Stephen King’s The Dark Tower film has been floating around development hell for quite some time, but it seems there might actually be light at the end of the tunnel. It has been announced that Sony and MRC are teaming up to bring the much loved fantasy series to not just film, but television as well. The plans include bringing the books to the silver screen in a film series as well as a complimentary TV show to accompany the movies.

The Dark Tower series is a series of book by famous horror writer Stephen King, the book blends multiple genres in what King himself describes as his finest work. It combines fantasy, science fiction, horror and Western in a series that follows a ‘gunslinger’ on his quest towards a tower. The series comprises of eight novels focussing on the protagonist Roland Deschain, a character King has revealed to be majorly influenced by Clint Eastwood’s “Man With No Name” from Sergio Leone’s acclaimed Western ‘Dollar’ trilogy. Other inspirations for the series have come from J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings’ vast fictional world, as well as Arthurian legend.

Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Erica Huggins and Akiva Goldsman are set to produce, who have collectively tried to get the project up and running for almost 10 years. The first film will be based on the very first novel, The Gunslinger, which was written back in 1982. Akiva Goldsman has been joined by Jeff Pinkner to co-write the script, and will be a completely different version to what has previously been written. Now all that is left is for a director to be bought onboard and production can begin.

The Dark Tower adaptations have been in the works for quite some time, but due to the sheer scope and size of the world in which the Gunslinger exists, potential budgets have been far too big for studios to take a risk on. Even though the books themselves have received critical acclaim, studios are reluctant in taking on a project of this scale without assurances that it will succeed. The project went through two major studios before landing with MRC and Sony. Universal Studios picked up the property back in 2007 and initially announced JJ Abrams was connected to direct a trilogy but soon removed himself from the project. Universal eventually pulled the plug after budget issues and a contract breakdown with director Ron Howard. Dark Tower then jumped ship over to Warner Bros. but again due to financial concerns, they also passed.

Stephen King himself is excited that his series has finally been given the greenlight as he recently stated that having Akiva Goldsman Jeff Pinkner onboard to write the adaptations is a brilliant and creative approach to his books. The Dark Tower will be the latest Stephen King novel to receive the silver screen treatment, which comes after countless critically acclaimed and successful film versions of his books have been released over the years. Such films include The Shawshank Redemption, It, The Green Mile, The Shining, Stand By Me and Carrie have all been hugely successful.

The Dark Tower has no release date for now, but after a decade of sitting in development hell, there finally seems to be some hope for the Gunslinger to make his way to television and the big screen.

Latest TV searches:

Piracy has been around as long as the entertainment industry itself. Before the internet, if you wanted a song but you didn’t want to pay for it you could just record it straight off the radio onto a cassette tape. Something the music industry were not too fond of. Then in the mid-nineties the internet took the world by storm and allowed the free sharing of anything digital. The rise of Napster, the file sharing company that at its peak had over 80 million registered users, came against fierce criticism from the music industry.

A lawsuit they eventually lost and the company was shut down in July 2001. Nowadays, piracy is as popular as ever, with internet speeds as fast as they are, anyone can download an entire high-definition film in less than five minutes. So what are the film and TV industry doing to combat piracy? And what are the actual effects of piracy?

What started as a Saturday Night Live sketch first appearing back in January 2007, MacGruber hit the big screen in 2010 to mixed reviews and a particularly bad showing at the box office. Will Forte plays the title character MacGruber, a special operations agent, a parody of the popular 80s adventure MacGyver. Forte is also joined by fellow SNL regular Kirsten Wiig as his assistant, Vicki St Elmo. MacGruber, much like his parodied influence, makes use of everyday household objects in an attempt to diffuse bombs. The original SNL skit was just a recurring scene in which MacGruber and his assistant were trapped in a control room with a ticking time bomb. MacGruber would proceed to ask for random everyday objects in an attempt to stop the bomb and save everyone. But MacGruber would repeatedly get sidetracked by irrelevant issues and the bomb was never diffused, ending each sketch by an explosion and presumably killing everyone.

This premise ran for several years before a full length feature film version was announced. Considering the very basic premise of the show would be difficult to translate into a motion picture, Forte and creator Jorma Taccone had to come up with an idea that would work as a film. Choosing to stay with satirising 80s action shoe MacGyver, they decided to extend it to cover all action movie tropes of that era. With only a budget of $10million, the film was released in May 2010 to dismal box office takings, making only $9.3million, still short of their relatively low budget. The film fared only slightly better with critics, where it has earned just 47% on film review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes.

