E.T. DVD Lands Briefly
niversal will release E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial on DVD Oct. 22, but only for only 10 weeks, the company announced.
Universal Studios Home Video will release both original and 20th-anniversary versions of the 1982 blockbuster. After the 10 weeks, the title will go on moratorium indefinitely.
Universal will release the E.T. Limited Collector's Edition DVD, a two-disc set featuring the 2002 version of the movie in either letterbox or full-frame formats for $22.95. The E.T. Ultimate Collector's Gift Set will include the original theatrical version, the 2002 theatrical version, a CD soundtrack, a script from the original feature and a collectible senitype for $69.98. A VHS full-frame version of the movie will be priced at $14.95.
The two-disc set will also contain a track with John Williams' live orchestral performance of his score, which accompanied the 20th-anniversary premiere of the movie in Los Angeles earlier this year. Other DVD highlights include a new interview with director Steven Spielberg, a reunion of the cast and crew, the evolution of the E.T. character and Universal Studios Total Axess, a DVD-ROM feature, the studio announced.
Helmers Up For Potter III
allie Khouri and Kenneth Branagh have joined Alfonso Cuaron on the short list of directors under consideration to helm the proposed third Harry Potter movie, The Prisoner of Azkaban, Newsweek magazine reported.
Cuaron (A Little Princess) was previously reported as a possible substitute for Chris Columbus, director of the first two Potter films, who said that he's dropping out so that he can move his family back to the United States.
Branagh plays Prof. Gilderoy Lockhart in the second Potter film, The Chamber of Secrets, which is slated for a November release. Khouri wrote Thelma and Louise and directed the current Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. Azkaban is set for a summer 2004 release.
EW Sneaks Potter II
he June 7 issue of Entertainment Weekly magazine features several new photos from the upcoming sequel film Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, based on the second of J.K. Rowling's best-selling Potter novels.
The magazine's official Web site has also posted the images, which feature the first glimpses of new characters Dobby the house elf and Prof. Gilderoy Lockhart, played by Kenneth Branagh.
The images also depict Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) in the titular chamber and classmates Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint). Chamber is slated for a Nov. 15 release.
Gellar Smooched In Scooby
arah Michelle Gellar, who plays the ever fashionable damsel-in-distress Daphne Blake in the upcoming live-action Scooby-Doo film, told SCI FI Wire that the rumored kiss between her character and Linda Cardellini's Velma was indeed filmed.
"We did kiss. It got cut," she said in an interview while promoting the film. "Hopefully they'll add it into the DVD."
Unlike Gellar's famous same-sex buss with co-star Selma Blair in Cruel Intentions, Gellar insisted that the Scooby kiss was not gratuitous. "It wasn't just, like, for fun," she said. The scene in question involves the four human members of the Scooby gang supernaturally switching bodies. "Initially in the soul-swapping scene Velma and Daphne couldn't seem to get their souls back together in the woods," Gellar said. "And so the way they found was to kiss and the souls went back into proper alignment."
Cardellini isn't the only co-star that Gellar kissed during the course of the film. She also shares an on-screen embrace with off-screen fiancée Freddie Prinze Jr., who plays Fred. So was the kiss with her real-life love interest anticlimactic after the controversial same-sex smooch? Gellar joked, "After kissing Linda? Well, you know, Linda is quite a kisser." Scooby-Doo opens June 14.
Buffy To Lighten Up
arah Michelle Gellar, star of UPN's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, told SCI FI Wire that she's eager for the show to lighten up next season.
"I think it's going to be a lighter year," Gellar said while promoting her upcoming film Scooby-Doo. "I think we've traveled to the dark enough already. Let's go back to happy Buffy."
The show's sixth season ended with the death of Tara, the transformation of Willow to evil and the departure of Giles for good. The show's sixth season was also characterized by storylines involving disillusionment, death, rape and addiction.
Gellar, meanwhile, told the Dark Horizons Web site that she's not eager to see a new feature-film treatment of the series, the story of which was first told in a 1992 movie of the same name. "I'm not into [a movie], and I've got to be honest and say that I believe that, first of all, it was a movie, it didn't work as a film, and we battled for so long, just getting out from underneath [what] was essentially a failed feature film," she told the site. "And I feel that, with the beauty of the story, ... the attachment you have and the ride that you take with these characters, ... I feel like we make a movie every week. So to take one episode to expand, it's kind of a waste. And I also feel it's kind of a shocking thing for television. I feel like it's saying, 'Well, OK, now we move on to bigger things, because you moviegoers expect it.' But ... I've always said I don't think it's right to be out, and I don't think it's fair."
