Mahershala Ali, Ethan Hawke and Myha’la Herrold.

Sam Esmail, the creator of “Mr. Robot,” will both write the adaptation of Rumaan Alam’s novel and direct.

The logline for the film is as follows: A family vacation on Long Island is interrupted by two strangers bearing news of a mysterious blackout. As the threat grows more imminent, both families must decide how best to survive the potential crisis, all while grappling with their own place in this collapsing world.

Producing are Sam Esmail and Chad Hamilton via their Esmail Corp, along with Julia Roberts, Lisa Gillan and Marisa Yeres Gill producing through Red Om Films banner. Executive producers are Higher Ground’s Tonia Davis,...

Exclusive: Days before the world premiere of Tig Notaro and Stephanie Allynne’s feature directorial debut Am I Ok? at Sundance, Deadline has learned about the duo’s next feature project is Time and Space, which Judd Apatow will produce through his Apatow Productions.

Allynne will direct off a screenplay she wrote based on a story she conceived with her spouse Notaro. Emmy nominee and stand-up comic Notaro also will star in the project, which follows the life of a lesbian couple who are thrown into turmoil when they ditch their Los Angeles city life for upstate New York. Notaro and Allynne will produce through their production company, Something Fierce.

Time and Space reflects Notaro and Allynne’s interest in sophisticated, entertaining storytelling with universal appeal where there just happens to be gay characters and themes.

The duo conceived Time and Space during the pandemic, though the movie is not set during one.

According to her dour, navy-suited employers in an old-school London financial institute, young American Millie Cantwell is the most prodigiously gifted fund manager in many a moon: a veritable supernova in her field, destined for great and profitable things. This is doubtless a wonderful thing to hear if you truly want to be a fund manager. If, like Millie, your most cherished ambition is to be an opera singer, it feels more like your head ruthlessly selling out your heart, leaving your voice stranded somewhere in the exchange. As for which ultimately wins out, expect no surprises in “Falling for Figaro,” a corny, cute-enough carpe diem comedy, in which it’s a lovable ensemble — led by Danielle Macdonald, and spiked by a deliciously imperious Joanna Lumley — that brings the grace notes to a pretty standard-issue script.

An Industry Selects offering at Toronto last year, now getting a quiet multiplatform release...

Exclusive: The story of disability pioneer Sylvia Flexer is set for the big screen.

Ben Lewin, director of The Sessions and The Catcher was a Spy, is to write and direct a feature film for Keshet Studios and White Lodge Productions.

Sylvia and the President is the true story of a marginalized group of people and their fight for equality. At the age of 21, outspoken Flexer – who walked with the aid of crutches – was elected president of the League of the Physically Handicapped. It was the height of the Great Depression and, like Sylvia, the majority of the members had been affected by polio.

Following their efforts to highlight government discrimination against disabled workers in New York, Flexer and 34 other members of the League rode all night on a flatbed truck to Washington to lobby President Roosevelt – who was still hiding the extent of his own disability from the public...

Robert Kirkman and Kevin Smith have paid tribute to Harlan Ellison, recalling the influence that the legendary science fiction writer had on movies such as 'The Terminator.'

"Anyone working in genre stories can’t claim that they have no influence from Harlan Ellison," Kirkman, creator of comic book series "The Walking Dead," said to IMDb.

Ellison, who died on June 28 at 84 years old, wrote episodes of "The Twlight Zone," "The Outer Limits," and "Star Trek" among others.

Speaking to filmmaker Kevin Smith for IMDb, Kirkman said: "He touched every form of science fiction and everything orbiting that world. His contribution to the world can’t be underplayed. It’s something that all creative people hope for: Can I affect a genre, a medium in the way that someone like that does? He accomplished something monumental. It’s a tragic loss."

Smith recalled Ellison's episode of "The Outer Limits" from 1964 titled "Soldier," which led to a lawsuit against Orion Pictures after claims that 'The Terminator' drew ideas from the story. It was settled out of court and a credit was added.

"If you looked at a 'Terminator' VHS or watched in the theater when it came out, there was a credit that wasn't there that when you watched a LaserDisc later on. It said 'Acknowledgement to the works of Harlan Ellison'."

"I’m a fan. I know these things," Kirkman said.

Reflecting on how Ellison's name should be remembered, Smith said: "To genre enthusiasts of a certain age, [Ellison] is there constantly. To this next generation, maybe not as much.

"It’s up to people like us to say: "Hey, there was this great writer who laid a lot of track that other people traveled on for the rest of their careers.""

