WB Reviving MacGyver?
he WB Network has ordered a pilot for an update of the old MacGyver TV series, entitled Young MacGyver, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The Paramount Network Television show will be executive produced by Henry Winkler, Stephen Downing and John Rich, the trade paper reported.
Young MacGyver will center on the adventures of MacGyver's nephew, who is brought into the fold of Phoenix Foundation, a think tank dedicated to righting wrongs and defeating bad guys throughout the world, the trade paper reported. Sam Baum is writing the script and will serve as a supervising producer on the pilot. Casting is under way for the show's lead.
The original MacGyver ran on ABC from 1985-92 and starred Richard Dean Anderson, who now stars in Stargate SG-1.
PS2 Rings Game In Stores
lack Label Games, a division of Vivendi Universal Publishing, announced that it has shipped its video game based on J.R.R. Tolkien's novel The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring for the PlayStation 2 gaming platform.
The title is published as part of VU Games' exclusive, long-term agreement with Tolkien Enterprises to develop interactive entertainment, based on Tolkien's Lord of the Rings books, for multiple next-generation and PC platforms, the company said. Black Label Games also plans to publish the title for PC this month.
Developed by Seattle-based Surreal Software, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring for PlayStation 2 is a third-person, action-adventure game featuring three members of the Fellowship—Frodo, Aragorn and Gandalf—as playable characters with unique abilities.
Black Label Games is a studio of the games division of Vivendi Universal Publishing and is owned by Vivendi Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
DVD Enhances First Rings
he upcoming special extended version DVD of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings features a completely new edit of the hit movie that now clocks in at more than three and a half hours, according to a preview offered to SCI FI Wire.
Director Peter Jackson significantly altered the theatrical-release version of the movie, which itself ran nearly three hours in length, extending most of the film's scenes and adding important new scenes, new visual effects and a new soundtrack with nearly 50 minutes of new score music by Oscar-winning composer Howard Shore. All told, Jackson inserted about 30 minutes of new footage into the movie.
The new version of the movie occupies two discs of the upcoming four-disc special-edition DVD, which will be available Nov. 12 with a suggested retail price of $39.99. A limited collector's edition of the special version will also come out with a price of $79.92.
Among the added scenes:
•The film opens with a new sequence of Bilbo Baggins (Ian Holm) writing a journal entry entitled "Concerning Hobbits" and features extended scenes of life in Hobbiton.
•Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) witness the exodus of the elves from Middle-earth to the Grey Havens.
•Aragorn talks more with Boromir (Sean Bean) about the fate of men.
•Gandalf (Ian McKellen) intones the Black Speech inscription from the One Ring during an extended Council of Elrond scene.
•Galadriel (Cate Blanchett) bestows gifts upon the Fellowship before they depart Lothlorien (and the new version restores Gimli's [John Rhys-Davies] crush on Galadriel).
•Extended scenes of the Fellowship with the elves in Lothlorien.
In addition to deepening the story and offering more insight into the characters, the restored footage also sets the viewer up for events to come in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, the sequel that comes to movie theaters on Dec. 18.
Translating The Ring
ore Verbinski, who directed the upcoming supernatural horror film The Ring, told SCI FI Wire that he made changes to the hit 1998 Japanese film on which it is based in order to make the English-language version more accessible to American audiences.
"I believe there's a kind of need for resolution in the American audience," he said in an interview while promoting the film. "Because the only resolution in life is death. We seem to want to impregnate all our stories with resolution. The Japanese perspective really has a completely different point of view. Yet we knew we couldn't
just start talking about volcanoes and ESP and a lot of the aspects of the original movie."
The premise of the film remains the same—an investigative reporter researches a videotape that can supposedly cause the death of anyone who watches it in seven days. In the original, the reporter's ex-husband uses ESP to help her
solve the mystery. Verbinski felt that that aspect was best left out of his version. "In the original movie, the Noah character has some sort of extrasensory perception. So he could really help [Naomi Watts' character, Rachel], because he
senses things. And we really wanted to take that out and have Rachel earn it in this movie more. ... We felt that there was something wonderful about a movie where everything's real, except for one thing—the videotape that'll kill you. Once you start to have characters who have ESP, we were worried about how that would play to a contemporary American audience."
Verbinski added, "I've also tried to make Rachel a symbol of the audience, because we also watched the tape with her, and we start to see it. It's not just ruled by the characters. It starts to slip into our world. It's also incredibly ironic that this
movie is about making a copy, and the movie itself is a copy. So the little things like the very beginning opening credits and the DreamWorks logo is a generation away from the original." The Ring opens Oct. 18.