Rings Wins MTV Award
eter Jackson's first Lord of the Rings film won the top honor at the 2002 MTV Movie Awards, taped June 1 in Los Angeles for broadcast at 9 p.m. June 6 on the music network, the Associated Press reported.
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring won the award for best movie, based on a national survey of MTV viewers.
Orlando Bloom, who played the elf archer Legolas in Rings, won the award for breakthrough male performance. The awards were the only ones presented to genre films. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Scooby-Doo star Sarah Michelle Gellar co-hosted the show.
Hobbits Filming Again
lijah Wood and several other Lord of the Rings stars returned to New Zealand in May to film pickup shots for the upcoming second installment in the trilogy, The Two Towers, the MTV.com Web site reported.
Wood (Frodo) and the trilogy's three other Hobbit actors—Sean Astin, Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan—reunited with director Peter Jackson to shoot the scenes, which fill in gaps in the movie, most of which was shot last year.
"They've realized that there are certain things that they are missing, certain moments that they need," Wood told MTV.
Added Astin, "And then they flew us down here, and now we're going to film them."
Episode III To Begin With Bang?
eorge Lucas told Entertainment Tonight that the next Star Wars installment will be different from the previous ones, according to a report on TheForce.net.
In spoilery comments about Episode III to the entertainment news show, Lucas said that the Clone Wars would end at the beginning of the film, and it would then become very small and personal.
Meanwhile, the Australian Daily Telegraph newspaper reported that two Australian children might be cast in the pivotal roles of young Luke Skywalker and his twin sister, Leia, in the final Star Wars prequel, which is slated to begin production next year in Sydney. "A baby Luke, if anything, and Leia an Australian? Who knows?" producer Rick McCallum told the newspaper.
Episode II Surprises Hinted
eorge Lucas and company revealed some of the hidden "easter eggs" in Star Wars: Episode II—Attack of the Clones, including appearances of some familiar vehicles, the official Homing Beacon newsletter reported.
Sharp-eyed viewers will notice several Millennium Falcon-style Corellian freighters on a dock on Naboo, as well as a Corellian bulk freighter, the same model as Talon Karrde's Wild Karrde, from the expanded universe, the newsletter reported.
Other surprises:
•R5-D4, the droid that blows up in front of Luke in Episode IV, can be seen on the streets of Mos Espa.
•The very first shot reveals an Orion space plane from 2001: A Space Odyssey in the orbital traffic around Coruscant.
•An X-wing fighter and TIE fighter are visible during the speeder chase over Coruscant.
Spielberg Talks Indy IV
teven Spielberg updated Cinescape Online on the progress of the fourth Indiana Jones movie, for which writer/director Frank Darabont has been hired to pen the script.
"The status is that Frank Darabont is starting—he's writing the screenplay," Spielberg told the site. "We just made Frank's deal two weeks ago. We have the story, which is a story George Lucas wrote. It's a wonderful story. We have Harrison Ford, who's approved the story. He's ready to perform in the movie."
Spielberg added, "The movie's going to be shot probably in May of 2004. When I say probably, it could be April or May of 2004, and the movie's going to come out probably for the July 4th weekend of 2005, because the last Star Wars is going to come out the week before Memorial Day 2005. So we're coordinating this to be a one-two punch, with the last Star Wars coming out in 2005 in May and Indiana Jones IV coming out 2005, probably June 29th or July 4th."
As for Ford's advancing age, Spielberg said, "Harrison Ford can still kick the sh-t out of most people half his age. I think he's in great condition to put the fedora and the ... leather jacket back on and crack that bullwhip a few more times."
Hulk Detail Revealed
! Online columnist Anderson Jones revealed a key plot detail for Ang Lee's upcoming Hulk movie, and confirmed that original Hulk TV star Lou Ferrigno has shot a cameo appearance for the film.
Jones reported that Bruce Banner, played by Australian actor Eric Bana, will be infected by a pack of feral irradiated dogs to become the titular green hero.
