It looks like John Cusack is going to be Edgar Allen Poe in a movie adaptation of THE RAVEN. Of course it can't be that faithful of an adaptation, because the raven is way too short a poem and takes place in a single room from beginning to end. Though this movie DOES sound pretty good.

"The story is set in the last five days of Poe's life in which he is forced to partner with a detective in search of a serial killer who has kidnapped Poe's fiancé and has gone on a spree of murders that mimics the author's work."

I'm on board with this. I love John Cusack. I love Edgar Allen Poe. And the premise of this movie is intriguing. I'm excited to see how they interpret scenes and concepts from the poem and apply them in this film.

THE RAVEN starts filming in October.

Back when I was in on the Beta of STAR TREK ONLINE, one of the most enjoyable aspects of the game was that you got your own ship and got to participate in space missions. The combat took strategy as well, because you had to monitor your deflector shields and keep repositioning your ship to mitigate the damage and allow your shields to recharge. My only complaint is that flying was kind of cumbersome. But that's the STAR TREK way. In STAR TREK it's more about being a space navy where you pull up next to a ship and pommel the hell out of it than it is about daring aerial maneuvers and dog fighting.

Well a video of the new space combat in STAR WARS: THE OLD REPUBLIC has hit the internet and has me all giddy as a school girl. It looks intense as you chase your quarry through asteroid belts, peppering their flanks with cannon fire. The downside to space combat in TOR is that it's railed, meaning that you won't be able to roam freely across a space map during fighting. But still it looks amazing and I can't wait to chase some Sith in my Republic freighter. Check it out below!

This December I will have a new BBC obsession. A few days ago I heard that Jamie Bramber of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA was going to star in a new space western series on BBC called OUTCASTS. These images have just been released, and although they don't show us much this description has me curious:

"It's the story of a group of individuals who are given the chance to build a new life on another planet, and across eight episodes, we'll be getting a show that looks like Britain taking a stab at a cross between Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek (the inclusion of BSG's Jamie Bamber in the cast helps with the comparison, certainly).

When the show starts, this group of pioneers will have lost contract with Earth, and all sorts of mysteries will be thrown up. And right now, that's pretty much what we know of the show."

BSG meets TREK? Sign me up. Check out more of the images below.

That title sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, I know. A while ago I heard that baseball player Curt Schilling,  R.A. Salvatore, Todd McFarlane, and Ken Rolston, the lead designer on Elder Scrolls: Oblivion had all gotten together to make a new RPG. I remember laughing and thinking to myself, "Wow, that's a motley crew." and then giving the project not a single thought afterwards. While trolling the internet I stumbled across these amazing production stills on that forgotten project, Kingdoms of Alamur: Reckoning, and now I'm very, very intrigued.

KINGDOMS OF ALAMUR: RECKONING promises an open ended environment with epic narrative and as you can see from these images huge weapons and gnarly monsters courtesy of MacFarlane's dark and twisty little mind. Not a whole lot of details have been released, but as you can see from these images and the cinematic teaser below, it looks pretty sweet. What do you guys think?

As TORCHWOOD fans wait in agony for the new season, TORCHWOOD: THE NEW WORLD to begin filming in January, we can't help but speculate on what is in store for Captain Jack, Gwen, and Rhys after the cataclysmic and heart-breaking ending that we got in CHILDREN OF EARTH. Well Russel T. Davies stopped by the Television Critics Association fall press tour to talk about that. With TORCHWOOD's return, Davies promises 6 things that will completely alter the TORCHWOOD experience.

1) There's an event that will take 10 episodes to deal with:

"It's far more complicated than just a monster," Davies said. "I think it's a brilliant idea, and when you hear it, it will make sense and you'll see how big it is. It could hae filled 20 hours."

Fans are used to TORCHWOOD's penchant for big story arcs but nothing that took a whole season to tell. What could Davies and company be planning that could take all 10 episodes of the first season to find closure?

2) In spite of the sad ending in CHILDREN OF EARTH, everyone's moved on:

"He (Jack Harkness) immediately appears. His first appearance in this is running and fighting and being brilliant," said Davies. "Then you'll discover he's carrying all the legacy of that with him, because that would be an awfully dull way to start. That's why you end those shows on that note, because they're ending. We'd never start THE NEW WORLD that way. It's very keen to move on, but at the same time we're going to be absolutely faithful to people who followed Jack's story and to John Barrowman's career. So we acknowledge the past stories while at the same time moving on to new stuff. He was left very dispirited and almost defeated at the end of the last series, which we acknowledge and deal with in a language that will both satisfy old fans and move forward into the future."

It's good to hear that everyone has found closure and is able to move on. While COE's ending was huge, it wouldn't do to start the new series on that dark note, with too many potentially new fans to wrangle into the fold. If they had, the show wold probably end before it really got started. At the same time, it's nice that the writers plan on allowing fans to share on that closure as well.

3) Jack's still an omnisexual horn-dog:

"He can sleep with man, woman, or alien," Davies said. "Yes, absolutely and not just with men. It's important to point out that he's bisexual. The trap you fall into with bisexual men is only having them sleep with men. So it's men and women. You'll see the full range of his appetites, in a really properly done way. It's not just exploitative. We always have done that. Equally, open sexuality has to include everything, and that means have a husband/wife great big crime-fighting team and happily in love. That's there in that. That's brilliant, so you have to include the whole gamut so you can't just say the minority stuff is the important stuff."

