Category Archives: Cult
Crazed Fandom Show CULT Debuts February 19th on The CW – Updated
What happens when a rabid, obsessed fandom crosses the line between the imagined and reality? We’ll get to see in three weeks when the buzzed-about meta series Cult debuts on The CW. The pilot episode introduces us to journalist Jeff (Matt Davis from the Vampire Diaries) searching for his brother whose disappearance may be linked to the fans of a TV series called Cult recreating what they’ve seen on the show. Jeff enlists the help of production assistant Skye (Jessica Lucas) from the show-within-a-show to examine the dark influence of its cult leader character Billy (Robert Knepper) on the fans and how the show-within-a-show’s creator might be purposefully manipulating them. The next twelve episodes track the fan reaction to twelve episodes of the show-within-a-show, culminating in season finales for both.
[Update: A new promo asks What is Real? One is TV. One is Reality. As it cuts back and forth between scenes from the show-within-a-show and "reality". Cult filmed the scene of car vs train on railroad tracks in Langley and caused traffic gridlock on a Friday afternoon as drivers slowed down to stare.]
Related: Matt Davis filming TV pilot Cult in Gastown
Showrunner Rockne O’Bannon of Farscape fame told the Television Critics Association (TCA) winter press tour that Cult puts a magnifying glass on the potential dangers of a passionate fan base of a dark show. Executive producer Josh Swartz elaborated, saying today’s fans feel like they have an emotional ownership of their show and get so much more access to the people who create, write and star in it that they “may feel they control that conversation as well. And when things don’t go the way they have tweeted, there’s a certain level of animosity
CULT’s Robert Knepper & Alona Tal Film the Show-Within-A-Show at the Vancouver Art Gallery for 1×07
Updated April 10, 2013 – This was the last episode of Cult aired by The CW before it cancelled the show.
Cult filmed scenes of Cult – its show-within-a-show – today at the Vancouver Art Gallery, with Robert Knepper (Prison Break)’s cult leader speaking about a proposed youth centre while Alona Tal’s police officer opens the trunk of the red car featured in the show-within-a-show. Confused yet?
You should be. “When the line between the imagined and reality is broken” is the meta tagline of The CW’s midseason series Cult. Matt Davis (The Vampire Diaries) stars as Jeff, an investigative journalist searching for his brother whose disappearance may be linked to the fans of a TV series called Cult (which stars Robert Knepper and Alona Tal’s characters) recreating what they’ve seen on the show. Jeff enlists the help of Jessica Lucas’s production assistant Skye from the show-within-a-show. Hopefully, all this meta-ness will be easier to follow when we see it on screen early next year.
CULT’s Stacey Farber Films in Downtown Vancouver’s Victory Square With Fake Palm Tree – Updated
Cult crew had to rent a fake palm tree and sweep up fall leaves in Victory Square today to film a scene set in Santa Monica. Vancouver’s endless summer came to an abrupt halt late last week so it will be tougher and chillier for Cult to fake southern California in the two-plus months left of filming for The CW series expected to air next year.
Cult is about an investigative journalist named Jeff (Matt Davis of The Vampire Diaries) searching for his brother whose disappearance may be linked to the fans of a horror TV series called Cult recreating what they’ve seen on the show. Jeff enlists the help of a production assistant (Jessica Lucas) from the show-within-a-show. “When the line between the imagined and reality is broken” is the meta tagline.
Tech person E.J. (Stacey Farber)
CULT’s Matt Davis & Jessica Lucas Filming Near Hastings Overpass for 1×04
Upcoming midseason CW series Cult has been filming inside the old Terminal City Ironworks complex for a couple of days, but unexpectedly emerged yesterday afternoon for a big scene with Matt Davis and Jessica Lucas near the Hastings Overpass and BC Sugar in east Vancouver. All I could tell from a distance is that it involved people running, simulated gunfire, a culprit being nabbed and some yelling.