A source close to the set told Jones that image capturing has begun at a special-effects house on actors playing the mutated junkyard dogs, including a giant poodle who battles Banner.
Hu Joins X-Men 2 Cast
he Scorpion King's co-star Kelly Hu has joined the cast of the X-Men sequel for director Bryan Singer, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Hu will star as the villainous Anne, a mutant with human emotions who is the sidekick to Striker, the lead villain who has yet to be cast, the trade paper reported.
Production on the sequel, sometimes called X2, is scheduled to begin this month, with Ralph Winter, Lauren Shuler Donner and Avi Arad producing, the trade paper reported. Hu joins other new cast members Aaron Stanford as Pyro and Alan Cumming as Nightcrawler.
Rising Stars Heads For Film
pike Seldin, president of production for Top Cow comics, told the Comics2Film Web site that sibling screenwriters Anthony and Joe Russo have signed on to adapt J. Michael Straczynski's Rising Stars comic series for the screen.
Babylon 5 creator Straczynski wrote a draft of the script, the site reported.
Rising Stars tells the story of superheroes who arrive on Earth in a flash of light in 1969 in the midwestern town of Pederson, Ill., and how they interact with a world that has never known such beings.
Loeb Joins Smallville Staff
omic writer Jeph Loeb has left his job shepherding the proposed animated Buffy the Vampire Slayer series to join The WB's Smallville as a consulting producer, the Comics Continuum Web site reported.
Loeb, who wrote Superman comics for DC and Spider-Man for Marvel, began work on Smallville on June 3, the site reported.
Smallville creators "Al [Gough] and Miles [Millar] called me in last season to pitch some ideas for shows," Loeb told the site. "I just kept babbling until they offered me a job for this season. It's a great group of folks, and I'm having a blast. ... At the moment, I'm the guy who writes everything down on the whiteboard. My hands are covered with markers. Actually, Al and Miles run the writers' room as very much a team effort. Everyone pitches ideas for stories, and they help us form them into some very cool upcoming episodes. I will be writing for the show, and my title is 'consulting producer,' which I guess means that I'm the ambassador to Spain."
As for the much-anticipated Buffy toon, Loeb said, "The Buffy animated series is going to happen. I left the show in excellent hands and terrific shape. The scripts are as good as the live-action show—that would be because the live-action writers wrote them—and the look of the show is being handled by a world-class animation team that must go unnamed at this time, and the entire operation is still under the watchful eye and care of Buffy/Angel creator and media mogul Joss Whedon. We hope to see some first rough animation by the end of the year. I was really sad to have to step back to go to Smallville, but I do feel like I carried the baby through the entire pregnancy, and now someone else—Joss and Mutant Enemy's Chris Buchanan—will deliver the goods and make it grow up to be big and strong."
Wonder Twins Activate Again
arner Brothers has teamed with Gaylord Films to option the movie rights to The Wonder Twins, the superhero characters from Hanna-Barbera's 1977 Saturday-morning animated series The All-New SuperFriends Hour, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The plan is to create a live-action family movie based on the characters, along the lines of Warner's upcoming Scooby-Doo film, the trade paper reported.
The Wonder Twins are two aliens from the planet Exxor. With the cry "Wonder Twin powers, activate!" Zan has the power to change into any water-based form, while Jayna can become any animal, the trade paper reported.
A writer is expected to come aboard shortly. Gaylord's Hunt Lowry and Casey La Scala will produce.
Butler Back In Witchblade?
roduction may resume as early as June 10 on TNT's supernatural series Witchblade, as star Yancy Butler is expected to show up for work, having successfully completed rehab treatment, sources told The Hollywood Reporter.
Production halted about a month ago to allow Butler to seek treatment for alcohol addiction.
Six of the second season's 13 episodes have already been shot, the trade paper reported. When Butler sought treatment, there was some speculation that she might be replaced in the lead role of NYPD Detective Sara Pezzini. Witchblade launches June 16 with a two-hour premiere, before moving to its regular Monday-night timeslot.
Lee Cameos In Marvel Movies
arvel Comics honcho Stan Lee told an AOL chat that he will make cameo appearances in the upcoming Hulk and Daredevil movies, according to a report on the Comics Continuum Web site.
"They were filming [The Hulk] in San Francisco, and I was supposed to go up there and do my cameo," Lee told the chat on June 4. "I didn't have time to get away. Now they are coming down to Los Angeles. And I think I will be doing it pretty soon."
