Global
Frequencywas a television project based on Warren Ellis'
popular graphic novel franchise of the same name. A pilot episode
was produced and completed and the show was scheduled to premiere
in the Spring of 2005 on the WB television network. The series
was executive produced and had a pilot written by John Rogers
(The Core, Catwoman, Transformers), with many other high-profile
names attached on the production staff, including Mark Burnett
(Survivor), Diego Gutierrez (Buffy the Vampire
Slayer), Ben Edlund (Angel, The Tick), and
David Slack (Teen Titans). Nelson McCormick
(Alias) directed the series pilot.
The
pilot starred Michelle Forbes (Star Trek: The Next
Generation, 24) in the part she was born to play, the enigmatic
Miranda Zero. Also on the Frequency were Aimee Garcia
(All About The Andersons) as Aleph, Josh Hopkins
(Ally McBeal, Pepper Dennis) as Sean Flynn, and Jenni
Baird (All Saints) as Dr. Katrina Finch.
A
change in network management altered the plans for Global
Frequency. While a 13-episode midseason order seemed to
be a lock, and a WB logline for the show was released, it seemed
in late 2004 that Global Frequency would never be seen
and there would be no more filming beyond the initial pilot
episode.
In
June 2005, a digital copy of the Global
Frequency
pilot episode made its way onto the Internet. No, we can't tell
you where; we don't condone illegal downloading around here,
even though we do promise that if you see it, you'll probably
like it. The pilot leak achieved international attention and
as of this writing, there is still hope that there is a future
for Global Frequency on television....
PLEASE
DO NOT TAKE GRAPHICS, NEWS, SPOILERS, ETC. FROM FREQUENCYSITE
WITHOUT FIRST ASKING
PERMISSION AND PLACING A LINK TO FREQUENCYSITE.COM.
OR, JUST SEND PEOPLE OVER TO THIS SITE! THANKS!
NEWS
POSTED AUGUST 25, 2005
John
Rogers On Attack Of The Show Global
Frequency TV showrunner John Rogers will be appearing
live on G4TV's Attack of the Show at 7PMET/4PMET on Thursday,
August 25. That's tonight!!
He
will be on the show to discuss - you guessed it! - the leaked
Global Frequency pilot, among other things.
Fans,
It's Time: You Are On The Global Frequency A
lot of the folks who are reading this website have somehow managed
to see the Global Frequency TV pilot, or they want to know
what they can do to improve the chances of ever seeing a DVD release
for the pilot at the very least.
It's
time to take some action. Nothing too difficult.
Right
now it seems the best plan would be to mobilize the troops and
let the major media outlets know about Global Frequency,
about the fandom for a project that wasn't even intended to air,
and about the international media coverage this project has spawned.
We hear the feature in Metro and
the Wired
article were invaluable for creating awareness in this project.
Let's have some more!
Here
are some options:
E-mail
Entertainment Weekly - ew_letters@ew.com.
EW is a Time-Warner company, and it's also one of the most highly-read
entertainment mags out there. This is really our first recommendation.
Beyond that, we can go from there.
E-mail
the tech reporter of your local daily paper, or a gaming/tech
magazine, and tell them the story of a TV show with a fan base
that at this point only exists on P2P.
Drop
by your favorite forums and spread the word! The more buzz,
the better!
Send
these folks to Frequencysite. Or to producer John
Rogers' blog which has had a lot of coverage of the pilot's
appeal. Spread the word about the fan efforts.
Face
it, success in this venture would be something that would make
even Miranda Zero proud. And you ALL know you'd love to see that
pilot all nice and clear on a shiny DVD laced with extras, right?
Surely many others who HAVEN'T seen the pilot yet would also love
what they see.
So
get to it. You are on the Global Frequency. And as soon as we
have some more specific news and e-mail addresses to write to,
you can find them right here, so check often.
Image
accompanying this article is from Warren Ellis' blog, original
creator unknown, but if anyone has a problem with it being posted
or requests credit, please send
an e-mail.
NEWS
POSTED JULY 6, 2005
Global
Frequency In The UK's Metro Tabloid The
Global Frequency TV project made international news last
week as it was featured in a large article in the UK's Metro
tabloid.
Special
thanks to BlackBeltJones
@ Flickr for letting us post the scan, and to Nick Ludlum
who originally made the scan in the first place.
NEWS
POSTED JULY 5, 2005
FrequencySite
2.0 To
tie in with the recent resurgence in popularity of the Global
Frequency TV project, FrequencySite has undergone a facelift.
Special thanks to Blair Marnell at SilverBulletComicBooks.com's
All The Rage for some of the screen captures. (Blair's weekly
column is fantastic, and at the link above, has a feature about,
you guessed it, Global Frequency)
Feel
free to post your thoughts on Global Frequency the show,
or about the website's new look, on the
GF forum at KryptonSite.
