EW: Tahmoh should play Magneto in X-Men spinoff

Entertainment Weekly's PopWatch blog suggested today that Tahmoh should be cast as "Magneto," the title role in the just-announced "X-Men" spinoff in development from 20th Century Fox and Marvel Studios that centers on the villain played in the original trilogy by Ian McKellen.

Which young actor should be cast as 'Magneto'?
Apr 30, 2007, 11:48 AM | by Michael Slezak

I'm trying my hardest to resist the urge to use the word "neat-o!" (tragic, I know) to express my excitement about the announcement that the co-writer of Batman Begins is working on a script focusing on one of my favorite characters from my favorite sci-fi franchise. Yes, PopWatchers, David Goyer (who's also responsible for directing The Invisible) will write and direct Magneto, a neat-o an X-Men spinoff that looks at the character's villainous origins -- or more specifically, about how his quest to avenge the Nazis who put his parents in Auschwitz turned him into a seriously disreputable dood.

Now, as fantastic an actor as Ian McKellen is, I'm guessing he's probably not the right man to portray the twentysomething version of his popular character. If I were casting the film, I'd go with Battlestar Galactica's Tahmoh Penikett (pictured), a PopWatch favorite who's got the good looks and charisma of a big-screen leading man, and more importantly, can actually act. (And for those of you who'd disqualify him for being too old, let's keep in mind that in most Hollywood circles, 31 isn't past the cutoff point for playing a high-school senior.) Are you on board with Penikett, or is there another young actor you'd cast as Magneto? Send your memo to the film's casting folks in the comments section below.

If you like the idea, be sure to go comment in support over at EW!

Read the Variety announcement of Magneto.

HDTV caps of Tahmoh as "Wes Keenan" in Smallville

Thanks to Ant for these high-res HDTV caps of Tahmoh's appearance in the most recent Smallville episode, "Nemesis," including this new photo of a different page of his service record from earlier in the show:

More screencaps from Hush [2005]

Here are more high-res screencaps of Tahmoh as Dr. Noah Hamilton in the Lifetime movie, Hush.

Tahmoh in last night’s Smallville

Thanks to Lisa & Michelle for the heads up that Tahmoh was actually briefly in last night's new Smallville in advance of his full guest star appearance in two weeks. Here are a few screencaps:

The episode, "Nemesis" (6.19), features Tahmoh as "Wes Keenan," a special forces soldier who supposedly died fighting in Afghanistan, as you can see from his service record:

Not sure why Lex Luthor thought silver boy shorts were appropriate for his evil schemes, but um, they must be. Quite the boy toy look, lol.


You can see other screencaps of the scene, where Tahmoh looks broader, but is less well-lit, by superherofan here.

Sci-fi to air Tahmoh’s appearance in Dark Angel

This Friday, April 27th at 1:30pm EST, Sci-fi will air the episode of Dark Angel that Tahmoh appeared in as an unnamed cop:

"Freak Nation" (2.21)

The Season Two finale, "Freak Nation", was a special 90-minute episode directed by show co-creator James Cameron (of Terminator and Titanic fame). White has decided to call in the Phalanx, a highly-trained combat unit belonging to the Familiars. Meanwhile, Joshua and Mole (Brian Jensen), a human-reptile hybrid, venture out of Terminal City to help one of Max's transgenic siblings, who is seeking refuge and about to give birth.

See more Dark Angel screencaps.

Tahmoh's part in the episode clearly isn't huge, but hey, Battlestar isn't on again until January...

New ways to get Tahmoh updates (& a new poll)

I've added a new poll about Tahmoh's guest appearance on Smallville at right. Will you watch in May? Definitely? Maybe? Maybe not?

Vote now! --------->

Also you might have noticed the new links at the top of the right sidebar. You can now be notified when the site is updated three different ways:

1. Subscribe in a reader (MyYahoo, NewsGator, Bloglines, etc.)
2.  Subscribe via email (get an email when the site is updated)
3. See updates on your LiveJournal friends' list

New, higher-res screencaps from Hush [2005]

Thanks to help from Michelle from Aaron Douglas Fans, I have Tahmoh's Lifetime movie Hush on DVD. I've started making screencaps that are higher resolution and not watermarked like the current ones archived at Northern Lights. I'll be making my way through the movie, but if there are any scenes in particular you'd like high-res caps of, comment here or email me.

Tahmoh playing a younger Noah Hamilton (with lots of hair!):

I promise not to include too many kissing Tori shots, but this one was pretty:

Happy Noah in scrubs:

Pensive Noah in a nice suit:

The Green Chain picked up by Christal Films

Christal Films will distribute the eco-feature The Green Chain, which stars Tahmoh as a firefighter, sometime within the next year in Canada.

