Hemecker Re-Ups For Witchblade
Writer-director Ralph Hemecker has signed up for a second season as executive producer of TNT's Witchblade series, Variety reported. The Warner Brothers Television series was given the green light for a second year in late summer, the trade paper reported. Production recommences in Toronto in January.
New episodes of Witchblade, which is based on the Top Cow comic series of the same name, will debut in spring or summer 2002, Variety reported. The first 10 episodes of the show, which stars Yancy Butler as New York cop Sara Pezzini, averaged a 2.3 rating Tuesdays at 9 p.m.--a 64 percent bump over the movies that were running in the time period a year ago, the trade paper reported.
Hemecker's other TV directing credits include episodes of The X-Files, Millennium and Roar.
Witchblade Is A Maxi Mini
TNT has called Witchblade a mini-series but actors in the show told The Continuum they are optimistic it will go beyond the 11-episode order.
"That's up to the viewers. Hopefully, our numbers will be that good," Yancy Butler, who stars as Sara Pezzini, told The Continuum. "I hope it will be picked up. I plan on it."
Ratings for Witchblade, buoyed by a rebroadcast of the pilot movie on The WB, have been good so far.
"Let's be practical. If it gets the ratings, they're not going to end it,"Anthony Cistaro, who plays Kenneth Irons, told The Continuum. "The reason they're calling it a mini-series is they want everybody to know that there is a definite beginning, middle and end. You're watching an 11-hour movie. You've got that two-hour pilot and 11 hours of new material, 13 hours all together. It stands from beginning to middle to end.
My guess, though, is that the writers are always so expansive that by the time the last episode is done is that there will still be more questions. There are a few open strings I see now, and I don't know how they're going to wrap them up. There's plenty of places for this to go."
If this show gets even a reasonable amount of numbers that the pilot got, it's definitely coming back, in my opinion. David Chokachi, who plays Jake, agreed with Cistaro about the show's potential.
"I think once people see this - I don't want to jinx it - but I think people are going to be jacked up on this show," Chokachi told The Continuum. "I think all the elements that we have in place right now are pretty much the top end -- the crew, actors, writers, directors. I would think they will be willing to give us another 11 to see what happens with it. There's just nothing like it on television."