MIB II Breaks Record
en in Black II topped the July 4 weekend box office, selling a record $90 million worth of tickets since its release on July 3, the Hollywood trade papers reported.
In the Friday-to-Sunday period, the sequel took in about $54.1 million, on top of its $35.9 million haul for Wednesday and Thursday, the trades reported.
The tally exceeded the last three-day record for the July 4 holiday period, set in 1997 by the original Men in Black film, which took in about $51.1 million.
The Powerpuff Girls Movie opened in ninth place, with a disappointing $3.6 million for the three-day period and about $6.1 million since Wednesday, the trade papers reported.
Lilo & Stitch slipped one place to number four, with a three-day haul of about $12.7 million in its third weekend and a total so far of about $103.1 million. Minority Report fell three places to number five, with about $12.4 million for the three-day weekend and a total of about $96.8 million after three weekends in theaters.
Lee Sells Comic Items
pider-Man co-creator Stan Lee put part of his personal collection of comic books up for auction, the Associated Press reported.
Lee sold items from his collection of original art from the Spider-Man newspaper strip and personal reference copies of key Marvel Comics issues, the wire service reported.
The sale was conducted during the Wizard World comic book collectors convention July 4-7 in Chicago.
Stewart Almost Declined Nemesis
atrick Stewart, who reprises the role of Capt. Jean-Luc Picard in the upcoming Star Trek: Nemesis film, told British Empire magazine that he very nearly turned down the 10th Trek movie.
Stewart said that salary negotiations with the studio nearly torpedoed his participation.
"I was a breath away from saying this is not worth the time," Stewart told the magazine. "An absolute breath away. They were negotiating so uncompromisingly that it had reached the point where humiliation was the only way of settling this, and I wasn't prepared to do that." But the two sides eventually came to terms.
Stewart, meanwhile, expressed irritation at the presence of Nemesis' script on the Internet. "That annoys the hell out of me," he said. "I don't know why people want to know what's going to happen. What satisfaction could you get out of that? I understand people wanting to know who's in it, who are the villains, but blow-by-blow accounts mystify me. On X-Men 2 I have a script with my name and code number printed across every page. It's a case of 'read your script and eat it.'" Nemesis hits theaters Dec. 13.
Trek Games Previewed Online
ctivision will preview its upcoming Star Trek Elite Force II and Star Trek Starfleet Command III video games Aug. 2-4 at the first Official 3-D Star Trek Convention online.
The "virtual convention" will be beamed from Las Vegas.
Activision is co-sponsoring the event. In Star Trek Elite Force II, players join the ranks of the Hazard Team, an elite Starfleet security unit assigned to the U.S.S. Enterprise E under the command of Capt. Picard. In Star Trek Starfleet Command III, players get to take control of their favorite starships and engage in strategic warfare.
Scorupco Kept Up With Fire
zabella Scorupco, who plays helicopter pilot Alex in the upcoming SF dragon movie Reign of Fire, told SCI FI Wire that it took all she had to keep up with male co-stars Christian Bale and Matthew McConaughey.
"I just think it sounds so silly to talk, 'Yeah, well I did my own stunts,' but it was just a part of surviving," Scorupco (Vertical Limit) said while promoting the film. "I ... can't imagine it can get worse than this, ... being in a movie with Christian and Matthew, the most physical, athletic guys you can imagine in Hollywood, and this is like for real. These guys, they climb, and they do pushups, and it's not anything phony whatsoever, like they're pretending. If the director would say, 'OK, are you going to climb up there?' 20 meters or whatever, ... they just do it in a second. And there you are, you're like a third party, and they never ask you. ... And you felt like, 'OK, if I'm not going to do it, I'm going to destroy the scene.' ... But I felt like I was scared to death."
Scorupco, Bale and McConaughey play human survivors battling fire-breathing beasts that have decimated the Earth. At times, the Polish-born actress admitted she wondered how she got herself into such a testosterone-driven movie. "Pretty much," she said. "Pretty often. Yeah, I have to say. ... I definitely felt that it was extremely scary sometimes to have to keep up with the guys, because they never really cared. I mean, they never cared. It was crazy. They would like jump down from roofs, and if you wouldn't, they'd be like, 'What's going on, what's happening? Why?' I mean, I guess because I come across as [tough and] ... because I so wanted them to do their thing and wanted to be a part of [it], ... then you can't really, you can't afford to say, 'I need help' or 'please,' because you just don't want to mess up. You don't want to be the one, you know, destroying [it] for everyone else." Reign of Fire opens July 12.
