Cover image: Production Office

In this blog series, we report on the production progress and other news of The Expanse each week. We collect the latest social media and press activity from the show’s production team, cast, and the community. We hope this series is useful for those who are not able to closely monitor social media but who want an easy way to catch up on all the latest Expanse updates each week.

To catch up on the previous week of updates, check out our last post here.

We open this week’s blog with a TEL item of pride: Our very own Ed Akselrud and Kyle LaBarre had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Wes Chatham. The team dove deep with Wes into the essence of Amos, and has some interesting tidbits regarding Wes’s approach to portraying the character and filming challenges, as well as some personal insights. There are some mild spoilers for Season 4/Cibola Burn in the article, so beware.

Let’s get down to it, here’s what happened this week in the world of The Expanse.

Production

This week in production news features information about a returning director and Director of Photography, with insight into the beginning of the direction process and a comprehensive crew view.

  • The Expanse Production Office reminds us it was a mere three years ago on December 14, 2015, that Season One premiered! It seems like just yesterday!
  • The PO was also strict with the 2nd Assistant Production Coordinator (APC), Michael, placing him in jail to review Daily Production Reports.
  • By popular acclaim, Breck Eisner returns to direct the final production block (generally, a block is where you arrange the production schedule to maximize efficiency in filming, so there are overlaps in filming episodes). Breck gives us a glimpse of his process here. This photo courtesy of Wes Chatham also includes a clapperboard with an interesting scene titled “Insect cuts Amos”. Could this refer to something from Cibola Burn?
  • Quite a bit of the lovely appearance of the show results from Directors of Photography. One of them, Jeremy Benning, captured a lovely panoramic show of the crew here.
  • Help the family of a member of The Expanse production family. Mario Esquillo was Head of Maintenance for The Expanse (and Cinespace) who suddenly passed away on December 12, 2018. A GoFundMe has been established to help. Our thoughts are with his family.

Media

In Media this week, The Expanse continues its run in popularity, and evidence that the upcoming book in the series REALLY EXISTS! Check out the sale on early books in the series.

  • Speaking of polls, the Museum of Science Fiction announced that the Rocinante (Tachi) won their November poll by a comfortable margin. This is impressive considering there was some STIFF competition. Also included was the Enterprise, Serenity and the TARDIS!
  • The Ringer identified The Expanse as one of its Best Comebacks of 2018. We agree!
  • We were CONSUMED WITH JEALOUSY when Dalton Ross squealed that he had received an advance reading copy of Book 8 of The Expanse series, Tiamat’s Wrath. Where do we go to break in?

  • Haven’t read the books yet? Especially books 1 through 3 (Leviathan Wakes, Caliban’s War and Abaddon’s Gate)? Do you love paper books? Save $13 off of list price, and get an extra $5 off, too! Don’t miss out on this deal good through December 21, 2018. (We are not affiliated with Amazon, we just know a good deal when we see one).
  • The art on hard copy books has long been a thing with fandoms (think Frank Frazetta). It turns out that illustrations for The Expanse novels published in different countries have different covers. We noted that the Polish covers were particularly popular, so we were pumped to see them for sale.

Cast

  • François Chau, the man playing Jules-Pierre Mao, who you love to hate, has been cast in Birds of Prey. The role is a secret, but, we wouldn’t be surprised if he played a bad guy, as he does it so well.

Community

  • Our intrepid cocktail inventors, Paine x MacTane released Cocktail 66 in honor of Manéo Jung-Espinoza, called the ¿Y Qué?. This week’s Cocktail 67 is the MCRN Kittur Chennamma, and yes, it’s spicy! Keep an eye on their twitter account, because each week, they announce a clue to a new cocktail, and publish people who correctly guess what it’s about.

The wonderful art, fine and visual, continues to flow from our lovely community.

  • Who loves Avasarala? EVERYONE. We love Andy Chipman’s illustration of the wonderfully talented, straight and spicy talking diplomat, Chrisjen Avasarala, played by the lovely Shohreh Aghdashloo.
  • Juliette Andromeda Mao – the challenging, strong and doomed young heir of Jules-Pierre Mao is wonderfully portrayed here by T.M. Showers. Check out the discussion of making this piece of art. (If you look closely, you’ll see the homage to Miller).
  • If you have some spare time, check out Enchantment of Eternity’s YouTube review of Abaddon’s Gate, focusing on the books, with some comparisons to the show.
  • Also on YouTube is a compilation from Margarita Life – this is a nice little less than 10 minute video, does an excellent job of actually showing bits of quite a lot of characters from all seasons.

That’s all for this week, folks. Sorry we’re a wee bit late this week.  Check back next Sunday for a rundown of the upcoming week in the world of The Expanse.

Thanks for reading!

~Kiddle