Genre TV Wins Tech Emmys
enre programming fared poorly in the 54th annual prime-time Emmy Awards on Sept. 22, with genre series taking home mainly technical awards.
The awards were broadcast on NBC. A list of genre winners follows.
Animated Program (For Programming Less Than One Hour)
•Futurama, "Roswell That Ends Well"
Art Direction for a Single-Camera Series
•Alias, "Truth Be Told (Pilot)," Scott Chambliss, production designer; Cece Destefano, art director; Karen Manthey, set decorator
Cinematography for a Single-Camera Series
•Alias, "Truth Be Told (Pilot)," Michael Bonvillain, director of photography
Hairstyling for a Series
•Enterprise, "Two Days and Two Nights," Michael Moore, designer; Gloria Pasqua Casny, hairstylist; Roma Goddard, hairstylist; Laura Connolly, hairstylist; Cheri Ruff, hairstylist
Hairstyling for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special
•Anne Rice's The Feast of All Saints, Part 1, Regan Noble, hairstylist
Makeup for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special (Non-Prosthetic)
•The Mists of Avalon, Part 1, Polly Earnshaw, chief makeup
Makeup for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special (Prosthetic)
•Jim Henson's Jack and the Beanstalk: The Real Story, Part 2, Daniel Auber, prosthetic makeup artist; Stephan Bettles, prosthetic makeup artist; John Cormican, prosthetic makeup artist; Chris Fitzgerald, prosthetic makeup artist
Sound Editing for a Series
•Smallville, "Pilot," Michael E. Lawshé, supervising sound editor; Timothy A. Cleveland, sound editor; Paul J. Diller, sound editor; Adam Johnston, sound editor; Otis Van Osten, sound editor; Andrew Somers, sound editor; Karyn Foster, sound editor; Jessica Dickson, sound editor; Karen Spangenberg, sound editor; Chris McGeary, music editor; Casey Crabtree, foley artist; Mike Crabtree, foley artist
Special Visual Effects for a Series
•Enterprise, "Broken Bow (Pilot)," Dan Curry, visual effects producer; Ronald B. Moore, visual effects supervisor; Arthur Codron, visual effects coordinator; Elizabeth Castro, visual effects coordinator; Paul Hill, compositing editor; Steven Fong, compositing editor; Gregory Rainoff, visual effects animator; Robert Bonchune, computer animation supervisor; David Morton, computer animation supervisor
Special Visual Effects for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special
•Dinotopia, Part 3, Mike McGee, visual effects supervisor; Tim Webber, visual effects supervisor; Pedro Sabrosa, lead visual effects compositor; Michael Eames, lead CGI artist/animation director; Alec Knox, lead CGI artist/supervising technical director; Craig Lyn, lead CGI artist/lead technical director; Ben Morris, lead CGI artist/lead technical director; Quentin Miles, lead CGI artist; Dadi Einarsonn, lead animator
SF Writer Biggle Dead
loyd Biggle Jr., SF writer and musicologist, died Sept. 12 after a 20-year battle with leukemia and cancer, the Locus Online Web site reported.
He was 79.
Biggle combined an interest in music with his work, which began with the short story "Gypped" in 1956. His notable short works included "Monument" (1961), a Hugo nominee later expanded into a novel, and "The Tunesmith" (1957), recently selected by Orson Scott Card for the anthology Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the Century, Locus reported.
Biggle's novels, which began with The Angry Espers in 1961, were mostly space operas on social and ecological themes and included the Jan Darzek sequence, beginning with All the Colors of Darkness in 1963, and novels about the Cultural Survey, including The World Menders (1971) and The Still, Small Voice of Trumpets (1968). In recent years Biggle wrote mystery stories and novels. He was founding secretary treasurer of the Science Fiction Writers of America and edited Nebula Award Stories Seven in 1972, Locus reported.
Biggle is survived his wife, Hedwig; daughter, Donna Emerson; and son, Kenneth Biggle.
GameCube Gets Scooby
ame publisher THQ announced that its Scooby-Doo! Night of 100 Frights video game for the GameCube platform has shipped to stores.
The PlayStation 2 version of the game was released in May.
Scooby-Doo! Night of 100 Frights features characters and villains from the animated Scooby-Doo! TV series, as well as the voices of guest stars Don Knotts, Tim Conway and Tim Curry. THQ's internal development team, Heavy Iron Studios, developed both the GameCube and PlayStation 2 versions of the game.
In Scooby-Doo! Night of 100 Frights, the team of Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy and Scooby contend with the Mastermind and his sinister plan, fighting in a creepy mansion, a spooky cave and a ghostly graveyard.
Hopkins: Devil Is Dead
nthony Hopkins told SCI FI Wire that the new film version of Stephen Vincent Benet's supernatural short story "The Devil and Daniel Webster" will never be finished.
