What’s Come Before in this look at the making of Superman 2025: October 2022, November 2022, December 2022, January 2023 Superman: Legacy Is Officially Unveiled February 2023 was the month that speculation gave way to confirmation. What had been swirling for months in the form of rumor, leaks and cautious statements was now made official: James Gunn’s Superman project had […]
What’s Come Before in this look at the making of Superman 2025: October 2022, November 2022, December 2022 Writing Begins, Titles Leak, and Superman Takes Center Stage As the new year dawned, James Gunn and Peter Safran entered the spotlight with mounting pressure and sky-high expectations. DC Studios had been officially formed, a new Superman film was confirmed and […]
What’s Come Before in this look at the making of Superman 2025: October 2022, November 2022 The Superman Reset Becomes Official December 2022 marked a dramatic turning point in the Superman legacy. After years of fan speculation, conflicting reports and hopeful teases, the future of the character was finally clarified—and it was not the future many fans had […]
What’s Come Before in this look at the making of Superman 2025: October 2022 The End of One Superman and the Birth of Another While October marked a leadership shift at DC Studios, November 2022 is when the future of Superman truly came into focus—and changed course dramatically. The month saw a flurry of public […]
Given my lifelong love for movies and television (especially the former when I was a kid), there’s something oddly perfect about the fact that my first job—at the ripe old age of 14—was as a matinee usher at the Twin-Shirley Theatre, located on Long Island, New York. My cousin Alfred was the assistant manager at […]
The Dawn of a New DC Era With James Gunn’s Superman opening on July 11, 2025, we’re taking a look back at the history of the project through a month-by-month breakdown beginning with this look back at October 2022. October 2022 marked the beginning of a new chapter not just for Superman, but for the […]
Having been all of 13 when the animated Star Trek made its animated debut on NBC’s Saturday morning lineup in 1973, I was impressed with the fact that the actors were reprising their roles and many of the scripts, which truly did feel as though they could have come from the original series. But even […]
To be perfectly honest, I figured that with the lack of movement from EON Productions following the 2021 release of No Time to Die, and their seeming inability to get past the departure of Daniel Craig as 007, James Bond, despite the final credit of that film, would not return. And I made peace with […]
Dark Shadows has been a part of my life since I was eight years old. I still watch the show and continue to express my love for it in my writing. But I recently had a chance to talk all things Dark Shadows in my life with Penny Dreadful at the Terror at Collinwood podcast. […]
In a television landscape once dominated by self-contained crime procedurals, Wiseguy broke the mold. Airing on CBS from 1987 to 1990, the show helped usher in a new era of serialized storytelling—years before it became the norm. Now, more than three decades after its finale, Wiseguy is reportedly making a surprise return (according to Yahoo), […]
Posting on April 18, 2023 was my appearance on Michael Bailey’s wonderful It All comes Back to Superman podcast, where I discussed the oral history book Voices from Krypton. Here’s how Michael described the episode: “This time out I celebrate Superman’s 85th birthday by talking with writer Ed Gross. Ed has a book titled Voices […]
The latest Galaxycon was held this past weekend in San Jose, California and my understanding was that it was a lot of fun. Oh, I was there, but spent most of those three days “locked up” in a room below the convention floor conducting interviews with various people from or regarding Star Trek, where, through […]
I’d say it was a busy week, but, these days, every week is a busy week, but, hey, the alternative is much worse. So, at firstforwomen.com, here’s a breakdown of what I wrote over the past few days. 10 Greatest Fictional Presidents on Film — Guiiding America on the Big Screen: An interview with Dale […]
Ape Nation is the YouTube channel dedicated to all things Planet of the Apes, and I recently had the opportunity to spend about an hour talking to the channel’s creator, Josh, about The Unofficial Oral History of Planet of the Apes that I’ve co-written with Joe Russo and Larry Landsman, volume I of which has […]
Well, I’ve obviously lost my mind! In 2023 I wrote the definitive (that’s what Mark Waid calls it!) unofficial oral history of Superman in the form of Voices from Krypton from Nacelle Books, and this year I co-wrote with Robert Greenberger November’s Superman: The Definitive History from Insight Editions. I’m hard-pressed to find a similar […]
An official inside look at the 85+ year history of Superman in all media.