Bale Heads Into Fire
hristian Bale, who stars in the upcoming SF dragon movie Reign of Fire, told SCI FI Wire that he trained hard to get in shape for the physical role—and actually got head-butted by co-star Matthew McConaughey during a key fight scene.
"There were some injuries," Bale said in an interview while promoting the movie. "Matthew head-butted me in a phenomenal fashion one time on set. On film. It is actually in the movie. And I came up with a huge kind of welt on my forehead from it. And everybody around said it sort of sounded like some watermelon cracking, because we had all these walls around the location, so it echoed around it."
The Welsh-born Bale plays the leader of a ragtag group of human survivors living in England after fire-breathing dragons have devastated the Earth. Better known for roles in independent films like American Psycho, Bale said he was at first leery of taking on the action-hero role in a big summer special-effects film. "I was kind of surprised that they were interested in me for it," Bale said. "Just because it's not like any kind of movie that I've done before. ... I've certainly enjoyed going along to huge movies like this, with so much action, etc., before. But I have often found that special effects often seem to get completely in the way of any kind of storytelling and any kind of character. I kind of wanted to know that it was a very strong-minded person who was going to be directing it, because otherwise I was sort of fearful that I would be making one movie, and then in CGI, they would put in, like, friendly dragons or something, or dragons with hats on, or dragons that talked, or something like that. And I would have no control over that whatsoever. But would just be mortified that I was in such a movie. So when I met with [director] Rob [Bowman], his concerns were exactly the same, and we sort of made a pact. ... Let's do this as long as we can ensure that we get to make the movie that he wants to make."
Bale added, "I felt that the challenge for me in it was that I see so many movies with special effects, etc., and they just kind of get so excited about that, that as a viewer I kind of lose all perspective in many movies about what the hell is going on, and do I really care about what is going on? And that was my job. To be able to create a story and a character people could believe in that would help them in order to believe in the dragons and the threat, and also somebody that was interesting enough that it would hold people's attention." Reign of Fire opens July 12.
Powerpuff Film Tells Origins
raig McCracken, creator of Cartoon Network's Powerpuff Girls series, told SCI FI Wire that the upcoming Powerpuff film will be "way more than a long episode."
McCracken, who wrote and directed the movie, said in an interview, "Just visually, we're able to do a lot more than we can do on the show. We're able to spend more time on everything—not just time within the storytelling, but time as far as how much work went into any given scene. We're able to finesse everything and try to make everything perfect."
The film tells the origins of Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup. "It's not so much an origin of how they got their powers, but it's the origin of they're [already] these little kids with superpowers, and it's the events that happen in their life to make them decide to be heroes. We realized there's probably a lot of people who've never watched the show, that don't have cable, and they might have only seen T-shirts. So we wanted to introduce the world and the characters to a new audience, but still do something a little more in-depth that diehard fans can get [something] out of it. We wanted to make sure it worked in both markets."
McCracken said he thinks the appeal of the show comes from the respect paid to the girls' youth. "We based the foundation in childhood," he said. "The girls act like real little kids, and their personalities are really similar to real little kids, and the things they deal with are similar to what most kids are growing up with. So there's a foundation in reality. Then there's the fantasy element of the idea—they're superheroes and do all these great things. But the personalities are pretty grounded, and I think kids like that."
Both the Cartoon Network series and the movie walk a line between superhero spoof and genuine affection for the genre. "I kind of have both, because I love the genre, but I also realize there's a lot of humor in the genre, and you can make fun of that. Powerpuff isn't a complete joke. It's not totally just making fun of it. There's definitely a love for that kind of storytelling, but you also step back a bit and realize how absurd and silly it is, so you poke fun at it sometimes. We don't try to get overly serious with it. We're always trying to have fun." The Powerpuff Girls Movie opened July 3.
Spielberg Resisted Indy IV
teven Spielberg told Chicago Sun-Times columnist Cindy Pearlman that he had to be "nagged" into doing a fourth Indiana Jones movie.
"There was a little nagging," he told Pearlman, laughing about the much-awaited sequel starring Harrison Ford. "George Lucas nagged me a little bit on it. But the deal is that George, Harrison Ford, [producer] Kathleen Kennedy and I built a family in the '80s. It was a wonderful family. A nine-year family. We made three films in nine years. Now I would like to go back and have some fun. I'm kind of saving the candy for the last one."