"They pulled the money out, apparently, so it'll never be seen," Hopkins said in an interview. "The producers have no money to finish it."
Hopkins played Webster, a lawyer representing a writer who sold his soul to the devil. Alec Baldwin made his directorial debut and co-starred in the film as the writer, Jabez Stone. Hopkins was positive about Baldwin's take on the short story, which was previously made into a play and a 1941 film. But he added that even Baldwin has abandoned the project. "He's good, a fine director," Hopkins said. "He's good to work with, but I don't know if Alec is even interested in [completing] it. We finished filming it a long time ago." Jennifer Love Hewitt starred as the devil. Filming wrapped in March 2001.
Ratner Flies With Superman
rett Ratner confirmed to SCI FI Wire that he will direct a proposed Superman sequel film, stepping in for director McG (Charlie's Angels) for Warner Brothers.
The deal was made between Warner and New Line Cinema that Ratner would commit to New Line's Rush Hour 3 in return for getting Superman, Ratner said in an interview. "I stole it from him, I took it away from him," Ratner joked. J.J. Abrams (ABC's Alias) wrote the script. Ratner will tackle Superman before Rush Hour 3.
Casting the Man of Steel, Ratner said, is "going to cause a lot of hype and controversy and excitement. I haven't started thinking about it, honestly, but I'll probably go with an unknown." But Ratner revealed to SCI FI Wire that he has at least one casting idea. "I want Anthony Hopkins to be Jor-El," he said.
Ratner could not confirm a release date for Superman. "I started preproduction yesterday [Sept. 13], and
we'll probably start [shooting] nine months from today," Ratner said.
Ratner said he had no knowledge of McG's plans, and that his film would not have anything to do with Wolfgang Petersen's proposed Batman vs. Superman film. "That's four years from now, really far down the line," Ratner said of the Petersen film.
Romance In Two Towers?
he IMDB news Web site reported a rumor that Peter Jackson's upcoming film adaptation of the second Lord of the Rings book will play up a love triangle among key characters.
The upcoming sequel film, The Two Towers, is rumored to heighten the romantic tension among Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), Arwen (Liv Tyler) and a character new to the film series, Eowyn (Miranda Otto), the site reported.
Citing an anonymous source, the site reported that there will be "plenty of tension between the three." The Two Towers opens Dec. 13.
Enterprise Honors 9/11
he cast and crew of UPN's Enterprise took a moment during production last week to honor the memory of the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the official Trek Web site reported.
Production on the series' upcoming second-season episode "The Seventh" wrapped on Sept. 11, and star Scott Bakula led the cast and crew in joining hands and observing a moment of silence, the site reported.
"Let us never forget," Bakula reportedly said. The call sheet for that day bore the message, "May those struck down by terror's heart keep us grateful for each new day," the site added.
The episode, which will be the seventh of the season's 26, is described as a La Femme Nikita-type episode featuring T'Pol (Jolene Blalock).
Sawyer Hosts CBC SF Show
uthor Robert J. Sawyer will host an SF radio magazine show, Faster Than Light, on Canada's CBC Radio One, the network announced.
Faster Than Light will air on Radio One's Sunday Showcase on Sept. 22 at 10:05 p.m. Toronto time and will be repeated on Sept. 23 on Radio Two's Monday Night Playhouse at 9:05 p.m.
The hour-long program will include two dramas by Joe Mahoney, a recording engineer for the network's arts and entertainment department; an interview with SF author Nalo Hopkinson; and commentary from host Sawyer.
Disney Picks Up Fool
isney has picked up the animated feature-film pitch The Fool's Errand from screenwriter David H. Steinberg, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Details about the project are being kept under wraps, but the story reportedly centers on a court jester who goes on a mythical journey to return peace to his kingdom.
Steinberg rewrote American Pie 2 and also penned the recent comedy Slackers, the trade paper reported. Fool marks Steinberg's first venture into the animated family market, as well as his first work with Disney.
Fox Adapts Adaptive
riter-director Gigi Gaston has been tapped to do a rewrite on the Fox 2000 SF thriller Adaptive Ultimate, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Leonard and Amanda Goldberg will produce the film, from an original script by Minority Report writer Jon Cohen, the trade paper reported.
Adaptive tells the story of a scientist who discovers a cure for disease, only to end up on the run for his life, the trade paper reported.
Blade III Story Approved
avid Goyer, who wrote the first two Blade movies, told the Comics Continuum Web site that the story for a proposed third has been approved.
"Both Marvel and New Line have approved the story, and I've done an outline," Goyer told the site. "I'm currently writing The Descent for DreamWorks, so the Blade III script will be written after that."
Meanwhile, Blade II, which exceeded the original Blade at the box office, appears ready to top the original in the home market as well, the site reported. The DVD and VHS releases of the sequel topped the charts in sales and rentals categories in its first week of release.
