Paranormal Supernatural (The CW, 2005-)

[verdantheart]

From zap2it:

Familiar Faces Track The WB's 'Supernatural'
(Wednesday, February 16 10:57 AM)

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) The nice thing about being an attractive young actor on a WB drama is you know that the network will keep trying to find a way to make you a star. "Gilmore" guy Jared Padalecki and "Smallville" vet Jensen Ackles will topline the drama pilot "Supernatural," as the netlet tries to make them into the next Chad Michael Murray (and hopefully not the next Oliver Hudson).

The series, from McG's Wonderland Sound and Vision, is invariably described as "Route 66" meets "The X-Files." Ackles and Padalecki will play brothers who travel the country looking for supernatural forces.

Padalecki has been an on-again/off-again regular on "Gilmore Girls" as Dean. The "New York Minute" thespian led The WB's "Young MacGyver" pilot back in 2003. In addition to his current run as Jason Teague on "Smallville," Ackles is a familiar Face of The WB from a guest run on "Dawson's Creek," the teen soap that also proved a spawning ground for the careers of Murray and, to a much lesser degree, Hudson.
Ed Begley Jr. is less likely to appear on billboards, but the five-time Emmy nominee is also coming to The WB. The "St. Elsewhere" star, last spotted in a recurring role on FOX's "Arrested Development," has signed on for the Anne Heche comedy "True." The series, from Warner Bros. TV, stars Heche as a woman who moves back in with her parents after her boyfriend breaks up with her while she's in labor. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Begley will play Heche's father.

 

[freakforalias]

I haven't heard anything about this... when will it start airing?

 

[verdantheart]

It's pilot season, so no telling when--or if--it'll make it to air.

 

[aliasfanjay]

Much like Fearless - that sounded promising and it was scrapped! I hope this one makes it.

 

[verdantheart]

from Sci Fi Wire:

Supernatural Explores Urban Myth

Jared Padalecki, who co-stars with Jensen Ackles in the new WB series Supernatural, told SCI FI Wire that he was attracted to the mythology that will be explored each week on the show. "There's a lot of great literary value in the story and the mythology of it and the reluctant hero," Padalecki said in an interview at the Television Critics Association press tour in Beverly Hills, Calif. "There's just so much more that's so much deeper than just 'Now we must fight this beast or that demon.' So it was really intriguing."

Supernatural centers around two brothers, played by Padalecki (Gilmore Girls) and Ackles (Smallville), who travel around the country investigating, hunting and fighting mysterious phenomena. Their travels are driven by the search for their father, who is on a quest to find the reason behind their mother's bizarre death.

Padalecki said series creator and executive producer Eric Kripke encouraged the actors to do research into the stories that they will be exploring, but he had already come to the role with a certain knowledge of the subject matter. "My mom is actually a heroes, myths and legends teacher, so I knew a lot about archetypes and mythology and the classic stories," he said. "I had heard of the woman in white, which is what the pilot's about. I've heard of Bloody Mary and the hook man and the lady in the lake. I mean, hopefully that's stuff that we'll get to explore, but it's stuff that everybody knows."

Kripke said in a presentation on the new show that he's always wanted to do a series which explored popular myths and legends. "[It's] kind of an obsession of mine, and a show that I've really wanted to do for really the extent of my career, a show about American folklore and urban legends, and sort of the idea that every town has a really great, terrifying ghost story," he said. "And that's a show that I've wanted to do forever, and just through conversation and creative discussion with [co-producer] McG [and] with Warner Brothers, we landed on this idea to do it as a road show, that the purity of literally just driving in and out of a different horror movie every week, driving in and out of a different small town where something dark and evil is lurking in the shadows, seemed like a very pure and stripped-down and mythic way to tell this story." Supernatural airs in the fall Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

 

[Jaimie]

i'll definitely watch this. it looks good and it has eye candy

 

[Princess1011992]

eye candy yes! Jared and Jensen are just really hot. And the show sounds great too. Its about time those two talented dudes got their own show lol.

 

[sd6452]

Oooh. Jensen Ackles was on Dark Angel. :drool:

 

[Princess1011992]

I kno! Thats why next to Alias, Dark Angel was by far one of my favorite shows ever. I'm definitely gonna check out Supernatural, Jensen is a pretty good actor plus he's hot.

 

[verdantheart]

From USAToday:

'Supernatural' is an eerie natural for WB
By Bill Keveney, USA TODAY

•The show: Supernatural

•The premiere: Sept. 13, 9 p.m. ET/PT on WB

•The twist: It's a road picture with ghosts.