Horsing Around In Ring
aomi Watts, who stars in the upcoming supernatural horror film The Ring, told SCI FI Wire that one of the most difficult scenes to film involved a runaway horse.
"I felt terrible for the horses," she said in an interview while promoting the film. "But we had the animal people there who were watching very closely and telling us what we could
and couldn't do, and everyone on the set was incredibly quiet and respectful in order not to spook them any more than they were already being spooked."
The Ring, a remake of a Japanese hit movie, tells the story of a videotape that causes death within seven days of viewing. The scene in question features a horse traveling on a ferry along with Watts' character, Rachel. After viewing the videotape, Rachel has begun exhibiting bizarre symptoms, including causing a violent reaction in the horse, which escapes from its trailer in a wild frenzy.
"We had a rotation," Watts said of the stunt horses used in the scene. "I think one horse actually got up at one point, and I was pretty scared that it might bolt. But nothing happened like that. And the people were incredible. How do you teach a horse to jump through a window? But it was great. I think it's a pretty powerful scene."
In a separate interview, director Gore Verbinski assured that a digitally created horse was substituted for the real one at the critical moment when it jumps off the boat. "We can't do what Sam Peckinpah did these days," he said. "So the horse was all real until the moment when it went over the ferry, and that was a computer-generated horse." The Ring opens Oct. 18.
Nemesis Scaled Back Worf
ichael Dorn, who played fan favorite Worf in Star Trek: The Next Generation, told SCI FI Wire that his role is considerably reduced in the upcoming Star Trek: Nemesis movie.
"Worf isn't up to much in Nemesis," Dorn said in an interview. "Usually he has his fighting stuff. He gets one or two scenes where he really is doing Worf stuff. In this movie there isn't any of that. There's a lot of stuff going on [in general], and I think the Worf kinds of scenes just didn't lend themselves to this particular installment of our series."
Dorn, who will next appear as the Sandman in The Santa Clause 2, added that he nearly didn't participate in the 10th Trek movie at all. "I was very close," he said. "It was extremely close. It was just negotiation stuff, business. But it was very close. There were several times when I just called my friends [among the Next Generation cast] before they found out, and I said, 'Look, it's just not going to happen. I'm really sorry.' But at the last minute [Paramount Pictures] came up with something that I could live with." Nemesis opens Dec. 13.
U.K Opens Trek Exhibit
.K. Star Trek fans can visit a new exhibition in London’s Hyde Park, beginning Dec. 6, that chronicles the entire Trek experience, the official Web site reported.
Star Trek—The Adventure kicks off a world tour with a multimedia interactive exhibition that takes up 7,000 square meters and offers recreated sets, props, costumes and interactive demonstrations of Trek lore. The attraction runs through Jan. 31, 2003.
Hundreds of items will be on display from all five Trek TV shows and 10 feature films, including the upcoming Star Trek: Nemesis. Fans will also get to experience being “beamed up” by a transporter or boarding the bridge of the Enterprise D. The Adventure also features a flight simulator, a three-story replica of Quark's Bar from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and a first look at the armory set from the UPN series Enterprise, among other things.
Trek Game Pack Released
ctivision announced that it has released the Star Trek Action Pack of video games in advance of the holiday shopping season.
The Star Trek Action Pack contains the full retail versions of Star Trek Armada, Star Trek Armada II, Star Trek: Voyager Elite Force and the Star Trek: Voyager Elite Force Expansion Pack, the company said.
The Star Trek Action Pack for the PC carries a suggested retail price of $29.99.
Rowling OKs Potter Sequel
hris Columbus, director of the upcoming sequel film Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, told SCI FI Wire that Potter author J.K. Rowling trusted the production team enough that she kept her participation in the project to a minimum.
"Jo was involved with the script again," Columbus said in an interview. "As always, she has a lot of information that none of us have, in terms of where the characters are going and in terms of what's going to happen to them. She's also got the backgrounds of all these characters in this world in hundreds of notebooks."
Columbus added, "So we can basically call her or e-mail her and find out any little piece of information we need. That relationship still exists. I think she trusts us a lot, so her involvement this time was actually a little less [than on the first film based on her best-selling books]. On the first film [which Columbus directed as well] she only came to the set one time, and she didn't make it to the set of Chamber of Secrets. But we've kept in touch, and she just came in for a script meeting on The Prisoner of Azkaban." Chamber of Secrets opens Nov. 15; Prisoner of Azkaban, the third Potter film, is in preproduction.
