Buffy Movies Still Possible
uffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel creator Joss Whedon told SCI FI Wire that he's ready to return to the Buffyverse with television films once he receives a green light from The WB, home of Angel, or another network.
"We haven't really heard anything," Whedon said in an interview. "Obviously, there's been a regime change at The WB. The fans are interested. I'm interested. I don't think either [Buffy star] Sarah [Michelle Gellar] or [Angel star] David [Boreanaz] would want to do it. But I think there's about 10 other characters I could name who would be totally worthy of movies. And I'm just waiting for somebody to say yea or nay."
As for a proposed Buffy animated series, Whedon said, "A presentation is being made. It hasn't been bought anywhere, but it's still in the creating stages, so it's still a possibility."
Beyond Buffy, Whedon said he'd readily return to series television. "I had some ideas," he said. "I'm sort of trying to look at the marketplace and say, 'What kind of idea will actually go?' Because I'm not really interested in making things that don't. … So I'm not sure if what I have is what the world wants right now."
But, Whedon added, "I am totally prepared to go back to TV. Not 24-seven, as I did with the first years of Buffy. But now I've learned about surrounding yourself with the right people and delegating so that I can actually run a show without ruining my life. And TV is, you know, … a medium that I love in a very different way than I love movies. The things that I can't do in [a] movie are things that I mourn: the smaller moments. The … protracted interactions. The things that make TV really fascinating. Watching characters change over the years. You know, I've waited my whole life to make movies, but movies don't do that. … You either write novels that are way too long, or you make TV if you want to do that. And … I can't write novels that are long."
Whedon Eager For X-Men
uffy the Vampire Slayer creator and avowed comic geek Joss Whedon told SCI FI Wire that he'd love to direct the next X-Men movie now that X2 helmer Bryan Singer has dropped out, but that he hasn't been approached.
Whedon would be a logical choice, having written the Astonishing X-Men comic series for Marvel. Whedon—a veteran TV writer, producer and director, not to mention long-standing movie script doctor—is set to make his feature-film directorial debut next year.
"Nobody has approached me about the X-Men franchise," Whedon said in an interview. But, he added, "would I like to make an X-Men movie? That'd be bitchin'. And I really think that, you know, I actually really like those actors, and I really like those characters, and I think there's a lot that could be done with it, and I think it would be a romp. But I'm not setting my sights on that."
Complicating the issue could be Whedon's tenuous relationship with the Fox movie studio, which produces the X-Men movies. Whedon hasn't been shy about expressing his disdain for Fox's production of 1997's Alien: Resurrection, for which he penned the script. "My relationship with the [Fox] film division, I haven't really worked with them for a long while," he said. "My relationship with the [Fox] network [which unceremoniously canceled Whedon's beloved Firefly], not so great. But my deal is with the television production facility, and we've had a good relationship for years. I mean, we did Buffy and Angel and Firefly together, and that's been fine. I don't really have a relationship besides the television production side of Fox."
Buffy Cleared By FCC
he Federal Communications Commission rejected an indecency complaint lodged against UPN's Buffy the Vampire Slayer by a conservative watchdog group, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The complaint filed by the Parents Television Council against an episode of Buffy was dismissed in a 5-0 vote because the commission found the show didn't violate its indecency regulations, the trade paper reported.
The PTC, run by L. Brent Bozell, complained to the commission about the April 22, 2003, episode of Buffy, in which the characters Spike and Buffy fight before having sex, according to the order. "The commission noted that there was no nudity and there was no evidence that the activity depicted was dwelled upon or was used to pander, titillate or shock the audience," the commission said in a release.
Kong's Wray Dies
ay Wray, the Canadian-born actress who earned fame as the frightened girl carried by King Kong up the Empire State Building, has died at age 96, a spokesman told the Reuters news service on Aug. 9.
Spokesman Greg Mitchell of the Writers Guild of America West in Los Angeles said Wray died on Aug. 8 in New York, the news service reported.
Born Vina Fay Wray in Cardston, Alberta, on Sept. 15, 1907, she appeared in about 100 films, but was best known for her role in 1933's original King Kong. She made an appearance at the 70th Anniversary Academy Awards in 1998, Reuters reported.
Wray had a daughter, Susan, by her first marriage to John Monk Sanders, and two children, Robert and Vicky, with Robert Riskin, the news service reported.
In Wray's honor, the Empire State Building will dim its lights for 15 minutes on Aug. 10, the Associated Press reported.
Shaun Get Hangover
imon Pegg, star of the upcoming horror satire Shaun of the Dead, told SCI FI Wire that he and co-writer/director Edgar Wright wanted to explore the zombie genre from a half-serious but realistic perspective.
"I think everyone has a fantasy about being the last person on Earth, or what you would do in any situation, be it a tornado or a zombie [invasion]," Pegg said in an interview. "I think it's one of those fantasies that everybody has. It's 'what would I do?' And that's what we sort of got to play on in the film."
Wright said in a separate interview that he and Pegg were initially inspired by video games, but ultimately found a believable context to place their story. "Around the time we first started thinking about it was when the Resident Evil games came out, and we played the PlayStation games really avidly," Wright said. "It just kind of sparked off those fantasies like, 'God, what would you do?' And then it became more specialized to our suburb and where we live and what would you do if you woke up on a Sunday morning and you were really hung over and there were zombies outside your door."