New
John Rogers Interview Online Global
Frequency TV showrunner John Rogers spoke with SilverBulletComics.com
in a new interview about his past and present projects, from the
Catwoman movie all the way to Transformers, and,
of course, Global Frequency. Here's a sample excerpt from
the interview
:The
whole point of the first two years is and youll notice
Sean saying this at the end of the episode: I dont
trust you. And for the first season, she gives him no reason
to. She does unpleasant thing after unpleasant thing, and the
arc of the second season was a very specific Should we even
be trusting her? Cause shes an awful human being.
The
Frequency Gets Wired Wired
today posted a feature about the leaking of the Global Frequency
pilot. The article linked to Frequencysite, which has given this
website the most daily hits in the site's history.
"Whether
the pilot was picked up or not, it is still the property of Warner
Bros. Entertainment and we take the protection of all of our intellectual
property seriously," Craig Hoffman, a company spokesman,
told Wired. "While Warner Bros. Entertainment values
feedback from consumers, copyright infringement is not a productive
way to try to influence a corporate decision."
Frequency
Future? The
recent leak of the Global Frequency TV pilot has gotten
people talking. A LOT of people are talking. For the first time,
possibly, ever, the fans are wanting a regular series out of a
pilot that was never publicly screened in the first place.
"I
assure all of you, I will call all the cast members over the next
few days and convey to them your wonderful reactions, the genuine
enthusiasm their performances created. (I think Josh and Jenni
would like to know that a night under the rain machine wasn't
a total waste)," producer John Rogers said today in his
online blog. "I'll also call Nelson McCormick, the director
and let him know that on several counts he was right and I was
wrong, and I owe him a beer. They made the show, you like the
show. We executive types need to get the hell out of the middle
of that relationship."
To
read more about what Rogers had to say, as well as what the show's
future chances may be, click
here. The future is slim, but who knows?
Producer
John Rogers Breaks Frequency Silence Global
Frequency executive producer John Rogers finally wrote about
what might have been in his Kung
Fu Monkey weblog. A number of recent posts, all since the
release of the torrent, give a little bit of insight as to what
might have been.
In
a post
dated on Saturday night, Rogers reveals the following tidbits
for those who had seen the torrent: "Somebody who saw the
torrent e-mailed me and asked if we would've abandoned the 'multiple
guest star' structure from the comic for the show. No. In order
to have some semblance of continuity for network audiences, I
needed some viewpoint characters -- but it couldn't be Miranda,
because you never knew what was going on in her head. As a matter
of fact, part of the entire five-season arc was that you were
never sure what Miranda was up to.
"The
only person who knew what the entire five season arc was was,
actually, Michelle. She knew what Miranda's full plan was. And
if you've got the torrent, watch her face in the final scene.
When Flynn and Dr. Finch hook up, to start the five year journey.
That is not a happy face..."
Rogers
also hinted that one of the characters in the pilot would not
survive that first 13 episodes. Click
here for that post.
At
the blog, John Rogers also posted some behind the scenes photos,
including the groovy shot of Miranda Zero (Michelle Forbes) that
accompanies this article. If you get a chance, check
out the blog and you'll see what a labor of love this pilot
was for many people who worked on it.
NEWS
POSTED JUNE 10, 2005
Global
Frequency Pilot Leaked Online We
don't normally condone illegal file-sharing of television programs
online, although since at this time there's probably no other
way to see it... It seems that the pilot episode for the Global
Frequency TV series has finally made its way to the Internet.
Because
this news is becoming pretty high-profile, and we'd prefer not
to have any kind of lawsuit from Warner Bros., we're going to
leave it at that. We don't encourage the downloading of illegal
files or anything of that nature here at Frequencysite... but
we do hope that the word can be spread so the pilot can be seen
by a wider audience. Hey, TPTB: How about a DVD release, or a
one-time airing? The fans will thank you...
NEWS
POSTED FEBRUARY 10, 2005
A
Surprise Treat: An Offical Global Frequency Cast Shot At
the rate things are going, the Global Frequency TV pilot
may never end up being seen by the general public. We've heard
nothing as far as shopping the series around elsewhere, or if
the completed episode will show up any place.
However...
we did come across an official cast shot from The Series That
Didn't Happen...
So
without further ado, in-costume photos of Josh Hopkins (Sean),
Jenni Baird (Dr. Finch), Aimee Garcia (Aleph) and Michelle Forbes
(Miranda Zero).
Amazing
Stories Takes A Look At Global Frequency Issue
#607 of the newly-relaunched Amazing
Stories has a four-page feature about the Global Frequency
TV project. Unfortunately this article seems to have been done
before the WB passed on the pilot, but hey, we can still hope
to see the show sometime. For the article, they've interviewed
Warren Ellis for some comments. Among the highlights:
On
Michelle Forbes as Miranda Zero, creator Warren Ellis says "I
love Michelle. She's so smart it's scary. I saw some playback
of her in a fight scene, and she was fantastic."