Chabon Progresses On Spidey 2
riter Michael Chabon, who is drafting a screenplay for the upcoming Spider-Man sequel film, The Amazing Spider-Man, told the Comics Continuum Web site that he's making progress.
"It's going pretty good," Chabon told the site.
Chabon added that he hasn't read previous drafts by David Koepp, who wrote the first Spider-Man film, or by Smallville executive producers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, the site reported. "I don't know what was in them," he said.
Scooby 3 In Works
arner Brothers has hired writers Dan Foreman and Paul Foley to write a third installment of its Scooby-Doo film franchise, Variety reported.
A second installment is already slated for release in 2004. The first Scooby-Doo, which was released in June, has grossed $265 million worldwide, the trade paper reported.
Scooby producers Chuck Roven and Richard Suckle will also produce the third Scooby movie. Foreman and Foley wrote the script for a proposed live-action film based on the animated TV series The Jetsons.
Wallace, Gromit Return
ardman Animations has produced 10 new one-minute films featuring the Oscar-winning animated duo of Wallace and Gromit in a series entitled Cracking Contraptions, the BBC News Online site reported.
The films will appear online at BBC News Online, starting with Soccamatic.
The films each focus on a different invention that Wallace has built to help him around the home. They will be viewable on the Internet on a pay-per-view site, starting Oct. 16, and will be shown on the United Kingdom's BBC One TV network later in the year, the site reported.
The pair's creator, Nick Park, is currently working on a script for the first full-length Wallace and Gromit feature film with Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks studio, to be released in two years, the site added. Wallace and Gromit last appeared in the 30-minute TV film A Close Shave in 1995.
JLA Game Pairs Heroes
idway product manager Patrick Dillon told SCI FI Wire that the new Justice League video game for the GameBoy Advance will let players control several pairs of superheroes from the animated series at each level.
"Every mission in the game has two heroes," Dillon said in an interview. "When you start, it's Superman and Wonder Woman, and you can switch off between the two at any time. If one dies, you're stuck with one. Once that hero's done, then you start the mission again at a certain point. [Later missions] have Batman/Flash, Wonder Woman/Hawk Girl or Green Lantern/Martian Manhunter. Each one has a particular ability that helps you throughout the level."
Justice League is a side-scrolling action game offering standard punch/kick attacks and a unique super power for each hero. Superman can fly. Batman throws a Batarang. "Flash can do super-speed and literally just run up a wall," Dillon said.
Dillon added that the super powers are not required for completing levels, but assist the player. But there are limits to the special attacks. "Like you have a bar for health, you have a bar for your special attacks, so you can't just keep using it and using it," he said. "It'll deplete the bar. You can replenish it if you find powerups in the game, but it's not something you have all the time." Justice League hits stores on Nov. 18.
Cage Comics Net $1.6 M
icolas Cage, an avowed comic-book fan, sold his personal comic collection—including a copy of Superman's 1938 debut—at auction for more than $1.6 million, the Reuters news service reported.
The 400 items in the catalog, which Cage collected over the years, auctioned off Oct. 10 to various bidders in a sale conducted by the Heritage Auctions house of Dallas in conjunction with the Mint of Kansas City, Mo., the news service reported.
Cage's copy of Action Comics No. 1, the 1938 comic that introduced Superman, sold for $86,250, more than $15,000 above its estimated value, auction organizers told Reuters.
A 1940 comic book, Detective No. 38, featuring the debut of Batman's sidekick, Robin, fetched nearly $121,000. Another 1940 publication, All-Star Comics No. 3, which introduced the Justice Society of America, sold for $45,000.
Dreamcatcher Spooked Stars
onnie Wahlberg, one of the stars of the upcoming Dreamcatcher movie, told SCI FI Wire that he and his fellow actors found themselves spooked by the roles they had to play in the Stephen King adaptation.
“It was really funny, because when we all got together to rehearse, they were all just as nervous as I was playing Duddits, and it was nice to see that,” Wahlberg said in an interview. “Morgan Freeman was playing a bad guy, and Tom Sizemore was playing a good guy. Damian Lewis is playing a guy who has someone else in his body and has to have conversations with himself.”
The film—based on King’s SF-tinged novel about a group of friends who confront an unknown force during a camping trip—is distributed by Warner Brothers and will come out April 4, 2003. Wahlberg is confident the film will please fans. “It’s a crazy movie,” he said. “It’s either going to be real good or real, real good. [Director] Lawrence Kasdan’s brilliant, so it’s in his hands, and I trust him.”
