Hitting Screens, Jan. 25 thru 31
Arriving in theaters today is The 5th Wave, based on Rick Yancey’s YA novel and expected to be the first in a franchise (see our earlier story). The upcoming week brings several adaptations for TV as well as for a high-profile movie.
Talk about your anti-hero. On the new debut of FOX’s Lucifer, the bored ruler of Hell comes to L.A., meets a girl, and somehow starts working with the cops.
As we reported earlier, the series is based on a character in Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, which was then spun off into the comic Lucifer, written by Mike Carey, both published by DC/Vertigo.
It stars Tom Ellis as Lucifer and premiers Jan. 25.
Also airing on the 25th, this time on the Syfy channel, is The Magicians, based on Lev Grossman’s bestselling novel.
The Syfy channel has already released the first full episode:
As we noted when it aired, reaction was not fully positive.
A tie-in came out in Nov: The Magicians (TV Tie-In Edition) by Lev Grossman (Penguin/Plume).
In movie news, Disney’s big budget disaster/rescue move, The Finest Hours, opens on Jan. 29th.
It is not getting great reviews either. Variety says:
“…perhaps the worst one could say about Craig Gillespie’s film is that, rather than their finest hours, the whole cast and crew all put in a solid shift at the office making the movie, producing a perfectly entertaining, sometimes quite well-crafted disaster drama that nonetheless retreats from the memory almost as soon as the credits roll.”
The Hollywood Reporter bottom lines it with “Too much of this action thriller feels dead in the water,” but goes on to say, “Even so, the film’s promise of thrill-ride spectacle — it’s going out in a variety of 3D formats — should help it ride a strong wave at the box office.”
A tie-in came out in late December: The Finest Hours: The True Story of the U.S. Coast Guard’s Most Daring Sea Rescue by Michael J. Tougias, Casey Sherman (Pocket Books).