Wright said that the main character of Shaun is hardly the natural choice for a film hero, but that was the reason he perfectly fit their story. "Shaun is not only ill-equipped to deal with the situation, but he's got a really bad hangover as well," Wright said. "Throughout the film you kind of see him get less groggy as kind of the hangover wears off. The [question becomes] is he becoming a great leader or has he just stopped having a headache?" Shaun of the Dead, which is being released by Focus Features, opens Sept. 24. Focus Features is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Love Meets Zombies In Shaun
dgar Wright, writer and director of the upcoming Shaun of the Dead, told SCI FI Wire that he and and co-writer/star Simon Pegg set out to mix genres in their offbeat movie, which is billed as "a romantic comedy—with zombies."
"We had been big fans of the zombie genre and also that paranoid contemporary horror stuff like Invasion of the Body Snatchers," Wright said in an interview. "But post kind of things like Evil Dead 2, we were at first kind of like, 'OK, what hasn't been done?' ... Considering there's been zombie comedies between Return of the Living Dead and Thriller and Brain Dead, it feels like every sort of joke has been done."
Wright said that the duo ultimately settled on an unlikely combination of romantic comedy and zombie horror that sets their film apart from such recent titles as 28 Days Later and the Dawn of the Dead remake. "The idea was to play the zombies completely straight, and the comedy is actually about the characters," Wright said. "The problems with [the zombies] are actually completely serious and the joke is the main characters' reactions to what is going on."
In Shaun of the Dead, Wright and Pegg (the U.K. TV series Spaced) have created a story about slacker Shaun (Pegg) and his ambitious girlfriend, Liz (Kate Ashfield), who find themselves with a group of friends in a pub that is beset by the living dead. Wright said that the duo enjoyed toying with expectations in the film, such that the opening of the film doesn't feel like a horror movie at all. "It was a way of actually telling a different story through the eyes of a different film," he said. "With it being a romantic comedy with zombies, we thought, 'Well, wouldn't it be funny if the first half of the film actually could be watched without the zombies.' You could go to the script and replace the word 'zombies' with 'traffic jam' or 'power outage' and it would still make sense. So that was the idea of actually having something that would work as both things: as a romantic comedy [or] drama and [a] zombie story at the same time." Shaun of the Dead opens Sept. 24.
Law Eager For Watchmen
ude Law told the Empire Online Web site that he is interested in playing Ozymandias in Darren Aronofsky's upcoming film version of Alan Moore's graphic novel Watchmen. Law told the site that he is an avid comic-book collector.
"I still go to comic shops, Forbidden Planet, and look through back issues of the ones I love," he said. "I was a big fan of Johnny Nemo and Strange Days, Parallax, you know those? But I haven't gotten into anything recently, not like I did with [Moore's] From Hell and Watchmen."
In Watchmen, Adrian Veidt, aka Ozymandias, is a former superhero and the smartest and richest man in the world. When informed of Aronofsky's film, Law reportedly said, "Darren Aronofsky? I'm on the phone now! Adrian Veidt, king of kings!" And then, as if to show off his Watchmen fanboy credentials, he whispered conspiratorially, "I'm tattooed with Rorschach, did you know that?" Empire reported.
Watchmen is considered one of the greatest comic books of all time. X-Men screenwriter David Hayter wrote the script for Watchmen, the site reported. Filming is tentatively scheduled for late 2005, allowing Aronofsky time to finish The Fountain, his SF epic starring Hugh Jackman.
ILM Enlisting In War
ndustrial Light & Magic and visual effects maven Dennis Muren are likely to sign onto Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds, which just got an accelerated green light from Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Producer Kathleen Kennedy is already beginning negotiations with the Northern California effects house, and Muren is likely to oversee the job, with Paramount executive Mark Baski supervising for the studio, the trade paper reported.
Spielberg's SF Minority Report was overseen by ILM's Scott Farrar, while Muren worked on The Hulk, the trade paper reported. Spielberg and Muren last collaborated on A.I. Artificial Intelligence. ILM is currently working on Paramount's Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events.
Worlds On Fast Track
new film based on H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Cruise, has been put on a fast track for production, Variety reported.
The project has pushed back both Spielberg's proposed untitled movie about the aftermath of the 1972 Munich Olympics and Cruise's upcoming Mission: Impossible 3, which J.J. Abrams (TV's Alias) has been hired to direct, based on his rewrite of Frank Darabont's script. M:I 3 is now pushed back to next summer, the trade paper reported. Abrams, who makes his feature-film directorial debut, replaces Joe Carnahan, who quit over "creative differences."
War of the Worlds, which will feature complex computer-generated visual effects, has been put on a very fast track, with only 10 weeks of preproduction, the trade paper reported. DreamWorks and Paramount are co-financing the movie. Sources told the trade paper that the budget for the film could exceed $100 million.
War of the Worlds, a contemporary adaptation of Wells' classic Mars invasion novel, will have to be rushed to make its November start date and a 2005 release. David Koepp wrote the script; Kathleen Kennedy and Paula Wagner will produce, the trade paper reported.
Making The Grudge Scary
akashi Shimizu, director of the upcoming supernatural film The Grudge, told SCI FI Wire that he employed several techniques to heighten the horror film's spookiness.
The Grudge is a remake of Shimizu's own Japanese hit film Ju-On and its sequel. "I think the important thing is the reality of it and how to make people scared in usual, regular circumstances," Shimizu said in an interview through an interpreter. "For the shower scene in the original one and also in the remake version, everybody takes showers, so I want to express a scary thing in that regular activity so people might think, 'Oh, this might happen to me too,' and get scared. I think it's really important, the reality of it, and ordinary circumstances."