Timeline Looks Rich
arton Csokas, who plays a knight in the upcoming time-travel movie Timeline, told the Dark Horizons Web site that the film will have a rich look.
"I must say the film looks gorgeous," Csokas told the site. "The look is reminiscent of Rembrandt, some parts of it anyway, from what I saw."
The movie is based on Michael Crichton's SF novel of the same name, about a group of modern-day archaeology students who travel to 14th-century France to rescue their professor. "That was an interesting film to be working on," Csokas said. "The embattlements that were built and the horses and the armor. Lots of fire. Flaming arrows going overhead. [Director] Dick Donner doesn't use a lot of computer-generated technology, which, while you're acting, is really lots of fun, as opposed to blue screen, which can be daunting in imagination, ... particularly when you've got seven people looking at one arrow. I enjoyed that, and I liked the concept. My character is a medieval military man who's in a precarious position. Not bad per se, but more motivated by survival."
Hitchhiker Gets Thumbs Up
creenwriter Karey Kirkpatrick (Chicken Run) has come onboard to co-adapt the screenplay of Douglas Adams' satiric SF story The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy, Variety reported.
Adams wrote his own feature adaptation before he died last May and will receive a posthumous producing credit on the proposed film, the trade paper reported.
Jay Roach (the Austin Powers franchise) is attached to direct and will produce with Spyglass Entertainment partners Roger Birnbaum and Gary Barber, the trade paper reported.
Hitchhikers, which started out as a BBC radio series, has previously been adapted as a novel, TV series and video game. It centers on Arthur Dent, who discovers that Earth is meant to be flattened for a hyperspace freeway bypass and is whisked away by an undercover alien.
Liu Goes Ballistic
ucy Liu, who plays rogue government agent Sever in the upcoming Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, told SCI FI Wire that she trained for months with firearms and martial arts to prepare for the physically challenging role.
"Three and a half months of training, like, seven to six long hours, five days a week," Liu said in an interview. "Sometimes six, depending if we could get the [shooting] range or not. Sometimes we'd have to go on Saturdays. A lot of firearms training. If I had scheduled firearms, I would pretty much just do a little bit of weights in the morning and go to firearms in the afternoon."
Liu plays an ice-cold assassin who can shoot, fight hand-to-hand and take on an entire squad of commandos at a time. "I had to learn the right technique, the specialties," Liu said. "How she walks, how she turns around, how she holds her weapon, how she reloads and unloads. ... So it's not like it could be messy up there and look like she just picked up the weapon for the first time. I had to be absolutely trained in it. So it made it very intensive. And then for martial arts, I would go in there, we would work on the choreography for hours and hours and just do it over and over and also sort of work on the ... what would flow better for the scene, and what if we added a person or took another person away? That sort of thing. It was pretty intensive. And I was glad when the movie finally started, because you just feel like after a while you just burn out, and you just need to take it and apply it, otherwise it just becomes a little bit old."
But even all of Liu's training couldn't prepare her for some of the on-set special effects she had to deal with, including massive pyrotechnics and explosions right behind her. "You go onto the set, and they say, 'OK, we want you to jump off of this train car. And there may be some pyrotechnics.' Actually, they didn't even say pyrotechnics. They said, 'We're going to have you jump off this train car. It's a pretty far jump. You think you could do it?' 'Yeah, it's fine.' Huge fireball! You're up there, and they're like, 'Rolling sound! Camera!' ... The whole thing, 'Pyrotechnics!' And then, 'Action!' And then [exploding sound], and then the hair and the hot [at the back of your head,] and you're coming down, and you're just like, ... I looked up, and I was like, 'Thanks for telling me.' And the producers ran over, and they were like, 'Wow, it was much closer than we thought it was going to be!' But it was fun. I had a really fun time." Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, co-starring Antonio Banderas, opens Sept. 20.
Reeve Assails Bush, Church
uperman star Christopher Reeve, who is paralyzed from the neck down, blamed the Catholic church and President Bush for obstructing research that might free him from his wheelchair, the Reuters news service reported.
Reeve told the British Guardian newspaper that the Bush administration had caved in on the issue of embryonic stem-cell research after the Catholic church expressed opposition to cloning, Reuters reported.
"If we'd had full government support, full government funding for aggressive research using embryonic stem cells from the moment they were first isolated, at the University of Wisconsin in the winter of 1998, I don't think it unreasonable to speculate that we might be in human trials by now," Reeve said.
Reeve added that he was "angry and disappointed" that Bush had hampered developments in stem-cell research, which might have led to human trials aimed at rebuilding the nervous systems of quadriplegics.
Bond Ruffled In Die
ierce Brosnan told the Empire Online Web site that he will play a different kind of James Bond in the upcoming movie Die Another Day.
"This time you see a much more desperate character in Bond," Brosnan told the site. "You see this renegade, a man completely out of his environment."