Lee added that he's already shot his scene for Daredevil, which stars Ben Affleck. "I think Ben Affleck looks exactly the way [Daredevil] did" in the comics, Lee said.
Lee also shot a cameo in Spider-Man, but that cameo was mostly cut out of the final film.
Knights Awakes At DreamWorks
reamWorks will develop Sleepless Knights, a film based on a pitch by comic-book writer Grant Morrison, with director Guillermo del Toro (Blade 2) attached to helm, Variety reported.
Morrison is best known for the graphic novel Batman: Arkham Asylum, and he has worked on such Marvel and DC Comics titles as New X-Men, Animal Man, Doom Patrol and JLA.
Morrison wrote the treatment for Sleepless Knights with producer and fellow Scotsman Susan Montford. The film tells the story of a time-machine experiment that goes wrong, leaving the planet permanently stuck on Halloween. When ghosts and spirits realize they have free rein, a young boy is recruited to an elite ghostbusting squadron called the Sleepless Knights.
Montford and del Toro are also making At the Mountains of Madness at DreamWorks, based on the H.P. Lovecraft novel of the same name, the trade paper reported.
Lopez To Shrink Heroes
ennifer Lopez will play a therapist to superheroes in the upcoming fantasy comedy Shrink for Columbia Pictures, which has optioned the idea, Variety reported.
Marvel Comics creator-illustrator Rob Liefeld came up with the idea, which is described as a cross between Men in Black and Analyze This, the trade paper reported.
Columbia hopes to use recognizable superheroes in the same way that Shrek made use of familiar animated characters, the trade paper reported. Lopez's character was once a superhero herself, until a traumatic incident prompted her to shield that power. She finds herself in a love triangle between a villain and virtuous superbeings.
Woo Shells Out Ninja Turtles
irector/producer John Woo told SCI FI Wire that his proposed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie would use computer animation instead of animatronic puppets, as did the 1990s series of live-action movies based on the comic franchise.
Woo will produce the proposed new film and a television series based on it. "We're still planning," Woo said in an interview. "I [will] work on this project as a producer with my partner, Terence Chang, as co-producer. The other companies [Digital Rim Entertainment and Mirage Studios] wanted to start with television first and then make a movie. Now we're starting with a story."
Woo said that computer animation would give Turtles a different feel from the previous film versions. "CGI can create more interesting techniques," he said. "It's also good for designing some of the crazy action. On the other hand, we want to be closer to the original [comic book], try to make it more moody and darker. CGI can create that kind of mood." New Line Cinema, producers of the three previous Turtles films, is not reported to be involved in the CGI version.
Is Carpenter Out Of Angel?
harisma Carpenter, who plays Cordelia in The WB's vampire series Angel, may or may not return next season, according to columnist Watch with Wanda on E! Online.
Carpenter disappeared from the series for a month last season, and her character ascended onto another plane of existence in the season finale.
"Last week, a WB source (whose scoops have always been dead-on) told me it had not been decided yet whether Charisma Carpenter would return to Angel, as she has been struggling with a personal problem that affected production this season," Wanda reported. "Charisma was allegedly told to take a month off to take care of it, and if she didn't, she'd be out."
But Carpenter's agent denied a personal problem, telling Wanda that "Charisma is coming back next season. We received her pickup orders today. Maybe they're confusing her with [Witchblade star] Yancy Butler." Butler took a month off in the middle of production on the TNT show's upcoming second season to deal with alcohol addiction, but will reportedly return to work next week.
Heinlein Award Created
he Heinlein Society announced that it is establishing the Heinlein Award, for outstanding published works in hard SF and technical writings that inspire the human exploration of space, Locus magazine reported.
The award is named for legendary SF author Robert A. Heinlein.
The award will be given periodically, but no more often than annually, and will consist of a certificate and a trophy, the magazine reported. The winner will be selected by an advisory board, currently consisting of Greg Bear, Joe Haldeman, Yoji Kondo, Elizabeth Moon, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Spider Robinson, Stanley Schmidt and Charles Sheffield, plus U.S. Naval Academy English professors Herb Gilliland and John Hill.
Mutant X Resumes Shooting
he Comics Continuum Web site reported that production has begun in Toronto on the second season of the syndicated Mutant X television series.