Shimizu said that his background in Japan taught him that women possess a different and more evocative kind of power when on screen. As a result, he made both his hero and purported villain female characters in both the original version and the English-language remake. "Between men and women, in Japan at least, it's still a male-dominated culture," Shimizu said. "I think that men physically are very strong and women are weak, but psychologically and mentally, women are a lot stronger than men. So when it's a serial-killer-type violent movie, it may make the audience more scared."
Shimizu also said that the combination of outward and inner strength creates a more volatile atmosphere on screen. "With a woman as a ghost, because she looks like us physically, but inside she has lots of strength, that's what makes it really scary subconsciously," he said. "It's also the reason why a kid ghost is scarier than an adult ghost. Children sometimes act unpredictably, and that unpredictability is really scary." The Grudge, starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, opens nationwide Oct. 22.
Giving U.S. Voice To Grudge
akashi Shimizu—director of the upcoming supernatural film The Grudge, a remake of his own Japanese horror film Ju-On and its sequel—told SCI FI Wire that he worked closely with American screenwriter Stephen Susco to adapt the movie for a U.S. audience.
"Working with an American screenwriter for the remake was easy," Shimizu said in an interview through an interpreter. "The writer saw all of the original Japanese versions and loved them, and he even wanted to direct the remake himself for America. He really loved the original movie, so it was really easy for me to work with him."
Shimizu said that Susco added an essential element to the script that he, as a native Japanese filmmaker, could not: the English language. "I can't write a script in English for American actors, so I really needed another screenwriter to work with," he said. Shimizu added that the changes he made to his original film for the American version, which stars Sarah Michelle Gellar and Bill Pullman, were partly based on a need to challenge himself. "The story is basically the same, but being that I'm the same director as the original, I wanted to make the story a little bit different for the American version," he said.
Shimizu added that he endorses the current U.S. trend of remaking Japanese horror movies, such as Gore Verbinski's The Ring. For now. "I feel that trend is really good, but if it keeps going on, I'm not sure that it will be [a] good thing," he said. "People will depend on more of the movies and not create new ideas. Maybe businesswise, it's going to be good for a while. But creativitywise, it isn't necessarily good, because there won't be any new ideas created. I feel the filmmakers should keep coming up with new ideas and making new movies." The Grudge, which is currently in post-production, is slated for release Oct. 22.
Grudge Balances New And Old
akashi Shimizu, director of the upcoming horror movie The Grudge, told SCI FI Wire that he embraced the chance to update his original Japanese supernatural horror film Ju-On, about a curse and a vengeful ghost.
"When I did the original Japanese version of The Grudge I had no idea that it would be released in America," Shimizu said in an interview. "I only concentrated on what a Japanese audience gets scared of. For the American remake, I had to adjust my ideas for what is scary to American people. At the same time, the American producers said [the original version] is really scary and then decided to do the remake, so I believe that if they didn't think the original version was scary then they wouldn't have wanted to do the remake."
Shimizu directed the American-produced, English-language remake with American actors Sarah Michelle Gellar and Jason Behr, but shot it in Tokyo and included many of the original film's Japanese actors.
Shimizu said that he trusted his own instincts about what is truly scary in his films, whether they are made for Japan or America. But he admitted that some minor changes had to be made. "I trust that the Japanese or Asian horror is going to be interpreted into the American [sensibility] well enough," the Japanese director said via an interpreter. "But at the same time, it's crucial to adjust some parts for an American audience so that they will feel like the remake is really scary also." Regardless of these adjustments, Shimizu said that the differences won't be significant. "There isn't much difference between the American version and the Japanese version," he said. The Grudge is set to open Oct. 22.
Flash To Visit Smallville?
he KryptonSite Web site reported that a classic DC Comics hero will make an appearance in the fifth episode of the upcoming fourth season of The WB's Smallville: The Flash.
A fast-talking character named Bart Allen (known to comic fans as the grandson of the original Flash) shows up in Smallville with the ability to move with superspeed.
The site added that the episode will also feature the names of other characters who have appeared in the comics as the Flash over the years, including Wally West, Barry Allen and Jay Garrick. Former Buffy the Vampire Slayer writer Steve DeKnight wrote the episode, which will air in October.
Zero Stars Mixed It Up
arrie-Anne Moss, star of the upcoming paranormal thriller film Suspect Zero, told SCI FI Wire that she thrilled at the opportunity to work with co-stars Aaron Eckhart (Paycheck) and Ben Kingsley (Thunderbirds).
"Aaron made me laugh so hard," Moss said in an interview. "I just loved working with him. I think he's such a talented actor, and so is Kingsley. I mean, before I ever worked with them, those were two actors that I really had dreamed of working with."
Moss said that conversations with Kingsley between takes proved to be one of the most valuable experiences of the production. "For me, working is really about the people that I work with and the talks that I have in between shooting," she said. "My favorite thing to do is to sit in a chair on the set when you're waiting, and just shoot the s--t with people and get to know them, and to be sitting next to Sir Ben Kingsley and talking to him about family and life and food and babies and traveling, that's just awesome. I enjoyed that so much. He's a great human being."
Moss added that she enjoyed the chance to support her fellow actors, instead of taking a starring role as she did in the Matrix franchise. In Zero, Moss plays the ex-partner of a troubled FBI agent played by Eckhart. "I loved Suspect Zero, because I'm a supporting character," she said. "But I was really thrilled to be there to be with Aaron to execute his journey. I felt it was about him and the director having their vision."
