Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Hogfather is coming, as well as Colour of Magic

Its getting to that time of year when the Hogfather shows up to hand out toys to all the good boys and girls. At least in Terry Pratchett's Discworld. The TV miniseries adaptation of Hogfather will be broadcast in the U.S. for the first time on Sunday night, November 25th on ION TV at 7 pm ET/6 pm CT as part of the RHI Movie Weekend. ION Television (formerly the PAX Network) airs on many local stations and is also available on cable and satellite TV. To find out where the network is in your local area, go to the ION TV website and click on "Find us by Zip Code" in the upper right corner of the screen.

The full press release about the airing can be found here. Youtube has the trailer for the premiere The RHI Films Hogfather page has some information an pictures for the US broadcast. The Sky One TV page for the UK broadcast of Hogfather last year has a lot of good behind the scenes information. Sadly, at this time the video portions cannot be viewed by U.S. viewers. If you can't wait for the TV broadcast, a Borders Exclusive DVD release will hit Borders stores on Tuesday, November 13th. The DVD will contain the miniseries and an interview with Terry Pratchett. It apparently will not include the additional material that is on the U.K. DVD which includes several Making of Hogfather segments as well as The Twelve Days of Hogswatch that were made availabe on the Sky One web site. The general release of the DVD to the rest of the U.S. is planned for March and will likely be a 2 DVD set with the extra material.

The Hogfather miniseries is just the beginning, though. Currently in production is a miniseries based on the first two Discworld novels, The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic. It stars David Jason as Rincewind, Sean Astin as Twoflower, and Tim Curry as Trymon. Sky One has an official production site for The Colour of Magic. It is expected to air in the UK around Easter and likely will air in the US later in 2008.
Yes, I will be chairing the first North American Discworld Convention coming up in September of 2009. Full details will be announced soon.
Lee

6 comments:

DL Morrese said...

I can't find the Hogfather DVD on the Border's website. Was the U.S. release delayed?

And why can't the U.S. versions of the DVDs be released at the same time as the U.K. versions?

Mr.SFTV said...

The Hogfather DVD is only available in the Borders stores, not via their website (which is essentially a portal to Amazon.com). You can look for it via the Bordersstores.com website and see if your local store has it.

http://www.bordersstores.com/search/title_detail.jsp?id=57467999&srchTerms=hogfather&mediaType=3&srchType=Keyword

As to why the lag time between the UK release and the US release, its pretty much up to the distributor in each country. The March release will likely have all the extra stuff that the UK release has.

Lee

DL Morrese said...

Thanks. I have spread that news and will check the local Borders stores again. Do you know anything about when the The Color of Magic movie will be available or shown in the U.S?

Mr.SFTV said...

According to the info released by RHI, Colour of Magic should air in the US sometime in 2008. It is supposed to air in the UK around Easter on Sky One.

Lee

Anonymous said...

Any update on the US broadcast date for Colour of Magic?

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