Matt Davis (The Vampire Diaries) stars as Jeff an investigative journalist searching for his brother whose disappearance may be linked to the fans of a horror TV series called Cult recreating what they’ve seen on the show. Jeff enlists the help of Jessica Lucas’s production assistant from the show-within-a-show. “When the line between the imagined and reality is broken” is the meta tagline.
CULT’s Matt Davis & Jessica Lucas Filming at the University of British Columbia for 1×03
It’s been two-and-a-half weeks since The CW’s midseason drama Cult started filming as a series in Vancouver. And sightings have been rare until yesterday when several people spotted their production signs DARK out on campus at the University of British Columbia. Finding the set proved much more difficult, but here they are tucked away inside the Buchanan quadrangle to film a steadycam scene of Matt Davis and Jessica Lucas walking and talking through a crowd of student extras.
Matt Davis (The Vampire Diaries) stars as Jeff an investigative journalist searching for his brother whose disappearance may be linked to the fans of a horror TV series called Cult recreating what they’ve seen on the show. Jeff enlists the help of Jessica Lucas’s production assistant from the show-within-a-show. ”When the line between the imagined and reality is broken” is the meta tagline.
Below is a slumbering racoon high on the ledge outside the windows where a handful of real UBC students watched the filming.
Where Has CULT Been? Tying Up Rush-Hour Traffic in Langley With A Stop-and-Stare Scene for 1×03
At 4 p.m. today, I saw a @News1130Radio Traffic Tweet: “Everyone slowing down @232nd to look at the movie trailers @ on side of the road: Backing up past @264th”. Not long after, someone in the neighbourhood informed me this was The CW’s midseason series Cult doing a stunt with a car facing off against a train on the tracks. Oh how I wanted to go see it for myself but ask the daily commuters how much fun it is to get from Vancouver to Langley in rush hour. On a Friday.
Cult started filming as a series two weeks ago in Vancouver but hasn’t been spotted on location in that time, as far as I know. Then today, hundreds if not thousands of drivers got a good, long look even though most didn’t know what they seeing, besides white trucks lining the road. This car versus train scene sounds like one of the reenactments by the rabid fans of the horror TV series who take their favourite show too literally. The tagline is: When the line between the imagined and reality is broken. “You have no idea how many followers are out there,” says Robert Knepper’s creepy cult leader in the show within the show in the extended promo of Cult.
Matt Davis of The Vampire Diaries (a CW example of a cult horror TV show with its own fanatical followers) stars as Jeff an investigative journalist searching for his brother whose disappearance may be linked to the fans of Cult recreating what they’ve seen on the show. Jeff enlists the help of Jessica Lucas’s production assistant.
I did see Matt Davis filming the pilot for the series last March downtown in Victory Square. And later, at a window seat in Gastown’s Alibi Room talking to someone who tells him Cult is “not just a TV show. It goes beyond that. Way beyond that.” The meta-ness of this show within a show with followers re-enacting the horrors of the show within the show is beyond me until I see it. All I know is that the many @ErnestORiley fans are hoping that I’ll see him filming again soon.
YVRSHOOTS Series: Vancouver Productions Working the Comic-Con Craziness
Published July 9th, 2012 on Vancouver is Awesome
How’s this for Comic-Con craziness? Comic-Con tweeted Twilight fans today asking them not to start lining up outside the San Diego Convention Center three days before the convention starts on Thursday like they did last year. The anual geekfest doesn’t want them to erect another Camp Twilight tent city either. Any Twihard or TwiMom who tries to line up earlier than tomorrow or brings more than a chair and a sleeping bag with them, risks not being among the six thousand-plus lucky enough to get into the final vampires & werewolves panel at lunchtime on Thursday. If asked to leave, they’ll miss seeing exclusive footage from the mainly Vancouver-shot The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn 2 and celebrity trio Kristin Stewart, Robert Pattison and Taylor Lautner in person. Organizers have scheduled the final Twilight movie as the first official panel in marquee Hall H so that Twilight teens and their Moms can’t ruin Comic-Con like they have in the past.
