We round up recent geek TV news, including a big change at Marvel Television.
Marvel Television head Jeph Loeb will be leaving the company soon, according to Hollywood Reporter, after a ten-year run as the head of the division. The move comes as Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige takes control of the television division from Marvel CEO Ike Perlmutter (see “Feige Takes Creative Control of Marvel TV”), but had been planned prior to the move, according to the report. Loeb’s longest-running show, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. on ABC, will conclude in 2020 after Season 7 (see “’Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to End”). Loeb’s talk at an ICv2 Conference in 2009 traced his personal journey and the path of Hollywood and the comics industry, and how they all came together (see “Jeph Loeb on How Comics Became Hollywood Inspiration”). The premiere of Watchmen on HBO on Sunday night (see “Full-Length ‘Watchmen’ Trailer”) drew 1.5 million viewers across all platforms, according to Variety. That’s better than the Season 2 premiere of Succession, HBO’s current “it” show, but behind the Season 2 premiere of Westworld last year, which drew 2.1 million viewers. Digital gave the show the biggest lift since the series premiere of Westworld in 2016, according to the report. Amazon has released the first ratings information for The Boys, which it had called “one of its most watched series ever:” Nielsen reports that the first season averaged 4.1 million viewers per episode over the first 10 days of its release, according to Hollywood Reporter. The ratings reflect a new effort by Nielsen to track SVOD viewership, but only reflect U.S. television viewership and do not include multi-platform or international views. Attendees at the ICv2 Insider Talks in New York earlier this month got a look at the usefulness of Nielsen’s SVOD ratings in predicting product sales (see “Pro-Case Studies on Comics and Streaming”). WarnerMedia’s new streaming service HBO Max (see “WarnerMedia Streaming Service Takes Shape”) has landed a big fish, the rights to stream the films of Studio Ghibli, the company announced. This is the first time Ghibli films have been licensed to a streaming platform. Ghibli films available at the launch of the service will include Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Howl’s Moving Castle, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Ponyo, Castle in the Sky, The Tale of The Princess Kaguya and more. The Wind Rises, the last film by Hayao Miyazaki, will debut Fall 2020. Sony streaming service Funimation has acquired streaming, download-to-own, home entertainment, and merchandising rights for the Robotech TV series and two sequel films, Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles and Robotech 2: The Sentinels, the company announced. The rights are worldwide except for Japan, with some beginning as third-party rights deals expire. Sony continues development of the long-gestating live action film (see “’Robotech’”). CBS TV Studios is developing a one-hour Clueless series, according to Deadline. It’s described as “baby pink and bisexual blue-tinted, tiny sunglasses-wearing, oat milk latté and Adderall-fueled look at what happens when the high school queen bee Cher disappears and her lifelong No. 2 Dionne steps into Cher’s vacant Air Jordans.” The property, originally a feature film and then adapted into a 90s TV series, has persisted as a license, for example in comics (see “’Clueless’ Comics to Comics”).Geek TV News Round-Up
Posted by Milton Griepp on October 23, 2019 @ 1:07 am CT
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