"We have begun shooting 'Time Squared,' the first [episode] of the season, but [it] won't air first, and it is literally a blast from the past," Tribune Entertainment's Seth Howard told the Continuum.
Howard added, "We start shooting our second-season premiere, 'Past as Prologue,' written by Howard Chaykin, on Friday [June 7]. Gabriel Ashlocke is back and is faced with his own mortality. Wait until you see who he goes to for help." Michael Easton, who plays Gabriel, has signed on to appear in three second-season episodes of Mutant X, the site reported.
Disney Mines Natural History
isney's Touchstone Pictures is developing an as-yet-untitled fantasy family movie set in the Natural History Museum of the Smithsonian Institution, Variety reported.
Jason and Justin Heimberg and Jeff Sank will write the screenplay for the natural history project, with Charles Segars and Jeff Phillips producing, the trade paper reported.
The film will tell the story of a family that gets trapped in the museum, where some of the exhibits magically come to life.
Goyer Bites Into Darksiders
roducer Alison Rosenzweig told SCI FI Wire she will produce Blade writer David Goyer's next film, Darksiders.
It will be Goyer's second directorial effort after the drama Zigzag. "He comes from the Blade world, and this is a very character-driven action piece, so to me it marries both of his things, because our movie is a character-driven genre action movie," Rosenzweig said in an interview.
The story deals with creatures similar to the vampires of Blade. "It's about a group of people who get infected with a virus, which gives them a bloodlust, and it also makes them immune to every human ailment," Rosenzweig said. "The CIA use them as operatives."
What will make these characters unique is how the film avoids vampire clichés. "No fangs," Rosenzweig said. "We don't see them sucking blood. They take a drug, which suppresses the desire." The film's conflict will come when they run out of medicine. Rosenzweig will produce with her partner, Tracie Graham.
Nemec Previews Stargate
orin Nemec, who plays Jonas Quinn in the upcoming sixth season of Stargate SG-1 on the SCI FI Channel, told SCI FI Wire that the two-part season premiere will find his character joining the SG-1 team.
Stargate SG-1 begins its run on SCI FI as part of the new SCI FI Friday lineup at 9 p.m. ET/PT June 7, followed by the fourth-season premiere of Farscape at 10 p.m.
In the two-part Stargate episode, "Redemption," Quinn signs on to the team on a permanent basis. "'Redemption, Part I and II,' is a really wonderful show," Nemec said in an interview. "Essentially what it does is it introduces the audience to Jonas Quinn, to his abilities, and it gives you a glimpse of what he has to offer, what he brings to the table."
Nemec first portrayed Quinn in the fifth-season episode "Meridian." The new episode "shows his enthusiasm about wanting to do all he can to assist the SG-1 team. It's also like a trial period for him, because he's trying to convince the rest of the team that he's a good candidate to be on SG-1. He's got to prove himself to O'Neill [Richard Dean Anderson] and the others. Over the two episodes he achieves most of his goal. They finally say, 'OK, we'll give you a shot.' But that's only the beginning. He's got to keep proving himself and proving his credibility and prove that he's actually got something to offer. It's exciting and a little scary, because I think the audience will be watching him just as closely and going, 'Can this guy really be worked in? How can he help?'" "Redemption, Part I," airs on June 7; "Part II" follows on June 14.
SCI FI Sneaks Taken
he SCI FI Channel offered viewers a sneak peek at its upcoming miniseries Taken, from producer Steven Spielberg, on June 7.
The channel aired a 30-second trailer for the miniseries during the second commercial break of the sixth-season premiere of the original series Stargate SG-1 at 9 p.m. ET/PT and the second break in the fourth-season premiere of Farscape at 10 p.m.
The trailer featured never-before-seen footage from the upcoming 10-part, 20-hour miniseries, which chronicles 50 years of alien abductions in the lives of three families. Taken is currently in production in Vancouver, B.C., and will air starting in December.
The SCI FI Channel, Steven Spielberg and DreamWorks Television are producing Taken, which was written and executive produced by Leslie Bohem. Steve Burton, Julie Benz and Joel Gretsch star.
Sawyer Hypes Hominids
ebula Award-winning author Robert J. Sawyer told SCI FI Wire that his latest novel, Hominids, tells the story of a parallel Earth in which Neanderthals have survived to the present day, but mankind as we know it did not.
