WHAT is going on in this photo?

Josh Schwartz just Tweeted this photo from the Chuck set with the words “Watch CHUCK Season 4 if you want this photo to make sense!!”

A larger-than-life statue of Captain Awesome? Why do I get the feeling the Premier of Costa Gravos is involved?

Tim Jones Takes Over as Human Target Composer

Tim Jones, the man responsible for the score on Chuck, is taking on the job of scoring Human Target‘s second season, according to The Hollywood Reporter. He takes over for Bear McCreary who is moving on to zombie drama The Walking Dead. Tim will work with Matt Miller, a former producer for Chuck is the new showrunner for Human Target. Tim is still scoring Chuck, so he’s going to be a busy guy!

Design the Chuck Comic Con 2010 Poster! (UPDATED)

Chuck co-creator Josh Schwartz announced via Twitter last night that they’re running a fan contest to design the Chuck 2010 Comic Con poster. The contest will be open from 11AM-11PM PST TODAY, with more details to come later this morning. Once you’ve designed your masterpiece, upload it to this Flickr group. The winner will go down in Chuck fan history!

Updated with Flickr group link.

Chuck Comic Con 2010 Panel Details

Warner Bros. just released their Comic Con 2010 details, including the scoop on Chuck at this year’s geek fest. The panel will be Saturday, July 24 @ 10AM in Ballroom 20. Confirmed to attend are cast members Zachary Levi, Yvonne Strahovski, Adam Baldwin, Joshua Gomez, Sarah Lancaster, Ryan McPartlin, Mark Christopher Lawrence, Vik Sahay, and Scott Krinsky, plus co-creators Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak. Alan Sepinwall and Daniel Fienberg from HitFix will moderate the panel.

A “special video presentation” is being touted in addition to the Q&A. They won’t have begun filming season 4 yet, so what could that video be? We will be on hand for both the panel and the press room to bring you all the scoop! Plus, we’re planning another Chuck fan get-together after 2009′s fun evening. In the comments below, please let us know when you’d prefer to meet:

• Thursday evening (7? 8?)
• Friday evening (7? 8?)
• Saturday evening (7? 8?)

For those keeping score at home, yes, 3 (former?) Buy More employees will attend. Also, if you are planning to go to Yvonne’s charity tennis tournament Saturday evening, you have plenty of time to get up to Los Angeles and get in a few practice swings.

Chuck vs. the Podcast 58 – Jeffster Special Part 2 – Behind the Scenes

Here’s part 2 of our 100 minute monolithic Jeffster Special!

Part 1 featured fun video interviews with the men of Jeffster, Scott Krinsky (Jeff Barnes) and Vik Sahay (Lester Patel).

Now, part 2 takes us behind the scenes…  first, we talk with musician Eugene Edwards, who performs guitar and bass on Chuck and also on Jeffster songs, and also sings guide vocals on the Jeffster temporary tracks.  Then, Chuck composer Tim Jones takes us into the studio, and demonstrates many before and after versions of Jeffster songs, explaining his process, and gives many funny and interesting anecdotes.

Of course, there’s also a ton of Jeffster music, including some never heard before versions and mixes.

We also have a new contest, to give away a pair of Chucks!

Miss any episodes? You can find them all at chuckpodcast.blip.tv, and every time you watch it helps to support us!

Also, if you like the show, please consider supporting us with a monthly vote at Podcast Alley.

Chris Fedak Discusses Season 3, the Season Finale & Season 4

Alan Sepinwall has a new interview with Chuck co-creator Chris Fedak where he talks about season 3 as a whole, the decision to give fans closure in 3.13, the real season finale, and much more.

I want to start by going back to “Chuck vs. the Other Guy.” Once upon a time, that was going to be the finale of the season, and that played to me like you guys said, “We got season 3 by the skin of our teeth, so just in case, let’s give our fans a real ending this time.” Am I reading that correctly?

Absolutely. When we were looking at season 3, we always knew that section of the story, those first 13 episodes, the end would be Chuck and Sarah together, and that we would build the whole season around that: Chuck wanting to be a spy and Sarah’s perspective on Chuck, and then culminating in that moment of Chuck’s first kill. The original iteration of the finale – we found out early enough when we were working on episode 13, so we were able to scale it back a little bit, but it was going to be a bit more of an epic battle on the Eiffel Tower. When we realized we were going to be airing that in the middle of the season, we scaled that back to the bridge scene, and I think that worked quite well. It was going to be more of an Intersect v. Intersect scene, like we did in in the season finale, episode 319.