Brosnan added, "He's in a situation that you've never seen Bond in before, so vulnerable and broken, as it were, because he's captured and tortured in the beginning of the film." Die Another Day, the 20th Bond film, opens Nov. 22.
Kingdom Hearts Released
quare Electronic Arts and Disney Interactive announced that their fantasy action role-playing game Kingdom Hearts has shipped to stores for the PlayStation 2 gaming platform.
Kingdom Hearts is the first video-game project between Square and Disney Interactive that features classic Disney characters and new characters and worlds created in the popular Square style, the companies announced. In addition to more than 100 Disney characters, Kingdom Hearts introduces Sora, Riku, Kairi and the Heartless, designed by Square's Tetsuya Nomura (Final Fantasy VII, VIII and X).
The North American version of Kingdom Hearts features a voice cast that includes Haley Joel Osment (A.I. Artificial Intelligence) as Sora, David Gallagher (TV's 7th Heaven) as Riku and Hayden Panettiere (Ally McBeal) as Kairi, as well as Sean Astin (The Lord of the Rings), Lance Bass (*NSYNC), David Boreanaz (Angel), Mandy Moore, Christy Romano (Kim Possible), Steve Burton and Billy Zane. In addition, many of the original Disney voice actors reprise their roles.
Japanese pop star Utada Hikaru lends her talent in her first song performance in a video game, singing the theme song "Simple And Clean."
Minority DVD Is Packed
lthough Steven Spielberg's SF thriller film Minority Report was just released a few months ago, the DVD version has been in the works for nearly two years, Variety reported.
In what is becoming more common on major theatrical productions, Spielberg's DVD producer Laurent Bouzereau (A.I. Artificial Intelligence) was given full access to the set of Minority Report from the first day of filming.
Bouzereau chronicled the production by shooting hundreds of hours of high-definition video, which resulted in more than an hour of featurettes on specific areas of filmmaking, including original interviews with Spielberg, star Tom Cruise and a handful of other filmmakers, the trade paper reported. DreamWorks will release Minority Report on DVD and VHS on Dec. 17.
Cinesite Wins Tomb 2 F/X
inesite has been awarded the majority of the visual-effects shots in Paramount Pictures' upcoming sequel film Tomb Raider 2, Variety reported.
Angelina Jolie returns as adventurer Lara Croft in the sequel, which just began shooting.
Final numbers are being worked out, but it's estimated that the sequel will require 300 or more effects shots, the trade paper reported. Cinesite's London-based European shop will handle the Tomb Raider 2 work, which will consist primarily of 3-D animated sequences, the trade paper reported. Tomb Raider 2 is slated for a summer 2003 release.
Ballistic Fired Up Banderas
aos, aka Wych Kaosayananda, director of the upcoming SF action film Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, told SCI FI Wire that star Antonio Banderas did indeed inadvertently take a face full of flame in one climactic scene, which made it into the final cut.
The mishap, which resulted in no injury, occurred when a flame mortar erupted prematurely just as Banderas passed it while running between a row of train cars. The filming of the final railyard sequence involved multiple explosions, the director said in an interview.
"The whole train yard sequence took us about three weeks, I think, to shoot," Kaos said. "That sequence with Antonio, the way we designed it was that Bruce Steinheimer, my effects coordinator, we sat and he mixed in essence what's like the coolest flame you could possibly get. And we tested it, because I really wanted Antonio to do the running, and Antonio wanted to do it, but of course there was a safety issue. So they took some time, and he came up with this mixture, I don't know what sort of chemicals they used or whatever, but the way we tested it was [to ask, 'What would be] the worst-case scenario in the sequence that could possibly happen?' And we determined that the worst-case scenario was that if Antonio tripped and fell right in front of the [flame] mortars, and if the mortars went off, that would be the worst-case scenario. So going along with that thought process, he came up with this mixture, which I was told was the coolest flame possible, and he tested it for me. And the way he tested it was we actually had a stunt guy get in front on the ground, and it blew up. And the guy was fine."
Kaos added, "It was going to look really bad, but of course, we never expected it to go off in front of Antonio ... when he was running. ... But it was really scary. But the thing that made it worse was [that] when we shot the sequence, it happened to be the time when Antonio's agent and lawyer were sitting there. And it went off. And I was like, 'Uh-oh.' But he was fine. It was five minutes. And afterwards, the only thing that came up from that incident was that we still had a good four weeks of shoot left, and you never heard the end of it from Antonio. I mean, he loved it so much. The first thing he said when we went in to check him—he was a little dazed, but physically, ... he was perfectly OK— ... the first thing he said was [that] ... he was going to kick my ass if that didn't make the cut." Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, which also stars Lucy Liu, opens Sept. 20.
SCI FI Seeks Dreamers
he SCI FI Channel is inviting viewers to submit their dreams for possible analysis on its upcoming original reality series The Dream Team With Annabelle and Michael.
