'DEAD LIKE ME' Movie Trailer Online
MGM has resurrected the Showtime series Dead Like Me as a direct-to-DVD feature. Whet your appetite for the summer release.
My father can't say I never did anything for him, because it's unlikely I'd be posting this story if he weren't such a fan of the show. But, anyway...
Bloody-Disgusting has posted the first trailer for Dead Like Me, the DTV feature-length follow-up to the cult favorite Showtime dramedy about the (after)lives of grim reapers.
Shot in Montreal, Canada, the film was directed by Steven Herek (The Mighty Ducks) from a screenplay by series writer-producer John Masius, and it stars most of the original cast.
Check out the trailer at BDTV.
Created by Bryan Fuller (Heroes), the series centered on Georgia "George" Lass (Ellen Muth), a young woman killed by a toilet seat from outer space and forced to work as a grim reaper alongside a group of eccentric characters, including Roxy (Jasmine Guy), Mason (Callum Blue) and Daisy (Laura Harris). They would receive their assignments on Post-it notes from Rube (Mandy Patinkin) and go out to reap the souls of the ill-fated.
Dead Like Me earned good ratings for Showtime over its two seasons, and it developed a loyal following. But the series was abruptly canceled by new network president Robert Greenblatt in December '04. Showtime told Variety's JOHN DEMPSEY that the ratings didn't warrant a third season, despite having boasted of impressively high ratings just weeks before burying the show.
When MARY MCNAMARA from Multichannel.com mentioned this during the January '05 TCA press tour, Showtime CEO Matthew Blank said that critical buzz was more important than ratings anyway. To a critic's assertion that Dead Like Me had gotten "decent reviews," Greenblatt replied that it hadn't gotten universally great reviews.
Then, in late '06, Charlie Cohen became MGM's Senior Executive VP-Finance and Corporate Development. He oversees the studio's Home Entertainment Productions division...and he's a big fan of Dead Like Me.
According to DeadLikeMe.com, the movie trailer has been on the 'Net since December 8th, with mixed fan response.
But Moviehole's CLINT MORRIS likes it. "It looks good. It looks fun. But it also looks like it may disappoint a few fans of the series--if only because both Laura Harris and Mandy Patinkin are nowhere to be seen."
"It's no secret that Mandy has his own show now [Criminal Minds] so he can't be involved in two at once," Muth posted on her MySpace page in July '07. "It's still the same story line [with] just a few new changes."
Harris (who now stars on ABC's Women's Murder Club) has been replaced as Daisy Adair by Sarah Wynter (The Dead Zone, left), which is appropriate, since Harris and Wynter played sisters on 24. Patinkin's character, Rube Sofer, has NOT been recast, but rather succeeded by a new character.
In the movie, set two years after the series, slick businessman Cameron Kane (Henry Ian Cusick of Lost, right) assumed Rube's duties as Head Undead, and his apathy toward the job puts him at odds with Daisy, Roxy and Mason. Meanwhile, George is trying to fix the botched reap of Hudson Hart (Jordan Hudyma), the secret boyfriend of George's younger sister, Reggie (Britt McKillit). George narrates the movie, as she did the series.
At the SciFi Channel/Entertainment Weekly Comic-Con party in August '07, Cohen said that, if all goes well, there could be more Dead Like Me movies or even another series. "If it's a series of movies that's fine. If someone saw it and thinks it makes sense to bring it back as an episodic series, we're open to anything."
Even if the show is revived, it probably won't be on Showtime, said Muth, and it's all dependent on the success of this movie.
Therefore, wrote THELINSTER at AfterEllen, "All in favor, buy the DVD."
It hits shelves this summer.
[Thanks to ROBIN BROWNFIELD at SyFy Portal and to ISABELLE CARREAU at TV Squad. To read Mary McNamara's full, amusing story on the show's cancellation, Click Here.]