Back in 1990, following its second season, I wrote a book titled Secret: File: The Unofficial Making of a Wiseguy, published by a nightmare company called Pioneer Books (which I’ll have to discuss in a future post). The book was an episode-by-episode behind-the-scenes look at the making of the first two seasons of Wiseguy, the […]
Hundreds of interviews take you inside the making of every Planet of the Apes film and TV series
In my new position as Senior Entertainment Editor at womansworld.com, I’ve been cranking away at Classic TV articles. Recent pieces have taken a look at Ernest Borgnine and the rest of the cast of McHale’s Navy, Jon Provost and the cast of Lassie (including quotes from my interview with Jon), the cast of One Day […]
Losing cast members from Dark Shadows is, unfortunately, something that oldtime fans of the show have gotten used to, yet it’s always a sad moment and that’s particularly true with the loss of Lara Parker, who made such an impact in her role as Angelique Bouchard. I had the opportunity to interview Lara a number […]
There’s no denying the obsession AI has triggered in me for Beatles-related AI music, especially original songs being done in the style and voices of the Fab Four, cover versions of other artists (Raffi’s “Bananaphone”) and inserting a couple of Beatles into a solo Beatles song (Paul’s “New” and “Return to Pepperland” and John’s “Grow […]
The Beatles AI version of the song “Bananaphone” became something of a sensation online, but then was yanked down (understandably). Originally created in 1994 by Raffi, who specializes in children’s songs, someone had the bright idea to kick the originator out (sorry, Raffi; nothing personal) and replace him with the Fab Four. This was the […]
Back in my early college days, I had it in my head that I would write a “making of” book to one of my favorite television shows ever, Dark Shadows, the Gothic horror daytime soap that starred Jonathan Frid as vampire Barnabas Collins. But a friend of mine at the time, Mike Pyne, looked at […]
The late Harlan Ellison was a brilliant writer, but he could also be a cantankerous pain in the ass. I’d had a couple of encounters with Harlan that went great, particularly for a profile that I’d written for Cinescape magazine that looked at his career in general and writing Star Trek‘s “City on the Edge […]
Let’s get one thing out of the way at the outset: even though this section of the blog is called “Fab Song of the Day,” the odds are pretty strong that it won’t be updated daily (I know myself too well). But you’ve got my promise that I’ll try. Now one thing I can say […]
When you really fall in love with a TV show, it’s more common than you’d think to want to connect to it on as many levels as you can. Maybe you want to read some fiction that branches the adventure off in a different way or (never admit that you) play with action figures based […]
Sitting down to watch the 1978 movie musical Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, one can only imagine the clash of egos that must have taken place on the set, given that the film starred the Bee Gees as the title characters with Peter Frampton as Billy Shears. At the time, the former had triggered […]
It’s a time of transition in the world of Superman. The comics, after a number of years of hits and misses, seem to be on a pretty great path thanks to writers like Philip Kennedy Johnson and Tom Taylor. For good or for bad, we finally received an answer on whether or not Henry Cavill […]
Superman Celebration 2023 came to a close yesterday and as I returned to my hotel room, I found myself reflecting on the weekend that was and actually feeling sad that it was over. Admittedly there are a lot of people who probably feel that way, but my personal response is a little surprising to me […]
SATURDAY JUNE 10, 2023: What a day! There were autograph sessions aplenty with Tyler Hoechlin, star of Superman & Lois, and Jesse Rath and Nicole Maines of Supergirl. Tyler participated in a photo op at the Superman statue in front of the courthouse, and later in the day took to the stage for a Q&A […]
FRIDAY JUNE 9, 2023: Admittedly this was officially Day 1 of Superman Celebration, but given that I started yesterday, we find ourselves in some strange sort of time paradox. In either case, it was an interesting day. For starters, there was a rededication of the 15-foot Superman statue outside the Massaic County Court House — […]