3-D Film Pioneer Pink Dies
idney Pink, a movie producer who pioneered 3-D feature-length movies in the 1950s, died Oct. 13 at his home in Pompano Beach, Fla., after a long illness, the Los Angeles Times reported.
He was 86.
Pink produced more than 50 films, including the cult SF movie The Angry Red Planet and Bwana Devil, the first full-length 3-D movie. The success of the latter film prompted Jack Warner to come out with his own 3-D production at Warner Brothers in 1953, The House of Wax, starring Vincent Price, the Times reported.
In 1959, Pink co-wrote and produced The Angry Red Planet, the tale of the first expedition to Mars. The SF movie was filmed in what was advertised as a "revolutionary" process called "Cinemagic," a printing-process technique that gave the Mars scenes a pink glow, the newspaper reported.
Later, Pink moved to Denmark, where he produced and directed Reptilicus, a 1962 movie about a prehistoric monster that comes back to life.
Midway Updates Defender Game
atrick Dillon, product manager of game publisher Midway, told SCI FI Wire that the company has updated the classic 1980s arcade game Defender, bringing it into a 3-D environment.
“We were able to expand the game from the original, but still keep the spirit of the original,” Dillon said in an interview. “The key elements of what made that game stand out from any other shooter was you kept saving these guys falling out of the sky or being swept up by the aliens. That’s what made that game different, and that’s what’s making this game different from all the other games out there right now.”
Players will fly a ship around a planet, picking up colonists and returning them to base, while blasting alien attackers. Mission goals include bringing tanks back to base, helping colonists protect and improve shields and other tasks. But don’t expect to crash. “We didn’t want to put in collision, because you have to go down and pick things up,” Dillon said. “If we had it where you just keep crashing, that would take away from the fun of the game. The same with the mountain walls. So you bounce off and don’t take any damage.” Defender also includes multiplayer features.
The PlayStation 2 version of Defender hits stores on Oct. 21. Xbox, GameCube and GameBoy Advance versions come out Nov. 7.
Dent Romances Taken Alien
atherine Dent, one of the stars of the SCI FI Channel's upcoming epic SF miniseries Taken, told SCI FI Wire that her character has a love affair with an alien, and it spoiled her for any human romance.
"He's an alien lover, and it's true what they say about aliens," Dent joked in an interview. "You don't ever go back. Real human men have nothing on the aliens."
Taken, a 20-hour miniseries produced by DreamWorks for the SCI FI Channel, traces the lives of three families, each intimately connected with the alien abduction phenomenon, over the course of five decades. Dent's character, Sally Clarke, appears in three episodes that span the period 1947 to 1980, requiring what she called "a lot of makeup. It's one of those things that you become your character. You put on enough prosthetic makeup, and you feel old and horrible, and so it's pretty easy."
For the character's earlier, younger scenes, Dent researched Roswell and people who claim to have encountered aliens. "My character actually starts right around that time in the mid-1940s," she said. "I found that these people are true believers. I'm not necessarily a believer in aliens. I think that there's other life forms out there. I don't have any kind of hubris to believe that we're just alone, but I never really thought more than that. These people really believe, and they have absolute faith as one would have in religion. So that informed me a lot."
Some scenes required Dent to perform against a blue screen, where aliens would be added in post-production. Now that she's seen a completed episode, she's pleased with the aliens' appearance. "They're beautiful," she said. "They're based on real accounts, on interviews with people who believe that they've seen them, so they look like the aliens that you have a certain familiarity with, the big hands and long fingers. But they're also very unique and special. I mean, our special-effects department tried to make them as tactile as possible. They're gorgeous."
Dent credits executive producer Steven Spielberg with the guiding vision for the special effects. "He was not on the set when I was there, but he was very hands-on in the process, very hands-on in the making of the aliens and all the sci-fi effects, things like that," she said. Taken premieres in December.
Poll Reveals UFO Belief
new national poll found that 72 percent of Americans believe the government is not telling the public everything it knows about UFO activity, and 68 percent think the government knows more about extraterrestrial life than it is letting on, the SCI FI Channel reported.
The poll—sponsored by SCI FI as part of its promotion for Steven Spielberg's 20-hour SF miniseries Taken—also revealed that men more than women think such information should be shared with the public. RoperASW conducted the poll of 1,021
adults aged 18 and over from Aug. 23-25. The margin of error is 3 percent.
