TV

‘Batman: Caped Crusader’ animated series finds new home at Amazon Prime

Posted on by indiemacuser

Batman: Caped Crusader has found a new home at Amazon Prime, having been given a two-series order.

The animated series hails from Bruce Timm,  JJ Abrams and Matt Reeves and was sold to a streaming rival as part of Warner Bros. Discovery’s efforts to monetize content by selling projects to third-party buyers.

Batman: Caped Crusader was first announced in May 2021, and is said to harken back to Timm’s 1990s Batman: The Animated Series, which stands as a benchmark for the Dark Knight’s animated storytelling. Comic book scribe Ed Brubaker is among the creative team and ran a writer’s room and serves as Timm’s right hand on the 10-episode first season.

The show’s move comes after DC Studios bosses James Gunn and Peter Safran, who Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav hired late last year, seek to bring order to DC’s properties. The duo are plotting a 10-year plan to tell a unified story across film, TV, gaming and animation, though certain projects will fall outside of that realm. Those include Reeves’ The Batman Part II and HBO Max spinoff series The Penguin, and, naturally, fare liked Caped Crusader that is distributed outside of the company.

Caped Crusader‘s move to Amazon comes after Zaslav revealed his film studio would develop more Lord of the Rings movies. Amazon, coincidentally, controls the TV rights to the Lord of the Rings franchise, and now will count Warners’ Batman as part of its service.

‘Batman: Caped Crusader’ Animated Series not moving forward at HBO MAX

Batman Filmography getting 4K Ultimate Collector’s Edition releases

Order Batman – The Complete Animated Series

Universal Classic Monsters actor dies

Posted on by indiemacuser

American film director, actor, producer, screenwriter, underwater cinematographer and stuntman Ricou Browning has died.

He was best known for his underwater stunt work, playing the Gill-man in Creature from the Black Lagoon, Revenge of the Creature and The Creature Walks Among Us – other actors portrayed the creature on land but Browning was the only actor to have portrayed the creature more than once.

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Review: Ninth Doctor Adventures –

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Review by Cavan Gilbey

It feels like only yesterday when Eccleston joined the team at Big Finish to star in a batch of new adventures, 8 boxsets later and we have reached the end of what we know the company had planned for the Ninth Doctor Adventure range. It’s been a range with some genuinely spectacular stories, reuniting this Doctor with old friends and old enemies in ways that feel new and fresh. There have been some rough patches on the journey to Shades of Fear but with 24 new stories in this series that is only to be expected. This new boxset I think is the most emblematic of the ranges strongest and weakest elements, it has the characteristic inconsistent quality that has been a bit of a blight on the range but the spirit of the era is captured so vividly with the right themes hitting home and the atmosphere fitting really nicely into what RTD helped create back in 2005. Its not the best one we’ve had from the range, but still manages to keep the momentum from previous sets rolling and delivers an all around good experience with Eccleston at the helm.

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Review: The First Doctor Adventures – The Demon Song

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Review by Jacob Licklider

Alright, it’s February and Big Finish have released their first Classic Doctor set of the new year after January’s pre-1989 Doctor Who releases were limited to the Audio Novel and the Short Trips release earlier this month.  Okay so The First Doctor Adventures: The Demon Song was initially solicited for release in January, but it was pushed back to February probably due to production delays or time for editing.  If you can’t help, I’m stalling.  The Demon Song and The Incherton Incident make up this set are sadly stories that don’t actually have much connection, just being a two-part story and four-part story that have the same TARDIS team which is thee First Doctor and Dodo, played by Stephen Noonan and Lauren Cornelius, so as such it’s going to be a bit difficult to give the set an overall score, especially since both stories are vastly in terms of what they are attempting to do.  The first feels very modern while the second is one that takes more lengths to imitate the style of a story you would have seen in the 1960s, which makes the lack of connection between the stories feel even more stark as each story serves a very different purpose.

