The Heroes cast is wrapping us its wildly successful world tour.
Before returning home, however, these ordinary people with extraordinary powers on screen showed off their abilities to hype up the Heroes Season One DVD and the show’s upcoming second season. Take a look:
Buy our DVD, say James Kyson Lee, Dania Ramirez and Zachary Quinto.
Watch season two, say Milo Ventimiglia, Jack Coleman, Adrian Pasdar and Hayden Panettiere.
NBC Universal said this week it will sell episodes of its new fall television shows using Amazon’s Unbox digital download service.
Amazon.com and NBC Universal said episodes of Heroes are available for $1.99 on Unbox, while new episodes will be added the day after they air. Fans can buy an entire season at once.
The NBC content can be played, without commercials, on the computer screen or on a TV via a Web-enabled TiVo set-top box.
NBC Universal, which is majority owned by General Electric, has said it wants to package programming in different ways at different prices, something Amazon is willing to consider, according to Jean-Briac Perrette, president of NBC Universal’s digital-distribution division.
BBC Two has struck a deal with NBC that will give the British channel first refusal on future seasons of Heroes. The network is currently showing the 23 episodes of the first series, with the second to follow.
Under the deal, the BBC will have the option of buying all content beyond the second season at a pre-agreed price.
As it has in American, Heroes is doing very well overseas. In July, the show’s debut on BBC Two captured an audience of 4.3 million, a sizable figure in Great Britain.
In a statement, BBC said: “We’re delighted to have secured an exclusive ongoing deal with NBC Universal. This means that if NBC Universal produce more seasons of Heroes (beyond season two, which is already in production) the BBC can buy them at a pre-agreed price.
This ensures that the BBC can continue to show Heroes at a cost that represents real value for money.”
Near the end of last season, our friends at BuddyTV sat down with Heroes actor Jimmy Jean-Louis.
While not as well known as Masi Oka or Zachary Quinto, Louis portrays a vital character on the show, simply known for now as The Haitian. Here’s what he had to say:
BuddyTV: The Haitian is such a presence on Heroes and the interesting thing is that for a lot of your episodes, he had no voice. Was that a big challenge for you as an actor?
Jimmy Jean-Louis: He had no voice but he had a big spirit. That’s what mattered. Yes of course it is a big challenge when you don’t get to say anything because it’s always harder to portray what you want to portray without the words. So it’s always a bigger challenge but because I understood the character and I am from Haiti and I connected pretty much with everything that I was asked to do so it wasn’t too hard.
BuddyTV: Definitely, definitely. He does have that huge screen presence. Did you know in the beginning that eventually you were going to be able to talk?
Louis: Yeah, yeah. I’d been told you know the way they hired me that at one point I will be talking, at one point I will be going off with Claire and that was about it. I don’t know what I’m going to be doing next but yes, I always knew it.
BuddyTV: Was the character a Haitian in the beginning? Did they tweak it towards your ethnicity?
Louis: Yeah, it was a funny process because originally I auditioned for the role of D.L. who is the husband and the father of the kid. I read for about three times for them and obviously they didn’t want to go with me. And then a few months down the line they called me back to read for the character that I’m doing now. But I wasn’t here. I was in Europe promoting another movie, so I couldn’t see them. And they decided to give it to me eventually without seeing me. But originally it was supposed to be a guy from New Zealand not from Haiti at all. So I guess because they hired me then the character became the Haitian because I am from Haiti.
BuddyTV: At this point the Haitian, his name has not been revealed is that right?
Louis: No, no we still don’t know. Even though he has a name, he has a name, but I think everybody sort of likes the Haitian so far, you know he has a lot of mystery with it so I don’t know how much longer we’re going to keep the Haitian but yeah, yeah, he really has a name.
BuddyTV: So at this point as far as you know it’s not going to be revealed to us?
Louis: I don’t know when, I don’t know when. And I don’t think I can reveal it to you either for the moment.
Follow our link to read the full interview with Jimmy Jean-Louis.
The DVD for Heroes season one hits stores today.
As countless fans make this purchase and relive their favorite moments from their favorite show’s inaugural episodes, Wizard Universe got the creative forces behind Heroes to reminisce on a few key scenes, revealing how there was a method to their madness, why fake blood is truly nasty and what’s in store next year…
Scene: YATTA! (Episode 1, “Genesis”)
Tim Kring: We filmed this on the same day we shot Peter [Milo Ventimiglia] falling off the rooftop. We did it on top of a parking lot in downtown Los Angeles with a green screen, and it was done late in the day with just two very quick shots that took only about 15 minutes to do. We could only do a limited sort of size on Hiro against the green screen and then with that, we put a composite of footage from Times Square that we had gone out to shoot, a 360-degree plate of Times Square.
Scene: Stripping for Supper (Episode 1, “Genesis”)
Ali Larter: [Stripping on camera is] absolutely difficult and makes you completely uncomfortable. You worry about your dad, your grandpa. But on the other side, it’s sexy and it’s fun, you know? There are two sides of the line you have to balance: One side is serving the character and the other is making sure it doesn’t get gratuitous.