Moss said that it took some convincing to get her to join Zero right after finishing the Matrix films. Zero director E. Elias Merhige "told me that he really wanted me in this movie, and I had just finished The Matrix and wasn't feeling like working," she said. "But I wanted to give him what he wanted. I literally left Australia and went and worked on it, and it really became about me supporting Aaron's journey, his character's journey. It never felt like it was about me and what I wanted to do, because it's not that kind of part. I was really there to support." Suspect Zero opens Aug. 27.
Zero Surprised Moss
arrie-Anne Moss, star of the upcoming paranormal thriller film Suspect Zero, told SCI FI Wire that the movie pleasantly surprised her as much as her previous projects, such as Memento and the Matrix series.
"I was pretty amazed by what [director E. Elias Merhige] did with the movie visually," Moss said in an interview. "It was a surprise, but I tend to be surprised pretty much every movie that I make, because when you're an actor and you're there and you're doing your work, you don't necessarily take into consideration the way they're shooting things."
In Suspect Zero, Moss plays Fran Kulok, the former partner of FBI Agent Thomas Mackelway (Aaron Eckhart), who is on the trail of a serial killer who may or may not be a former FBI agent himself, Benjamin O'Ryan (Ben Kingsley). Moss said that Merhige brought care and meticulousness to every element of the film. "He's very poetic," Moss said. "There’s a poetic-ness about him and a very kind of thoughtful, deep consideration for what he's doing. I really liked him."
Moss added that she looks for certain qualities in a director to feel comfortable and stimulated on set. "I like to feel safe with a director," she said. "I like to feel supported by them. I like somebody who tells me when I do it right, tells me when what I did didn't work, but they're not too hard. I'm not somebody who thrives on dominating. I like it a little gentler. I will jump through hoops for you if you make me feel like you think I'm great. I have a very strong sense of intensity about me, and I don't need anyone else to give me that." Suspect Zero opens nationwide Aug. 27.
Stars Shared Zero Charisma
aron Eckhardt, who plays FBI Agent Thomas Mackelway in the upcoming paranormal thriller Suspect Zero, told SCI FI Wire that he loved working with co-stars Ben Kingsley and Carrie-Anne Moss.
"It was delightful," Eckhardt said in an interview. "Sir Ben had a great role to play with this 'remote viewing,' his [finger] tapping and that great tape recorder in the back playing, 'Remember, keep focus and concentrate.' It's great moviemaking, you know? It's creepy stuff. He's not like that in real life. He's just a great actor. I was honored to share the screen with him."
Eckhardt plays troubled FBI Agent Mackelway, who is on the hunt for a renegade agent played by Kingsley (Schindler's List), who is trained in the paranormal ability of "remote viewing": a mixture of clairvoyance and mind-reading. Mackelway is reunited with his former partner, FBI Agent Fran Kulok (The Matrix's Moss), and it becomes apparent that the pair shares a complicated past that isn't fully disclosed or totally explored in the film.
"In the script, I was supposed to be making love with someone else, so we did keep it ambiguous, because we wanted this undercurrent," Eckhardt said. "But then Carrie-Anne and I got on so well and worked well together that we were like, 'Let's get something going between Carrie-Anne and me.' The money ran out, and we ran out of time, but I think our relationship became deeper as the film progressed. There is a scene in a hotel room in the end, which wasn't scripted. I threw it in, and it seemed to work, because I feel like when I saw the movie, the audience wanted us to get together to some extent, and they wanted to know about us. I thought it was richer than me going off and having an affair with the coffee girl, which was what was originally scripted, but didn't make it in the film. So, yeah, I think we throw it out there, and you have to keep everybody interested," he said with a chuckle. Suspect Zero opens on Aug. 27.
Paranormal Added To Zero
aron Eckhardt, who plays FBI Agent Thomas Mackelway in the upcoming thriller film Suspect Zero, told SCI FI Wire that director E. Elias Merhige added the paranormal elements when he joined the project.
The initial script was more of a traditional cop thriller, but Merhige (Shadow of the Vampire) inserted the element of so-called "remote viewing"—a mixture of telepathy, clairvoyance and precognitive skill—with which the director has a long-standing fascination. "I didn't know anything about remote viewing," Eckhardt said in an interview. "The script that I read initially did not have remote viewing in it. It wasn't until later that Elias incorporated it into the script."
Eckhardt's Mackelway is a troubled agent, both personally and professionally, on a desperate search for a renegade agent named O'Ryan (Ben Kingsley), who was secretly trained by the government to use remote viewing to find serial killers and who might be killing on his own now. Eckhardt admitted that the late-in-the-game meshing of SF and cop drama was a surprise, but one that ultimately added to the project. "Overall, the genre was always pretty firm, and I think that my character stayed the same. You know when my character starts to change, then you've got trouble. Then you have to decide if you want to stay in the movie. In this case, it enhanced it and made me more excited about it, because it made it unique and unconventional. It gave Sir Ben Kingsley somewhere else to go. It gave me somewhere else to go and the audience somewhere else to go. You feel like there is so much cop drama on television that you wonder how you are going to make this different. You do it through your investment in the character, taking the character further than you think he is going to go. And then a good director, man! You can't say enough about a good director. A director that has a vision of the film and says, 'OK, you think we are going to go here, but we are going to go way past it.'"
Eckhardt admitted that Merhige made a believer out of him. "I was excited to learn about that stuff. I had not avoided the paranormal: Actually, sometimes my life seems like it is paranormal," he said with a laugh. "I'm not worried about aliens abducting me. But I do believe in remote viewing now. After having it explained to me and demonstrated to me, if I had a child who was abducted, I would certainly call on these people. I don't think it's too far off from, for example, prayer, which is at its most fundamental asking a question and preparing yourself for the answer. That's really what remote viewing is. They have developed a methodology for it and believe it to be a science that anybody can do. You don't have to be gifted. You just have to learn how to do it." Suspect Zero opens Aug. 27.