• The concept: In the producers' Hollywood-ese shorthand, Route 66 meets The X-Files and Star Wars at a truck stop. Two estranged brothers head out in their '67 Chevy Impala to search for their father, who trained them to hunt for supernatural phenomena — and the answer to their mother's haunting demise years earlier.

With Supernatural, WB is pinning its hope on scare tactics.

Horror has been hot on the big screen, with films such as The Ring, The Village and The Grudge all scoring more than $100 million at the box office. WB entertainment president David Janollari says that audience — more female than male — could flock to a horror series, giving it breakout potential.

The films "are scoring huge with the young moviegoing audience, particularly the young female audience. That's our audience," he says.

The series' otherworldliness is a reminder of earlier WB shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. And the twentysomething protagonists should be a familiar fit for longtime network fans: WB veterans Jared Padalecki of Gilmore Girls and Jensen Ackles of Smallville (and earlier, Dawson's Creek) play Sam and Dean Winchester.

Janollari sees the show as "a thrill ride — just scary and suspenseful and creepy and cool."

Its significance to WB is evident in a big promotional campaign that includes signs at gas stations, trick mirrors — which turn into ads for the show — in bars and clubs, and multimedia magazine inserts.

Supernatural comes in a season when eerie happenings are multiplying on the fall schedule. Other new fall shows, including ABC's Invasion and Night Stalker, CBS' Threshold and NBC's Surface, also traffic in mystery and monsters. But Supernatural executive producer Eric Kripke says most of those are science fiction, not horror.

Kripke (Boogeyman), joined as a producer by McG (Charlie's Angels) and Robert Singer (Midnight Caller), acknowledges the success of ABC's Lost in making it easier for these kinds of shows to get on the air. They reflect an uncertain post-9/11 spirit in which an enemy "is not only out to get us. He could be living among us."

Although Supernatural may fit with the times, Kripke, 31, has been nurturing this idea for almost a decade. He considers himself a disciple of the late Joseph Campbell and his examinations of mythology. The names of the two lead characters are an homage to the wandering Sal and Dean of Jack Kerouac's On the Road. And Kripke also cites contemporary signposts, including Star Wars and The Matrix, when discussing the heroes' journey.

Structurally, Supernatural will be made up primarily of self-contained episodes: "They'll be driving into town to kill that evil and then they'll drive back into the sunset," Kripke says. A longer thread including their search for their father will be established over time.

Supernatural's apparitions will reflect a commitment to folklore. In their travels, Sam and Dean will confront a Windigo, a man-eating creature from Native American lore; the hook man, the scary subject of many a campfire tale; Bloody Mary, a demonic wraith in the mirror; and a succubus, another kind of female demon.

Although Kripke's research indicates a thoughtful approach, he has a visceral goal. "We want to scare the hell out of you."

 

[sd6452]

:o So that's what it's about. Hmm, I thought there was something supernatural about the guys, I guess not!

Where can I find these trick mirrors? Are they free?

 

[Tuulia]

I can't wait to see this! Finally some more Jensen

 

[verdantheart]

If you're planning on recording the premiere, please take note of this (from Sci Fi Wire):

Supernatural Will Debut Long

The WB is announcing that the upcoming premiere episode of Supernatural will run about seven minutes long, the Zap2It Web site reported. The network is giving viewers a couple of weeks' notice to set their recording devices to capture the entire opening installment of the show, which stars Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles as brothers who hit the road in search of strange phenomena. The debut episode of Supernatural will air at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Sept. 13 and will end at 10:07 p.m.

The Supernatural pilot runs just over 46 minutes, and that's without opening or closing credits, the site reported.

 

[verdantheart]

Another article from Sci Fi Wire:

Supernatural Won't Draw Out Arcs

Eric Kripke, creator and executive producer of The WB's upcoming creature feature series Supernatural, told SCI FI Wire the show is a return to self-contained storytelling. "I'm a fan of Lost, and from what I know of Invasion and Surface and a lot of the new shows is they're sort of about this endless mystery unfolding," Kripke said in an interview. "And I think that you have to be careful with that, because that runs the risk of the Twin Peaks syndrome, where your audience loses patience with this endless tease."

Supernatural stars Jensen Ackles (Smallville) and Jared Padalecki (Gilmore Girls) as monster-hunting brothers who travel the country looking for their missing dad.

"We're hoping the audience will connect to just committed, good, red-blooded, rollicking storytelling that every week is a satisfying story," Kripke said. "We'll track the mythology, but every week we just want to scare the hell out of you with basically a different horror movie that has a beginning, a middle and an end."