The last one? "Oh, I don't know," Spielberg said. "Of course, I said the third Indy would be the last one. And obviously it's not. So I can't even comment whether the fourth will be the last one or not." Spielberg added about the storyline, "I'm not looking to redesign the wheel. I just want to continue the saga." Spielberg added that his wife, actress Kate Capshaw, will have a cameo in Indy IV.
Apes Sequels Delayed
lanet of the Apes producer Richard Zanuck told SCI FI Wire that a sequel to the 2001 film will be delayed.
Zanuck said that Fox told him that it does not want to exhaust the franchise with too many sequels right away. "The idea is to space it out now," Zanuck said in an interview. "The studio doesn't think that a sequel has to be made immediately. They made a lot of money off the picture, but the theory, at least what they're telling me, is that every three years or more [they will make one]."
After the first Planet of the Apes movie in 1968, four films sequels followed rapidly until 1973, as well as a TV series in 1974 and TV movies in 1975 and 1981. The series lay dormant for 20 years after that. "They don't want the franchise to just burn out and be finished again for another 20 years," Zanuck said. "I don't know whether they're right or not, but that seems to be the idea."
Zanuck said the next film could pick up right where the last one left off, with Leo Davidson's (Mark Wahlberg) further adventures on an ape world. "They have a deal with Mark Wahlberg in place, but I don't know what their ultimate plan is," Zanuck said.
Bowman Up For X-Files 2
ongtime X-Files director Rob Bowman told SCI FI Wire that he's willing to direct a second X-Files movie—if one is made, and if he's asked.
"That's up to [creator] Chris [Carter]," said Bowman, who directed the first film. "I think I would [do it]. I certainly like all those people. And I enjoy it. So my answer is, as long as it still provides a challenge for me, I'll do it. I don't want to do it for a check. And I don't want to do it because it's easy. I want to do it because I can learn something on it."
As for possible storylines, Bowman added, "I know that it would have to be a stand-alone movie. You can't do any more mythology. Not for a movie. Not for a one-off. We were sort of obligated to do that on the first one, because we had fans who'd followed us all that way, but I think the next one is a one-off. Anything you want."
Troyer Gets Small In Goldmember
erne Troyer, who reprises the role of Mini-Me in the upcoming sequel film Austin Powers in Goldmember, told SCI FI Wire that the set wasn't a high-pressure place to be.
That was the case, he said, despite the
fact that star/co-writer/co-producer Mike Myers and director Jay Roach are attempting to top Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, which grossed more in its open weekend than the original film, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, did in its entire run.
"I didn't really sense that much more pressure, because I was used to it from working on The Spy Who Shagged Me," Troyer said in an interview. Troyer's character—a concentrated version of Dr. Evil (Myers)—was
introduced in The Spy Who Shagged Me. "For me, it was just a matter of coming back and reprising the role. I felt very comfortable, because I'd worked with everybody before. So there wasn't as much pressure for me on this
one as there was on [my] first, actually."
Troyer, a stunt double-turned-actor whose credits include Men in Black, Wishmaster and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, is quick to acknowledge that his Powers association changed his life and career. He's a star these days, and, he said, he's eager to see what the future holds. "I'm definitely happy," Troyer said. "It's gotten me everything that I have right now. I can't deny that! Right now, I'm dealing with [Goldmember] publicity and
talking to [journalists]. So we'll see what happens. I'm just trying to take advantage of everything that's happening for me. I just want to keep it where things are at now." Austin Powers in Goldmember opens July 26.
9/11 Inspires ID4 II
ndependence Day producer Dean Devlin told SCI FI Wire that he and partner Roland Emmerich came up with the storyline for a sequel in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
"Since September 11th, [director Emmerich] and I did a lot of reflecting on the movie," Devlin said in an interview while promoting his latest film, Eight Legged Freaks. "It started because people were asking us about images that were fantasy images that then looked so frightening real in the [wake of] horrible events that took place."
The original 1996 film features eerily prophetic scenes of the fiery destruction of Manhattan, as well as the White House and other world landmarks. While those scenes may be difficult to watch after the events of Sept. 11, Devlin pointed out that ID4 also has an inspirational theme and depicts the world's uniting against a common threat. "After the great attack, everyone comes together who had been at odds, and we kind of watched our world do that," he said. "The one good side, I think, of something horrible is how people come together and band together. And through those discussions we started talking about the other parts of Independence Day that we actually liked the most, and that led us to a new story."
