Dune Miniseries Set To Shoot
rincipal photography on the SCI FI Channel miniseries Frank Herbert's Dune
will begin on Nov. 22 in Prague.
Academy Award-winner William Hurt will play
Duke Leto in the six-hour epic, while Italian screen icon Giancarlo Giannini
has been signed to play Emperor Shaddam IV.
Casting is still underway, although it's been announced that newcomer Alec Newman
will play the key role of Paul Atreides. Also, Muriel Baumeister will play Princess Irulan,
Uwe Ochsenknecht will play Stilgar, Ian McNeice will star as Baron
Harkonnen and Barbara Kodetova will take on the role of Chani.
The project is being written and directed by John Harrison, while Richard P.
Rubinstein and Mitchell Galin will executive produce. Three-time
Oscar-winning cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (Apocalypse Now) will serve
as the director of photography.
Theodor Pistek, who picked up an Oscar for his work on Amadeus, has joined
the project as costume designer. Cesar-winning production designer Miljen
Kreka Kljakovic and Emmy-nominated special effects supervisor Ernest Farino
will also work on the miniseries.
Dune is being produced by New Amsterdam Entertainment Inc. in association
with Victor Television Productions. The project is budgeted at more than
$20 million and will air on SCI FI in the fourth quarter of 2000.
The miniseries is based on Frank Herbert's best-selling SF book Dune, which
has sold more than 12 million copies worldwide. Harrison has reportedly
penned a faithful adaptation of the novel.
Straczynski Mum About CBS Series
abylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski isn't talking about a report in the Cleveland Plain Dealer that he and X-Files creator Chris Carter are developing a new drama for CBS.
The news ran as one sentence in a Nov. 16 Dealer story about science fiction and fantasy TV shows and has been the cause of much speculation among SF fans ever since.
When SCI FI Wire e-mailed Straczynski about the story, he responded: "There's nothing that I can say about this at this time, but I will be able to say a little more in about a week...all I can say for now is that it is and it isn't what it seems."
Spielberg Working On A.I. Script
efore his death Stanley Kubrick was working on an SF film called A.I., and it looks like Steven Spielberg is going to continue the project.
According to Variety columnist Michael Fleming, Spielberg is writing a screenplay based on Kubrick's 80-page treatment for the film.
A.I. would be the first script Spielberg has written since his famous 1977 picture Close Encounters of the Third Kind. However, the director is only working on the screenplay while there is a lull with his big-budget SF project Minority Report, and Fleming says he may hand the project off at any time.
West Plans Radical Prisoner Movie
on Air director Simon West has always wanted to film a big-screen version of the quirky British TV series The Prisoner, and now Universal is going to give him his chance.
Variety reports that West has inked a deal with the studio to work on the project, which will be supervised by Universal's Kevin Misher.
"My father turned me on to the series in the late '60s, and I was so obsessed that when I visited my grandmother in Wales, I made her drive me four hours to the set," West said. "I want [the film] to be as radical as that series was back then, with the theme of a man fighting the system after he's fallen down the rabbit hole."
Four Writers Will Pen Blair Sequels
ollowing news that Jon Bokenkamp has been hired by Artisan Entertainment to script a sequel to The Blair Witch Project comes word that he won't be the only writer working on a follow-up.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Bokenkamp and Neal Marshall Stevens, as well as two other writers who have yet to be named, will each pen a sequel to the hit film.
Artisan will then choose the best of the four scripts and put that one on a fast development track for release some time in 2000. Although this so-called "sweepstakes" scripting process is unusual, according to the Writer's Guild of America it's been known to happen in the past.
It's still not clear whether Blair creators Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick will work on the film, since Artisan owns the rights to the franchise. Earlier this month Sanchez told Entertainment Weekly: "The ball is in their court. They control whether we get involved or not."
Deep Space Nine Game Goes To War
imon & Schuster Interactive has announced that its second PC game based on the series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine will be called Dominion Wars.
The real-time strategy title takes its name and story line from the last few seasons of the TV show, which focused on the war for the Alpha Quadrant.
Gamers will be able to play the Federation, the Klingons, the Cardassians or the Jem 'Hadar, controlling up to six ships at any one time. Dominion Wars is being built with the Quantum game engine and will ship in fall 2000.
Digital Camera Developed For Star Wars
ony Electronics and Panavision Inc. have teamed up to create a prototype 24-frame progressive high-definition digital camera system for George Lucas' company Lucasfilm.
Lucasfilm will test the camera over the next several months in preparation for using it to shoot Star Wars: Episode II and Episode III.
The three companies have been working on the innovative digital technology for the past year and a half in an effort to advance so-called "filmless" filmmaking. Earlier this year Lucasfilm also held several screening tests in which The Phantom Menace was shown using filmless digital projectors.
Loncraine Will Direct Neverwhere
ichard Loncraine will direct the film version of Neil Gaiman's urban fantasy novel Neverwhere, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The movie is currently being produced by Miramax under its Dimension label, though at one point it had been over at Sony with Jesse Dylan attached to direct.
The picture will begin shooting next spring in London with a budget reported to be less than $30 million. Neverwhere was previously adapted as a mini-series for the BBC.
CBS Isn't Touched By Dogma
BS has asked Lions Gate Releasing to quit using the tag line "Get Touched By An Angel" to promote Kevin Smith's new religious satire Dogma.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, CBS thinks its viewers are confused about the connection between its family oriented series Touched by An Angel and Smith's "irreverent movie that apparently belittles every religious tenet embraced by our show."
Lions Gate Releasing co-president Tom Ortenberg said his company would replace the slogan with the new catch phrase "#1 Comedy in America" and that "we never thought it would become an issue." Dogma, which stars Ben Affleck and Matt Damon as two angels who are trying to get back into heaven, has already been the target of public protests by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.
The independent film opened on Friday, Nov. 12, earning a sizable $8.7 million.
Duvall Joins The Sixth Day
cademy Award winner Robert Duvall has signed a deal to star alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in the Phoenix Pictures cloning thriller The Sixth Day.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Duvall will play a scientist who is in league with the film's as yet uncast villain.
Meanwhile, Schwarzenegger stars as a man who returns home one day and discovers he's been replaced by a clone. Roger Spottiswoode will direct the $80 million movie, which begins shooting this December in Vancouver, B.C.
Briefly Noted
- TNT has picked up the exclusive second-run rights to The Psi Factor: Chronicles of the Paranormal and plans to air the series in September 2000. In an unusual move, TNT also bought the official Psi Factor Web site.
- Pokemon: The First Movie earned a monster $32.4 million during its opening weekend in theaters.
- The SCI FI Channel and USA Network will air Galaxy Quest: 20th Anniversary Special...The Journey Continues in December. The special is a look at the fictional TV show that DreamWorks' upcoming SF comedy Galaxy Quest is supposedly based on.
- Pixar Animation Studios will include the Oscar-nominated short movie Luxo Jr. along with the release of its feature film Toy Story 2, which opens in theaters this Thanksgiving.
- The Encore Media Group has purchased the pay TV rights to Kevin Smith's religious fantasy film Dogma and will begin running the movie on The New Encore cable channel in fall 2000.