Ellison also acted as a conceptual consultant on "Babylon 5" and a creative consultant on the 1980s series of "The Twilight Zone" as well as writing the short story upon which post-apocalyptic feature "A Boy and His Dog" was based and the screenplay to 1966 drama feature "The Oscar."

Watch the full interview here...

Character actor Tim O’Connor, best known for his role as Elliot Carson in 1960s prime time soap Peyton Place, has died. He passed in his sleep on April 5 in his longtime home of Nevada City, California at age 90.

O’Connor had a long career on stage and particularly television, where he had appearances in such iconic shows as All in the Family, M*A*S*H, Gunsmoke, The Twilight Zone, General Hospital, Dynasty, and Star Trek.

Born in Chicago, his career spanned Broadway, television and films. He worked with such actors as Sir Laurence Olivier, George C. Scott, Edward G. Robinson, Jessica Tandy, Maximilian Schell, Vincent Price, and Boris Karloff, among others.

Arriving in Hollywood in 1965, O’Connor moved to Santa Monica, California, and gained national recognition as one of the stars of Peyton Place. He starred as Elliot Carson, father of Mia Farrow’s Allison, in more than...

As a young child lying on a little mattress at the foot of his grandmother's bed in Guadalajara, Mexico — abandoned to her care as he so often was by his hardworking and hard-traveling parents — Guillermo del Toro experienced the first of what he calls his "lucid nightmares." He had just watched an episode of The Outer Limits, starring Warren Oates as a mutant with a bald head and giant eyes, and that image merged in his mind with the iconography of the Roman Catholic church, stamped on his soul by his deeply religious grandmother.

"I would wake up...

July 16th will be remembered as a day when we lost two cinematic legends. Following the heartbreaking news of George A. Romero's passing, it's now been reported that actor Martin Landau has passed away at the age of 89.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Landau passed away at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center from "unexpected complications."

Nominated several times for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar (including for his work in Francis Ford Coppola's Tucker: The Man and His Dream and Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors), Landau played horror icon Bela Lugosi opposite Johnny Depp in Tim Burton's Ed Wood, a superb supporting performance that earned him the Oscar win.

In addition to Coppola, Allen, and Burton, Landau worked with the great Alfred Hitchcock in North by Northwest. He would go on to appear in The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, one of many guest-starring roles on genre television series,...

Class-act director John Boorman continues to mix genre grit with European-flavored art cinema, and the result is another winner. Toshiro Mifune and Lee Marvin fight a miniature two-man war when they’re marooned together on the same tiny island. Boorman’s strong direction and Conrad Hall’s knockout cinematography insure a maximum visual impact; it’s great filmmaking all around.

Hell in the Pacific

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1968 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 103 min. / Street Date June 27, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Lee Marvin, Toshiro Mifune

Cinematography: Conrad Hall

Art Direction: Anthony Pratt, Masao Yamazaki

Film Editor: Thomas Stanford

Original Music: Lalo Schifrin

Written by Alexander Jacobs, Eric Bercovici story by Reuben Bercovitch

Produced by Reuben Bercovitch, Henry G. Saperstein, Selig J. Seligman

Directed by John Boorman

Former TV director and producer John Boorman barely survived a first feature with the Dave Clark Five, imitating Richard Lester’s success with the Beatles.

Tonight, the city of Los Angeles will pay tribute to the late Adam West, the man behind the first live-action Batman and Bruce Wayne, in ABC's 1966-68 Batman TV series. L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti and Police Chief Charlie Beck and guests will hold a ceremonial lighting of the Bat-Signal at City Hall on the Spring St. steps, tonight at 9:00pm Pt. Surprise Bat-guests will reportedly take part in the event. On Saturday, June 17th, MeTV will pay tribute to West, with its “The Best of Adam West” programming block. The special will include memorable episodes of Batman, Maverick, The Big Valley, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The Rifleman, and The Outer Limits, featuring West. Read More…...

Adam West, the titular star of ABC's Batman television series that ran from 1966 - 1968 and left a defining mark on popular culture, passed away Friday, June 9th, from a battle with leukemia. The iconic thespian was eighty-eight years old. Born William West Anderson, West grew up in the town of Walla Walla, Washington before serving in the U.S. Army where he worked as an announcer for the American Forces Network -- considering the cadence of his voice, this is a supremely fitting start if you ask me. West then moved to Hawaii to pursue acting and subsequently appeared in early classic television such as Maverick, Lawman and The Outer Limits. At 37 he got his big break when producer Lorenzo Semple Jr. cast...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Chicago – When Mary Tyler Moore passed away in January, it was another reminder of her groundbreaking 1970s TV series “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” One of her co-stars – who portrayed bossman Lou Grant, and made his own mark in TV and movies thereafter – was Ed Asner. The actor appeared at “The Hollywood Show.”