Eckhart Enters Never Was
aron Eckhart told SCI Fi Wire that his next film, Never Was, mixes fantasy with reality.
"It's a drama that wraps up into a magical-kingdom feeling," Eckhart said in an interview while promoting his latest film, Suspect Zero. "It's very difficult [to explain], because there's a man, a paranoid schizophrenic, who thinks he's the king of Never Was. That's Ian McKellen."
Eckhart added, "He's in a psychiatric hospital trying to get back to Never Was. Well, Never Was is an illusion as far I'm concerned. In that way we're dealing mostly with straight drama, straight narrative, straight storytelling here. It's not until the end that we go out and see Never Was. Now I don't know how they're going to realize it. It depends if it's subjective or objective, and that I don't know yet. For me, I'm looking at it as a straight drama. I don't know how [writer and first-time director Joshua Michael Stern] is going to make it look. But I say it's kind of a magical drama." Nick Nolte, Brittany Murphy and McKellen's X2 co-star Alan Cumming are also set to star in Never Was, which will commence principal photography next month in Vancouver, B.C.
Roofworld Readied
ine Line Features has hired Charley Stadler to direct the SF thriller movie Roofworld, with Dave Mitchell on board to write the screenplay adaptation of Christopher Fowler's 1988 novel, Variety reported.
Roofworld deals with a group of disenfranchised people who flock to London's rooftops to form alternative communities, the trade paper reported.
Peter Samuelson, Marc Samuelson, Pippa Cross and Janette Day are producing. Commercial director Stadler makes his feature-film helming debut with the upcoming action comedy Dead Fish, starring Gary Oldman and Robert Carlyle, the trade paper reported.
Stars To Voice GoldenEye
lectronic Arts announced that its upcoming James Bond video game GoldenEye: Rogue Agent will feature the voices of Christopher Lee and Judi Dench, the GameSpot Web site reported.
Dench will voice her movie character M, 007's boss at MI6. Lee will voice his character Scaramanga, from the 1974 007 movie The Man with the Golden Gun, the site reported.
EA also announced that DJ Paul Oakenfold will compose an all-original score for GoldenEye: Rogue Agent. GoldenEye: Rogue Agent is due Nov. 15 for the Xbox, GameCube and PlayStation 2.
Newcomer To Helm Morning
creenwriter Cartney Wearn has signed a deal to make his feature-film directorial debut on the supernatural horror movie Pray for Morning, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The independent film follows a group of high schoolers who break into an abandoned resort hotel that turns out to be haunted, the trade paper reported.
Norm Novitsky is producing and financing through his Monarch Pictures.
Hugo Design Contest Gears Up
nteraction, the 63rd World Science Fiction Convention, and the Glasgow School of Art announced a public design competition for the base of the 2005 Hugo Award.
The awards will be presented at a ceremony during the 2005 Glasgow Worldcon.
The Hugo Awards, named after legendary magazine editor Hugo Gernsback, are awarded each year by the members of that year's Worldcon. The trophy is a silver rocket with a base that varies from year to year and is usually inspired by the history and location of the city hosting the convention.
The competition will be open to two qualifying groups: students of the School of Art and science fiction fans across the world. Shortlists of the best four entries from each qualifying group will be forwarded to a final judging panel, including representatives of Interaction and the GSA. Full information on how to enter the competition will be published on Interaction's Web site later this month. The competition winner will receive a membership to the convention, a cash prize and the opportunity to introduce his or her base design as part of the Hugo ceremony itself.
Wicked Prayer Still Delayed
he ABaHB.CrowFans.com fan Web site reported rumors that the much-delayed fourth Crow movie, Wicked Prayer, may see a theatrical release in February 2005 or later, but that no definitive date has been set.
Confusion about the fate of the movie, which stars Edward Furlong and David Boreanaz, stems in part from turmoil at Miramax, which is rumored to be considering layoffs as negotiations continue with Miramax parent company Disney over the studio's fate.
The site added that post-production on the movie continues "at a feverish pace." An earlier rumored Aug. 6 release date passed without word on the movie.
Bubba Premieres In HD
he independent SF movie Bubba Ho-Tep makes its television debut Oct. 30 on Monsters HD, the first all-monster movie channel in high-definition video, the network announced.
Monsters HD is one of Voom HD Originals, 21 HD channels available on Voom, the first high-definition television service, the company said.
Bubba Ho-Tep stars Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis in a story about Elvis as an elderly resident in a Texas rest home, who partners with a fellow resident who thinks that he is President John F. Kennedy to battle an evil Egyptian mummy.
Untitled Superhero Comedy Sold
am Hamm and Darin Morgan have sold an untitled comedy pitch to DreamWorks, about a repressed psychologist who must play along with a delusional man's elaborate superhero fantasy in order to find his missing daughter, Variety reported.
Hamm's screenwriting credits include Batman and Batman Returns, and he also is a writer on Fox's upcoming Fantastic Four adaptation.
Morgan won an Emmy for writing episodes of The X-Files.
Kingsley Bites Into Blood
en Kingsley will play the vampire Kagan, the evil ruler of an army of bloodsuckers, in an upcoming film adaptation of the video game BloodRayne, opposite Kristanna Loken (Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines), the Associated Press reported.
Set in 18th-century Romania, the film chronicles the adventures of a half-vampire, half-human who has the super strength of a monster but the emotions of a person, the wire service reported.