Scene: Fly, Peter, Fly (Episode 1, “Genesis”)
Kring: We hung both Milo and Adrian Pasdar on these harnesses and shot them while they were about 10 feet off of the ground. We shot up using wide-angle lenses to make it look like we were shooting really high up. Then it wasn’t until after we got picked up for a series that we went back and did one day on a green-screen stage and we got close-ups and performance stuff there. So a lot of stuff like that was added literally two months later.
Ventimiglia: I love doing that stuff. There were some things they wouldn’t let me do for insurance purposes, but I would have been jumping off that 15-story building into an airbag the size of a Volkswagen if I could.
Scene: Painting for Sale (Episode 1, “Genesis”)
Producer Jeph Loeb: [Kring] called and asked whether or not there was an artist who could do the things he required, which was someone who could work quickly and who could draw on a large canvas and work in various mediums—pencil, ink, paint. There really was only one choice, and that was Tim [Sale]. So that was sort of my first real contribution, finding Timmy, and putting the two Tims together. The world will never be the same.
Aritist Tim Sale: I’d never been asked to do anything like this before and thought it was exciting. I remember telling Jeph it’d make a cool comic, and depending on how that was set up, it could be something I’d really like to draw. It reminded me a lot of his scripts with some of the dialogue.
Scene: Gruesome Girl (Episode 3, “One Giant Leap”)
Hayden Panettiere: It was a freezing-cold steel table. I had this piece on top of me that was really heavy and they kept spraying it and it was wet. The [fake] blood was trickling down the sides and it’s made of corn syrup and so you can imagine how sticky it gets—It never fully hardens and it’s ripping the little tiny peach fuzz [hair] off your skin. It’s not pretty. But that scene [in the autopsy] I was in practically nothing, just a bra and underwear on this cold metal table. There was gobs of blood and it was not fun. My hair was pink for a while.
We’re inching closer and closer to season two of Heroes.
As fans count down the days, and read up on Heroes spoilers and alerts, NBC has released a few promotional photos of new and old stars.
Kristen Bell, formerly of Veronica Mars, will come aboard as Elle.
Dania Ramirez will portray Maya, another new character on the show.
And the rest: Hayden Panettiere, Masi Oka, Adrian Pasdar and the Heroes cast prepares for season two.
The Heroes World Tour has been split into three legs, with four cast members traveling to each destination. Here are the dates and details about each locale:
Europe:
Cast members on the trip: Jack Coleman, Hayden Panettiere, Adrian Pasdar and Milo Ventimiglia.
Asia:
Cast members on the trip: Greg Grunberg, Ali Larter, Masi Oka, and Sendhil Ramamurthy.
North America:
Cast members on the trip: Noah Gray-Cabey, James Kyson Lee, Zachary Quinto and Dania Ramirez.
Save the Cheerleader, Save the World.
Tonight’s rerun of Heroes is the culmination of that famous tagline. Peter finally tracks down the cheerleader (Claire, obviously) in Odessa, Texas and realizes his life mission: to save her from death at the hands of Sylar.
Hayden Panettiere and Milo Ventimiglia will host the episode on NBC.
Peter arrives, hopefully in time to save the cheerleader and the world.
And Heroes Fanatic will have you covered with a full recap tomorrow. Remember: we’re always your source for Heroes spoilers, quotes, pictures and more. Thank you for visiting our site.
Of all the guest stars or new regulars added to the Heroes season two cast - from Dianna Agron to David Anders - it’s hard to imagine any garnering more excitement than this one:
Veronica Mars star Kristen Bell is coming aboard.
NBC has snagged Bell for a key multiepisode arc of Heroes. This is a major casting coup for the show, as the actress was being sought after by multiple other programs, including ABC’s Lost.
Bell is likely to become even more well-known and popular, too, as her next gig is playing the lead role in Judd Apatow’s upcoming Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
The actress will make her first Heroes appearance in October. She’ll play Elle, a character described as a sexy, mysterious young lady who has ties to the supposed death of Peter, Mr. Bennet’s past and the future of Claire. Those are a lot of connections for one character to possess.
Variety reports that Elle will kick off her arc by committing a serious crime, though it’s unclear whether she’s good or bad.
“This was not easy to pull off,” said Heroes creator-exec producer Tim Kring. “But since we’re an ensemble show, with many arcs playing out through the year, we found a way to jump into a small window in (Bell’s) schedule.”
Universal Media Studios prexy Katherine Pope also hinted that landing Bell wasn’t easy, noting that “many studios (were) chasing her in both film and TV” and that she was happy that Bell “chose to star in our show.”
Perhaps we should add Bell to our latest Heroes poll, huh? She’d win in a landslide.
Milo Ventimiglia was recently featured in Zink Magazine.
Now, the entire cast of Heroes graces the cover of Emmy Magazine.
The PR machine is obviously in full swing, as our favorite show hypes up the soon-to-be released season one DVD, as well as the premiere of season two on September 24.