Ed Asner at The Hollywood Show in March of 2017

Photo credit: Joe Arce of Starstruck Foto for HollywoodChicago.com

Edward Asner was born in Kansas City, Missouri. He began his acting career in the Army, touring in plays while in the Signal Corp. He attended the University of Chicago, and joined an early version of The Second City troupe, the Playwrights Theatre Company of Chicago (Asner is considered a Second City alumni). He was a consummate character actor in the 1960s, appearing in such diverse series as “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” “Route 66,” “The Untouchables,” “The Outer Limits,...

Leslie Stevens' 1960 film noir Private Property is an incredibly tense psychosexual thriller that is years ahead of its time. Stevens was probably best known as the creator of the influential science fiction TV series The Outer Limits, but before that project got off the ground in 1963 he was a writer and director of a couple of feature films that didn't exactly set the world on fire. Private Property was his first in the director's chair and it is definitely a bold debut, even if audiences in the Us didn't get to see it at the time. Duke (Corey Allen) and Boots (Warren Oates) are drifters making their way down the Southern California coast when they spy a pretty young woman zooming down the...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Robert Wagner as a social climbing psycho killer? I knew it! 'Mr. CinemaScope Smile' grins only once or twice in this movie, and then only to fool an unsuspecting woman. A great cast brings tension to Ira Levin's outrageous tale of murder. Joanne Woodward has a powerful role, but my heartthrob this time out is lovely Virginia Leith. A Kiss Before Dying Blu-ray Kl Studio Classics 1956 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 95 min. / Street Date May 3, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring Robert Wagner, Jeffrey Hunter, Virginia Leith, Joanne Woodward, Mary Astor, George Macready, Robert Quarry. Cinematography Lucien Ballard Art Direction Addison Hehr Film Editor George A. Gittens Original Music Lionel Newman Written by Lawrence Roman from a novel by Ira Levin Produced by Robert L. Jacks Directed by Gerd Oswald

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

It's a safe bet that a huge chunk of Americans now identify Robert Wagner as the father of Anthony Dinozzo on TV's NCIS.

It shouldn’t be a surprise to any of our readers that we here at PopOptiq love horror movies. All month long we’ve been counting down the 200 greatest horror films ever made alongside our 31 Days of Horror marathon. And every year just before Halloween, our staff bands together to decide what our favourite horror films of the past year are. It’s never an easy feat since we don’t always agree but as with every list, nobody will. That said, here are the 17 best horror films of 2015 according to our writers.

Note: We didn’t bother to list them in any order but we recommend them all!

****

A Christmas Horror Story

A Christmas Horror Story offers five interwoven tales of terror set on Christmas Eve, as executed by three Canadian filmmakers, Grant Harvey, Bret Sullivan and veteran genre producer Steven Hoban making his feature directorial debut. Much like Trick ‘r Treat,...

The news of Leonard Nimoy's passing last week caused me to reflect on the icon's career. I thought it was time to celebrate his many TV and cinematic accomplishments outside of Star Trek sans the ears that have made him so famous. For the sake of keeping things in focus, I'm concentrating on his other genre appearances and voice work.

The Autobots have run up against a villainous Leonard Nimoy on two separate occasions. He voiced the sinister Galvatron in 1986’s animated The Transformers: The Movie. He also lent his familiar vocal talents to bring to life the traitorous Sentinel Prime for Transformers: Dark of the Moon. We should have known he was evil from the moment we saw the “Mirror, Mirror” evil Spock beard the robot sported.

The actor was taken over by aliens for the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. He plays the part of Dr.

Leonard Nimoy, the actor, director and author, known mostly for his work on "Star Trek," has passed away at his Bel Air home due to complications from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He was 83 years old. Nimoy started his acting career in early 1950s, which mostly included guest spots on shows like "The Outer Limits" and "The Man From Uncle." But in 1966, he signed on to play Mr. Spock on Gene Roddenberry's NBC series "Star Trek," which would go on to air for only three seasons. Thanks to a cult following, the show spawned an animated series, twelve feature films, four spin-off shows, video games, theme park rides and lots of merchandise. After directing the third and fourth films in the "Star Trek" franchise, he proved to be a talent behind the camera, going on to direct the 1987 hit "Three Men and a Baby." In recent years, Nimoy appeared in...