But it would have ended either way with Chuck at least appearing to kill Shaw?

Yes.

Well, you spend the first 13 with Sarah concerned about the idea of Chuck killing anybody. And then we come to that point, and he does kill Shaw, and Sarah is okay with it, and understands that a Chuck who is a killer is still “my Chuck.”

Right. That Chuck is the same guy. Even though he’s a hero and done these amazing things, in the end he’s actually killed someone to save her live, he’s still the Chuck Bartowski who saved her life.

(Read the full interview on HitFix…)

Chuck vs. the Podcast 57 – Jeffster Special Part 1 – The Actors

It’s finally here — our 100 minute monolithic Jeffster Special! We’ve even done a custom opening in honor of the phenomenon known as Jeffster.

Part 1 features fun video interviews with the men of Jeffster, Scott Krinsky (Jeff Barnes) and Vik Sahay (Lester Patel). Hear from their perspective how Jeffster has impacted their characters, and what their process is like preparing and performing a Jeffster song.

Then, part 2 will take us behind the scenes… first, we talk with musician Eugene Edwards, who performs guitar and bass on Chuck and also on Jeffster songs, and also sings guide vocals on the Jeffster temporary tracks. Then, Chuck composer Tim Jones takes us into the studio, and demonstrates many before and after versions of Jeffster songs, explaining his process, and gives many funny and interesting anecdotes.

Of course, there’s also a ton of Jeffster music, including some never heard before versions and mixes.

Behold, Part 1!

Miss any episodes? You can find them all at chuckpodcast.blip.tv, and every time you watch it helps to support us!

Also, if you like the show, please consider supporting us with a monthly vote at Podcast Alley.

Chris Fedak Drops Clues for Season Finale & Season 4

Chuck co-creator Chris Fedak gave Sci Fi Wire in exclusive interview leading into tonight’s Chuck season finale which not only teases what we’ll see tonight, but gives us a clue about what’s coming up in season 4.

Chuck’s enormous two-hour, two-episode finale airs tonight, and there’s one thing creator Chris Fedak wants you to know. “It’s the craziest two hours of Chuck we’ve ever done,” Fedak said in an exclusive interview. “We’ve done a couple of two-hour episodes in the past, and we always say, ‘Oh, each week is like a little movie.’ But this finale is not little. There is nothing little about it.”

(Gigantic Spoilers Alert!)

How big is it? Well, big enough that we’ve got 10 reasons from Fedak why you should watch tonight’s season-three finale on NBC at 8 p.m. ET/PT:

1. You get two episodes for the price of one, Buy More style! First up is “Chuck Versus the Subway,” and no, we’re not talking that Subway! Sandwich eating is optional… And the second episode is “Chuck Versus the Ring, Part II.” Do not expect to see Ellie get married again. It’s so not that kind of ring this time. (That was last year!) In fact, Fedak said, “That ‘part two’ is just me being pretentious. I just wanted to be like The Godfather, Part Two.” In the finale Brandon Routh is back as Daniel Shaw, and guess what? He “has his own Intersect loaded into his head,” he said.

2. Yep, Shaw’s back, and you can call him Two-Face! “We do have the return of Shaw, and that’s one of the big changes. But it’s not the Shaw that you know, that we left in episode 13 … the tortured agent who decided to seek revenge. This is a version of Shaw who’s embracing the dark side. And Brandon is wonderful in the part as the guy who’s flipped the coin. He’s embraced the Two-Face of it all and has become the villain,” said Fedak.

“We had always planned that he would be our Harvey Dent character. That we would essentially take someone who was an expert in the Ring and someone with a kind of tragic backstory and fold that back through our characters. And that in the end the season would boil down to Chuck and Shaw.”

3. Which means, Chuck’s going to meet his match! “Absolutely. I mean, in truth there’s a great kind of intensity. I love westerns, and there’s that great moment as you’re heading into the third act of a western.” Cue the spaghetti-western good guy/bad guy face-off music … “Let’s put it this way. I’m never above using some Ennio Morricone on my show.”