Loken will play the heroine, who must overthrow Kingsley's character—who is also her father—in order to save the world from the living dead. The $47 million movie is set to begin filming in Romania later this month, according to video-game publisher Majesco, which released the game, the wire service reported.
The BloodRayne video game debuted in 2002, and a sequel is set for release this October.
Megacity Optioned
onald Shusett, co-creator of the Alien film series, has teamed with comic-book specialist Daniel Alter to option the feature-film rights to the SF title Megacity, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Megacity is to be published by Devil's Due via an arrangement with the Korean entity Studio Ice, the trade paper reported.
Set in the not-too-distant future, Megacity follows the exploits of an elite team of soldiers called Phobia, whose job is to stop psychic parasites known as pulses from possessing innocent people and turning them into monsters, the trade paper reported. Alter discovered the property at the recent Comic-Con International in San Diego, the trade paper reported.
Alter is also working with Shusett on the previously announced 2176 and the Image Comics series Industry of War.
4400 Finale Scores High
SA Network claimed the top three basic-cable spots in total viewers last week with the Aug. 8 finale of The 4400 and new episodes of Monk and The Dead Zone, Variety reported.
The final installment of 4400 earned a 2.3 rating among viewers aged 18-49 and 6.1 million viewers overall, while Dead Zone posted a 2.0 rating and 4.6 million viewers, the trade paper reported.
USA placed first with a 0.95 national rating in 18-49, putting it on a par with The WB (1.0). USA averaged a 1.15 rating in 25-54 and 2.9 million total viewers, the trade paper reported. USA Network is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Publisher Mulls Village Action
imon & Schuster Inc. is reviewing its legal options against The Walt Disney Co. and writer-director M. Night Shyamalan over what the author of a children's book said are similarities between its plot and the film The Village, a spokeswoman for the publisher told the Reuters news service.
The Village has grossed $85.6 million since opening two weeks ago. Last week reports circulated that its plot and surprise ending parallel Margaret Peterson Haddix's first book Running Out of Time, published in 1995, Reuters reported.
Haddix told Reuters that she heard about the similarities last week when fans and journalists began calling and e-mailing her and her publisher to ask if she had sold the book to Shyamalan. She said she has never spoken to The Sixth Sense director or to Disney, the news service reported.
In Running Out of Time and The Village, adults in a bucolic 19th century town keep the same secret from their children, and a plucky tomboy journeys through dangerous woods to get medicine, the news service reported. Haddix said she optioned the book twice, once to Viacom-owned Nickelodeon, which allowed the option to expire in May 2003 without making a film.
In a statement, Disney and Shyamalan's Blinding Edge Pictures said they "believe these claims to be meritless."
Mythopoeic Award Winners Named
he Mythopoeic Society announced the winners of its 2004 awards, honoring fantasy books and scholarship.
This year's award winners were announced at Mythcon 35, July 30–Aug. 2, in Ann Arbor, Mich. A list of winners follows.
Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature
•Sunshine by Robin McKinley
Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children's Literature
•The Hollow Kingdom by Clare B. Dunkle
Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies
•Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth by John Garth
Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in General Myth and Fantasy Studies
•The Myth of the American Superhero by John Lawrence and Robert Jewett
Spidey 2 Faced New F/X
isual-effects producers on Spider-Man 2 told SCI FI Wire that it was a challenge duplicating the face of Alfred Molina's villainous Doctor Octopus in the movie's computer-animated visual-effecs sequences.
Unlike the first Spider-Man, in which computer effects had to match only the mask of Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin, the sequel required filmmakers to match Molina's actual face in the movie, which is now playing in IMAX theaters.
"We figured the best way to do it was to actually get real photography of his face," digital effects supervisor Scott Stokdyk said in an interview. "This is something no one's ever really done exactly like this before." The Spider-Man 2 team, housed in Sony's digital-effects house ImageWorks, developed a new photo-based image-rendering technique using academic work and equipment from the University of Southern California's Institute of Creative Technology. The result is so realistic that people are finding it hard to distinguish the real from the computer graphics.
"That's actually a huge compliment, because we have 40 minutes [out] of [the] total running time of CGI work in the movie, which is a lot, a good percentage of the movie," visual effects producer Lydia Bottagoni told SCI FI Wire in a separate interview. "Over 800 shots. If people aren't noticing it or being taken out of the movie because of it, that's actually a compliment."
The new techniques are so seamless that some reviewers have mistaken computer-generated shots of Doc Ock's tentacles for the robotic puppets that were also used in the movie. ImageWorks worked in conjunction with Edge Effects, who sent them the puppet tentacles piece by piece to be scanned and reconstructed in computers. "We actually did roughly about 220 CG tentacle shots, and I guesstimated that the puppets ended up in the movie [in] about 120-140 shots," Stokdyk said. "So as you watch the movie, it's very, very difficult— ... even for us sometimes, and we forget what we did—to distinguish between the CG and the real ones. But a lot of times, you'd be surprised that they are CG."
Sommers Goes Airborn
tephen Sommers, director of the Mummy films, and his producing partner Bob Ducsay will produce Airborn, a fantasy film for Universal Pictures, based on a children's book by Kenneth Oppel, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Ruddy Morgan principals Albert Ruddy and Andre Morgan will partner with Sommers and Ducsay.
Airborn tells the story of a 15-year-old boy who works on a luxury airship that is part dirigible and part passenger cruise ship. When air pirates attack the airship, the boy and a girl embark on an adventure that includes strange flying creatures, secret lairs, nasty villains and uncharted volcanic islands, the trade paper reported.