During the show, expert Michael Lennox and co-host Annabelle Gurwitch (Dinner & a Movie) will dissect and explain the dreams of audience members and call-in viewers.
Viewers can submit their dreams by telephone at (323) 520-5683 or by e-mail. Dreams must be recent ones so that the details are fresh in memory. The Dream Team will premiere in January 2003.
Rowling Wins Muggles Suit
federal court on Sept. 18 threw out author Nancy Stouffer's claims that Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling stole the term "muggles" from Stouffer's books, the Reuters news service reported.
The claim was part of a suit against Rowling and her U.S. publisher and movie producer that Rowling had stolen terms and characters, the news service reported.
In Rowling's books, "muggles" is the name wizards give to humans who have no magical abilities. Stouffer had used the term to describe mythical characters in her books for children, the news service reported.
But the U.S. District Court for southern New York found not only that Rowling did not steal "muggles," but also that Stouffer had lied to the court and doctored evidence to support her claims. The court fined Stouffer $50,000 for this "pattern of intentional bad faith conduct," Reuters reported. Rowling, book publisher Scholastic Corp. and Warner Brothers said that the court forbade Stouffer to ever claim to own the rights to the muggles name or to say that Rowling violated those rights. In addition, the court told Stouffer to pay a portion of the attorney's fees incurred by Rowling, Scholastic and Warner, the news service reported. A lawyer for Stouffer was not available for comment to Reuters.
Martial-Arts Snow To Fall
isney is negotiating with action choreographer Yuen Wo Ping (The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) to direct an as-yet-untitled live-action martial-arts version of the classic fairy tale Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Variety reported.
The film was at first titled Snow White and the Seven Shao Lin, a reference to the ancient order of Chinese monks.
A deal would mark Yuen's English-language-film helming debut. Written by Josh Harman and Scott Elder, the Snow White update is set in the 1890s and follows a woman who returns home to Hong Kong to attend her father's funeral, only to discover that her stepmother is plotting against her. She escapes to mainland China, where she seeks solace with seven Shao Lin monks who, in turn, come to believe the woman holds the fate of the world in her hands, the trade paper reported.
Disney Has Monsters Hit
he video version of Disney-Pixar's animated fantasy film Monsters, Inc. had the biggest opening day ever, with consumers buying more first-day copies on Sept. 17 than any other title in history, Variety reported.
Disney's wholesale revenue was at least $85 million, the trade paper reported.
Consumers purchased 5 million VHS and DVD copies of the title on its first day, with a far higher percentage—60 percent to 65 percent—purchased on DVD than the 50 percent the studio expected, the trade paper reported. About 1 million of those copies were pre-sold to consumers who reserved a copy at The Disney Store and other outlets in the past weeks and months.
Coscarelli Ponders Phantasm 5
on Coscarelli, director of the Phantasm horror-film series, told SCI FI Wire that a fifth installment in the saga of The Tall Man (Angus Scrimm) isn't beyond the realm of possibility.
"There's a resurgence of interest, so that's good," Coscarelli said in an interview. "Roger Avary, a friend of mine and a big Phantasm fan, had taken it upon himself after he won an Oscar for Pulp Fiction to write this epic Phantasm sequel."
Coscarelli, whose latest genre film, Bubba Ho-tep, just played at the Toronto Film Festival, added, "It's a really cool script. It's always been very large in scope and requires somebody to invest some money in it. There's no precedent for it, honestly, because when has anybody made a theatrical movie, then a theatrical sequel, then two direct-to-video movies and then come back and done a theatrical movie? That's why we've never been able to get that kind of funding."
The situation might change, Coscarelli said. The Phantasm films remain popular rental titles, and if Bubba Ho-tep generates any serious buzz and revenue, someone might finance Phantasm 5. "There are a few people out there who still seem to think they can get the money put together," Coscarelli said. "I guess that the perpetual, never-ending success of the Halloween and Freddy series prompts a lot of entrepreneurs to look at the list and go, 'Oh, they've never done a new Phantasm.' So I get phone calls from people all the time. It could happen."
Bell Tolls For Angel
eteran Angel producer and new show runner Jeffrey Bell apprised SCI FI Wire on the behind-the-scenes drama that resulted after the departure of David Simkins, who'd been brought in to replace series co-creator and co-executive producer David Greenwalt.
"It won't really affect what you see," Bell said in an interview. "It was sad that David [Greenwalt] left. He co-created the show and had done a fantastic job, and he's still consulting and giving us notes and helping out."
