Eric Johnson turns 29 years old today. I’ve gotten quite a few comments via the contact form wishing him a happy not-quite-3-0 already, and since these can’t be seen by anyone but me, it was obvious this needed its very own post. So be sure to leave Eric your birthday wishes in the comments! Eric, from all of us at EJWeb, may today kick off a year filled with all the success and happiness you can handle!
Unfortunate news today: according to the always-reliable Michael Hinman over at SyFyPortal, SciFi channel president David Howe obliquely told Variety last week that the network was not renewing the show for a second season.
Reports Michael:
SciFi Channel president David Howe told trade publication Variety March 21 that the network didn’t treat the character of “Flash Gordon” the way he should’ve been treated, and the network may try to do it again sometime … just not right now, which reading between the lines means that “Flash Gordon” is no longer on the schedule.
[source]
Via e-mail last month, Michael shared with me his hopes that the series would get a second season, as he had visited the show’ set last year and had met the entire cast and crew, including Eric Johnson, and he said that he couldn’t remember meeting a nicer, harder-working group of people.
We enjoyed the show while it lasted, and will be sorry to see it go, and wish everyone involved with the production the best of luck in all future endeavors.
The star of the new Flash Gordon series has revealed he only became an actor after it transpired he wasn’t going to be an ice-hockey player.
Eric Johnson, who has previously appeared in Smallville and Legends Of The Fall, said: “I only got into acting because I couldn’t play ice hockey.
“I would skate around and wave at the audience that was conveniently there, so I guess I was more suited to the stage than the ice.”
Eric was the first member of the cast to sign up for the series, and up until around a week before shooting was due to start, he wasn’t entirely sure who would be joining him.
“Even though I was on my own in the show, I knew it was going to work,” he said. “I read the script and it has this wonderful sarcasm and self-deprecating humour running through it. There are two mistakes we could have made with this series - one would be to make it totally ridiculous, and the other would be to make it really serious.”
He continued: “It’s such a fantastical circumstance, with such oddities - hawkmen and lionmen etc - how could you do that deadpan? It’s asking far too much of the audience.”
[Source]
For those of you across the pond, Flash Gordon premieres tonight on the UK SciFi channel!
The first season of Flash Gordon starring Eric premieres on the UK SciFi channel in March 2008. To celebrate, the UK web site MetalHammer is having a contest giving away this awesome watch, “So you know what time the show comes on n’that.” All you have to do is answer a trivia question about who the star of the show is. Shouldn’t be TOO hard for all you EricJohnsonWeb.com readers 
Details about the contest can be found here.
And for you UK fans, the UK SciFi web site has put up a placeholder page for the show here. So keep your eyes peeled - that’s how the US version started out too, and you can see the awesomeness that turned into.
From SliceofSciFi.com:
Join the writers, producers and cast members from SCI FI Channel’s BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, EUREKA, FLASH GORDON, PAINKILLER JANE, and others for an afternoon rally at NBC Studios.
WHEN:
12 noon - 2 pm
Wednesday, February 6th
WHERE:
NBC STUDIOS
3000 W. Alameda Ave.
Burbank, CA
Sign in at WGA table in Bob Hope Park (next to NBC on Bob Hope Drive). We encourage fans to make their own signs, or grab one of ours and meet at the corner of Alameda & Olive.
We wouldn’t be here without our fans. Please march with the WGA as we push the AMPTP to finally make us a fair deal so we can all get back to work telling stories for the people who make our jobs possible. We hope you can make it out so we can say thank you in person for your ongoing support.
I look forward to seeing you there.
In Solidarity,
Jaime Paglia
EP/co-creator “Eureka”
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Note from Andrea: I don’t know if Eric will be there, but at the very least, his friends and co-workers will, so those of you who are in the area who want to support the people who make the show possible should definitely attend if you can!
Our friends at FADPOV.com (From A Different Point of View) have chosen Eric for their weekly highlight feature, “Boyfriend of the Week,” which is a weekly feature of hot, talented, notable actors and personas in science fiction, comics and fantasy. Here’s an exerpt:
Eric Johnson. Even his name sounds strong and reliable and manly… just the kind of guy you’d want around if you were looking for someone to save the universe. And that’s exactly what Eric’s doing in his current role as “Flash” Gordon - battling the evil emperor Ming after passing through an interdimensional rift to the planet Mongo.
Check out the rest of the article about Eric and the funny commentaries here!
In a TV season where most of our favorite shows are being waylaid by the WGA strike, Flash Gordon premiered last week with all-new episodes for the second half of its freshman season. That continues tomorrow night with the episode “Ebb and Flow,” at its brand-new time of 8PMEST/7PMCST. Unfortunately, it’s unembeddable, but you can see the full trailer online here - the production values look MAJORLY upgraded!
If you missed last week’s mid-season premiere, you can see the entire episode, ”Thicker than Water,” as well as the rest of the season, streamed online for free by clicking here. In fact, if you’re an Eric fan and you haven’t checked out SciFi’s Flash Gordon site lately, you don’t know what you’re missing. It’s loaded with tons and tons of extras, including downloads, video blogs, Flash Gordon games, Eric’s photo blog (which we’ve embedded here on EJWeb in the right-hand column!) and more. It’s pretty amazing! Check it out here!
Just a note from Andrea to let you all know, the email address webmaster@ericjohnsonweb.com no longer functions. I had been trying to salvage it for weeks, but in the end, it was unfortunately overrun by spammers after having been a publicly listed email address for the last 7 years. For now, the best way to contact me is to use the form on the contact page found here.
Please note, if you have sent me email since the middle of October and I have not responded, I probably never saw it. I am not ignoring you - it’s just that toward the end, despite my best spam filters, my inbox was receiving literally thousands of emails per day, 99.999% of them spam, and yours likely got lost in the shuffle. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused anyone.
On behalf of everyone associated with EricJohnsonWeb.com, I wish every person reading this a very happy, safe and blessed holiday season and a fantastic new year!
Recently, Eric was asked to fill out a survey for the entertainment web site, Variety.com and his answers were very, very funny! And he mentions his wife and his 2-month-old daughter, Calla Prairie, who was born in early October, as his main inspirations. Congratulations and the very best wishes for your awesome (and awesomely named!!) little baby, Adria and Eric!!!
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Book I’m reading: “Acting for the Small Screen” by David Caruso. I really bought it for the cool pair of sunglasses it came with.
Total number of books I own:
See above
What book would you like to see brought to the bigscreen and what book do you hope never gets adapted?
I would love to see “Survivor” by Chuck Palahniuk brought to a theater near me and I never want to see Paris Hilton’s autobiography unauthorized or otherwise made into a biopic.
Gotta love those Canadian spellings Eric will be a special guest at VCon, Canada’s largest sci-fi and fantasy convention, October 19 through the 21st in Vancouver, Canada. If any of you are in Vancouver and would like to report on it for EJWeb, I’d be much obliged. For more information, location, times and ticket sales, please visit the VCon official web site!
Dayna, good RL friend of mine, is working on a report of all things Flash Gordon and, especially, Eric-related from this year’s DragonCon panels, so stay tuned for that, too.