Christal Films has also acquired the rights for Mark Leiren-Young's debut feature The Green Chain from Canada's Middle Child Films, Perpetual Motion Productions and Donna Wong-Juliani. The film is scheduled for release in late 2007 or early 2008.

The Green Chain examines the battle between loggers and environmentalists using the framework of a series of inter-linking monologues which are inspired by the true dramas taking place each day in North America's forests. The film stars an acclaimed group of actors including Tricia Helfer and Tahmoh Penikett from TV's Battlestar Galactica....

Read the full press release.

Read director Mark Leiren-Young's announcement here.

Here's hoping for a US release! See previous posts on The Green Chain here.

Tahmoh to play "Wes Keenan" on Smallville

The CW has just released this plot summary for the upcoming Smallville episode, "Prototype" (6.21), in which Tahmoh guest stars:

Lex has been secretly trying to turn Wes Keenan (guest star Tahmoh Penikett), a military man who supposedly died fighting in Afghanistan, into a "super soldier" by injecting him with DNA pulled from the various meteor freaks he has captured. After a crooked senator (guest star Alan C. Peterson) threatens to expose his secret labs, Lex dispatches Wes to kill the senator, but Lois witnesses the attack and inadvertently becomes the super soldier's next target. Meanwhile, Clark tries to convince Lana to leave Lex. Allison Mack and Annette O'Toole also star.

Sounds like Tahmoh will feature rather prominently in the episode!

To see more photos from "Prototype" scroll down or click here.

Trick ’r Treat teaser poster & set visit

Trick 'r Treat writer (& BSG fan), Mike Doughtery, added a new teaser poster for the upcoming film, which stars Tahmoh as "Henry," to his myspace page. The poster for the R-rated Halloween flick looks suitably creepy.

In other Trick 'r Treat news, Dreadcentral just posted a report about their visit to the film's set, including an interview with Doughtery and much of the production staff.

The plots for all four have been online for a while, but the actual meaning behind them has not. "One of the stories is very much about the Halloween of your childhood, dealing with your parents, not being old enough to trick or treat necessarily," producer Alex Garcia explained during our tour of the set tour, "Another is the Halloween of adolescence where you’re probably too old to be tick or treating but you’re out anyway; you may get into trouble, you may not. The next is the Halloween of your 20s and 30s when it’s very much about sex, then we get into the Halloween of Mr. Kreeg (played by veteran Brian Cox), the old man who hates the holidays."

The article also features new stills from the movie (though none of Tahmoh).

Read more about Trick 'r Treat here (including interviews with Tahmoh).

Tahmoh in upcoming Smallville ep, "Prototype"

Thanks to Sophie for the heads up that Tahmoh will guest star on an upcoming episode of Smallville this May. The episode, "Prototype" (6.21), is scheduled to air on Thursday, May 10th on the CW.

Spoilers for Smallville below!

Here is the latest information on the episode, thanks to KryptonSite!

In "Prototype", it seems Senator Burke has been pushing billions to LexCorp for a project called 'Ares' (which if you know your Greek mythology, and who doesn't, Ares is the son of Zeus). Burke finds out that Lex wants to make multiple Ares instead of delivering the prototype. He threatens to cutoff funding and Lex threatens to expose how much money is in the Senator's Cayman account. Later, while Lois is confronting the Senator in front of a restaurant about his Cayman account, he is killed along with his bodyguards by an unseen force. It seems Lex's prototype has escaped...

Earlier in the season, in an episode titled "Nemesis," Lex Luthor has in his custody a former special ops agent named Wes Keenan. Could Wes Keenan be this super "prototype" that is hinted at?

Thanks to Celebrity Photo Blog for the images. See their post for super high-res versions and the 4 other non-Tahmoh promotional photos from the episode. You can also find high-res CW watermarked high-res images from the episode here.

Notably, Tahmoh has already appeared on Smallville, as "Vince" in "Resurrection" (3.15):

Watch clips of his appearance here and see screencaps here.

Bid on boxing glove signed by Tahmoh & BSG cast

In addition to the teddy bears the Battlestar cast signed to support the fight against breast cancer, they also all signed a pink Everlast boxing glove. It is also up for auction this week.

Bid on the glove!

1 pink Everlast boxing glove signed by the following cast members from Battlestar Galactica: Edward James Olmos, Mary McDonnell, Jamie Bamber, James Callis, Tricia Helfer, Grace Park, Michael Hogan, Aaron Douglas, Tahmoh Penikett, AJ Julian, Kandyse McClure.