Among the poll's other findings:
•The younger you are, the stronger your belief that the government is withholding information about UFOs and extraterrestrial life: 80 percent of respondents 18-24 years old said so, compared with 75 percent of those 25-34 years old and 73 percent of those 35-49 years old.
•Just over half (53 percent) of respondents said that their level of trust in the government has remained stable over the past five years, while nearly a third (29 percent) said that they trust the government less than they did five years ago.
•Most respondents said that the government does not share enough information
with the public in general (55 percent) and that the U.S. government should not withhold information about UFO sightings (60 percent) and potential encounters with extraterrestrial
life (58 percent) when national security is not an issue.
Taken premieres on SCI FI in December.
New Line Develops Martian
ew Line Cinema will develop The Martian Child, a dramatic film with SF overtones by screenwriters Jonathan Tolins and Seth Bass, based on a short story by SF author David Gerrold, Variety reported.
David Kirschner, Corey Sienega and Ed Albert will produce the film; the screenwriters will co-produce, the trade paper reported.
The film tells the story of a single man who adopts a 6-year-old boy, then begins to believe the child's claim that he is a Martian.
Muto Morphs Into Galaxy
idway product manager Patrick Dillon told SCI FI Wire that the upcoming 3-D fantasy adventure video game Dr. Muto will let players morph into various animals.
"There are elements to the game where you have to be a certain creature," Dillon said in an interview. "For example, in the first world, there's a part where you have to be the spider to progress forward. As you get more 'morphs,' you can go back to any place you've been before. There are secret areas that you can't access until you get those morphs, and you'll want to go back and play some of those areas."
In the game, the crazy scientist Dr. Muto has accidentally destroyed his world and must travel to other worlds to collect the elements to rebuild it. In his galactic travels, Dr. Muto collects DNA that allows him to morph into the various creatures required to complete the game. To earn each morph, the player collects combinations of DNA from the creatures he defeats in each level.
"Let's say, for example, if you're in a small area, turning into the gorilla just isn't going to do anything for you," Dillon said. "It's structured use, basically. It's more strategy. You have the morphs with you and you have to use them to your advantage." Dr. Muto hits stores on Nov. 14 for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox gaming platforms.
Exorcist Turns Mann's Head
abriel Mann, who will play Father William Francis in the upcoming prequel to The Exorcist, told SCI FI Wire that he is studying the life of real priests for his role in the movie, which begins filming in Marrakesh, Morocco, in two weeks.
"I found a really fantastic parish priest in Venice [Calif.], who I've been talking to and going to services [with]," Mann said in an interview. "[I have] frankincense and myrrh in the apartment, then just my own private actor stuff that I do."
Mann is not concerned that controversies in the Catholic church will hinder his portrayal of a noble priest. "There are still good priests in the world, I swear to God," he said. Having read the script, Mann promised fans that the prequel returns to the tone of the original 1973 movie. "I think that it's the [film] that seriously makes the closest attempt to get back to the elements that made the first one so great," he said. "To me, it's something that moves away a little bit from running-around-with-axes, chasing-people-through-woods kind of terror, to the kind of creeping, growing eeriness that starts to really permeate inside you until you realize you're really scared and really freaked out." The Exorcist prequel is scheduled for a July 18, 2003, release.
Greenwalt Eases Into Miracles
oger Birnbaum, producer of ABC's upcoming supernatural TV series Miracles, told SCI FI Wire that writer and Angel co-creator David Greenwalt has acclimated to the new show.
"We've just come up with some really terrific storylines, very exciting storylines that have showed a great depth to the combination of David Greenwalt and Richard Hatem writing together," Birnbaum said in an interview. "They just seem to really gel together. They're both very smart. They both approach stories the same way, and they have a mutual respect for each other. I don't think that's unique, but it's nice when it works."
Miracles concerns a team that investigates reports of miraculous phenomena. Greenwalt, who co-created The WB's Buffy the Vampire Slayer spinoff series Angel with Joss Whedon, left that show at the end of last season to run Miracles. Birnbaum said that he is so happy with Greenwalt and Hatem that he's offered them future projects. "As a matter of fact, I've made a deal with them that when we go into our first hiatus on the show, they're going to write a movie for me," he said. "[It will] not [be] based on Miracles, but definitely a genre picture that will hopefully frighten audiences." Miracles begins airing in January 2003.
Craven To Get Cursed
cream director Wes Craven and writer Kevin Williamson will reteam at Dimension Films for Cursed, a proposed werewolf film, Variety reported.