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Review: The Diary of River Song – Friend Of The Family

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Review by Cavan Gilbey

River Song has had a bit of a fandom redemption I feel thanks to Big Finish, sure she had a ton of fans thanks to her TV outings (myself included) but the Classic Who fans and those who weren’t massively enamoured with Moffatt’s writing style would probably need a lot of convincing to like Doctor Song. That’s where the Diary of River Song range seems to come in, offering a fun bridging of the worlds of Classic and New Who along with plenty of original stories. I’d heard the second, fifth, and sixth volumes before coming into series 11. I had really positive experiences with the former two but was hugely disappointed by what felt like fanservice for the sake of fanservice in volume 6. But Friend of the Family offers a new avenue for the series; a distinct absence of Doctor Who elements. Previously we’d either have had a prior Doctor, companion or foe but here we have a completely original and stand-alone story which gives River the time to shine she deserves.

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Review: Torchwood – Double (Part 1 & 2)

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Review by Cavan Gilbey

Every so often Big Finish will give us the chance to explore new characters within the Torchwood universe, offering us a look at branches and agents we may never would have seen onscreen. We’ve been to a Third Reich occupied Paris in The Dying Room, a Charlie’s Angels inspired LA in The Dollhouse and most famously we’ve had a glimpse into Norton Folgate’s Soho based branch. Double follows suit and takes back to a world where the Autons are slowly plotting their global take-over through corporate subterfuge and how a 70s British Torchwood may go around dealing with this hostile threat. Double’s strength lies in its longer format as we get to feel more involved with the world we see in Guy Adams’ script, everything is given the room it needs to breathe and we are offered an Auton story that feels genuinely fresh and expectedly bleak. Although there are some issues with how long it takes Adams to breathe, which ultimately does leave us with a big cluster of brilliant ideas and characters trapped within a narrative which ends up being somewhat confusing for the listener. img_3585

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‘Dexter’ gets Prequel/Spinoff series at Paramount+

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Spinoffs of hit show “Dexter” are being planned at Showtime as the premium cabler rebrands to Paramount+ With Showtime and reconfigures its programming.

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Review: Time War – Cass

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Review by Jacob Licklider

What’s always fascinating for a range is what happens when a cast member cannot return for a range.  Time War: Cass is one such release, continuing the Eighth Doctor releases from Time War: Volume Four but without the character of Bliss due to scheduling conflicts with Rakhee Thakrar.  Luckily, unlike the issues that arose with Dark Eyes and the scheduling conflicts Ruth Bradley faced, the setting of Time War: Cass is one where due to the universe being in a constant state of flux due to the Time War.  This is something that the writers of this box set are keenly aware of with each of the three stories featured doing something with the ‘time’ element of the Time War which is already a recipe for success when dealing with this era.  There is a clear reason (or at least an appearance of a reason) for why Bliss isn’t there, though the details of this are not given to the listener partially for intrigue and partially because there is not a guarantee that she will be available to record with Big Finish anytime soon.  Instead this set picks up some time after the cliffhanger ending of Time War: Volume Four with the Doctor traveling with Alex Campbell, once again played by Sonny McGann, with an unspecified amount of time having past and this is an interesting premise since when we last saw Alex he was dead. Continue reading →

Review: Class – Secret Diary of a Rhodian Prince

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Review by Cavan Gilbey

Big Finish did the impossible; they made Class one of my favourite Doctor Who spin-offs.  Prior to hearing Secret Diary I was well accustomed to the first two volumes of the audio stories set within Coal Hill Academy, and I absolutely adored them and hold them up as a pair of Big Finish’s best New Series era boxsets. They have stories which explore new ideas, really interesting small scale sci-fi threats, and have outstanding character development and characterisation. As of time of writing I am yet to hear the later two series of stories, I have been put off due to the recasts, but the finale of Volume 4 was penned by one Blair Mowat; composer extraordinaire who has done Big Finish’s best musical suites as well as composing the excellent score for Class’ TV series. In recent years he has stepped into the world of writing, first with Queen of Rhodia and now with Secret Diary of a Rhodian Prince. Which, with no word of exaggeration, is the best Class story and an easy early contender for favourite release of 2023.

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Doctor Who Season 9 ‘The Collection’ BluRay announced

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The third season for Jon Pertwee‘s Third Doctor is the next release to come to Blu-ray with Season 9.

Across an action-packed twenty-six episodes, the Doctor and Jo (Katy Manning) face off against Daleks, Ogrons, Sea Devils, Ice Warriors, Mutants and their old enemy the Master (Roger Delgado). Joining them in their adventures are the UNIT team of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney), Captain Yates (Richard Franklin) and Sergeant Benton (John Levene).

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