Film Nerd 2.0 has become one of the things I am most closely identified with, which is fine by me. I think there is real value in talking about how we introduce media to our children, and there's absolutely value in talking about how that media affects them. It wasn't a column that I consciously set out to create, though. It just sort of gradually became clear that it was something I wanted to write, and the turning point, the moment of actual creation, was all because of "Star Trek." For Toshi, the 2009 film was not just his entry point to "Star Trek," but also his entry point to movies in general. When I took him to the theater to see the film, he stood the entire time, and he didn't want to be touched or spoken to or distracted in any way. He was fascinated, and he had a million questions afterwards.

It is with great sadness that we have learned of the passing of actor Leonard Nimoy today at the age of 83. Best known as Mr. Spock from the Star Trek series, Nimoy garnered a legion of loyal fans throughout his career and his contribution to sci-fi over the last six decades has been immeasurable. An avid use of social media, we found out that he had been hospitalised over the last few days, but he said his goodbye to us on Monday, with this his final tweet, signed off with Llap - Live Long And Prosper. Last year it emerged that he had been diagnosed with a respiratory disease that was incurable, and he encouraged people to stop smoking as a result of the impact it had on his life. Beginning acting in 1951, and making appearances on everything from Bonanza, The Outer Limits, The Man From U.N.C.L.

We’re sad to report that Leonard Nimoy has passed away at the age of 83.

The New York Times reports via Susan Bay Nimoy, Leonard's wife, that the prolific actor passed away this morning of end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Nimoy is best remembered for playing Spock on Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek TV series from 1966 – 1969, reprising the role in Star Trek: The Animated Series and eight Star Trek movies, most recently in 2013's Star Trek Into Darkness. His acting career touched seven decades, beginning in 1951 and including roles in many memorable shows and films, including Mission: Impossible, Fringe, The Outer Limits, Night Gallery, The Brain Eaters, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Gunsmoke, and The Twilight Zone.

Nimoy also displayed admirable skills behind the camera, directing Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, 3 Men and a Baby, one episode of Night Gallery, and much more.

In October of 1978, we saw Michael Myers come home. It was the first time he’d stepped on his town’s soil in 15 years, but it certainly wouldn’t be the last. Over the decades, we’ve seen the serial killing prodigal son of Haddonfield cross back into small town limits to create carnage with everything from a butcher knife to a pitchfork, though we haven’t seen his silent rage at work on the big screen since Rob Zombie’s H2 in 2009.

But we’re now one big step closer to seeing Michael come home again, as the folks at Dimension Films have hired a pair of writers to pen the long-gestating next entry in the Halloween franchise, and many horror hounds are very familiar with the duo tasked with bringing back The Shape.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan have been hired to write...

From The Twilight Zone to Penny Dreadful, Doctor Who and more, Den Of Geek’s writers revisit the TV episodes that truly terrify them…

It’s Halloween! Icicles are glistening from window sills. Chestnuts are roasting on open fires. North Pole elves are… hang on, no. None of that nice, fluffy stuff is happening. At Halloween, demonic creatures hunt for flesh, monsters creep out of their graves, and TV does its level best to freak us all the hell out.

In the spirit of all that, we asked our writers to select and share the TV episodes, horror or otherwise, that have made them whimper with fear. Here they all are, 31 of them, because, well, at Halloween, we like things to add up to 31.

Note that this isn’t a Top 10, or a Best Of, nor is it listed in order of scariness. It’s a collection of the particular...

We pay tribute to the actor James Shigeta, famous for his roles in Flower Drum Song, Die Hard, and a legion other turns on stage and TV.

For a generation of moviegoers, James Shigeta will be immediately recognisable as Joseph Takagi, the Nakatomi Corporation boss who's ruthlessly despatched by Alan Rickman's sneering villain in the 1988 hit, Die Hard. But there was so much more to Shigeta than John McTiernan's action classic - that appearance was, in fact, but one of many in a long and fruitful career on stage, television and the silver screen.

Born in Hawaii in 1933, Shigeta embarked on a singing career after winning first place in a TV show called Original Amateur Hour. His subsequent success was such that a lengthy run of appearances in Tokyo musicals left him with the nickname, The Frank Sinatra of Japan.

Returning to America in the late 1950s, Shigeta...

My geek overdrive continues to overwhelm me. But I’m not the only one.

Less than a week away from this year’s San Diego ComicCon (which opens its doors this Thursday, July 24th, and closes them on Sunday, July 27th) Entertainment Weekly joins the national geek fest that is summertime with a bang-up double-size issue featuring a cover shot of Robert Downey, Jr. as Iron Man and Chris Evans as Captain America with Ultron looming behind them. The issue is a stuffed-to-the-gills San Diego Comic Con preview…

And I read every single page. Including the adverts.