Kripke said that his great wish is that the nights his show airs, no one will go to sleep. "I think it's a huge advantage that we have budget considerations and have restrictions to what we can show and what we can't show, because it seems uniquely and specific to horror that [that] always seems to improve the product," he said. "When you don't see the monster."

Kripke added of his two hunky leads: "We're hoping our guys are charismatic and handsome, and we hope the girls are attracted to that. But we want everyone to come to the party. We have what we think are Luke Skywalker and Han Solo cruising the country and killing monsters, and what's not to love about that?" Supernatural debuts Sept. 13 and will air Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

 

[verdantheart]

Yet another article, from zap2it, beware of spoilers:

'Supernatural' Brothers Brave a Hidden Evil
(Saturday, September 10 12:03 AM)
By John Crook

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - Two estranged brothers encounter occult challenges while searching for their missing father in "Supernatural," a new WB thriller premiering Tuesday, Sept. 13.

Part quest fantasy, part family drama and part scare-the-kernels-out-of-your-popcorn fright flick, "Supernatural" opens

Spoiler

20 years ago on a horrifying night for the Winchester clan, when a shadowy figure appeared at the cribside of infant Sam, then whisked mother Mary away to a fiery death.

Sam (Jared Padalecki, "Gilmore Girls"), now a college student, has no memory of that awful night, unlike his older brother, Dean (Jensen Ackles, "Smallville"), who willingly joined his father's obsessive quest to find the key to Mary's disappearance. That's why Sam has distinctly mixed emotions when Dean, whom he hasn't seen for four years, suddenly turns up with news that their father has disappeared as well.

"Sam is struggling with his destiny, trying to figure out whether he has a choice in this," Padalecki says of his character. "He has fought it as long as he can, from the day he could get out of the house and away from his father and brother and the life he was born into. He has been trying to convince himself that he could just live a normal life. He finds out slowly but surely that he can't choose his own destiny."

"I think there definitely was a conflict of interest as they were growing up together with their dad inflicting his life mission upon our characters," Ackles says. "Dean was very receptive to it, being the age that he was when their mother was taken away. He was able to process it and understand, to the extent that he could, what that meant.

"Sam was just a baby and had no emotional ties to the situation, whereas Dean wanted to be a part of his dad's mission. Sam was forced into it, though, and the first chance he got, he split. A few years later, you have Dean coming to Sam and asking for his help, knowing that he's the only one Dean can really trust to watch his back, now that his father is gone."

Reluctantly, Sam joins Dean on what will turn into an extended quest for their missing father.

Each episode will find the pair encountering and grappling with some occult entity or phenomenon.

"[This is] kind of an obsession of mine, and a show that I've really wanted to do for the extent of my career," says "Supernatural" creator and executive producer Eric Kripke. "It's a show about American folklore and urban legends, sort of the idea that every town has a really great, terrifying ghost story.

"We landed on this idea as a road show, the purity of literally just driving in and out of a different horror movie every week, a different small town where something dark and evil is lurking in the shadows. That just seemed like a very pure and stripped down and mythic way to tell this story."

Ackles says the mythic resonance of the series is hard to miss.

"This is definitely Joseph Campbell territory," he says. "Sam, especially, is a reluctant hero and, although I hope we really do scare viewers every week, it's the dynamic between these two brothers that will keep people coming back, I think."

It helps that, even in the pilot, the two actors have a relaxed chemistry together that suggests a long-shared history. Ackles says he and Padalecki spent long hours together before production even began, physically training for their roles in anticipation of the long work days to follow.

"We did a 17-hour day yesterday, and we're back into it today," Ackles says. "And these days aren't spent in our trailers snoozing or watching DVDs. Jared and I are in almost every scene. We get a half-hour for lunch, so we try to scarf our food down as quickly as possible and grab a 15-minute nap."

He pauses as a production assistant interrupts the interview to ask him to come try out a new prop, then continues.

"See? That's what it's like."

The two actors carried their sibling relationship off the show's Vancouver set recently when Ackles inadvertently led Padalecki into a real-life bar brawl that left the latter with a broken hand.

"When we walked into the place, there had just been a fight inside the bar, but we didn't know that yet," Padalecki explains. "When we started hearing them talking about the fight, we decided it was best to leave, but when we went back to the front, the guys there thought we were some of the guys they had been fighting with so they basically continued the fight again."