The film version involved Forte and Wiig reprising their roles as MacGruber and St Elmo respectively. This time they are joined by Ryan Phillippe as Dixon Piper, a young lieutenant who is assigned to MacGruber;s team, much to his disdain. MacGruber is forced out of retirement and is tasked to retrieve a nuclear warhead from his old nemesis Dieter Von Cunth, played by Val Kilmer. The film, although a hit with fans of the show, became the 2nd worst film in terms of box office takings of 2010, behind the forgettable The Warrior’s Way, starring Geoffrey Rush and Kate Bosworth. In fact, the film became the lowest-grossing wide releasing SNL film ever, behind the likes of Wayne’s World and Blues Brothers, both of which were box office successes as well as cementing themselves as cult favourite status. But as with many similar films, MacGruber slowly grew a cult following and its popularity is one that continues to grow. So much so that a sequel has been confirmed by the original’s director and creator, Taccone, who announced the news last year and Forte has been quoted as saying shooting might have already been wrapped up.

In the meantime, MacGruber is available to stream online through Netflix.

Once upon a time, where almost all fairytale stories start so what’s the difference with this TV show? Let me tell you now that the fairytale stories that you’ve heard of or have watch since you were young isn’t what it all seems.

It all started with the hatred of the Evil Queen Regina (Lana Parilla) to her stepdaughter Snow White that she even asked the help of Rumplestiltskin (Robert Carlyle), an evil sorcerer, to conjure a curse, a curse that so powerful it will rift of all the happy endings of everyone, everyone except the Evil Queen of course as her happy ending is to see Snow White miserable but alas every curse can be broken. Snow White (Ginnifer Goodwin) and her husband Prince Charming (Josh Dallas) feeling responsible for their current predicament have tried to think of plans after plans for them to break this curse. Snow White who was pregnant then felt fear for her unborn child that she convinced Prince Charming to let her seek answer through Rumplestiltskin.

They were given an answer; a savior will break the curse which happens to be their baby. The curse was casted and all fairytale legends we know are swallowed by purple clouds to God knows where.

28 years later, Emma Swan (Jennifer Morrison) who was revealed to have escaped the curse by a magical wardrobe was found by Henry Mills (Jared S. Gilmore), the son that she gave up for adoption 10 years ago. He brought her to Storybrooke, Maine, the town where the residents of the Enchanted Forest now resides.
Not so bad right? ECK WRONG! The twist to this story is that no one remembers who they were, they were given false identities and here’s the best part, they were kept frozen for the while 28 years. Now it’s up to Emma, with the aid of Henry and his Once Upon A Time book of fairytales that holds the key on how she will break the curse. And if you think that’s crazy how about Regina, the Evil Queen is also the one who adopted Henry. Conflict after conflict just happens to happen.

The show also shows us the past of our favorite fairy tale character’s past. You will see how the show made the original fairytale into something even more. Some of them are made from being all smooth sailing stories into one with a sad twist or things that you’ve never even predicted. The show not only revolves on the world of Storybrooke or the Enchanted Forest because in the second and third season, the story revolves around Neverland and the fourth season, you’ll never guess where, it’s Arendelle! Yup, they even included the fictional movie, Frozen.
This show is just getting better and better.

More fairy tale characters introduced, more twist ahead and you will definitely use that detective skills of yours because you just can’t stop on finding clues after clues, guessing what will happen and so much more. It’s not your cliché romantic show, it’s mixed with romance, angst, comedy, action, fantasy, and a lot more. It is now on its second half of season four which will premiere on Sunday, March 1, 2015 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on ABC.

Latest TV searches:

With comedy sketch show Saturday Night Live entering its 40th anniversary this year, the show is celebrating its landmark year by hosting a three and a half hour special featuring guests and stars from the show’s 40 years on air. The show started back in 1975 and was simply called NBC’s Saturday Night as another show held the Saturday Night Live title, it originally aired on October 11 1975. The original cast featured Laraine Newman, John Belushi, Jane Curtin, Gilda Radner, Dan Aykroyd, Garrett Morris and Chevy Chase. In the original season, cast members were only paid $750 by NBC per episode.

There have been 782 episodes since it first ran back in the 70s and many of its stars go on to successful careers in TV and film. The original cast of course went on to bigger fame, including Dan Akroyd who teamed up with Harold Ramis and Bill Murray to write and star in the classic Ghostbusters. John Belushi reprised his role with Dan Akroyd in the 1980s classic Blues Brothers film, based on their SNL sketches. Jake (Belushi) tries to get his old band back together after leaving jail in order to save the orphanage where he and brother Elwood were raised.

Latest TV searches: