1) The U.S. cable Sci Fi Channel has renewed its spin-off series Stargate: Atlantis for a 20 episode fifth season. The fourth sesaon is currently running and added two new cast members – Amanda Tapping and Jewel Staite. The Sci Fi Channel is also airing a two-hour pilot for a new show called Warehouse 13, about two F.B.I. agents in charge of retrieving special objects for a top-secret storage facility in South Dakota.

2) The U.S. cable channel AMC is also getting into sci-fi television with a horror series, 99 Stories, set in a high-rise building in which a group of strangers find themselves trapped. The franchise is meant to compliment AMC’s long-running Monsterfest.

3) To circumvent the need for a lengthy season hiatus, NBC hit show Heroes in the U.S. had planned to do a showcase follow-up series, Heroes: Origins, with directors like Eli Roth and Kevin Smith lined up to do episodes. Now the show has announced that it’s postponing production on the anthology series and may scrap the plan altogether due to the burgeoning writers’ strike.

4) David Dobkin, director of Wedding Crashers and just released film Fred Claus, has signed on to helm the next DC Comics adaptation, The Flash. Shaun Levy was originally to direct but had to drop out because of scheduling conflicts.

5) Terry Gilliam’s next movie is the fantasy adventure The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. It tells the story of a man who made a deal with the devil so that he could guide the imaginations of others. The film stars Heath Ledger (who worked with Gilliam on The Brothers Grimm,) Tom Waits, Christopher Plummer, Lily Cole, Andrew Garfield and Verne Troyer.

6) Joss Whedon is returning to U.S. television with Dollhouse, a sci-fi series starring Buffy/Angel alumnus Eliza Dushku for the Fox network. Dushku plays Echo, one of a group of men and women who are imprinted with different personalities for secret assignments, then mind-wiped while they live in the dormitory lab of the Dollhouse. Fox bought six episodes of the series without seeing a pilot.

7) Word has come from the X-Files crew that the next film in the franchise, X-Files 2, will be released in July 2008. No trailers or description of the plotline of the film have yet been released, though the producers say the film will take the Mulder-Scully relationship in interesting directions.