Thursday June 8, 2023: This year marks my third visit to Metropolis, Illinois for the annual Superman Celebration, the first having been in 2018 and the second in 2022. The difference between those and the 2023 trip is that the first was as a fan, the second was for the purpose of research for the […]
The idea of being on the receiving end of questions is a fairly new experience for me as an entertainment journalist, but not an unenjoyable one as I’ve discovered while promoting my upcoming oral history of Superman book, Voices from Krypton. Over the past few weeks I’ve been on a number of podcasts where I’ve […]
You ever have one of those moments where you hear of somebody being cast in a role and you’re just, like, “I’m in. That sounds great?” Well, that’s precisely the response I had to the recent announcement from Deadline.com that actor Eddie Murphy is circling a brand new version of The Pink Panther, taking over […]
Wish I could say this was a result of having too much time on my hands, but, instead, it’s about looking for a bit of fun as life tends to pile it on a bit. So last night I decide to ask ChatGBT to write a script for Lord of the Rings featuring The Beatles […]
Time was that fans of James Bond could go to bed at night comfortable in the knowledge that every two years, like clockwork, a new 007 adventure would reach the big screen. Time before that was a new flick once a year! Oh, there would be a few hiccups along the way, notably the three-year […]
When it came to movies, my parents had the most bizarre habit of walking into a theater whenever we got there, even if it was in the middle or towards the end of the film, and sitting there as the next showing unspooled — until the point we walked in on, which is when we […]
Superman’s incredible 84-year journey in comics and various mediums will be explored for the first time in oral history format within the pages of Voices from Krypton: It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s the Unofficial Oral History of Superman, written by veteran entertainment journalist Edward Gross and to be published by the Nacelle Company (The […]
Deemed “Star Trek Day,” September 8, 2022 was an odd one for me, the basis of that feeling probably stemming back to 2016. It was that year which saw the publication of the two-volume oral history of Trek that Mark A. Altman and I had written, The Fifty-Year Mission, which had been a culmination (at […]
I can remember like it was yesterday going to the movies with friends to see The Odd Couple, starring Walter Matthau as sportswriter and slob extraordinaire Oscar Madison, and Jack Lemmon as neatnik photographer Felix Unger. This was a film, based on the stage play by Neil Simon, about a couple of divorced guys who move […]
Definitely some relief on this side of the world as I was able to hand in the text for Chevrons Locked: The Unofficial Oral History of Stargate SG-1, The First 25 Years, which is a behind-the-scenes look at the first TV show based on the 1994 film Stargate. It’s written in the same oral history […]
I’d spent 15 years as executive editor of Life Story and Movie Magic magazines at Bauer Publishing, when those magazines were abruptly canceled and what should have been a ticket to the unemployment line, instead became — after a weekend of actually being unemployed — a shift over to the company’s digital division. For a […]
Back in the 1980s I was in my twenties, embarking on my career on a career as an entertainment journalist and nurturing the dream of breaking into Hollywood writing for film or television. It was a dream shared by Tom Sanders, who I’d met at Hofstra University (selling movie posters out of my dorm room, […]
Pop culture has always played such an important role in my life, the real problem being I’ve never been able to let things go. For the most part, once a passion, always a passion, and I tend to just add more topics and characters into the mix. After all this time, it’s a wonder that […]
A few years ago there was an announcement that Tom Hanks would be producing a film based on the old Major Matt Mason toy line from the 1960s — which immediately brought me back to my childhood and the realization that during my formative geek years, my obsessions were pulling me in different directions. In […]