Canadian author Oppel is also the author of the best-selling Silverwing fantasy trilogy. Universal Pictures is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Myst IV Demo Online
bisoft and the GameSpot DLX Web site have posted a demo for the upcoming fourth installment in the best-selling Myst PC game series.
The demo for Myst IV Revelation puts players in Atrus' room, which contains a number of objects, a trademark Myst puzzle and a flashback of Atrus' daughter, the GameSpot Web site reported.
Myst IV Revelation sends players back to the story of the first game, where the evil brothers Sirrus and Achenar were imprisoned inside two books. Atrus, their father, was implored to release them, however, and in the process, his daughter Yeesha disappears. Atrus sends players to search through four different ages, or worlds, to find his daughter, the site reported.
Myst IV is being developed by Ubisoft Montreal and is scheduled for release for the PC in September.
Ring 2 Delayed To 2005
spokesman from DreamWorks confirmed to SCI FI Wire that the upcoming supernatural sequel film The Ring 2, starring Naomi Watts and Simon Baker, has been pushed back to spring 2005 from its original November release date because of production delays.
The sequel to 2002's hit The Ring, based on the Japanese Ringu movies, ran into problems when the studio and first-time director Noam Murro parted ways in March over "creative differences."
Murro was replaced by the director of the original Ringu films, Hideo Nakata, but subsequent delays have caused scheduling conflicts with leading lady Watts, who is supposed to start filming King Kong for Peter Jackson in New Zealand this month.
Shepard Joins SF Comedy Film
ctor Dax Shepard told SCI FI Wire that he's just completed work on writer-director Mike Judge's as-yet-untitled upcoming SF comedy movie.
"It's a hilarious movie that's very Mike Judge," Shepard said in an interview. "Luke Wilson gets frozen for 500 years, and when he wakes up, only the idiots have reproduced, which is not far from what's happening [today]. I play maybe the biggest idiot in the future."
Shepard added that he had a blast working with Judge, creator of the animated television series Beavis and Butt-head and King of the Hill and writer-director of the cult classic live-action feature Office Space. "I am head-over-heels in love with Mike Judge," Shepard said. "He's the smartest closet genius. He was a physicist before he was a cartoonist. He plays 13 instruments proficiently. He knows everything about everything and probably has the single best comedic track record as far as hit after hit. He's kind and humble. The cool thing about that movie is that he did the same thing he did in Office Space, meaning he was anal about who he cast in every single part. Even if a guy only had two words, he would see 200 people for that [part]. Every player in it is remarkable."
Asked if Judge filled the screen with state-of-the-art visual effects or went the low-tech route, a la Woody Allen's Sleeper, Shepard said that Judge took the latter approach. "This is a testament to how smart he is," said the actor, who's about to start work on director Jon Favreau's family SF adventure Zathura. "By saying everyone in the future is stupid, you can make s--t look like it's from the past, because everything is so crappy. It's a great 'get-out-of-jail-free' card for a low-budget futuristic movie."
Earthsea Faithful To Books
ob Lieberman, director of the upcoming SCI FI Channel original miniseries Earthsea, told SCI FI Wire that the production tries to be faithful to the Ursula K. Le Guin novels upon which it was based.
"We've been very, very honest to the books and tried to capture all the levels of spiritualism, emotional content and metaphorical messages in this," Lieberman said in an interview. "I've tried to ground it in a great deal of reality, and we have things that we find real and familiar, as well as the unfamiliar and the fantastic."
Based on the first two books in Le Guin's best-selling fantasy trilogy, Earthsea stars Shawn Ashmore, Kristin Kreuk, Danny Glover and Isabella Rossellini in a story about a reckless youth, Ged (Ashmore), who discovers that he has magical powers, but who accidentally unleashes a dark power that threatens the world.
Lieberman said that film deals with one specific conflict. "Throughout the whole piece, I saw it as having a duality of spirituality versus paganism and wizardry, male and female duality," he said. "Kristin's character and Shawn's character, who don't really meet until well into the film, represent two different belief systems in this world, and the only thing that really saves this universe, the Earthsea universe, is the union of those two beliefs."
Lieberman added that he strove to distinguish Earthsea from other successful fantasy franchises, such as The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. "It's so uniquely different in terms of its space," he said. The Earthsea novels are not specific in their description of the various islands that make up the world of Earthsea, he said. "I took the names of all the islands that appeared in the piece, and I spent a day just picking out a font to put on a piece of paper that would define that island, because I was trying to find cultural differences between these islands, so there wouldn't be just a hodgepodge of stuff. And then I wrote an outline of what life was like on that island. Not from the book. Just from what I got from the book and what my impressions were." Earthsea premieres in December.
McGregor Mulls The Island
wan McGregor is in talks to star in The Island, a DreamWorks SF move that Michael Bay is set to direct, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Based on Caspian Tredwell-Owen's spec script, The Island deals with a "harvested being" who makes a bid to escape the utopian facility where he is being kept.
Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci will rewrite the script. Walter Parkes, Laurie MacDonald and Ian Bryce are producing, with Marc Haimes serving as the studio executive. DreamWorks is eyeing a fall start, the trade paper reported.
McGregor will reprise the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi in the upcoming Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith, which opens next May.
World Fantasy Nominees Named
ominations for the 2004 World Fantasy Awards, covering the 2003 publishing year, have been announced.
The winners will be selected by the judges and will be announced at the awards banquet at the World Fantasy Convention, Oct. 28-31, in Tempe, Ariz. Candidates for the Life Achievement award are not announced in advance. A list of nominees follows.