Dimension co-chairman Bob Weinstein has green-lighted the film and set an Aug. 8, 2003, release date for what he hopes is the beginning of a Scream-like franchise, the trade paper reported.
It's the second werewolf project reported in as many days. Warner Brothers and Industry Entertainment began developing the Karen Armstrong novel Bitten as a starring vehicle for Angelina Jolie, the trade paper reported.
Time Ships For GameCube
idos has shipped the SF video game TimeSplitters 2 for the GameCube to stores, the GameSpot Web site reported.
The first-person shooter game offers players a wide variety of weapons, characters and modes over several levels of time travel.
TimeSplitters 2 was developed by the same team that created GoldenEye and Perfect Dark for the Nintendo 64, the site reported. A PlayStation 2 version of TimeSplitters 2 is already in stores, and the Xbox version should be in stores later this week, the site added.
Twohy Pitched 3 Riddicks
irector David Twohy, who is in preproduction on a proposed film trilogy spun off his sleeper hit SF movie Pitch Black, told SCI FI Wire that the first sequel in the Chronicles of Riddick series will greatly expand the universe seen in the original film.
"It takes that Riddick character [played in Pitch Black by Vin Diesel] and follows him through multiple universes, multiple worlds, as he meets multiple adversaries," he said in an interview while promoting his latest film, Below. "There's a lot of theology running through it. Not just mythology, like maybe you get out of Star Wars or Lord of the Rings, but theology as well. Even though I'm not a religious guy, I'm very interested in religion anyway and why people turn to it."
Twohy said that the title of the first sequel film will be the same as the title of the new series as a whole, to establish continuity, yet create an identity apart from the original. "Right now we're saying the series is called Chronicles of Riddick. We're referring to it as C1, C2 and C3. I'm plotting all three films as we preproduce this first film. And we're in active preproduction. I've got a production designer on it. I've got a whole art department of conceptual artists. The script is in. We are being funded by Universal. It's a big deal."
Twohy added, "The reason why it's The Chronicles and not Pitch Black 2 is because that would be a disservice to what we're doing now. Or would give a false impression of this next film. Because not only are we changing genres—the first one was a horror film and this will be action/adventure/sci-fi—but we're also increasing the scope in such a way that isn't true to the original film as well."
Universal Pictures is owned by Vivendi Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Jolie Bites Bitten?
arner Brothers has optioned the film rights to Kelley Armstrong's supernatural novel Bitten, with Tomb Raider's Angelina Jolie attached to star as a female werewolf, Variety reported.
Alexander Stuart (The War Zone) will adapt the book for the screen, the trade paper reported.
Jolie will play a woman who turns into a werewolf after she gets bitten and lives among a clandestine wolf pack in Canada. She finally decides to suppress her animalistic tendencies for a normal human life, becomes a journalist and falls in love, but is drawn back to her pack when a rogue band of werewolves begins drafting criminals into its pack, the trade paper reported.
Episode II Theft Charges Filed
former employee of Lucasfilm has been charged with 13 felony counts in connection with the theft of an estimated $450,000 worth of materials related to the film Star Wars: Episode II—Attack of the Clones, the Marin (Calif.) News reported.
Shea O'Brien Foley, 30, who was employed as a production assistant at the Lucas Valley filmmaking company, has been charged with the theft of sound effects, storyboard images, the film score and hundreds of digital images and video files between September 2000 and April 2002, the newspaper reported. Foley has previously denied that he was responsible for providing a bootleg copy of the film to an Internet reviewer.
Foley was arrested at his Burbank, Calif., workplace by officers with the Department of Motor Vehicles' computer forensics and investigations office, the newspaper reported. He was booked into Los Angeles County Jail and is being held in lieu of $200,000 bail on the warrant, which charges him with four counts of unlawful access to a computer system and nine counts of grand theft.
The case results from an internal company investigation launched after a review of Episode II appeared on the Ain't It Cool News Web site on March 17, two months before its theatrical release on May 16. Foley became a suspect because of information posted on Star Wars-related chat rooms under the name "Shay," including a picture of Foley's winning Boba Fett costume from a Lucasfilm contest held around Halloween 2001, court documents said. If convicted, Foley would face a maximum prison sentence of seven years and four months, the newspaper reported.
CBS Judges New Pilot
BS is developing a supernatural TV series from Barbara Hall (Judging Amy) and 20th Century Fox TV, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The trade paper described the proposed series as a family-based drama with a supernatural twist involving one of the clan's teenage daughters.