Now I know how those fans at the 1976 Sdcc felt when Charles Lippincott (then head of Lucasfilm’s marketing, advertising and publicity department) showed some of the first production slides of Star Wars, and (writer) Roy Thomas and (artist) Howard Chaykin previewed their Marvel Comics adaptation of the film, because the cover story,...

Here's the latest Austin film news.

Austin will be the setting of two upcoming TV series. Kut reports that HBO is developing God Save Texas, about a freshman Texas legislator wooed by energy lobbyists. Writer/co-producer Lawrence Wright is basing the show on his play Sonny's Last Shot. No word yet on whether it will actually be shot in Austin. And per Austin Business Journal, Amazon is producing Hysteria, a series starring Mena Suvari as a psychiatrist at The University of Texas at Austin who's investigating a teen epidemic related to the title. This series might actually shoot locally, considering a recent casting call.Local screenwriter/author/former film critic C. Robert Cargill has his next project lined up: He's co-scripting The Outer Limits with Scott Derrickson, who co-wrote the horror feature Sinister with him too. The movie will be based primarily on an episode of the 1960s anthology show...

Scott Derrickson is a busy man. He has Deliver Us from Evil coming out in a few weeks, he'll be producing Sinister 2 later this year, and he just landed directing duties on Marvel's Doctor Strange. But that's not busy enough, so he and his Sinister cowriter C. Robert Cargill have just landed writing duties on a new The Outer Limits movie. MGM is producing the feature version of the classic sci-fi anthology series, though this movie won't contain multiple stories. It'll actually be a single, feature-length adaptation of Harlan Ellison's fantastic episode "Demon with a Glass Hand," about a man who is sent into the past in order to save the future. "Demon with a Glass Hand" is a pretty cool story involving aliens hunting a man...

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"Doctor Strange" director Scott Derrickson will be taking a break from that blockbuster life to reunite with his "Sinister" collaborator C. Robert Cargill for some spooky sci-fi goodness in "The Outer Limits."

The dynamic duo will be taking a crack at adapting one episode of the creepy '60s TV series, "Demon With a Glass Hand" by Harlan Ellison. On the show, Robert Culp plays a man who wakes up with a crazy computerized hand and no memory of his life, aside from the past 10 days. There are aliens and time travel and all sorts of crazy stuff, and it sounds like Ellison's original vision for the story was much larger than what "The Outer Limits" could afford, so it will be cool to see how the filmmakers play with Ellison's screenplay.

Ellison, a fantastic (and fantastically prolific) author, wrote a ton of scripts for TV, with credits on "Star Trek,...

At long last, a feature film based on the iconic 1960s sci-fi television series The Outer Limits is moving forward over at MGM. The studio has wanted to turn the property into a movie for more than four years, and now we’re hearing that it has enlisted the help of Sinister scribes Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill to finally bring The Outer Limits to the big screen.

Derrickson, a vocal fan of the series who also recently locked down the directing gig for Marvel’s Doctor Strange, will work with Cargill to adapt one episode of the series in particular. “Demon with a Glass Hand,” written by Harlan Ellison, will be their jumping-off point. It focuses on a man hunted by an alien race who can’t remember anything beyond the previous ten days of his life. Due to his inexplicable computerized hand, the man determines that he comes from the future.

The classic 1960s TV horror anthology The Outer Limits famously began with “There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission.”

Now, the series is returning—not to your television set, but to movie screens. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Scott Derrickson, who directed Sinister and is lined up to direct Marvel’s Doctor Strange, has signed on to write a feature film based on the TV series with his Sinister co-writer, C. Robert Cargill.

Derrickson and Cargill’s script will focus on one episode of the series, which ran...

Scott Derrickson has signed on for an Outer Limits film.

The Sinister 2 director will bring the classic 1960s sci-fi television series to the big screen for MGM, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The movie will be based on sci-fi legend Harlan Ellison's The Outer Limits episode 'Demon With a Glass Hand'.

The story centres around a man who wakes with no memory of the last ten days and a computerised hand.

He discovers that he is from the future and goes on the run from aliens who believe he is the key to their survival.

Derrickson will reunite with Sinister co-writer C Robert Cargill on the project.

His Deliver Us From Evil will debut in July. He recently signed on to direct Marvel Studios' Doctor Strange.

Derrickson will develop his Outer Limits script while working on the superhero movie.