The auction closes on Wednesday, April 25th.

Seems appropriate for the show, no?

See my post about the bear auction here. Bid on the bears!

Galactica nominated for 2007 Spaceys & a Hugo

BSG is nominated in several categories for the Spaceys, awarded each year by Canada's Space Channel. Some of the awards are determined by viewer's choice online votes, among them:

• Favorite TV Show - Battlestar Galactica
• Favorite Character You Love to Hate
• James Callis
• Tricia Helfer
• Favorite TV Character - Katee Sackhoff

Vote for Battlestar now! (no registration req'd)

BSG won "Favorite TV Show" last year and "Favorite Limited TV Show" the year before. So be sure to vote to make Galactica a winner again this year. If they win, the Spaceys crew visits the cast on set!

See my previous posts (with more cast photos from the Spaceys) here.

---

Sci-Fi wire recently reported that Galactica was among the nominees for this year's Hugo Awards, which are chosen by the membership of the World Science Fiction Convention.

The Battlestar Galactica episode "Downloaded" was nominated in the category of Dramatic Presentation, Short Form. The winners will be announced at the 65th Worldcon, Aug. 3-Sep. 3, in Yokohama, Japan.

Battlestar Season 4 to film from May to March

Thanks to Sandra for the heads up that production on the fourth season of Battlestar Galactica is set to begin on May 14th. Season 4 filming is currently scheduled to wrap on March 15th, 2008.

Speaking of Season 4, be sure to check out these interviews with BSG executive producer/writer, Ron Moore, if you haven't already:

• Onion AV Club: Ronald D. Moore
• MTV: 'Galactica' Producer Talks Movie(s?), Possible Conclusion
  
• Frak Party podcast

As always, for all the latest news on the Battlestar-verse, check out the excellent Battlestar Galactica Sitrep.

Helo on Caprica fan drawing

Thanks to Jason for sharing this drawing of Helo by Jason Palmer that he bought at a BSG convention last weekend in Burbank (Tahmoh wasn't a guest).

You can see another version on the artist's website. To create the image, he apparently used a combination of traditional drawing, digital rendering, and acrylic for the highlights.

It's similar to the image on the Season 1 trading card.

Bid on a teddy bear signed by Tahmoh for charity!

Lisa Spodak, who will be participating in her 13th Avon Walk for Breast Cancer, has gotten the Battlestar cast to sign teddy bears and pose with them to support her fund raising efforts. She is trying to raise $20,000 (last year she raised $26,000). All proceeds from this auction will go towards that goal.

Bid now!

Small (7") stuffed breast cancer awareness bear with tag signed by Tahmoh Penikett. This bear also comes with a print of the above photo.

The auction closes on Wednesday, April 25th.

The rest of the Battlestar cast has also posed with and signed bears that are up for auction with hilarious results. See all the cast bears here.

Tahmoh talks about Trick ’r Treat & the BSG connection

Patrick Lee from Sci-fi Wire recently spoke to Tahmoh about his upcoming role in the Bryan Singer's Trick 'r Treat, which is scheduled for an October 5, 2007 release.

Galactica's Penikett Tricks In Treat

Tahmoh Penikett, who co-stars in the upcoming Halloween-themed horror film Trick 'r Treat, told SCI FI Wire that writer/director Michael Dougherty cast him in part because Dougherty is a big fan of SCI FI Channel's Battlestar Galactica, in which Penikett plays Lt. Karl C. "Helo" Agathon. "Before I went into the audition, my agent told me that the director was a huge fan of the show," Penikett said in an interview earlier this year on the Vancouver, Canada, set of the supernatural thriller movie, which interweaves several narratives on a Halloween night in a small town.

But Penikett wasn't prepared for how big a fan Dougherty, co-writer of Superman Returns, really was. "When I went in, I see this really young-looking guy," he said. "Mike looks like he's in college or something. ... And as soon as I come in, this guy comes up to me, he's like, 'Wow, I'm a huge fan of the show.' [He] introduced himself, and we sat there for, like, five to 10 minutes just talking about the show. I'm like,'OK, are we even going to do this audition?' It was great. It was nice. You could tell he was a genuine fan. So we had a great conversation, and then, of course, I found out that I got the gig, and Mike didn't hesitate once we talked again to say, 'Look, I'm a huge geek. ... I'm a huge [fan] of the show, and I would love to come to the set and check it out.' So we actually had a closed set to the press for [the] last couple of months because of all the leaks that have happened, and I talked to the producers and, of course, Michael Rymer, the key director, and said, 'Would you mind if Mike came in?' ... They're like, 'Fine, no problem.' So we brought him in, gave him the royal tour, showed him everything. It was cool." Battlestar Galactica also shoots in Vancouver, and Penikett lives there.

