In Mercy, which premieres in theaters on Friday, in the near future, Detective Chris Raven (Chris Pratt) is accused of murdering his wife and stands on trial, the judge the artificial intelligence he championed, Judge Maddox (Rebecca Furguson). With no memory of what happened before he woke up in the Mercy Chair, he is given 90 minutes to comb through all available surveillance footage to prove his innocence. However, if he’s found guilty, he will be executed instantly.SciFi Vision recently spoke with star Chris Pratt about being restrained in the chair and how it both helped and hindered his ability to portray the detective. “The sense of claustrophobia, the sense of feeling trapped, being isolated in a room, a cavernous space, this cacophonous volume that I was confronted by, nothing other than digital screens, that's what my character's going through,” he explained, adding that it was similar to what he himself was going through as he filmed the scenes.
Pratt was joined by director Timur Bekmambetov who explained that although Pratt was in the chair for a large portion of the film, there is also a lot of evidence around him on the screen. “[It’s] a full of action, full of events of his life, because he's in the chair, but all his backstories are around him, and we see him fighting, chasing,” said the director.
“[I]t's very much an action forward film,” added Pratt. “Just, rather than being the person who's perpetrating the action, I'm sort of subject to witnessing the action along with the audience.”
Dead Man’s Wire, which opened in theaters nationwide over the weekend, tells the true story of Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgård), who in 1977 walked into the office of the president of the Meridan Mortgage Company and kidnapped Richard ‘Dick’ Hall (Dacre Montgomery) with a sawed-off shotgun, with a dead man’s wire attached to the trigger and his own neck. The spectacle of the standoff quickly became a media frenzy.
Based on a true story, Dead Man’s Wire, now in theaters, takes place 1977 when Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgård) came into the office of the president of the Meridan Mortgage Company, Richard ‘Dick’ Hall (Dacre Montgomery), and used a sawed-off shotgun to take him hostage. What followed during the standoff with the police was a media frenzy that turned Kiritsis into an outlaw folk hero. The film, directed by Gus Van Sant, also stars Cary Elwes, Myha’la, Coleman Domingo, and Al Pacino.
When Starfleet Academy premiered this week, fans finally got to see two of the most anticipated characters: Robert Picardo’s holographic Doctor and Gina Yashere’s Commander Lura Thok. Picardo has been a fan favorite since The Doctor’s run on Voyager thirty years ago, and viewers can’t wait to see him back in action. Yashere (Bob Hearts Abishola), on the other hand, makes her Star Trek debut as a Klingon/Jem’Hadar hybrid - two of franchise’s most fearsome species.
Starfleet Academy is here! The latest entry in the Star Trek franchise premiered on Paramount+ this week, and in the capable hands of executive producers and co-showrunners Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau, it’s everything fans have been waiting for. Set in Discovery’s far future timeline, the show focuses on the first class of cadets to attend Starfleet Academy since the collapse of the Federation more than 100 years ago.
In Riot Women, Kitty (Rosalie Craig), recently released after having been caught shoplifting, is singing in a bar when she’s approached by depressed teacher Beth (Joanna Scanlan) at a time when they both need it the most.
The Hunting Party, which debuts its second season tonight on NBC, follows a small team of investigators, including ex-FBI profiler Bex Henderson (Melissa Roxburgh), CIA Agent Jacob Hassani (Patrick Sabongui), and prison guard Shane Florence (Josh McKenzie) who track down the worst of serial killers who have escaped the top-secret prison known as the Pit. The series, which is a hybrid of both procedural manhunt and serialized conspiracy thriller, picks up where last season left off, with the team having been disbanded and Bex pushing to get the hunting party officially reinstated in the aftermath of Odell (Nick Wechsler)’s attack.
Tonight, season two of The Hunting Party premieres on NBC. Equal parts procedural manhunt and serialized conspiracy thriller, the series follows a small team of investigators led by Bex Henderson (Melissa Roxburgh), who track down and capture the worst of the worst serial killers who have escaped from the top-secret prison known as the Pit. Picking up where the season one finale left off, in tonight’s all-new episode, Bex works to have the team reinstated to continue their search for the missing inmates, the first of which is Ron Simms (Eric McCormack), an escaped killer targeting women who are searching to find love.
Today, the Acorn TV original crime drama, My Life is Murder, returns for its fifth season. The eight-episode season season, starring Lucy Lawless as investigator Alexa Crowe, features all new intriguing cases, starting today when Alexa and her tech wiz Madison (Ebony Vagulans) investigate a cheer squad when a fitness influencer is suddenly murdered.
The Hallmark Channel reality competition Finding Mr. Christmas, which started out with ten aspiring male actors competing to become the next leading man for the network, closes out its second season tomorrow night when the top three contestants, Craig Geoghan, Rustin Cole Sailors, and Angel Garet, take part in their final star quality challenge. During the season finale, the three will film a three-part scene in three different locations that ends in a kiss. Acting in a scene alongside not only Ellen Krakow, but host Jonathan Bennett, judge Melissa Peterson, and actor Kristoffer Polaha as well, the finalists will see if they have what it takes to win it all.