Bell added, "Tim Minear had already been tapped to go toward Firefly; otherwise, I think he would have been running [Angel] down here. So in that absence, Fox, I believe, wanted someone with experience to come in. David Simkins—a smart man, a good man—came in. It would have been a miracle for anyone from the outside to succeed. Joss [Whedon, Angel's co-creator and executive producer,] has a very specific sensibility. So I think it simply came down to that. When they came to their creative differences I'd been the man under David Simkins, and was under Tim Minear and David Greenwalt last year. I'd been delegated a lot of responsibilities, so evidently it made sense to those around me to have me carry on in their stead [following Simkins' exit], which is what I'm doing." Angel kicks off its fourth season Oct. 6 on The WB.
New Buffy Dawns
ichelle Trachtenberg, who co-stars as Dawn on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, told SCI FI Wire that it's too early to say whether or not the show's upcoming season will be its last and that it's also premature to assume Dawn would take center stage next year if the series were to forge on without star Sarah Michelle Gellar.
"People ask me what do I see as the future of Buffy," the actress said in an interview. "Honestly, I view the future of Buffy as every next episode."
Trachtenberg added, "I haven't even read the script for episode six yet, because we haven't gotten it, and we start shooting it in two days. I look at it episode by episode and even day by day, because I can't project what will happen at the end of the season. I have no idea what will happen, so I don't know how to interpret the end of the season. I prefer to look at it as, 'OK, we're doing this, and it will make this kind of notch in Buffy's television history.'"
As to the rumors that Buffy might morph into Dawn the Vampire Slayer, Trachtenberg sounded open to the idea. "I'm a fan of Dawn," Trachtenberg said. "I like her as a character. I like playing her. I love the show. So whatever happens, it's up to Joss [Whedon, the series creator and executive producer]. I'd want the original heart of Buffy to be there. If there's one second where someone would doubt Buffy the Vampire Slayer, we probably shouldn't go on. But whatever they decide, I'll be here. I'll be thinking about Dawn and having fun." Buffy the Vampire Slayer begins its new season Sept. 24 on UPN.
Park Ready For Iron Fist
ay Park, who is set to star in the film adaptation of the Iron Fist comic series, told SCI FI Wire that the movie is next on his schedule, but is still in its early stages.
"At the moment, [we're] just polishing up a lot of things for the script," Park said in an interview while promoting his upcoming movie Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever. "We're looking at starting. I'd like to just shoot it." Contrary to earlier reports, Park added that no director has yet been attached to the project. John Turman wrote the first draft of the script.
Park will play the lead in the movie, which is based on a Marvel Comics series about a Westerner raised in a Chinese temple by monks trained in the martial arts. "It's also going to be true to the comic as well," said Park, who is best known to genre audiences as Darth Maul in Star Wars: Episode I. "It'll be about the character's journey. In the comics his parents get killed, and he gets found in the temple, and he's been trained up by the monks. And he's a Westerner [who's] been trained by the monks. And he's just trained on revenge in the comic. So he goes to find these killers, his father's killer. So it's that sort of journey. There's a journey there for him. And it's sort of good and bad. Does he take the bad route and kill for revenge? Or does he be humble?"
Kidman Twitches For Bewitched?
icole Kidman is in talks to star in Columbia Pictures' Bewitched, a proposed feature-film adaptation of the long-running television series of the same name, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Doug Wick and Lucy Fisher's Red Wagon Productions is producing.
No offers have been made to Kidman, and no deal is in place for her to star, but the actress is said to have expressed interest in the starring role of Samantha, the witch who tries to abandon her powers for the sake of her mortal husband, Darren, the trade paper reported. Sources told the trade paper that Mike Myers (the Austin Powers franchise) is the top choice to play Darren.
The proposed project has no director on board and is out to writers to begin a new draft, starting from scratch. Penny Marshall, who at one point had been developing the feature film, is expected to produce the project in some capacity, the trade paper reported.
Bewitched ran on ABC from 1964-'72 and starred Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha.
Enterprise Ratings Lukewarm
he second-season premiere of UPN's Enterprise on Sept. 18 ranked fourth among the major broadcast networks, Media Week reported.
The 8 p.m. relaunch kicked off with a 4.9 rating, below the series premiere's 9.1 rating on Sept. 26, 2001, or the average 6.9 rating of the first season's second through fourth episodes, the magazine reported.
The 9 p.m. debut of UPN's new Twilight Zone held onto Enterprise's audience, with a healthy 4.6 rating, just 6 percent below the Enterprise lead-in and 18 percent above the season premiere of former time-period occupant Special Unit 2 on Oct. 3, 2001 (3.9).
Hellraiser VII Set To Shoot
roduction is slated to start Oct. 21 in Romania on Hellraiser IV: Deader, the seventh installment in the horror franchise created by Clive Barker, Production Weekly reported.
The film is likely headed for a straight-to-video release. Rick Bota is directing. Neal Marshall Stevens (Thirteen Ghosts) and Tim Day (Hellraiser: Hellseeker) wrote the script, the site reported.