Novel
•The Etched City by K.J. Bishop
•Fudoki by Kij Johnson
•The Light Ages by Ian R. MacLeod
•Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton
•Veniss Underground by Jeff VanderMeer
Novella
•"A Crowd of Bone" by Greer Gilman
•"Dancing Men" by Glen Hirshberg
•"The Empire of Ice Cream" by Jeffrey Ford
•"Exorcising Angels" by Simon Clark and Tim Lebbon
•"The Hortlak" by Kelly Link
Short Fiction
•"Ancestor Money" by Maureen F. McHugh
•"Circle of Cats" by Charles de Lint
•"Don Ysidro" by Bruce Holland Rogers
•"Gus Dreams of Biting the Mailman" by Alex Irvine
•"O One" by Chris Roberson
Anthology
•Gathering the Bones, Jack Dann, Ramsey Campbell and Dennis Etchison, eds.
•Strange Tales, Rosalie Parker, ed.
•The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases, Jeff VanderMeer and Mark Roberts, eds.
•The Dark: New Ghost Stories, Ellen Datlow, ed.
•Trampoline: An Anthology, Kelly Link, ed.
Collection
•Bibliomancy by Elizabeth Hand
•Ghosts of Yesterday by Jack Cady
•GRRM: A Rretrospective by George R.R. Martin
•More Tomorrows & Other Stories by Michael Marshall Smith
•The Two Sams by Glen Hirshberg
Artist
•Donato Giancola
•John Jude Palencar
•John Picacio
•Jason Van Hollander
Special Award, Professional
•Peter Crowther (for PS Publishing)
•John Howe and Alan Lee (for artwork in The Lord of the Rings)
•Kelly Link and Gavin Grant (for Small Beer Press)
•Sharyn November (for Firebird Books)
•David Pringle (for Interzone and service to the field)
•Sean Wallace (for Prime Books)
Special Award, Non-Professional
•Deborah Layne and Jay Lake (for Wheatland Press)
•Paul Miller (for Earthling Publications)
•Ray Russell and Rosalie Parker (for Tartarus Press)
•Dave Truesdale (for Tangent Online)
•Rodger Turner, Neil Walsh and Wayne MacLaurin (for SF Site.com)
Global Due On WB
ohn Rogers, executive producer of The WB's upcoming SF spy series Global Frequency, told fans that the series will be a midseason replacement for the network, the Comics Continuum Web site reported.
Speaking at last month's Comic-Con International in San Diego, Rogers said the pilot episode will shoot this month in Vancouver, B.C., and that four episodes have been financed out of a planned 13, the site reported. Global Frequency is based on the WildStorm comic created by Warren Ellis and stars Michelle Forbes (Star Trek: The Next Generation) as Miranda Zero, the lead character. Aimee Garcia plays Aleph, Josh Hopkins is Sean Ronin, and Jenni Baird plays Dr. Kate Finch.
"We've basically introduced a sort of Mulder and Scully that appear on every episode: Sean and Kate," Rogers said. "They actually go out and are our investigatory and sci-fi girl team. Aleph's always running the ops. Miranda bombs in when we needs to do cool spy stuff. And also, by keeping the cast split up, we can really develop the global feel. The idea that Miranda's in one place and the experts are in another. Also, we will be very heavily hitting the idea that you could be on the Global Frequency. Every episode, we're going to grab somebody. And a lot of fun for the writers has been what's been the weirdest, most obscure, [most] ordinary thing that we can grab to do a really interesting episode."
Ellis has played a role in the series and will be visiting the set, the site reported. "Warren's level of involvement is that he approves all of the stories," Rogers said. "He approved the stories and the script on the pilot, and Warren will be writing at least one this season."
Briefly Noted
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A CD of music from and inspired by The WB's canceled vampire series Angel is in the works for a fourth-quarter release, the City of Angel fan Web site reported. Rob Kral, who wrote score music for the show, told the site that the CD will include tracks by Angel stars Christian Kane and Andy Hallett, as well as an extended version of the theme music by the Los Angeles band Darling Violetta.
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Former James Bond actor Roger Moore, who is now a UNICEF goodwill envoy, assailed hotels and schools in Beijing for turning away a group of AIDS orphans in town for a three-day summer camp, the Reuters news service reported. Moore is visiting China to draw attention to the problems of children orphaned by the HIV/AIDS crisis.
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Dan Leach, who said Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ led him to confess that he murdered his girlfriend, pleaded guilty to the crime in a Texas court Aug. 11, the Reuters news service reported. A jury will decide his punishment, which could be up to life in prison.
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Sprague Grayden (HBO's Six Feet Under) will appear in at least five episodes of CBS' Joan of Arcadia in the fall, Zap2it reported. She will play a 16-year-old who befriends Joan (Amber Tamblyn) at summer camp.
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Cartoon Network and Warner Bros. Television Group are developing a weekday morning franchise of animated series aimed at preschoolers, which will launch next spring in a commercial-free block of original and acquired programming, Variety reported.
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SCI Fiction editor Ellen Datlow will host an evening of feminist science fiction Oct. 14 at Bluestockings Bookstore in New York, featuring readings from SF authors Carol Emshwiller, Marleen Barr, Nancy Jane and Sue Lange.
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Warner Home Video will release sets of the animated TV series Teen Titans: Divide and Conquer and Static Shock: The New Kid, both featuring six season-one episodes, on Sept. 28, with a suggested retail price of $19.97 for the DVD and $8.93 for the VHS version.
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