[Update: A Twilight fan who'd been camping outside the San Diego Convention Center since Sunday was struck and killed by an SUV on Tuesday morning while rushing to cross the street to get back to the lineup which Comic-Con organizers were moving. Fellow fans are trying to organize a moment of silence in her honour during the Breaking Dawn 2 panel.]
Once the Twihards have gone home, Comic-Con is free to fly its geek flag until Sunday night, epitomized by what could be 2012′s hottest panel — the 10th Anniversary reunion of the cast (and creator) of space western Firefly, featuring Canada’s own browncoat Nathan “Captain Tightpants” Fillion. Is cult TV once again dominating big budget movies at Comic-Con with Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead and The Big Bang Theory panels all in high demand too?
Maybe, maybe not. Iron Man 3 is a hot ticket, as are the Warner Bros./Legendary Pictures and Sony Pictures panels in Hall H. Who doesn’t want to see footage from The Hobbit, which just wrapped filming in New Zealand? Or get a first look at two other mainly Vancouver-shot movies: the upcoming Superman reboot Man of Steel starring Henry Cavill (seen below filming a shirtless green screen rescue scene in North Vancouver) as part of the Warner Bros. panel on Saturday afternoon and mysterious space station movie Elysium starring Matt Damon (link to first official photo) and Jody Foster as part of the Sony panel on Friday afternoon. Vancouver director Neill Blomkamp will be on hand with his stars to answer questions about the followup to his Oscar-nominated first feature District 9. It turns out Elysium is the name of a vast space station constructed by a company called Armadyne where the very rich live in the year 2159 (want-ads for Armadyne popped up at last year’s Comic-Con, the start of a viral campaign for the movie). The rest of us –- the 99% if you will — live on the over-populated, ruined planet Earth below. A bald, buff Damon is Max, who goes up against Foster as hard-line government official Minister Delacourt [corrected], who will stop at nothing to enforce anti-immigration laws and preserve the grandious lifestyle of the citizens of Elysium in space (the mansion set below on Kent Hangar field could be on the space station).
Vancouver-filmed FRINGE, SUPERNATURAL, ARROW & CULT at Comic-Con 2012 – Updated
FOX’s Fringe has been upgraded to marquee Hall H for its final appearance at the annual San Diego geekfest Comic-Con next month. Expected to be on hand for its Sunday, July 15th panel will be the Fringe family: main trio Anna Torv, Joshua Jackson and John Noble, as well as Lance Reddick, Jasika Nicole, Blair Brown, and showrunner Joel Wyman, and hopefully a 2036 Observer or two (Seth Gabel will be missed I’m sure). Here’s a link to Fringe’s Final Comic-Con Panel poster. Can you spot the 2036 Observers?
Fringe panel & screening: 10:00 to 11:00 a.m., July 15th, in Hall H
The CW’s Supernatural is also slotted for Hall H that Sunday so if you’re going you might as well start lining up now and plan to spend the whole day there. Joining the Winchester Brothers — Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles — on the SPN panel will be Misha Collins (Castiel), Jim Beaver (whose character Bobby might be really gone this time, making this panel a chance to say goodbye) and Mark A. Sheppard (Crowley). Departed showrunner Sera Gamble will not be there of course, making way for new executive producer Jeremy Carver and writer-producer Ben Edlund.
Supernatural panel & screening: 11:15 p.m to 12:15 p.m. in Hall H on July 15th
Supernatural’s new Wednesday night CW lead -in Arrow will screen its kick-ass pilot twice at Comic-Con. Once in the opening night Warner Bros. TV screenings on Wednesday, July 11th, and then again on Friday the 13th at the Arrow panel with Green Arrow Stephen Amell no doubt wearing something green for the fans
Arrow panel & screening: 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. on July 13th in Ballroom 20 (a big venue for a series that hasn’t launched yet)
Mid-season CW show Cult is also slated for an opening night screening and a Friday the 13th panel, with stars Matt Davis, Jessica Lucas, Alona Tal and Robert Knepper expected to attend.