If possible, Devlin said he would like to bring back the entire cast for the as-yet-untitled sequel. "I would try to get everybody back, you know? If they don't want to come back, all right. But to me it's like a cocktail, you know? You don't want to change the ingredients."
Rocky To Rise Again
he Fox network will celebrate the 30th anniversary of the camp SF movie The Rocky Horror Picture Show with The Rocky Horror Birthday Show, a two-hour movie to be produced by Fox TV Studios, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Birthday will air in February 2003, 30 years after Richard O'Brien first penned Rocky Horror as a play that ran in London, the trade paper reported. O'Brien will act as a consultant on the TV project and will contribute at least one new original song, the trade paper added.
The 2002 version of Rocky Horror will be faithful to O'Brien's original lyrics, but with a new concept conceived by the project's director, Stephan Elliott (The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert). In the new version, Doctor Frank-N-Furter, who originally was an alien scientist from the planet Transexual on a quest to build the perfect man, will instead be a plastic surgeon who lives in a posh penthouse. Production will begin in September in Australia.
Sub-Mariner Script In Works
creenwriter David Self told SCI FI Wire that he is adapting Marvel's Namor the Sub-Mariner comic series for the screen, but won't base it on any specific comic storyline.
"It's a totally different project, because I don't have a specific storyline to adapt," Self said in an interview. "I just have sort of a mythology of Namor and some incidences, some characters that come and go during Namor's life. I have a much freer hand to create a different, new story. But I'm also not being handed a great, exciting moment or concept or story, so I've got to do my own legwork, so to speak. For me, I saw a unique story I could do with it and take off from Sub-Mariner to make a different type of new comic book movie."
Self was vague on the details, but said the movie would be an origin story. "I think to a degree it will be. People don't know Namor as well as they know other Marvel heroes, and I think it's an identity story, so that's well-suited to an origin story. That's how we plan that project in general terms. It's definitely a challenge to decide how to approach it. You have obligations to bring the audience up to speed with the character. There's different ways to go about doing that." Self has been on the Namor project since November 2001, with no specific start date for production.
Silence Is Golden In Core
tanley Tucci told SCI FI Wire that working in a big, loud SF action movie like The Core made him appreciate the rare moment of silence.
"It's very much about action, it's very much about pace, it's very much about lots of little pieces put together to create this sense of drama," Tucci said at a press conference. "So it is a very different kind of genre and way of working, and I had never worked that way before. But when you do have a still moment in a movie like that, in a way those moments become very poignant."
This filmmaking philosophy challenged Tucci's usual style, which has been to reduce dialogue. "I'm one who will encourage directors to cut my lines, because I think there's just a lot more that actors can do with their faces and their bodies and the way they move within the space, and it's something that I encourage when I write a screenplay, but also when I direct actors," he said. "I'll always be pulling lines out and let actors do with their faces and their bodies what so many writers and directors think that they really have to say, but they don't have to. The audience is much more intelligent than we give them credit for and the actors much better than we give them credit for." The Core, about a mission to save the Earth by tunneling into it, opens Nov. 1.
New Pan Taps Source
roducer Lucy Fisher told SCI FI Wire that her upcoming Peter Pan movie would be the first faithful live-action adaptation of J.M. Barrie's original book and play.
"The actual live-action version has never been done," Fisher said in an interview. "It's been made into an animated movie, a musical and Hook, which was another interpretation. The J.M. Barrie source material never has."
Fisher said the appeal of going back to the source would be to explore its themes with modern special effects. "It's to return to the original, which is incredibly interesting, kind of dark and inspirational also. Because of special-effects capabilities now, we can actually do the flying, and we can do Tinkerbell and do Neverland in ways that nobody has ever seen before."
There will be some practical sets for Neverland, but filmmakers will also use a lot of computer animation to expand those sets, Fisher said. Fisher would not name the 13-year-old actor who has been cast as Peter Pan. "The first time it's being played by a boy," she said. Peter Pan is a separate project from Neverland, a Miramax film in which Johnny Depp is playing J.M. Barrie.
Dead Zone To Air On SCI FI
SA Network's hit series The Dead Zone will air on sister cable network the SCI FI Channel Friday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT, starting July 12.