"It was life imitating art," Ackles jokes. "I've just got to play the role of older brother and show this young whippersnapper how they do things in Vancouver."

Series creator Kripke insists that "Supernatural" will not be one long tease as far as its core mystery is concerned, and he promises to answer questions on a regular basis, "then ask several larger, even more difficult questions," he adds. "So I think Dad may be making an appearance somewhere during this first season in an unexpected way."

Although "Supernatural" is bowing in a season that is unusually heavy with other spooky series, including "The Night Stalker" on ABC and "The Ghost Whisperer" on CBS, another executive producer on the WB series, the film director McG, says "Supernatural" stands out from the rest of the pack for a very simple reason.

"This is the show that's designed to make it difficult to go to sleep that night after you watch it," he says. "If you watch it by yourself, you're in trouble, because you're going to be looking behind the door and your mind is going to be playing tricks on you a little bit. And that's just a delicious feeling."

 

[verdantheart]

The premiere is tonight, if you're interested (remember, it will run long).

Meanwhile, yet another article from Sci Fi Wire (has this show got enough coverage or what?):

Supernatural Is Route 666

Eric Kripke, creator and executive producer of The WB’s upcoming Supernatural, told SCI FI Wire he took some time off after working on The WB's failed Tarzan series, and it allowed him to follow up on a lifelong passion. "I've always wanted to do a show about urban legends and American folklore," Kripke said in an interview. "That's always been an obsession. We have this American mythology that is as uniquely American as jazz and baseball, and it's as intricate as any world culture, but it's just not as well-known."

Supernatural tells the tale of two brothers who are looking for their father through the dark corners of America. The series stars Jensen Ackles (Smallville) and Jared Padalecki (Gilmore Girls) as the monster-fighting brothers.

In trying to figure out the best engine to drive the story, Kripke came up with "a hundred different versions of people investigating urban legends and American folklore," he said. During discussions with Warner Brothers, he reluctantly mentioned the idea for Supernatural. "I said, 'I have one idea, but I don't even want to bring it up, because it's impossible from a production standpoint, and it's totally irresponsible of me,'" Kripke said. "And they said, 'What is it?' And I said, 'Well, it's to do this show as Route 66. The real way to get into every small town and hear every small town's ghost story or creature story is to put two guys in a cool car and drive them from small town to small town across America. But that's crazy, because there's no standing sets and no recurring cast.'"

But, Kripke said, "they loved it. Warner Brothers just sparked to it immediately. And I said. 'Before we move any further you need to put me on the phone with your head of production, and they need to promise me that I'll be able to do this show if we move forward.' Which they did, to their credit." Supernatural premieres Sept. 13 and will air Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

 

[verdantheart]

For those interested, Supernatural has been picked up for a full season.

 

[verdantheart]

latest from Sci Fi:

Supernatural Will Give Answers

Jensen Ackles, who co-stars in The WB's Supernatural, told SCI FI Wire that the second half of the first season will offer some answers to the show's underlying mystery. "That's going to start building towards the surface in the back nine [episodes]," Ackles said in an interview at the Television Critics Association winter press tour in Pasadena, Calif. "Everything's going to kind of come close to the surface, and things are going to start coming together more. We actually get to interact with our father in the episode that we're filming now, which is a huge step for us. Now where that takes us we're not quite sure, but it's definitely a big step in the right direction, I think."

Ackles stars as Dean Winchester in the series alongside Jared Padalecki as his brother, Sam, who travel around the country in search of their father while battling against supernatural forces. The first half of the season established the mythology behind the Winchester family. According to Ackles, upcoming episodes will fill in some of the history that has been hinted at so far.

" think it can be very much a faux pas to drag it out season over season over season," Ackles said. "I think that these things need to be resolved and things need to surface, at least within a season, and I think [creator and executive producer] Eric Kripke's on the same page. I think he's against that whole dragging audiences ... across many, many seasons of storylines. So I definitely know that he's on the same page about resolving things and moving on to bigger and more interesting problems."

 

[Dani 22 01 1979]

I love this show.

My New Fave Show.

Till Alias comes back on of course

Jensen and Jared very good together and Jensen(Dean) got some funny one-liners

 

[verdantheart]

I think it is shaping up nicely. The brothers have a good chemistry together and they're building the characters well--giving them a background and solid character traits. Plus I like it that Dean is a sort of "throwback"--you know, not the sort of guy who wants to sit down and discuss his "feelings." He's more like an average guy, but you don't tend to meet them on TV shows that much. Of course, real average guys aren't that good-looking and don't go hunting spooks . . .