Scott Derrickson, who was recently tapped to direct Marvel's Doctor Strange, has reunited with his Sinister co-writer C. Robert Cargill to pen a big-screen version of The Outer Limits, the cult sci-fi and horror anthology that ran on ABC from 1963 to 1965. Derrickson and Cargill plan to focus specifically on the episode "Demon With a Glass Hand," written by Harlan Ellison, about a man with a computerized hand and no memory beyond the past ten days who discovers he is being hunted by an alien race. According to THR, the adaptation will tackle the quintessential sci-fi trifecta of "time travel, alien invasion and genetic manipulation." Your move, Twilight Zone movie.

Scott Derrickson is a busy man. He's got Deliver Us from Evil coming out in a few weeks, he'll be producing Sinister 2 later this year, and he just landed directing duties on Marvel's Doctor Strange. But that's not busy enough, so he and his Sinister cowriter C. Robert Cargill have just landed writing duties on a new The Outer Limits movie. MGM is producing the feature version of the classic sci-fi anthology series, though this movie won't contain multiple stories. It'll actually be a single, feature-length adaptation of Harlan Ellison's fantastic episode "Demon with a Glass Hand," about a man who is sent into the past in order to save the future. It's been wrongly spread over the years that it was this story that Ellison sued James...

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Between 1963 and 1965, ABC aired 49 episodes of the strange and the macabre in "The Outer Limits" (review). Talk of a big screen adaptation has been ongoing for a few years now, but finally some steps in the right direction have been taken!

THR reports that Scott Derrickson, who just signed on to bring Marvel's Doctor Strange to life, is reuniting with his Sinister co-scribe C. Robert Cargill to write the big-screen take of the cult classic 1960s sci-fi TV series "The Outer Limits" for MGM.

Derrickson is a longtime fan of the show (he has said in the past he prefers it over "The Twilight Zone," as do I), and he and Cargill will focus on one episode in particular: "Demon With a Glass Hand," which was written by Harlan Ellison.

The duo will be tackling time travel, alien invasion and genetic manipulation in adapting the episode, which focused on a...

Though he was just recently hired to direct Marvel's "Doctor Strange," filmmaker Scott Derrickson is also hopping onboard another project.

Derrickson will reunite with his "Sinister" co-scribe C. Robert Cargill to write a new film adaptation of the classic 1960s sci-fi and horror anthology TV series "The Outer Limits" for MGM.  Derrickson and Cargill will focus on a new take on the classic episode "Demon With a Glass Hand" which Harlan Ellison wrote.

That story follows a man with no memory beyond the last ten days. His left hand has been replaced by an advanced computer shaped like a hand but missing three fingers - fingers that must be reattached before the truth can be revealed.

At the same time the man is being hunted by an alien race who seem him as key to their survival and who have the missing fingers. So begins a deadly hide-and-seek game within...

MGM is moving forward with its own film based on a classic anthology television show: The Outer Limits. THR says that Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill are going to team up for a feature film based on the episode "Demon With a Glass Hand," which was scripted by Harlan Ellison and starred Robert Culp.

The post ‘Outer Limits’ Film to Reunite Writer, Director of ‘Sinister’ appeared first on Shock Till You Drop.

Scott Derrickson headed to The Outer Limits? Before you start panicking that Marvel has lost its grip on yet another director, calm yourself. He’s looking to adapt an episode of the classic sci-fi series as a future project, not giving up on Doctor Strange.MGM, which holds the rights to the show, has Derrickson and his Sinister co-writer C. Robert Cargill working on a cinematic adaptation of Demon With A Glass Hand, a famous episode from the first run of the series between 1963 and 1965.Demon, originally written by sci-fi legend Harlan Ellison, follows a man named Trent who is trying to figure out a huge mystery. He has no memory beyond the past 10 days, and a sophisticated computer encased in a protective transparent cover has replaced his left hand. The machine tells him it can’t reveal any more unless he finds the three missing fingers. And that’s...

Over the past few years, writer J. Michael Straczynski has jumped genres from Marvel's Thor in 2011 to Underworld: Awakening in 2012 and World War Z last year. Now he's heading into straight-up sci-fi territory with an adaptation of Repent, Harlequin! Said the Ticktock Man, a story published by Harlan Ellison in Galaxy Magazine back in 1965. In a completely regulated society, where being a minute late here and there shortens your life accordingly, the Ticktock Man is king; Harlequin is the jellybean joker who wants to knock him from his perch. This is the first time the author has allowed his story to be adapted. Ellison himself is a veteran of anthology series like "The Twilight Zone" and "The Outer Limits," not to mention "Star Trek." Deadline says the author only agreed to give Straczysnki the rights to his story (which won the 1966 Hugo Award and 1965 Nebula Award) after he delivered a finished screenplay for approval.

