Hitting Screens, Week of June 6
The adaptations that debuted last week did quite well. Deadline reports that the remake of Roots wrapped “respectably,” despite competition from basketball. It’s a sign of the changing media landscape that the series was not expected to do nearly as well as the original, which dominated the airwaves in 1977 when there were only a few network TV stations to choose from.
On the other hand,ratings were soft for Cinemax’s Outcast, based on the comics by Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman. Reviewers have also not been kind.That won’t have any effect on the potential for a second season. It’s already been renewed.
On the big screen, Me Before You went beyond analysts predictions.
Coming this week:
Monday, June 6, TNT’s Rizzoli & Isles begins its 7th and final season, in a show ending 13 episodes run.
Variety reports the series was canceled in January, saying it had “faded since its very strong first two seasons in 2010 and 2011, but remains among the most popular cable programs.”
The show, a mix of police procedural and forensic medical thriller, is based on the popular mystery series by Tess Gerritsen. Publisher PRH/Ballantine is issuing a new set of mass market paperbacks with covers linking the books to the TV series. The most recent is The Mephisto Club: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel.
The film Blackway opens on June 10, starring Anthony Hopkins, Julia Stiles, Ray Liotta, and Alexander Ludwig, tells the story of a woman stalked by a small town thug who has scared off the police. She turns to an old logger and his side kick for help.
It is based on the novel Go With Me, Castle Freeman, Jr. (Steerforth, 2009; HarperPerennial), which The Wall Street Journal said had “echoes of Deliverance and Cormac McCarthy.”
Also opening on June 10 is Genius, a literary bio-pic featuring an all-star cast including Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman, Jude Law, Dominic West, and Guy Pearce. Firth plays Max Perkins, Law, the writer Thomas Wolfe, West stars as Ernest Hemingway, and Guy Pearce plays F. Scott Fitzgerald.
The film is based on Max Perkins: Editor of Genius, A. Scott Berg (PRH/NAL; OverDrive Sample). As we wrote last week, a tie-in is available.