4. Luckily, Chuck’s got some serious backup! Chuck and Sarah “make for a wonderful couple, and we were just so excited to tell those stories of their relationship. And not from the perspective ‘will they/won’t they,’ but from the perspective of a young couple,” said Fedak. And then there’s the other wonderful new couple on the show, Casey and Morgan. “They’re obviously a couple. We realized that we had this perfect odd couple earlier in the season.” We’ll also see Elli and Awesome in action, as well as Papa Bartowski (Scott Bakula), and, of course, the Buy More gang.

5. But someone’s going to die! “Nobody is safe. … The show this season is a dangerous show, and the world that Chuck lives in is a dangerous place, and not everyone’s going to make it.” So someone we care about is going to die? “Yes,” said Fedak.

6. In fact, it’s so sad that even Fedak gets “emotional” talking about it! “There’s a scene that we have—it’s very hard to go there,” he said, choking up just a bit. “It is so emotional and such a big moment for the show in total, all the episodes … that I actually have a hard time watching. I actually get very emotional. … So it’s a, it’s a, um … yeah, it’s a, um, you know.”

(Read the full interview here…)

Chris Fedak Talks Back Six, Plus Chuck 3.14 Review

TV Squad has a new interview with Chuck co-creator Chris Fedak in which he discusses the back six episodes and the initial plans for the first 13 episodes. Here’s an excerpt:

Can you give us any indication of how Chuck’s dad is going to come back?
Well, I think that you know, Steven J. Bartowski, when he does come into Chuck’s life, he’s a person who’s been involved in the spy world. And when we last saw him, he had spent an incredible amount of time trying to get the Intersect out of his son’s head. And much of what we’re going to be dealing with coming up is that Chuck’s now decided to be a spy. And that decision, in episode 22 last season when he uploaded the Intersect 2.0 to save Sarah and Casey and to be a hero, that’s very much what this season is about. And the next few episodes will be dealing with the ramifications of that.

Is it good to have a neophyte spy with Morgan being on board? Because Chuck’s not really that way anymore, now that he’s got the Intersect 2.0 in him and he can do a lot of stuff he couldn’t do.
Well, I think two things. One, I would say is that Chuck is always going to be Chuck Bartowski. It’s important to the show and I think it’s also so much a part about how Zach imbues Chuck with kind of a regular guy (vibe) and that’s a part of the show.

But you’re absolutely right. What’s been great for us this season is that bringing Morgan into the spy world with another person, another newbie, kind of a virgin to the spy world, who becomes our eyes and sometimes our voice for how incredible the spy world is, and how whackadoodle it can be. It needs to have another person. And Josh Gomez (who plays Morgan), last season when we were talking about season three, he was just so excited to kind of be able to be the new audience, to be the new kind of fish out of water in the spy world.

(Read the full interview here…)

Meanwhile, Jace at Televisionary has posted his review for “Chuck vs. the Honeymooners”, which airs Monday, April 26:

There’s a winning sense of joy and lightness to this episode that has been missing from the series for a bit, given some of the darkness that crept in during the last few installments. “Chuck Versus the Honeymooners” provides just the right mix of comedy, romance, action, and intrigue as well as several new character dynamics to explore.

Given that the previous episode had finally brought together Chuck and Sarah in a real and meaningful way, I was curious to see just how their relationship would be handled here, whether they would be taking tentative first steps into the dating world or whether we’d find them as a full-blown couple.

Let’s just say: the honeymoon isn’t over. Not by a long shot.

(Read the full review here…)

Excited yet? Let’s just have another look at the preview, shall we?

Chuck Wins Save One Show Poll

Good job, Chucksters! Chuck won E!’s annual Save One Show poll with a whopping 52% of the votes, compared to just 20% going for second-place show (and sometime timeslot competitor) One Tree Hill. Chris Fedak and Josh Schwartz made the following statement to E! after the results were announced:

“We are so thankful that our fans voted for Chuck in such a huge way. Though we are also a little frightened of their ability to control the Internet. Our fear aside, we are honored to have the greatest fans in the history of television.”

Watch E! News tonight at 7/6c to see Chuck crowned the winner. Also, as promised, Kristin will be taking the results directly to Jeff Zucker at NBC to show how much fans want a fourth season. Last but not least, here’s Zachary Levi reacting to the results:

Next Page »