3 posts tagged “nathan fillion”
The Hollywood Reporter reports that Nathan Fillion has been cast as Alex Tully, in Tim Minear's new FOX series, Drive. Good old speculumor. We knew you were too pretty to die.
As we mentioned in our last update, Herc posted about it at Ain't It Cool, after our original speculumor was published (although he did not cite us). Soon, a poster named "Haunt" cited Herc's item at Whedonesque. Between then and the HR release, it had been mentioned at the Drive-TV blog, and elsewhere around the Internet, too.
Here's how we developed our speculumor:
October 17, 2006: In the beginning, there was an innocuous item at TVSquad, which read, in part:
Nathan Fillion signs deal with Fox
Evidently, Nathan Fillion has restored his faith in Fox. Or he could really use a job. Either way, Fillion has signed a talent holding deal with Fox (similar to the one Amy Brenneman signed with ABC). According to ComingSoon.net, the deal calls for Fox to develop a comedy or drama for Fillion and, if it doesn't go to pilot, to cast him in an existing project.
She read the TV Squad item quite by accident, when looking for something else, and paid so little notice to it she forgot to mention it to He. She promptly forgot about it. Reading today's HR report (linked above), it seems they reported on that item, back then.
November 21, 2006: A Nick Lea website posted an item from an unidentified 'reliable source' that neither Nick Lea (Mr. Bright, original pilot) nor Ivan Sergei (Alex Tully, original pilot) would appear in the series.
December 1, 2006: The Hollywood Reporter ran an item that Greg Yaitanes, who directed the original pilot of Drive, had extended his contract with FOX, and would serve as an Executive Producer on the series. In that article the rumors that key roles were being re-cast was confirmed.
December 8, 2006: Tim Minear posted on the Buffistas board:
So we're >this< much closer to being cast. Offer went out today to our male lead. Wish I could say who. But assuming it all works out, soon.
The Buffistas made many guesses, some in fun (Charisma Carpenter), some in earnest (James Remar). Minear then teased them:
But it's not Remar. My guy actually has more in common with Charisma, if you really think about it.
That Charisma Carpenter comment was a huge clue. From it, we gleaned that Minear and company were probably making an offer to an actor who had worked with Minear, and that actor was probably a Mutant Enemy alum. Personally, we were thinking (and hoping) Alexis Denisof, at that point, and our Google news alerts may or may not reflect this point.
December 10, 2006: Back at the Buffistas, Tim Minear commented on the re-cast, at the end of a post, saying:
p.s. -- deal not done on my new leading man, but spoke to him and he's in.
The timing of the above made us start rethinking our Denisof guess (and hopes). We began to zero in on Fillion.
As most people know by now, there was supposed to be a Firefly convention, Flanvention II, this past weekend in Burbank, California. Booster Events, the firm running the convention, canceled it so late it's practically understatement to say it was 'last minute'. Fans had already begun to arrive. From other continents, even.
The heart-warming thing is, most of the Firefly talent came through in a big way, for their fans (for free), even though they had been booked to appear by Booster Events for a fee (thousands of dollars per, and reportedly tens of thousands of dollars, in Fillion's case) to appear. Tim Minear, who (as far as we know) hadn't even been booked, also ran a panel-of-one for the stranded fans, before the weekend was out.
If you go back to the previous clue, namely, that the Drive hopeful had much in common with Charisma Carpenter, you can see the whole trail. Charisma Carpenter had appeared on both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. Nathan Fillion had appeared on both Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and starred in Firefly. Now, Tim never worked on Buffy the Vampire Slayer (although the press gets this wrong more often than not), but he had worked on both Angel and Firefly. Both Carpenter and Fillion had roles in Miss Match, too.
But that wasn't enough for us to start speculating in black and white. It's one thing for us to discuss alone, together, over coffee. It's another thing to post, here. So we bit our tongues (which hurt a lot, by the way). It was difficult, because later, a Buffista (not Tim) posted:
So, Tim hinted today who the Drive lead is at that Firefly thang. I'm keepin' mah trap shut as foot in mouth, and all that. Plus I don't want to jinx anything.
Another Buffista chimed in that she was dying to spill. Tim hushed them both.
Then, Nathan Fillion mentioned in a locked entry in his blog that he had a new job (in TV) and would be working with someone he'd worked with, before. This was all the confirmation we needed. However, we wondered about the ethics involved in posting about it, when Nathan revealed it in a locked entry. Granted, more than 6,000 people have a key to that lock, so it's not like that statement was top secret, but we were unsure if we should reveal anything.
Then, bless their excited hearts, one of the Buffistas spilled news about Nathan's blog entry. It was soon edited out of his post. A similar reveal was posted at Whedonesque. Like the Buffistas, the Whedonesque people decided it was unfair to post speculation based on Fillion's locked entry and edited it out.
Whedonesque left a handy link on the front page (link now gone) leading to the comment in which Whedonesque explains the decision that it is not cricket to cite information in locked blogs. We were ready to explode by then, because all the information needed to speculate had been available, before Fillion put finger to keyboard.
Fortunately, there was momentary confusion among the Buffistas (over the information deleted from their board) and in that shiny moment, Tim Minear spilled the secret, although we do not think he realized he did. Someone asked if the edited post had originally contained a (totally unrelated) anecdote from Fillion's blog. Before people had time to explain that other information had been deleted, Tim Minear replied:
Somebody's a big ol' blabbity mouth. I love it.
And Minear was right. It is just that he was the big ol' blabbity mouth in question, and we love it. Because Buffistas is a public board, we felt no compunction to keep it under our hats any longer, particularly since we had enough information to speculate, before Fillion's hints and Minear's goof.
And that's the story of the story.
Drive is set to premiere on FOX, this coming Spring. With Minear as its engine, and Fillion behind the wheel, our motors are already racing.
Ain't It Cool news reports hearing from untested sources, that Nathan Fillion may be in negotiations for a part in Tim Minear's new series for FOX, Drive. Does Hercules the Strong read our goodtv.vox.com blog?
Is Nathan Fillion in negotiations to fill one of the roles (to be re-cast) in Tim Minear's next FOX project, Drive? Only time will tell. This is completely unsubstantiated rumor. Wait, it isn't even a rumor, yet. It is speculation based on indirect, and unrelated information we've read here, there and everywhere. We will call it speculumor, because we've never actually read this thing, as its own thing, in black and white (until we started typing up this entry).
We're being so emphatic about this being only speculumor, because as far as we see it, you Browncoats have been given the shortest end of a stick ever offered a TV watcher by a craphill network. But you took that end, and you...took it! And that's...well...we guess that's somethin'. And we don't want to get your hopes (too far) up.
We don't want to lead you on. We're no gorram Booster Events. We're just so excited, because we're thinking this speculumor is too pretty for God to let it die.
In the meantime, keep your eyes pointed at the sky, which they can't take from us.
(Our apologies if you saw this posted, twice. We had problems with the original version posted about an hour ago, and ended up deleting it.)