SCI FI will run the series in order, starting with the first episode, which had the highest-rated cable premiere in history.
The Dead Zone will lead in to original episodes of Stargate: SG-1 at 9 p.m. and Farscape at 10 p.m. The Dead Zone, which USA airs Sundays at 10 p.m., premiered three weeks ago to a 4.8 rating, the best debut number for a dramatic series in the history of basic cable. In its June 30 airing, Dead Zone pulled in a 4.0 rating, making it the number-one-rated show in all of basic cable for the week.
USA Network, SCI FI and SCIFI.COM are owned by Vivendi Universal Entertainment.
SCI FI Orders Scare Tactics
he SCI FI Channel said that it has ordered 13 episodes of Scare Tactics, a hidden-camera reality series that will mine people's fears of UFOs, ghosts and other phenomena for laughs.
The series is slated for the first quarter of 2003.
Shannen Doherty (Charmed) will host the show, in which friends and relatives will set up their loved ones in elaborate pranks that range from a mock alien encounter to
babysitting in a haunted house. Scott Hallock and Kevin Healey (Spy TV) created the series, which will be produced by Hallock Healey Entertainment.
Artisan To Get Lost
rtisan Pictures will develop The Lost, a supernatural thriller film from new writers Dan Dworkin and Jay Beattie, Variety reported.
David S. Goyer (writer of the Blade movies) will produce.
The Lost tells the story of a psychiatrist who discovers that a woman's multiple personalities are actually murder victims.
NBC Raises Carrie
BC will develop a new television movie version of Carrie, based on Stephen King's supernatural novel, the Zap2it.com Web site reported.
Angela Bettis will play the telekinetic teen who gets revenge on her peers at the prom, a role played in Brian De Palma's 1976 theatrical movie by Sissy Spacek.
Patricia Clarkson will play Carrie's religious fanatic mother, and the cast will also include David Keith, Jasmine Guy and Emilie de Ravin (Roswell). Filming on the three-hour movie began in June in Canada; the film will air in the fall.
King Reveals Rimbauer Author
tephen King revealed on his official Web site that he didn't write The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer, the best-selling book based on a character from his ABC miniseries Rose Red.
"Now it can be told—the actual author of The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer is suspense novelist (and Rock Bottom Remainder bass guitarist) Ridley Pearson," King wrote on his site. "Ridley did a great job—I couldn't have done better myself. Here's hoping you will continue to support Ridley's work by buying a copy of The Art of Deception."
The diary, purportedly written by the fictional Rimbauer and edited by another character from the miniseries, told of 19th-century life in the rambling Seattle mansion that was the modern-day setting of the haunted-house story of the miniseries. It was widely assumed that King himself had written the diary. The Rock Bottom Remainders is a rock band consisting of King and several of his writer friends.
Briefly Noted
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The TrekToday Web site has posted a link to the teaser poster for the upcoming sequel film Star Trek: Nemesis, which opens in December. The site added that the teaser trailer for the film will appear in theaters this weekend.
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A teaser poster for The Matrix Reloaded, the sequel to 1999's The Matrix, has gone up on the official Web site.
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Tom Hanks told SCI FI Wire he would like to reprise the voice of Sheriff Woody in a third Toy Story film, if the producers decide to make one. "If there is a Toy Story 3, I'll be happy to talk to them about doing it," he said in an interview. "I do what they tell me on that series. Period. The end. Those people are very smart, and if they think that there is something there to do, [then there is]."
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The SCI FI Channel has moved the premiere of William Shatner's Full Moon Fright Night to 11 p.m. ET/PT Aug. 3 from July 20. The series features former Star Trek star Shatner hosting 13 horror films from Full Moon.
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An official teaser trailer has gone live for the upcoming sequel film The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, which opens Dec. 18.
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The BBC Web site has posted a behind-the-scenes clip from the production of Die Another Day, the 20th James Bond movie, which opens Nov. 22.
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The independent live-action film Batman Beyond: Year One, based on the animated TV series Batman Beyond, is coming to VHS and DVD in August, the official Web site reported.
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The Dark Horizons Web site reported a rumor that the supernatural horror film Freddy vs. Jason is set to begin shooting in Canada Sept. 9.
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TheForce.net reported a rumor that Star Wars: Episode II—Attack of the Clones will be coming to IMAX theaters in 15 countries, including the United States around Labor Day. The site added that the IMAX version of the film may include additional scenes.
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