One of the things that worried fans about TORCHWOOD moving to Fox (besides unfair cancellation) was that they would tone down Jack's sexual appetites. It's good to see that he will be the same old Jack, because that's one of the things that make him unique.

4) TORCHWOOD is now based in America:

"We're going to be in Los Angeles, but we don't start filming until January, so all of this is very early," Davies said. "That's rare. Everyone else is in Canada. It's very exciting to be actually here. America is the heartland of the story. The story moves city in the U.S., so we have some scenes in Washington, we have some scenes in L.A. It's a very, very fast-paced storyline with a lot of movement. Our intention is absolutely to base ourselves here and work with the best crews and the best actors."

This may upset a lot of fans. I, myself feel a little saddened that we will never again see the spanning shots of Cardiff. But let's be fair here. After the British government tried to wipe TORCHWOOD out in CHILDREN OF EARTH, you can't blame them for picking up camp and moving elsewhere. Would you trust a government that turned on you after you've saved their bacon on several occasions?

5) Gwen and Rhys are back and stronger than ever:

"Gwen, who is the lead woman of the series, has a lovely husband called Rhys, played by Kai Owen, and now a baby between the two of them." said Davies. "So the sight of Gwen Cooper with baby in one arm and a gun in the other is going to be our poster, I hope, because that's just irresistible. I can't imagine Gwen without him (Rhys), and so he's back. He's a very big part of events. By the time this starts it will have been off air for 2 years, I think. We're taking a brand-new audience into consideration. Rhys is now ahead of the game as it were. There are no secrets. They're a team. It's a really lovely thing to write in a storyline is a husband-and-wife team who love each other. They have fun with each other. It's kind of sex. It's kind of sexy in a really unusual way. So I love that coupling. He's right up there with the team."

After watching Rhys sit on the bench for two season it was nice to see him get brought into the fold in CHILDREN OF EARTH. He not only proved to be useful, we watched his relationship with Gwen evolve. Instead of being an awkward piece to the Torchwood puzzle, he fit right in with the team and it's good that they are keeping with that.

6) Torchwood has to work with 2 CIA agents:

"Rex Matheson has yet to be cast yet, because we don't film until January," Davies said. "That character is an entrance into the new story. He's a CIA agent. The fact that TORCHWOOD has been off the air for a while and is also brand-new to a lot of people is actually being used as part of the story in that Rex has no idea what Torchwood is and has to investigate Torchwood. Torchwood was destroyed, disbanded. It's like a legend now. It's something that ceased to exist a long time ago that's spoken of only in whispers. So Rex is drawn into this, has no choice but to be drawn into tis through complications that you will see in the story. Also, he's at the CIA. We also have a watch analyst in the CIA called Esther, who is friends with Rex, but works with Rex's colleagues. The two of them become embroiled in the Torchwood legend and investigate what Torchwood is or was."

It's good to see that they are really taking a new audience into consideration here. Torchwood was great on the BBC and the potential for it on it's new pay network format is astronomical. If they want to be successful they need to hook a whole new audience and it's good that they will use these characters as a bridge to bring new viewers into the TORCHWOOD family of fans.

It looks like TRANSFORMERS is going try its hand at the MMORPG game. Chinese developer NetDragon is developing an online game based on the hit franchise. The good news is that Hasbro has officially signed off on the project, so we don't have to worry about legal entanglements down the road. The bad news is that the game will release initially only in  Asia, Russia, the Middle East and North Africa. North America, Western Europe, and Australia are being left out of the release loop for the time being.

Personally, I'm not that interested. While I do like the idea of playing with a Transformer character creator engine, there would have to be major innovation conceptually for this game to work. We're talking an overhaul on the whole MMORPG system (which I admit is needed.) And frankly, the fact that North America and Western Europe are being left out of the target release does not bode well for the quality of the project. What do you guys think?

I won't lie. A couple years ago when I went on my STARGATE SG-1 binge I instantly fell in love with Ben Browder in season 9. I liked his swagger and devil may care attitude. When my STARGATE obsession finally ended, I sought out FARSCAPE and was reintroduced to the Jim Henson puppeteering that made my childhood so magical. Suffice to say, every experience I've had with Browder has been one of absolute joy. He has firmly been locked in as one of my favorite unsung actors, and I will support him in his every endeavor.

Browder's next project will probably have me as hooked like all the rest. NAUGHT FOR HIRE is a web-series, that tells the story of Nick Naught, a private investigator in the year 2030. The series will be light-hearted and in the style of the noiir films of the 1930s. The series will be adapted from the book by John E. Stith and will also star Buff allumn Juliet Landau, DEEP SPACE NINE's Chase Masterson and CLEOPATRA 2525’s Jennifer Sky. The series 13 episodes will be shot this summer, but no release has been announced.

Fantastic. I love sci-fi. I love noir. I love Ben Browder. I'm totally pumped about this project. Sci-fi noir is so far unexplored territory for the small screen (or any screen for that matter), and I can't wait to see the result. What do you guys think?