HEROES' Ventimiglia to host geek icon battle webseries

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Milo Ventimiglia - AKA Peter Petrelli on NBC's Heroes - will appear in and produce Ultradome, a new web series pitting the greatest characters from sci-fi and fantasy against each other in epic battles for supremacy.

"My whole life has been spent engaged with friends in intellectual debate," said Ventimiglia, "like whether Captain Kirk is tougher than Spock or if Middle Earth is a more difficult place to live than Tatooine. With Ultradome, we can bring these debates to the public and settle them in the most logical way possible: through armed combat."

If you're already having fantasies about watching a catfight between Buffy and Xena, forget it. According to the Reporter, Ultradome will be "played for laughs with pop culture-driven battles, and shows fans fighting instead of trying to re-create the iconic warriors themselves."

Apparently the series of 3-to-5 minute episodes will begin with fans engaging in a debate about who would win in a fight between two famous characters - Neo vs. Harry Potter, Gandalf vs. Darth Vader, etc. - and then the fans will be transported to a stadium where they will fight using the skills and weapons of their chosen character. It's a novel way to get around the rights issues of using copyrighted characters, but it's a little disappointing that we won't actually get to see, say, Han Solo vs. Indiana Jones. (Well, at least they didn't decide to go the ultraviolent, Celebrity Deathmatch route. I really don't need to see Han and Indiana killing each other with chainsaws.)

Ventimiglia will appear in the first episode, taking the side of The Lord of the Rings in a battle against Star Wars. Hmmm... How long before we get to see Peter Petrelli vs. Luke Skywalker?

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Technocrati tags: [Heroes][Ultradome]