"If
James Bond met Miranda he'd wet himself," Ellis said. "She
is truly terrifying, but with a human side Fleming rarely alluded
to with Bond. She never settled into being just a super-secret
agent. She sees what's going wrong. She also sees how to fix
it. She decided she isn't going to sit in bars, but get off
her arse and do something about it."
"Jenni
Baird is the next Gillian Anderson," Ellis said. "Kartina
Finch is the Scully of the group. She's every boy's new TV crush.
She's got the smart thing going."
About
executive producer John Rogers: "If it wasn't for John
Rogers, frankly, we'd be screwed. What I love about John is
he won't call a spade a spade; he'll call it a lovely big stick
with a huge piece of metal at the end of it. So when someone
says something stupid about the show, he turns around and shouts
at them that they are stupid and their idea isn't going to work,
and then explains why it wouldn't work. There's no bull about
him whatsoever."
And
Ellis also had praise for director Nelson McCormick. "We
are also lucky that the director is incredible," Ellis
said. "He's got this fantastic sensibility and knows how
to do great art photography yet ground it with a war photographer's
professionalism. It's amazingly well shot."
The
article also talks about some other script and story ideas that
may be seen or may have been seen had Global Frequency gone
to series. Since the project is not yet considered "dead,"
maybe we'll see this stuff someday.
Babylon
5's Straczynski Talks Global Frequency TV Popular
creator of the Babylon 5 television series and writer to
many comics primarily for Marvel, J. Michael Straczynski,
could have ended up involved with Global Frequency had
it gone to series. On the rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated newsgroup,
JMS had this to reveal:
"Since
it's no longer an issue, because the show was not picked up,
the series I'd mentioned that had come to me to talk about coming
aboard as an EP was Warren Ellis' Global Frequency. I'd met
with the people involved, been approved by the network, went
by to meet Warren during filming in Vancouver, who seemed like
a very nice sort, and was waiting for the next round of serious
conversations...but the show has not been picked up by WB. I
know they're shopping it elsewhere, so we'll see, but for now,
at least, that's that. (I have to say, by the way, that the
pilot script is probably the smartest script I've ever read.
It could really be one hell of a series.)"
No
new updates are available yet about how the "shopping around"
is going.
NEWS
POSTED NOVEMBER 4, 2004
It's
Official: The WB Passes On Global Frequency We
have now received official confirmation that the WB has passed
on the Global Frequency TV pilot. Here is what FrequencySite
received from executive producer John Rogers to confirm
the news:
You
can make it official. The WB has passed on the pilot. However,
they've also been real gentlemen and released it back to the
studio to be taken elsewhere. Many networks hold onto pilots
out of spite, fearing that if it succeeds elsewhere, they'll
look bad. Luckily the WB folk value the product over politics.
On
a personal note, everyone -- my fellow producer Mark Burnett,
the director Nelson McCormick, the actors, the DP and his cameramen,
the production design down to the ridiculously hyper-efficient
PAs -- worked their asses off and BELIEVED in the project. As
executive producer I owe -- no, I have a deep responsibility
it to those people, to Warren's talent, and to the book's enormous
fanbase to run this bastard out down every road I can, to get
this show on the air.
And,
frankly, it would be selfish of me to keep to myself the little
chill I get when I hear Michelle say the line "My name
is Miranda Zero... and you are on the Global Frequency."
We're scheduling meetings now between various studio humans
to decide where to take the show from here. Fortunately for
us the television landscape has changed. Midseason and summer
launches, 13 episode runs, genre shows are now no longer longshots
but viable strategies. DC Comics stands enthusiastically behind
both the comic and the show, especially now that they've seen
the pilot.
I
only ask that when we come back to you and ask you to show the
TV humans that there IS an audience for a smart, hip genre show,
you answer the call. We'll keep everyone updated.
And a note from the FrequencySite webmaster Craig: Those of you
who would still like to see Global Frequency on television who
would like to get the word out are all invited to the GF
forum at KryptonSite to discuss ideas!
NEWS
POSTED SEPTEMBER 9, 2004
Frequency
Silence... No
new news to report on the Global Frequency TV project,
as all sources and folks involved are being very quiet, likely
editing together the pilot.
We'll
let you know if and when we hear anything!
NEWS
POSTED JULY 20, 2004
KryptonSite's
Global Frequency Forum For
those of you who would like to discuss the Global Frequency
TV project... KryptonSite's
Global Frequency forum section is now open! Feel free
to talk about what you'd like to see on the show, and anything
else!
OLDER
HEADLINES
Older
Headlines... Travel
further back into the development of the Global Frequency
TV project by reading some of our older
headlines! Includes original casting announcements.