"In that sense, it's an alternate-history novel, with the turning point occurring 40,000 years ago," Sawyer said in an e-mail interview. "That's when archaeologists and paleoanthropologists say the Great Leap Forward occurred."
Sawyer added, "Our kind of humanity, Homo sapiens, has existed in its anatomically modern form since 100,000 years ago, and our cousins, the Neanderthals, first appeared 200,000 years ago. But, until 40,000 years ago, neither kind of human made art, neither kind made jewelry, and neither kind buried their dead with what archaeologists call 'grave good'—objects that might be of use in a putative afterlife. Well, I take the dawn of art, bodily adornment and the notion that there might be something beyond physical existence to really represent the dawn of true consciousness. Forty thousand years ago, there were two distinct species of humanity, and consciousness flowered, in my view, through a quantum-mechanical event, which split the timeline in two. In one timeline, our ancestors became truly conscious, sentient and self-aware. In the other, it was the Neanderthals who did that. A quantum-computing experiment in the Neanderthal world goes awry, and a Neanderthal physicist and his A.I. companion are plunked right down in the middle of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, a real-life physics facility two kilometers underground in northern Ontario. From there, the story is—well, my editor Dave Hartwell dubbed it 'a Stranger in a Strange Land for the new millennium,' which is an enormously flattering way of putting it. But certainly the intent is there: an outsider's commentary on the human condition."
Hominids is out now from Tor Books and is the first volume in a trilogy entitled The Neanderthal Parallax, with Humans to follow in February 2003 and Hybrids in stores by November 2003.
Twohy To Helm Riddick
itch Black writer-director David Twohy will direct The Chronicles of Riddick, the proposed sequel to the SF sleeper, and has committed to two more for Universal and Radar Pictures, Variety columnist Michael Fleming reported.
Twohy had previously said he would not direct because of his commitment to direct Below and an adaptation of the Harlan Ellison SF story "Demon With a Glass Hand," but changed his mind. Pitch Black star Vin Diesel will reprise the role of Riddick.
Sequel drafts were turned in by David Hayter and Akiva Goldsman, but the studio has decided to go with Twohy's original pitch, Fleming reported. "Vin has become a bigger star, and he and I became interested in multiple pictures," Twohy told Fleming. He has been mapping out multiple sequels with Diesel. "Vin wanted a franchise, and when Fast and the Furious didn't happen for him, we pitched this to the studio, and they went for the idea of not just one, but up to three follow-ups. We'll give Riddick multiple adversaries on different levels. We think of Pitch Black like Mad Max was to Road Warrior or The Hobbit was to Lord of the Rings. They were places to find one of your characters, enabling you to take them to different places in subsequent films."
Lemmons To Helm Cloverfield
asi Lemmons will direct The Battle of Cloverfield, a supernatural thriller film, from her own script for Spider-Man producer Laura Ziskin and Columbia Pictures, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Cloverfield takes place in a Southern town, where ghosts of the past conspire to change the future, the trade paper reported.
Ziskin has wanted to work with Lemmons since the director conceived and helmed a tribute to Sidney Poitier at last year's Academy Awards show, which Ziskin produced, the trade paper reported.
Omens A Balancing Act
harles Roven—producer of the upcoming movie based on Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's novel Good Omens—told SCI FI Wire that writers Terry Gilliam and Tony Grisoni are trying hard to balance satire and blasphemy in the film adaptation.
"We're trying very hard to crack that book with the screenplay," Roven said in an interview.
Roven added, "It's proving extremely challenging to walk the line of being funny and not too dark and not too blasphemous. But you've got to be blasphemous if you're dealing with that material. It's about an angel and a demon who have been put on Earth for many, many thousands of years, and they've gone native, and they like it. They find out that the end of the world is going to come with the Antichrist, and they try to protect the Antichrist as he appears and change him, make him not so bad."
The angel and demon's efforts prove for naught, when they realize their kid was switched at birth with the real Antichrist, who is still out there ready to do evil. Roven also expects Gilliam (Brazil) to direct the film. "I know that he wants to direct it," he said. "He would have directed already if we would have been able to put all the pieces together, but we just haven't been able to do it. It's hard and complicated."
