Syfy Annouces 28 New Projects, Including Booster Gold and a New Show From True Blood Creator Charlaine Harris

Yesterday we brought you news of a Syfy optioned film/mini-series based on Stephen King’s The Eyes of the Dragon. Well, turns out it was part of a huge push on the part of Syfy to get more hours of new original programming into its 2013 lineup (that is, not syndicated shows). According to Syfy, this 28 hours of original premieres is a record for the channel. Well, we took a look at those 28 hours, and here’s what we found noteworthy.

First: Grave Sight, a new television project from Charlaine Harris, yes, the author behind the Southern Vampire Mysteries book series that True Blood is based on. Her series The Harper Connelly Mysteries follows the titular young woman with the ability to sense the location of dead bodies and even how they died… although not the identity of their killer. Together with her “protective” step-brother, they fight crime. And now, it’s been optioned as an ongoing series on Syfy where investigating a missing girl leads Harper and her brother to uncover a “network of lies and murders throughout a small town in the Ozarks.”

Much to my own surprise, likely because I view all television adaptations of superhero characters as not happening until they, well, actually happen, that Booster Gold series that Syfy has been saying it will make… is still one of the series it says it’ll make. Booster Gold, for those not familiar, is an excellent choice to bring superheroes to the small screen, in that he’s not really a typical superhero as the wider culture knows them. To quote myself:

In the 25th century Booster was a washed up high school athlete working as a night watchman in a museum of 2oth century superhero history. He steals a docent robot named Skeets and several bits of superheroic technology, and uses the exhibit’s time machine to transport himself back to our time, in order to develop a superhero identity, corporatize it, and live comfortably off of the proceeds. He uses Skeets’ encyclopedic knowledge of publicized superhero events to know when crimes are going to occur, and becomes the one-man Kardashian family of the DC Universe.

In other words, television, and our larger culture is absolutely ready for a show based on his character. Booster slowly realizes that being a superhero takes more than being telegenic, and his stories are a struggle between his natural inclinations towards attention whoring and the more noble inclinations that rub off on him as he brushes shoulders with the greatest historical heroes of his culture.

Now, asking a Booster show on Syfy to be set in the wider DC universe might be a bit much, but seeing as how the writer/producer team on the show are also working on the CW’s Arrow, based on DC’s Green Arrow, maybe I’ll get my wish after all.

The majority of Syfy’s 28 shows are various reality programs, many of which have descriptions that sound more interesting to me as fictional programs than reality tv, but there was one that I felt worth mentioning. It’s called Divas of Dress Up

Divas of Dress Up—This program follows the six hottest cos-play stars as they push the boundaries of creativity and costuming in this docu-series that takes viewers inside the amazingly creative world of cos-play competition. Each week, the top women competitors transform themselves into fictional characters with visually arresting costumes, pushing the boundary between fantasy and reality. Production company: Skip Films. Executive producers: Skip Chaisson, Brian Gallagher.

Ok, Syfy, hear me out on this one. Strip out the apparent gender focused nature of this show, give it a cast that isn’t gender restricted, and make it Project Runway for Cosplay. I’m uneasy about your show about “the six hottest [female] cos-play stars” in their “visually arresting costumes.” There are plenty of awesome dude cosplayers out there and by excluding them and framing your stars as sexy, well, it makes it sound like you’re making eye candy rather than celebrating the craft and dedication of fans.

You already made Project Runway for Special Effects Makeup. Make Project Runway for Cosplay, and I will watch the shit out of it.

(via Blastr.)