Hall told the trade paper that the concept for the as-yet-unnamed show has been a "pet project" for some time, but that her duties as showrunner on Judging Amy kept her from devoting the time needed to develop it into a pilot until now.
SF&F Writers Oppose War
cience fiction and fantasy writers are among more than 100 artists who have signed an online petition opposing military action in Iraq.
Signatories include SCI FICTION editor Ellen Datlow and writers Karen Joy Fowler, Lisa Goldstein, John Kessel, Kelly Link and Michael Moorcock, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Web site reported.
"Science fiction writers have a special interest in the future, and the U.S. policy on Iraq is putting our future at risk," said Douglas Lain, the Portland, Ore., man who co-wrote the petition with New Zealand author Tim Jones, the SFWA site reported. "It's no wonder that so many fine writers in the genre are coming out in opposition to Bush and his war."
Tailoring World For Chan
rank Coraci, director of the upcoming new film adaptation of Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days, told SCI FI Wire that filmmakers are tailoring the role of Passepartout for Jackie Chan—making the character Chinese and basing his backstory on a real Asian myth.
"The design is that Jackie is actually a Chinese man in the movie who is one of the 10 Tigers, which is a pretty famous fable in Asia," Coraci said in an interview. "Most martial-arts people know who they were. They were a band of basically Robin-Hood types, do-gooders who helped the poor people of China. Part of this movie, we wanted to teach people things that they may have not seen. So we made him one of the 10 Tigers."
Passepartout joins Phileas Fogg's journey to escape with his latest booty. "The movie opens with Jackie robbing the Bank of London, and he has to hide out," Coraci said. "He hides out by pretending he's a French valet for Phileas Fogg, the inventor. He's the perfect valet, because he's an extremely brave man, and Phileas has all these crazy inventions, like jet packs and what not. For a big part of the movie, he's undercover pretending to be French, so a lot of humor is mined out of the fact that Jackie plays a Chinese French man."
Around the World in 80 Days begins shooting in January 2003, aiming for a Christmas 2003 release.
Quaid Looks To Tomorrow
ennis Quaid, who will play a climatologist in Roland Emmerich's upcoming SF thriller movie The Day After Tomorrow, told SCI FI Wire that he'll make it up as he goes along when he begins filming in a month.
"As far as any preparation for it and stuff like that, there's no big active preparation for that, because the movie is the star of the movie," Quaid said in an interview.
Quaid's character will have to stop a sudden global warming and a new ice age in New York, which will lead to the sorts of catastrophic special effects of Emmerich's other big hits, he said. "I loved Independence Day myself, because of just that ride," Quaid said. "It's not my usual taste, but I did love that ride, and this is just going to be a big action end-of-the-world movie."
The Day After Tomorrow will also star Jake Gyllenhaal as Quaid's son and will be distributed by 20th Century Fox in summer 2003.
ABC Eyes Starman Show
BC has ordered a script for a proposed TV series based on the DC Comics series Starman, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The network has given a script commitment to Tollin/Robbins Productions, the company behind The WB's hit DC Comics-based Smallville and Birds of Prey, and Warner Brothers Television, the trade paper reported.
Like the comic, Starman will center on a 25-year-old former slacker who is forced to become a superhero after his brother, the former Starman, is mysteriously killed. John Gatins (Hardball) is writing the script for the show and is executive producing with Tollin/Robins' Joe Davola, Mike Tollin and Brian Robbins, the trade paper reported.
Cat Props Walk Off
hieves stole $55,000 worth of large, custom-designed props from the set of the upcoming fantasy film Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat, the Associated Press reported.
Among the items taken were an 8-foot-long pair of dark blue glasses, a yellow 4-foot-long door key, a black 6-foot-by-4-foot-by-8-foot anvil with hammer, a 4-foot golf tee and a blue golf ball 7 feet in diameter that weighs more than 200 pounds, the AP reported.
Police have not identified any suspects. "We have ruled out the Grinch," a police spokesman told the AP. The stolen items were in a fenced lot near the set of Cat in the Hat, which is set to begin filming later this month. The movie, starring Mike Myers, is based on the book by Dr. Seuss and is aiming for a 2003 release.
Phantastik Winners Named
he German SF Web site Phantastik.de announced winners of the 2002 German Phantastik Prize.
Winners were selected by visitors to the site. The prizes were presented on Oct. 12 at the Buchmesse Convention held near Frankfurt am Main, Germany. A list of winners follows.
