Supernatural
(9/2005 - present)
Airs: 9pm/8pm (c), Tuesdays (WB)
DVD releases:
The Complete First Season (9/05/2006) [Buy It]
Premise:
The series is being described as X-Files meets Route 66. It is produced by Warner Brothers Television and McG and Stephanie Savage's Wonderland Sound and Vision.
The show revolves around estranged brothers Sam & Dean, played by Jared Padalecki (House of Wax) and Jensen Ackles (Smallville), who travel around the country investigating, hunting and fighting mysterious phenomena. They are driven by the search for their father, who is on a quest to find the reason behind their mother's bizarre death. Elizabeth Bond has also been cast to play Amy in the pilot.
"They're all specifically American, be it a windigo, a Native American creature, or Robert Johnson selling his soul to the devil at a crossroads," Kripke told Variety. "It's a show about the bloody, beating heart of America."
News: (04/14/06) - TV Guide's Michael Ausiello recently answered a question about the final three episodes of Supernatural's first season.
"Question: Any Supernatural news? — Cheryl"
"Ausiello: We're going to get Meg's backstory soon. And the season finale is essentially a three-part episode airing April 20 and 27 and May 4, which finds the Winchester clan (including Papa John, played by Grey's Anatomy's Denny) going after the demon that killed their mother. When they discover that the beast is planning to strike again, they set a trap that goes horribly wrong. "
(01/19/06) - Jensen Ackles (Dean Winchester) told SCI FI Wire, at the Television Critics Association winter press tour in Pasadena, California, that some of the show's mysteries will be answered in the second half of the first season. "That's going to start building towards the surface in the back nine [episodes]," Ackles said. "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."
"[I] 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."
Jensen Ackles also said that the show will be adding a new recurring female character. "The character of Meg, played by Nicki Aycox, she's going to be coming back and doing some stuff," Ackles. "That's going to be a really interesting multiple storyline, a nice little arc there. ... We're planting some nice seeds for some good arcs."
Aycox (Jeepers Creepers II, Over There) first appeared on Supernatural in the episode "Scarecrow" as Meg a hitchhiker that has a dark secret.
"She's a new recurring character, " Padalecki said. "She's back and trying to cause more trouble."
(12/15/05) - According to TV Guide Online, William B. Davis (The X-Files) will guest-star as a possibly evil professor in the January 10th episode titled Scarecrow and Julie Benz (Angel) will guest star as a woman with a brain tumor that seeks help from an evil clergyman in the episode titled Faith.
(10/11/05) - According to Variety, the WB has picked up Supernatural for a full season.
(9/16/05) - According to TV Guide Online, Supernatural's debut episode on Sept. 13 held on to 90 percent of the more than 6 million viewers who tuned in to the Gilmore Girls' season premiere in the preceding hour.
(9/15/05) - Creator and executive producer Eric Kripke told SCI FI Wire he took some time off after his failed Tarzan series, which allowed him to follow up on a lifelong passion. "I've always wanted to do a show about urban legends and American folklore," Kripke. "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."
During discussions with Warner Brothers, he 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.'"
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."
(9/09/05) - Eric Kripke, creator and executive producer of Supernatural, told SCI FI Wire that the show will be 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. "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."
"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."
"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 always seems to improve the product," he said. "When you don't see the monster."
Kripke added, "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 Hans Solo cruising the country and killing monsters, and what's not to love about that?"
(9/08/05) - The WB and Yahoo! have made the show's debut episode available as a webcast. The episode, is the Yahoo! front page and in its TV section, will be up through Sept. 12, a day before Supernatural's TV premiere. This is the second webcast of its kind for The WB. Last year, the network streamed the premiere of Jack & Bobby to America Online subscribers.
(7/27/05) - According to the Zap2It Web site, The WB is announcing that the upcoming premiere episode will run about seven minutes long. 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 pilot runs just over 46 minutes, without opening or closing credits.
(7/27/05) - Co-star Jared Padalecki spoke to SCI FI Wire at the Television Critics Association press tour in Beverly Hills, Calif.
"There's a lot of great literary value in the story and the mythology of it and the reluctant hero," Padalecki said. "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."
"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."
Executive producer Eric Kripke said at the presentation 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."
According to Variety, the WB network has ordered a pilot from McG, director of the Charlie's Angels films and executive producer of Fox's teen drama The O.C., and Eric Kripke, executive producer of the short-lived WB series Tarzan. X-Files alumnus, director David Nutter, has also come on board as helmer and executive producer.
Cast:
Jensen Ackles as Dean Winchester
Jared Padalecki as Sam Winchester
Crew:
McG - Creator, Executive Producer
Eric Kripke - Creator, Executive Producer
David Nutter - Executive Producer
Stephanie Savage - Executive Producer
Episode List
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