Equilibrium Delayed
ctor Angus MacFadyen, who appears in the upcoming SF movie Equilibrium, told SCI FI Wire that the
futuristic political film is being delayed indefinitely in reaction to the current political climate.
"I have a feeling that because of 9/11, since the film is very much about that the enemy is within, it may be too dark for right now," MacFadyen said in an interview.
The film tells the story of a future society in which the population is forced to take a drug that suppresses all emotions. When a government agent (Christian Bale) starts to experience feelings, he falls into conflict with his bosses. MacFadyen would play the highest-up boss. "I play the president of the world, who is a bit of a fascist," MacFadyen said. "Everybody thinks he's a nice guy, but actually, he's the baddie." Equilibrium was produced by Dimension Films and was formerly titled Librium.
SyFyPortal Returns
he SyFyPortal Web site has been offline because of domain-name problems, but will be back on the Web later this week, co-owner Michael Hinman announced.
The site is expected to return online on June 6, and updates will resume on June 7 or over the weekend, Hinman said.
Greg Boubel, the site's co-owner and co-creator, will be retiring, Hinman added. SyFy Portal was formed through the merger of Hinman's SyFy World site and Boubel's Star Trek Portal site.
Scott Shapes Up In Monk
harles Roven, producer of the upcoming supernatural martial-arts film Bulletproof Monk, told SCI FI Wire that co-star Sean William Scott trained to perform his own stunt work and fighting in the comic-book adaptation.
"Sean William Scott is an incredibly talented guy," Roven said in an interview. "He can do it all. Obviously, you guys know what a great comedian he is, but he is also an incredibly focused actor who spent four months completely changing his body and doing it for a reason, because he wanted to do a lot of his own stunts. He also wanted to do a lot of his martial-arts work in the movie. There's no doubt about it, when you see the film, you're going to see his face [as he's] doing a lot of his own stunts, almost all of them."
Scott plays a street kid being trained by an immortal Tibetan kung fu master (Chow Yun-Fat) to take over as guard of an ancient scroll. Roven emphasized that this would not be a Rush Hour-style culture clash, but rather the opposite. "I just came back from Cannes, where we showed about nine minutes of the film—nonlinear, different cuts of scenes—to the international distributors. ... One of the things we focused on was the incredibly wonderful relationship that happens between Chow Yun-Fat and Sean William Scott over the course of the movie." MGM will distribute Bulletproof Monk in the U.S. No release date has been set.
The Tuxedo Suits Stormare
eter Stormare, who plays a villain in the upcoming Jackie Chan supernatural comedy film The Tuxedo, told SCI FI Wire that his bad guy is brainier than some of his other villainous roles.
"He's a scientist, the bad guy's sort of sidekick," Stormare said. "It's a funny, mad scientist. He's going to take over the world."
In the film, Chan's character wears a suit that gives him magical powers with which to fight villains. Stormare said he only gets to fight Chan "a little bit." Stormare, who is best known for playing the blond murderer in Fargo, originally turned the film down, but was offered a smaller role so that he could join the cast. "The chance came back to me to do another part in Tuxedo, and I didn't turn it down because, first of all, [it was] DreamWorks, and I liked the ... new director, [Kevin] Donovan. He's a young, talented guy. And to get to work with Jennifer Love Hewitt and Jackie Chan."
The Tuxedo will open in October, after being delayed from June to allow more time for special effects work. Stormare was glad the film would have more room to breathe. The summer film schedule is "too crowded," Stormare said. "All of a sudden, it's like a traffic jam. They're aiming for younger people, and they're all [still] in camp."
Titans To Clash Again
ohn Glenn and Travis Wright, writers of the upcoming SF action movie Red World, will write a remake of 1981's mythology movie Clash of the Titans for producer Adam Schroeder and Warner Brothers, Variety columnist Michael Fleming reported.
The remake will focus on Zeus' son, the ancient Greek soldier Perseus, as he tries to procure the head of Medusa to defeat an unstoppable tyrant, Fleming reported.
Bob Brassell and David Beaubaire will oversee the film with producers Schroeder and Bryan Hickel.
Frankenheimer Exits Exorcist
irector John Frankenheimer has dropped out of the as-yet-untitled prequel to The Exorcist after undergoing back surgery two weeks ago, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Morgan Creek Productions will seek a new director to meet the movie's proposed Sept. 1 start date, the trade paper reported.