Cult panel & screening: 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on July 13th in Room 6BCF
There is no word yet on non-Warner Bros. TV panels for Vancouver-shot shows like Psych and last season’s big hit Once Upon a Time or for upcoming Vancouver-shot feature films like Man of Steel or Elysium. I’m also hoping Vancouver-as-Vancouver shows Continuum and Primeval: New World will have a presence in San Diego even though they aren’t broadcast in the U.S. yet.
UPDATE: Fringe co-showrunner Jeff Pinker has left the show and won’t be involved in the fifth and final season, so he’s not expected to be on the Fringe panel at Comic-Con.
Four Vancouver-Shot American TV Pilots to Series – ARROW, CULT, EMILY OWENS M.D. & RED WIDOW – Updated
American TV networks gave series orders to four of the eight pilots filmed this March in Vancouver, starting with The CW’s Arrow, Cult and Emily Owens M.D. (formerly First Cut) and then ABC’s Red Widow (formerly Penoza) in a flurry of announcements this afternoon ahead of next week’s New York upfronts — where networks unveil their fall schedules to advertisers.
If anything can be called a sure thing, The CW pilot Arrow was it. Based on DC Comics The Green Arrow, it stars Stephen Amell in a more Jason Bourne-like and less Smallville-ish production. Like The Dark Knight trilogy’s re-imagined Batman, Arrow’s vigilante superhero fights crime with martial arts and technology plus the special skill of archery. TV sites have been counting down to the Arrow’s expected pickup to series.
Also getting solid buzz but not quite a sure thing was The CW’s meta-pilot Cult starring Matt Davis of The Vampire Diaries as a blogger named Jeff investigating the rabid fans of a cult horror TV show, who have taken the series too literally. It will be a shorter, 13-episode series, leaving room for Davis to return to Mystic Falls if they can figure out how to resurrect him – again.
YVRSHOOTS Series – ARROW and Seven Other TV Pilots Await Their Fate
In mid-May, the five American broadcast networks start to unveil their fall plans in New York and we will know if Arrow, Midnight Sun and six other TV pilots we saw filming in the Vancouver area before the Easter weekend will make it to series for next season. Add one more pilot to film later this year for a total of nine and Vancouver ranks second in production of drama pilots, behind New York’s eleven and ahead of Los Angeles’s eight. Why is our city so popular for American dramas? (SEE UPDATE BELOW)
Well, Vancouver is beautiful, can look like anywhere-U.S.A., has great crews who are cheaper than U.S. ones and shares the same time zone as L.A., where the showrunners and their bosses live. Not to mention that one of the five pilots shot here last year became a surprise big hit — modern fairy tale series Once Upon a Time. Still, nothing is guaranteed with 41 drama series pilots vying for a limited number of primetime slots.
Of the five The CW drama pilots in town last month, two are considered hot prospects: pilot Arrow (based on DC Comics The Green Arrow) and The-Hunger Games-Meets-The-Bachelor pilot The Selection. By all accounts, Stephen Amell is the Green Arrow in this more Jason Bourne-like and less Smallville-ish production based on the old Smallville lot near the Skytrain. Like The Dark Knight’s re-imagined Batman, Arrow’s vigilante superhero fights crime with martial arts and technology plus the special skill of archery.
I saw Stephen Amell in Gastown in late March in character as his secret identity Oliver Queen with Katie Cassidy as his former love Dinah “Laurel” Lance. And in mid-March, I spied Amell in the downtown eastside during a west coast windstorm with Colin Donnell as his best friend and trustafarian Tommy Merlyn, who drives one-heck-of-a-ride, the Mercedes 2012 SLS AMG (two wings and a cockpit).
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