Exclusive: For the first time, iconic sci-fi writer Harlan Ellison has allowed a film to be developed based on Repent, Harlequin! Said The Ticktock Man, the seminal story he published in Galaxy magazine in 1965. Ellison has granted an option directly to J. Michael Straczynski, whose recent credits include World War Z, Thor, the TV series Babylon 5 and Sense8, the upcoming Netflix series he is doing with Lana and Andy Wachowski. How did Straczynski do it? He had to deliver a finished screenplay to Ellison, whose credits range from The Outer Limits and Star Trek to being acknowledged in many sci-fi works including James Cameron’s The Terminator, and serving as a Babylon 5 consultant. Only then did Ellison grant the option. The story is about Everett C. Marm, an ordinary man who disguises himself as the anarchical Harlequin and engages in whimsical rebellion against the Ticktockman. The trouble is...

The Warner Archive Collection is really starting to put out some great DVDs that feature titles you aren’t going to find anywhere else, and the latest to be made available is Search. A massively fun show from the early 70s, Search starred Hugh O’Brian, Doug McClure, and Tony Franciosa, and was (although I’m testing my memory) a show that pulled great tech ideas into the espionage drama realm, at a point when some of the ideas were practically sci-fi.

The complete series is available now, and it’s a lost classic that deserves a look. Unfortunately, it’s hard to get a taste of it to know if you’re interested in buying, but for those who remember the series, this is a real treat.

Catch the full info below, and don’t let this one escape your notice.

Look no further: You can now find Search...

The television and film world lost a really class act today as Russell Johnson has passed away quietly in his home via natural causes at the ripe old age of 89. Take a moment to celebrate his comedic legacy... and a whole lot more.

It's no surprise that Johnson will always be remembered for his role as Professor Roy Hinkley, Jr., on the 1964 cult comedy favorite TV show "Gilligan's Island" along with several films that saw him reunite with his fellow castaways, but Russell was also in several horror/sci-fi classics such as the recently announced for DVD Horror at 37,000 Feet, This Island Earth, It Came from Outer Space, and even stints on "The Twilight Zone" and "The Outer Limits."

We here at Dread Central would like to take a moment to honor and thank the man for all of his contributions and the smiles that came along with them and...

Feature Ryan Lambie 29 Nov 2013 - 06:15

This week's Crowdfunding Friday features a Garbage Pail Kids documentary, a British stop-motion drama, and much more...

Is there a scientific formula for crowdfunding success? We haven't learned of one yet, but if there's one thing we've learned over the past few weeks, it's that a good-quality board game or miniature project will have donations flooding in.

Just look at the hugely warm response to Gamezone Miniatures' 25th anniversary revival of the classic fantasy board game project, HeroQuest, which has managed to garner almost 10 times its minimum funding goal within 24 hours of its launch. Then there's Prados Games' Aliens Vs Predator: The Miniatures Game, which made  more than £270,000 more than its £35,000 target - no doubt thanks to the spectacular-looking Alien and Predator models that come packed into its handsome box.

The moral appears to be: if you offer a tangible and desirable reward for your target audience,...

On this day in 1966 the only horror film shot in a constructed language premiered at the San Francisco Film Festival. Starring William Shatner from the first to last scene the actors in Incubus exclusively speak Esperanto. In Incubus however Producer Leslie Stevens sought to use the language solely for gimmick purposes. Originally aiming to create a featurelength film in the mode of the recently cancelled The Outer Limits TV series Stevens thought the use of Esperanto would give his production a unique twist that would produce buzz.

The final season of "Mad Men" is adding an Oscar winner to its writing staff.

"Chinatown" screenwriter Robert Towne has joined the AMC series as a consulting producer on its seventh and final season, Variety reports. The series has also hired Patricia Resnick ("Nine to Five") as a consulting producer. "Saturday Night Live" and "United States of Tara" veteran David Iserson will be a co-producer.

Additionally, Carly Wray has made the jump from writers' assistant to staff writer for the final season.

Towne wrote a handful of TV scripts very early in his career, including episodes of "The Outer Limits" and "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." His last TV work, however, was nearly 50 years ago. In addition to his Oscar win for "Chinatown," he was nominated for Academy Awards for his screenplays for "The Last Detail," "Shampoo" and "Greystoke."

Season 7 of "Mad Men" will be split into two parts, with seven...