Cast members Liam Neeson, Gabriel Mann and Billy Crawford remain attached to the film.
Potente Draws Blue Print
erman actress Franka Potente told SCI FI Wire that her next movie, a German-language SF drama called Blue Print, explores the issue of cloning in the story of a pianist who has multiple sclerosis.
"It's set in the near future, and she has the idea of secretly cloning a daughter with the exact same talent [but not the disease], so I play the mother and the daughter," Potente (Run Lola Run) said in an interview.
Potente added, "It's the love-and-hate story between these two women, who are like one person [split] into two halves that are so different, but linked somehow. They have the same talent, and they look alike, but there are little things here and there that are slightly different. It's more the personality. The daughter is a hateful character, because she doesn't love herself. She thinks nobody loves her, they only love the mother in her."
Potente promised that the film would question the moral issues surrounding the science of cloning. "We raise the question of what can you clone and what can't you clone? What if you cloned a person, what would that person feel like? Does the person have a soul? Does the person have her own identity or not?" Blue Print begins filming in July for three months.
Dark Castle Gets Gothika
oel Silver and Robert Zemeckis' Dark Castle company will produce Gothika, a ghost-story film based on a pitch by writer-director Sebastian Gutierrez, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Dark Castle will produce the film for Warner Brothers.
Gutierrez will write and direct the movie, about a female psychiatrist who wakes up as a patient at the asylum where she works, the trade paper reported. Gutierrez previously wrote and directed the Cinemax supernatural telefilm She Creature. Dark Castle recently wrapped production on Ghost Ship, a supernatural horror movie starring Gabriel Byrne, Julianna Margulies and Isaiah Washington, the trade paper reported.
Trek Actors' Parents Die
umiko Emily Takei, mother of original Star Trek actor George Takei (Sulu), died May 25 in Los Angeles after a long illness, the official Trek Web site reported.
A complete obituary can be found at George Takei's official Web site.
The father of Star Trek: The Next Generation actor John de Lancie (Q), also named John, died May 17 at his home in Walnut Creek, Calif., of leukemia, the site added. He was 80. A complete obituary may be found at LATimes.com and NYTimes.com, which requires registration.
Briefly Noted
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Cinescape Online has posted an image from The WB's upcoming Birds of Prey TV series, and Dark Horizons has a link to a promotional TV trailer. The show, based on the DC Comics series, is due in the fall.
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The Comics2Film Web site has posted an image of the villainous Bullseye from the upcoming Daredevil movie, based on the Marvel Comics series of the same name.
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The teaser trailer for Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets hits theaters on June 14, attached to prints of Warner Brothers' Scooby-Doo, the studio announced.
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Nickelodeon will air a sneak-peek episode of a proposed Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius series, on the heels of the successful computer-animated film, at 8 p.m. July 20, the Zap2it Web site reported.
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The video of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone has become the top-grossing first-week rental title of all time, earning an estimated $19.1 million after five days, according to Video Store magazine research and The Hollywood Reporter.
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Writer David Goyer told the Comics2Film Web site that the proposed third Blade movie will differ from his proposed "planet of the vampires" concept.
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Alias was one of the new series nominated as best new program in the Television Critics Association's 18th annual awards, which will be handed out July 20 at a ceremony at the Ritz-Carlton Huntington Hotel and Spa in Pasadena, Calif.
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TNT has updated the official Web site for the upcoming second season of its supernatural television series Witchblade, which premieres with a two-hour episode at 8 p.m. ET/PT June 16 before moving to its regular Monday 9 p.m. timeslot on June 17.
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Warner Brothers is posting Scooby-Doo audio clips, ring tones and other features for cell phones on its official Web site.
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The Comics Continuum Web site has posted the first image of Jennifer Garner's Elektra character from the upcoming Daredevil movie, currently in production in Los Angeles.
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Fox and Turner Broadcasting will share broadcast rights to Spider-Man, the Hollywood trade papers reported. Fox will get first crack at airing the movie in November 2004, with TNT and TBS getting it after that. Fox, Turner and The WB will then share the film.
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Lena Olin has joined the cast of ABC's Alias and will play Sydney Bristow's (Jennifer Garner) mysterious mother for 16 episodes next season, Variety reported.
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Fox has updated the new official Web site for its upcoming SF series Firefly, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon. Firefly debuts in the fall.
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