Doug Bradley will reportedly reprise the role of Pinhead. The story revolves around Amy Klein, a London reporter who receives a tape showing a person being killed and brought back to life, and Amy travels to Bucharest to investigate.
StarCraft: Ghost Due
lizzard Entertainment announced it will develop StarCraft: Ghost, a video-game sequel set in its StarCraft universe, for multiple console gaming systems.
Blizzard made the announcement Sept. 20 at the Tokyo Game Show. The game is slated for release in late 2003. StarCraft: Ghost will be co-published by Capcom and Blizzard in Japan; further announcements regarding platform/country specifics will be announced in the months to come, the company said.
In StarCraft: Ghost, players take on the role of Nova, a lethal Ghost operative skillfully trained in the arts of espionage and tactical combat. With the help of a determined group of allies, players follow a series of story-driven missions, engaging in a mix of planetary battles and solo operations.
Blizzard is a division of Vivendi Universal Publishing and is owned by Vivendi Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
New Writers Reach Limits
GM has hired Douglas Cook and David Weisberg (The Rock) to rewrite the film adaptation of the SF anthology TV series The Outer Limits, Variety reported.
MGM hopes to put the adaptation of the 1960s TV series into production as quickly as it can, with Rupert Wainwright (Stigmata) directing, the trade paper reported.
MGM originally hired Gerald Di Pego (Phenomenon) and sons Justin and Zachary to write the feature earlier this year, the trade paper reported. Mark Victor and Michael Grais of Victor/Grais are producing The Outer Limits, along with Trilogy Entertainment's Pen Densham (UPN's The Twilight Zone), Guy McElwaine and John Watson.
The Outer Limits is being eyed as a movie franchise. After its initial '60s run, the series was remade as a TV show for Showtime and the SCI FI Channel.
Ripa To Voice Batwoman?
aytime talk diva Kelly Ripa will provide the lead voice in an upcoming animated movie tentatively titled Batman: The Mystery of Batwoman, which is expected to go straight to video, the Comics Continuum Web site reported.
The site based its report on anonymous sources. Representatives of Warner Brothers Animation did not comment on the film to the Continuum.
Batwoman will likely be a modernized version of the yellow-and-red-clad Silver Age character who was spotlighted in Batman and World's Finest comics in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the site reported.
Chabon To Rewrite Spidey 2
ulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay) will rewrite the script for The Amazing Spider-Man, the sequel to Columbia's summer hit, Variety reported.
Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst and director Sam Raimi have already signed on for the sequel, as have producers Laura Ziskin, Avi Arad and Ian Bryce, the trade paper reported. The sequel is slated to begin shooting early next year and is eyeing a May 7, 2004, release.
Alfred Gough and Miles Millar (TV's Smallville) were originally signed to write the sequel. David Koepp, who received sole screenplay credit for the first Spider-Man, also wrote a draft, the trade paper reported.
Chabon also was approached by Fox in 1996, when the studio was still seeking a writer to crack X-Men. Although the author wrote an impassioned letter outlining his take on the story, he ultimately wasn't selected for that project, Variety reported.
Suit Distracted Potter Author
arry Potter author J.K. Rowling told BBC Children's Television that stress over a plagiarism case has hindered her work on the eagerly awaited fifth book in the best-selling series, the Reuters news service reported.
Rowling added that she was enormously relieved after a U.S. court threw out rival author Nancy Stouffer's claims that she stole words and characters from Stouffer's books, the news service reported. With that suit behind her, Rowling said that much of the book has been written and insisted, "I really am getting there." She added, "I'm so relieved. This court case has dragged on for a few years. I'm a really happy woman today."
As for the effect of the suit on her writing, Rowling said, "It has affected it, obviously. Anyone who's been involved in a court case will know that it's time-consuming. It plays on your mind. There have been times when I've been writing, and that's been uppermost in my mind, whereas what should have been uppermost in my mind is what's going on with Harry and company."
So when will the much-anticipated fifth Potter book appear? "I'd rather not say, just in case I have a bus accident, and things get knocked off track! It won't be too long.
There's a lot of the book done. That's all I want to say, because if I give it a date, and then I pass it, everyone will be upset. I will say that I have a beginning, a middle and an end. You could read it all the way through, and I know a lot of Harry Potter fans will say just to give it to us. But I'm a perfectionist, and I want a bit more of a tweak."
Briefly Noted
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Freakylinks star Ethan Embry will appear in "Time Lapse," an upcoming episode of UPN's new Twilight Zone series, playing a young man who finds himself an unwitting figure in a Byzantine assassination plot. The episode airs Oct. 9.
- Twentieth Century Fox is lining up a list of promotional partners to support Bryan Singer's upcoming X-Men sequel film, X2, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The studio's partners include Mazda, Dr Pepper, Baskin-Robbins, Radio Shack and Kraft.