Film and television actress and producer Gail Kobe died yesterday at the age of 82. Her first major film was Cecil B. DeMille’s epic The Ten Commandments in 1956. She went on to appear in dozens of TV shows throughout her career, earning an Emmy nomination for her portrayal of Dr. Anne Warner on the 1960s TV series Dr. Kildare. Her other TV credits include soaps Peyton Place and Bright Promise. She also starred in such TV classics The Twilight Zone, The Fugitive, Bewitched, Hogan’s Heroes, The Mod Squad, Mission Impossible and The Outer Limits and appeared in over 50 Westerns, including, Rawhide, The Virginian, Maverick, Daniel Boone and Gunsmoke. She moved into producing daytime dramas during the 1970s and 80s with credits including Days of Our Lives, Texas, Another World, The Bold And The Beautiful, and Guiding Light, for which she was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award. For the past two years,...

“There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. We control the horizontal, we control the vertical. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control what you see and hear. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to…The Outer Limits.”

#10 Nightmare directed by John Erman … Continue reading →...

Star Trek – and we’re talking the original 1966-69 series here – was a lousy TV show. I was 11 years old when the series debuted on NBC and I thought it was a lousy show then.

That’s why I couldn’t stand the Trekkies even back before there was a name for them. My first run-in with a pre-Trekkie Trekkie was Vincent DePalma. In seventh grade, Vincent had his mother make a sparkly Star Fleet emblem for a corduroy pullover to make it look like the uniform blouses on the show. He wore it to school which I thought was him begging to get his ass beat. He’d built a full-sized replica of the helm/navigation console from the Enterprise bridge in his basement. His father worked for Bell Telephone and had gotten him banks of light-up buttons that really worked. His dream was to eventually recreate the entire bridge in his basement.

In 1984, The Terminator was a relatively low budget ($6.5 million) action-adventure film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, hot off Conan and Linda Hamilton pre-Beauty and the Beast. Written by James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd, it was a fun little science fiction film of a potential future that needed to be avoided. Things blew up and Arnold stoically told a cop and the audience, “I’ll be back.” No one knew at the time that the film would trigger such an enthusiastic response, giving us sequels, comics, novels, and a television series. Suddenly, SkyNet, John Conner, Sarah Conner and the Terminator T-800 model would become a part of the social fabric of pop culture. It also got Cameron sued by Harlan Ellison, who successfully argued that the story lifted a lot from the classic “Soldier” story penned for The Outer Limits. Little wonder then, that when Blu-ray discs started showing up, it...

Chicago – Bring up the name Ed Asner, and immediately his legendary TV character Lou Grant comes to mind. Asner created the only TV character to successfully transition from a sitcom – “Mary Tyler Moore” – to the cutting-edge TV drama “Lou Grant.” But Asner has also been steadily working since those days, including his latest film “Let Go.”

“Let Go” is a crazy quilt ensemble comedy, following the exploits of a parole officer (David Denman). One of his clients include Artie, portrayed by Ed Asner. The iconic TV and film actor gives a subtle late career performance as a small time robber who can’t understand why things change. There is a beautiful scene with Asner and actress Peggy McKay at the conclusion of the film, as Artie makes one last attempt at redemption. Ed Asner is no lion in winter, he is still roaring.

Released on DVD: Ed Asner as Artie...

"The Amazing Spider-Man" has been taking the box office by storm. Since opening on July 3, the film has made $75.5 million domestically, and could eventually compete with the Sam Raimi trilogy for top Spidey franchise. However, while the Tobey Maguire-starring "Spider-Man" films are praised by both critics and audiences, they were not the first attempt to get the friendly neighborhood superhero onto the big screen. Over the last three decades, there have been several versions of "Spider-Man" that almost came to be: from a corny B-movie to an R-rated epic from James Cameron. Moviefone takes a look back at the "Spider-Man" moves that almost happened. A "Spider-Man" Monster Movie, directed by Tobe Hooper ("Texas Chainsaw Massacre") The first studio to acquire the rights to "Spider-Man" was Cannon Films (the people behind '80s fare like "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo," "Masters of the Universe" and "Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.

Another day, another schedule for the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con. Next up is Day 3 - Saturday, July 14th - which is just about as chock-full of events for the horror crowd as Friday the 13th!

As always, our focus is the horror panels, but included are a few others that we think will be of interest as well. Remember that times and participants are subject to change so keep your eyes on the official Sdcc site for updates. And hopefully they'll provide a fix soon for the Sdcc smartphone app - in years past it's been extremely helpful.

10:00-11:00 Comic-Con How-To: Anatomy of a Fight Scene, Part One— Stories are about conflict, and there is no purer form of conflict than a good ol' fisticuffs-style brawl-or sword fight, laser battle, western shootout, or even two chicks pulling each other's hair. How do you put that much action down on...