In Trick 'r Treat, Penikett plays an earthbound young husband. "I play Henry," he said. "I'm the loving husband to Leslie Bibb's character. There's one key scene that we're involved in where I think a lot of the characters are all brought together. That's this big parade scene that's downtown." As for the rest of the stories, Penikett said: "It's really sort of cleverly interwoven, the whole storyline." Trick 'r Treat is in post-production with an eye to an Oct. 5 release.

Tahmoh's 2003 resume

Thanks to Meg for sending along this scan of an early version of Tahmoh's resume. It includes alot of completely unknown projects and some rather amusing 'special skills'... among them, "Hacky Sac" and "Camping".... though maybe I shouldn't be joking about someone who is "experienced with rifles."

Of course, if anyone has a more recent version of his resume they'd be willing to share, please let me know!

Tahmoh in Cold Squad promo photos & TV Guide

Thanks to the official website of Sonja Bennett, Tahmoh's costar in the seventh season of Cold Squad, here are two official S7 Cold Squad promo photos and probably Tahmoh's earliest appearance in TV Guide from April 24, 2004.

Here's a screenshot of the TV Guide article [click to make it larger], but you can find a PDF version on Bennett's site.

Remember, Season 7 of Cold Squad is airing in the US in syndication every weekend in most markets. If anyone out there in the SF Bay area could record it for me, please let me know! (SF seems to be the only place airing all of S7 in order.)

Tahmoh at the Seattle BSG finale screening

The Thursday before the Battlestar finale aired on Sci-fi, a private screening was held at the Science Fiction Museum for some lucky fans. Tahmoh and Aaron Douglas also attended, talking with fans and being interviewed by them. Thanks to Lisa S. for the photos of the stars!

A Sci-fi camera crew was in attendance, so hopefully video of the event and the interviews will air or show up on scifi.com sometime soon...

Photo of the venue thanks to Bryan Fish, who was also lucky enough to attend.

Trapped Ashes to be released by Lionsgate

A press release from Arclight films confirms that Tahmoh's horror film, Trapped Ashes, has been picked up by Lionsgate for distribution later this year.

Arclight is currently using the new still photo of Tahmoh at left to promote the film. You can see a larger and slightly different version of the pic (released for Cannes) here.

Trapped Ashes picked up by horror-hungry Lionsgate

Lionsgate has picked up North American rights from Darclight Films to the horror anthology Trapped Ashes.

No word on whether the film will be released theatrically or on home video...

To see more pics and find out more about the film, see my previous posts.

A new (old) Tahmoh headshot surfaces

Thanks to rebelliousrose over at Kindreds, for spotting this old Tahmoh headshot on ebay (the auction has now ended).

I guess that's one of the dangers of becoming famous, people will dig up old photos of you, and in this case, auction them off for money, lol. The photo looks like it must be from early on in his career (2001ish?), as he doesn't have hair like that in any of his more recent projects...

In any case, I much prefer his later set of headshots (esp. the one in the site header above):

ETA: The resume that accompanied the headshot was dated to 12/2003, so the photo may be more recent than I thought... Thanks to queenmeg for letting me know!

Tahmoh in latest BSG video blog, "David Who?"

Watch the videoblog.

Tahmoh appears in the last minute of this hilarious videoblog about elusive Battlestar executive producer David Eick, wishing that he'd come around set more...

First Season 7 episode of Cold Squad airs in US

The episode introduces Tahmoh as an ambitious young cop who wants to be a detective. In an amusing Battlestar connection, the head detective Matthew Bennett (the cylon Aaron Doral on BSG) isn't so keen on the idea and blows Tahmoh's character, Ray Chase, off.

Just a warning, in NYC/Boston at least the ABC affiliates are inconsistent on the timeslots they air Cold Squad in. I only got the first half of the episode as The Color Purple late night airing ran over... Anyone get the whole episode? (I also only have it on VHS at the moment, so these screenshots are retro... I'll make more/better ones when/if I get a better copy of the episode).

Here's the episode description from TV.com:

86. No Life Like It
First aired: 9/4/2004 Production Code: 86

When the sister of a murder victim from a case Ali worked on years before is found dead in an alleyway behind a strip club, Ali investigates the murder even though she's not officially on the police force.

For more on Cold Squad, see my previous posts.

For a list of stations airing the series in US, go here. (It's sold to 96 of the top 100 US markets, so hopefully somewhere near you...).