- The Film Society of Lincoln Center will host the New York premiere of Gore Verbinski's supernatural horror film The Ring, which will kick off the group's "Scary Movies" festival Oct. 17-31, Variety reported. The Ring opens wide on Oct. 18.
- Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling announced that she is pregnant and that she and her second husband, Neil Murray, would be having a baby next spring, the Reuters news service reported.
- Annette Bening has officially dropped out of Disney's fantasy comedy remake of Freaky Friday, Variety reported. Bening was to have played a widow who swaps personalities with her tomboy teen (Lindsay Lohan).
- The Dark Horizons Web site reported a rumor that Lakeshore Entertainment is considering a sequel to this year's paranormal thriller film The Mothman Prophecies, titled The Mothman Lives or The Mothman Returns. If the sequel goes ahead, it would appear in early 2004.
- British actress Rachel Hurd Wood, 12, will make her feature-film acting debut as Wendy in the upcoming live-action Peter Pan movie, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The movie is set to start production Sept. 30, with P.J. Hogan directing.
- The official Lord of the Rings Web site has been updated with a new module featuring the horses of Middle-earth, in anticipation of the upcoming sequel film, The Two Towers, which opens Dec. 18.
- Star Wars: Episode III producer Rick McCallum denied a long-running rumor that scenes were shot with Natalie Portman to be inserted into some future release of Return of the Jedi, the official Star Wars Web site reported. "No," McCallum said in response to a fan question. "There would be no reason to do that. ... Unless maybe we could find that metal bikini!"
- Gore Verbinski's supernatural horror film The Ring will kick off the sixth annual Hollywood Film Festival on Oct. 2, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The Ring opens to the public on Oct. 18.
- The Coming Attractions Web site reported that Steve Bacic will play Dr. Henry "Hank" McCoy, aka the Beast, in the upcoming X-Men sequel film, X2.
- Cinefex reported that Universal Pictures has set a May 21, 2004, release date for its upcoming vampire-hunter film Van Helsing.
- Warner Brothers has updated the official Web site for its upcoming SF action film Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, which opens Sept. 20.
- The IMAX version of Star Wars: Episode II—Attack of the Clones will be 23 minutes shorter than the original theatrical release to fit the 120-minute capability of most IMAX platter systems, the Jordan's IMAX Web site reported. A Lucasfilm spokesperson told the site that the editing will "maintain the integrity" of the story.
- M. Night Shyamalan, director of the hit SF movie Signs, will receive the Kodak Award at ShowEast 2002, Variety reported. Shyamalan will be feted at an awards gala set to close the annual trade show for theater owners on Oct. 12.
- Marisa Ramirez (General Hospital) has joined the cast of ABC's new supernatural series Miracles, the Zap2It Web site reported. She becomes the only female regular on the midseason drama, which stars Skeet Ulrich as a former Vatican miracle investigator.
- The Superhero Hype! Web site reported a rumor that daytime talk hostess Kelly Ripa will voice a character in an upcoming top-secret animated TV show based in DC Comics' Batman universe.
- Fans of TNT's canceled supernatural series Witchblade took out a full-page ad in Variety on Sept. 16, seeking a network to pick the two-year old show up. The ad cost $3,550, for which fans are trying to raise money.
- TV Guide Online reported that ABC will delay the premiere of its Dinotopia series until Nov. 28 (Thanksgiving night) to make room for reruns of USA Network's Monk, which will air Thursdays at 8 p.m. PT/ET, starting Sept. 26.
- Signs took sixth place in the Sept. 13 weekend box-office derby, taking in $5.3 million in its seventh weekend of release, the Hollywood trade papers reported. That raised the movie's total take to about $212.9 million.
- Former Roswell star Katherine Heigl will appear in "Cradle of Darkness," an upcoming story on UPN's new Twilight Zone series, in which she will play a woman who goes back in time to stop one of the most notorious murderers in history. The episode airs at 9 p.m. ET/PT Oct. 2.
- UPN will air The Crow 3: Salvation, starring Eric Mabius and Kirsten Dunst, at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Sept. 27. Except for a brief test screening, the third film in the goth franchise never saw the light of day in theaters, but was released straight to video.
- Brett Ratner told SCI FI Wire he will still direct a live-action feature film based on the Cartoon Network animated series Samurai Jack, but not until after 2004, when he wraps his next two projects. "I'm a young man," Ratner said in an interview. "I'll do it after Superman and Rush Hour 3."
- The full new trailer for the upcoming sequel film Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets has gone live on the official Web site. Chamber opens Nov. 15.
- Colin Farrell, who co-stars in the upcoming Daredevil movie, denied to USA Today that star Ben Affleck wears a toupee, as rumored. "There's really a rumor going round that he wears a toupee?" Farrell asked. "Guess what? I'm supposed to be Batman [in the proposed Batman vs. Superman]. Don't believe anything."
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