tim minear

The Whedonverse is an incestuous place. While Drive is not technically a Whedon show, Tim Minear was brought into the fold long ago and is part of the family. And it is showing as they continue to retool the cast of his latest creation. Amy Acker, formerly Fred on Angel, is the latest addition. She'll be playing the missing wife of Nathan Fillion's (Firefly, Buffy) character, Alex Tully.

There is finally an official start date for the show as well. Drive will premiere on Sunday April 15th before settling in to Mondays at 8 on April 16th. Leading in to 24 is about as good a slot as they could have asked for, and taking over for Prison Break seems to make a lot of sense. Viewership for the two shows should be similar, so hopefully most of those folks will stick around to see what Minear has cooked up.

[ via whedonesque ]

Fox has finally set an actual date for the premiere of Drive, but it's probably not what the cast and crew were hoping for. Beginning March 1st, Drive will take over the Thursday at 9 slot that has been home to The O.C. this season. I suppose it's better than the Friday slot Minear's Wonderfalls got, but not by much.

If you're a glass half full type, the good news is that expectations for that slot are low. The O.C. has struggled to reach even 4 million viewers this season. Drive should be able to best that pretty easily. On the other hand, if you're a glass half empty person, it is also the toughest time slot of the week. Not only will they be going up against the number 1 and 2 shows on TV in Grey's Anatomy and C.S.I, but they also face Supernatural, which I think has some crossover with viewers who would watch Drive.

There's more casting news on Fox's mid-season drama Drive from executive producers Tim Minear, Ben Queen and Greg Yaitanes. Just as Nathan Fillion replaced the pilot's lead Ivan Sergei, actors Kevin Alejandro and Mircea Monroe have been brought into take over the roles of Winston Salazar and Ellie Laird, both participants in the underground cross-country race at the center of the show. Laird's credits are fewer and further between, but you'll recognize Alejandro from his recent appearances on Sleeper Cell and Ugly Betty as Justin's father Santos.

Most television shows get a casting shake-up between the filming of the original pilot and, should the show get picked up, its eventual run. It happens for all kinds of reasons - networks don't like a certain actor in a role, scheduling conflicts, etc. In the case of Drive, characters are reportedly being taken in a "different direction."

Sorry, folks. Small, fan-girl breakdown approaching. Oh, hell yes! Nathan Fillion (aka Capt. Mal Reynolds) has been reunited with Firefly scribe Tim Minear to star in Fox's mid-season replacement Drive. Fillion will play Alex Tully, a "charming, rogue landscaper" who is coerced into joining a cross-country race in order to search for his abducted wife. (Alright, if that character description came from anyone other than Minear, I might be more skeptical.) In the original version of the pilot, the role was played by Ivan Sergei.

While he had initially been approached for the role, Fillion had to turn it down due to a scheduling conflict. After the pilot was shot, but before Fox had picked up the show, he was approached for a second time by executive producer Minear. This time he was able to accept, and the Whedonverse rejoiced. Drive debuts in March.

Wow - an invitation to list all of my TV-related wishes for the coming year. This is just like sitting on Santa's lap except without the horrible awkwardness and guilt. When I was a kid, I felt like I had to ask for world peace instead of a bike. That's what happens when you grow up Catholic. It was selfish to have "wants" and worse to state them aloud.

This would explain why it was such an unprecedented joy for me to spend time reveling in the frivolity of my own TV desires this holiday season. I have been given a momentary, guilt-free license to indulge. And, I pass that license on to you. Feel free to offer up your own television wishes in the comments section. I couldn't recommend it to the recovering Catholic portion of our readership more.

Tim Minear has had a rough go of it with his post Whedonverse career. Wonderfalls and The Inside were both shut down early in the going, which is a shame because Wonderfalls was a fantastic show. I don't have a lot of hope for his current gig as Consulting Producer for Standoff either. The show just doesn't seem to be able to find an audience. But you know what they say... try try again.

USA Today's Coming Attractions has a little blurb about Minear's latest project, Drive, that says it is coming in March. They refer to it as "Amazing Race meets 24." Minear adds, "There's a giant purse of money at the end, but they don't know where the end is." Other than that, most things about the show remain up in the air. Early reports had Nick Lea (X-Files, Whistler) and Ivan Sergei (Hawaii, Jack & Jill) starring in the show. However, a recent post on nicklea.com reveals that many of the roles are being recast, including Lea's and Sergei's. Even with all the confusion, it's still a Minear show. That makes it worth watching.

Because the man didn't have enough to do with a sci-fi and legal drama in development, the hardest working man in showbiz will be producing The Wedding Store, an hour-long dramedy for Fox set to premiere mid-season. Along with Tim Minear's Drive, the two series represent Fox's big Spring offerings.

The show has a strange, but not unfamiliar history, to Hollywood watchers. The series is based on a similarly-themed 2004 pilot project that Kelley and co-producer Jason Katims, now the showrunner for Friday Night Lights, developed for ABC called DeMarco Affairs and a Fox project that was in the process of being redeveloped. That project was entitled The Wedding Album. The amalgamation we'll be seeing on TV this Spring is described by Kelley as "a romantic comedy about a group of wedding planners dedicated to having their clients live happily ever after, or at least until they get to the parking lot."

The wedding industry has never been more ripe for satire than now. Let's hope the great premise ends in great results.

Here's a bit of good news. Fox has ordered 12 episodes of Tim Minear's new show, Drive. That's a little surprising because it looked like the show was dead up until the announcement. In September, the network made Minear a Consulting Producer on Standoff, which implied that there wouldn't be any need for him to be off making his new show. Now they are saying that Minear will remain with Standoff until they finish their 13 episode production order, which doesn't really bode well for that show.

Drive tells the story of an underground race across America and stars Alan Ruck (Spin City), Kristin Lehman (Tilt), and Melanie Lynskey (Two and a Half Men). That's a pretty good start to a cast, but really, if it is made by Minear, it could star the finger puppet troupe from Mrs. Jablonski's first grade class and I would still watch it. The show is set to launch in the spring, hopefully not on Friday night at 9.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a big Tim Minear fan. Actually, I never missed an airing of Angel, Firefly, Wonderfalls, or The Inside. He served as a producer on all of those, along with writing his fair share of episodes. Heck, I even remember watching some episodes of High Tide back in the day when Minear was just getting started as a writer. Still, news that Minear is being brought on as Consulting Producer for Standoff just boggles me.

Now, I think that Firefly and Wonderfalls were brilliant, and The Inside was solid. But that just means that 'I' think someone should give Tim another show. The part I don't get is that from the Fox perspective, these shows were all failures. They managed to last 11, 4, and 7 episodes. Three series, 22 episodes. What does a guy have to do to be shown the door?

The new FOX hostage negotiation drama Standoff has stopped production for a week, but not because the show is being shelved. It's actually a "writer's break," so they can get caught up (since they start the new season before the other networks) and new consulting producer Tim Minear comes on board to help out.

So, those of you who had Standoff in our contest can stop jumping up and down now and go back to watching television.