Best German Novel
•Elfenfeuer by Monika Felten
Best Foreign Novel
•Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer
Best Short Story
•"Die letzte Fahrt der Enora Time" by Andreas Gruber
Best Anthology/Collection
•Die letzte Fahrt der Enora Time by Andreas Gruber
Best Serial
•Maddrax
Author of the Year
•J.R.R. Tolkien
Best Translation
•Monika Angerhuber for In a Foreign Town, in a Foreign Land by Thomas Ligotti
Best Feature
•Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Best TV Series
•Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Best Actress
•Liv Tyler, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Best Actor
•Ian McKellen, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Best Web Site
•SF-Radio.de
Honor Award
•Peter Jackson, for directing Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Flop of the Year
•Planet of the Apes
Knight Game Coming Soon
avilex Software announced that its Knight Rider video game, based on the 1980s TV series of the same name, is ready to ship to stores, the GameSpot Web site reported.
Designed for the PlayStation 2 and the PC, Knight Rider allows players to assume the role of K.I.T.T., the talking Trans Am.
The two versions of the game are essentially identical, the site reported. Koch Media is publishing Knight Rider in Europe and plans to release both versions on Nov. 8. No North American release date has been confirmed, the site added.
Briefly Noted
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The Superhero Hype! Web site posted an image of the logo for the upcoming superhero movie League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which is currently in post-production.
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Sony has posted a trailer for its upcoming supernatural horror film
Darkness Falls, which stars Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Emma Caulfield and opens in January 2003.
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The WB's Smallville delivered its best-ever ratings and gave the network the highest adults 18-34 rating for any program in network history (4.5/13) and the second highest in adults 18-49 (4.4/11), Variety reported.
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Universal announced that it will release the original theatrical version of its E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial on DVD as part of a low-priced limited collector's edition ($22.95), Variety reported. Universal had earlier said that the original version would be offered on DVD only as part of a $70 ultimate collector's gift set edition of this year's revised theatrical release.
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Disney's Touchstone Home Entertainment will release a double-disc 15th-anniversary Vista Series edition of Who Framed Roger Rabbit on March 25, 2003, Variety reported. The release will feature rare new animation of Roger and other animated characters from the groundbreaking combination of live-action and original cartoon characters and legendary animated stars from every studio, the trade paper reported.
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Online ticket seller Fandango.com has already begun selling tickets to the sequel film Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, which debuts Nov. 15, Variety reported.
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Warner Brothers has posted the United Kingdom trailer for its upcoming sequel film Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, which opens Nov. 15.
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Composer John Williams told Movie Music Now that he will write scores for the upcoming films Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Jurassic Park IV, Star Wars: Episode III and Indiana Jones IV.
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Richard Harris, 72, who plays Professor Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter films, has been diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease, USA Today reported. He's currently undergoing chemotherapy and is expected to recover in time to appear in the third Potter film, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which begins shooting in March 2003.
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The WB Network has given a full-season pickup to Do Over, its back-to-the-future sitcom, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The netlet has already picked up a full season of its fledgling Birds of Prey series.
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William Baldwin has signed to star in the independent supernatural film Red Rover for director Marc Grenier and producer Lee Faulkner, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Alisandra Rand and Linda Cordeiro wrote the film, which tells the story of a brother and sister who discover that their family's centuries-old estate contains secrets of witchcraft and the occult.
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The United Kingdom's Channel 4 will continue to develop the movie version of Alice Sebold's best-selling supernatural novel The Lovely Bones, to be directed by Lynne Ramsay, Variety reported. Bones tells the story from the point of view of a 14-year-old girl from beyond the grave after she has been raped and murdered.
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The Comics Continuum Web site features images and discussion about costumes from the upcoming Daredevil movie, which hits theaters in February 2003.
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M. Night Shyamalan's hit SF thriller movie Signs comes to home video on Jan. 7, 2003, Variety reported. The DVD release will feature a movie that the director made as a child, as well as a DVD diary about writing the Signs script.
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Roberto Benigni's Pinocchio movie smashed Italy's three-day opening record with a weekend estimate of $7.9 million in its debut, Variety reported. Released by Medusa Film on 940 prints—almost one in three of Italy's 3,000 screens—Pinocchio toppled the Italian record held by The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, the trade paper reported.
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Tuck Everlasting opened in eighth place in the weekend box-office rankings, with $5.5 million for the period beginning Oct. 11, Variety reported. Meanwhile, Below, which opened on only 168 New York and Los Angeles screens, grossed $200,000, or a disappointing $1,200 per site, a week before it expands to 400 runs in the top 20 markets, the trade paper reported.
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