Holmes Talks Batman Role
atie Holmes, who co-stars with Christian Bale in the upcoming Batman Begins movie, told SCI FI Wire that she sees her character as a transitional role to more adult-oriented material.
"I hope that as I get older and [more] mature that I will be able to play more adult-like roles, and hopefully it will happen naturally," Holmes said in an interview. "I think doing Batman will be helpful, because it's a movie that brings a lot of exposure."
In the fifth movie in the Batman franchise, Holmes—who first gained fame as teenager Joey in The WB's Dawson's Creek—plays Rachel Dawes, a childhood friend of Bruce Wayne (Bale).
She added that she had trouble with the film's many special-effects shots. "I found it to be more challenging to be in a huge effects movie, because a lot of the things aren't there," Holmes said in an interview. "You have to trust the director and react to nothing."
Holmes added that she was intimidated by the cast and crew, which included Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Gary Oldman, Ken Watanabe, Cillian Murphy and Morgan Freeman under director Christopher Nolan (Memento). "With this particular project, the cast was very intimidating," Holmes said. "Chris Nolan is amazing, but I was just thrilled to be with these people. I was like, 'I have to do this so right and perfect.' I think if I get to be in another maybe I'll relax a bit." But she added that she's eager to do more. "They can have me if they want me for two more," she said. "I was so excited to be a part of something with such history. The experience was awesome." Batman Begins is slated for release June 17, 2005.
Holmes Loved Batmobile
atie Holmes, who co-stars in the upcoming Batman Begins movie, told Zap2It that she loved riding in the new Batmobile.
"I saw the 'mobile take off and go down the street, and I was like, 'OK, I get it. I get why guys love cars. I'm in love right now, and all I want is that car,'" Holmes told the site with a laugh. But Holmes said that she didn't get to drive the handmade Batmobile.
"Every day I was on set I was e-mailing my friends, 'I just rode in the Batmobile. Ha ha. What are you doing?'" she joked.
Holmes plays Rachel Dawes, a childhood friend of Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) in the fifth installment in the Warner Brothers film franchise. Holmes said that her part is more of a "talking" role rather than a physical one. "I'm not into stunts," she said. "I'm not one of those girls. I like it real easy." Batman Begins is slated for release June 17, 2005.
Lost Has No Limits
amon Lindelof, co-creator of ABC's SF series Lost, told SCI FI Wire that the creative team hasn't found itself limited by the show's premise: plane crash survivors stuck on a deserted island.
With 48 survivors and a core cast of 13, Lost is proving to have more stories than they can tackle. "Every single one of these characters is so uniquely interesting to me," Lindelof said in an interview. "We have spent so much time already discussing who they all are. The first phase of the show is finding out why everybody was in Australia and why they were flying to Los Angeles. Answering the questions 'Where were you coming from?' and 'Where were you going?' will be fairly interesting for everyone. And the answers to those questions are very satisfying."
Lindelof, who co-created the show with Alias' J.J. Abrams, also writes the series in his capacity as executive producer and show runner. He said that the distinctive mix of characters translates into constant inspiration. "Lately, I have been obsessing on the Korean couple [Daniel Dae Kim and Yunjin Kim] and then I'll start thinking about Hurley [Jorge Garcia], who is the heavyset guy, and he is equally fascinating. Then I think the pregnant girl [Emilie de Ravin] is going to be having the baby, and I'm looking forward to that episode. We've never seen a birth on a deserted island. It will be an event in many ways. There is no character that I don't get, and there are so many stories I want to tell. What began as an overwhelming 'How could you ever do 100 episodes of this thing?' has suddenly become 'I want to do this and that.' It's almost limitless. I know that there will be skepticism out there about how it can be done, but hopefully that skepticism turns into 'How can it be done? I'm going to watch and see!'" Lost airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT.
Lost Was Fast-Tracked
amon Lindelof, the co-creator and executive producer of ABC's Lost, told SCI FI Wire that creating the show with J.J. Abrams occurred in an accelerated time frame early this year.
"I've been a huge fan of J.J.'s ever since Felicity and then Alias," Lindelof said in an interview. "I had been waiting for the opportunity to sit down and meet him, and I dreamed of collaborating with him. I love his sensibility and character-focused writing style."
Lindelof said that former ABC chief Lloyd Braun came up with the idea for a show built around a plane crash on an island in the South Pacific. "Basically, the network mentality was, 'Let's do Survivor: The Drama,'" Lindelof said. "I believe they originally developed that idea with Aaron Spelling. I got a call in early February from an executive at ABC and was asked if I wanted to meet with J.J. about this crazy plane crash idea. They didn't like the way the idea developed with Spelling, so they wanted to start from scratch. I met with J.J., and we talked for about three hours, and we got really excited about it. We decided that aside from the island being a character, it was going to be all about the people."
The duo came up with the concept for Lost, dealing with 48 survivors of a crash on a remote island. "This is why I've always responded to J.J.'s work," Lindelof said. "It's all about the characters. Over the course of a week, we broke a new story for the pilot and a very detailed outline. ABC read it and loved it and immediately green-lit the show. From that day, it was about five weeks later, and we were shooting the two-hour pilot."
As for the day-to-day guidance of the show, Lindelof said that he will be running the series. "J.J. now has a whole empire to manage," he said, referring to Abrams' Alias, not to mention his upcoming feature-film directorial debut with Mission: Impossible 3 and a new TV project. "In the early going, he was very involved in what we were doing, but he is back to Alias now and is working on the pilot for The Catch. I've written the first episode after the pilot. My hope is to write more, but I want to focus on enabling the writing staff to infuse the show with their voices too." Lost airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT.
Garner Eager For New Alias
ennifer Garner, star of ABC's spy series Alias, told SCI FI Wire that the upcoming fourth season will let her character, Sydney Bristow, get happy.
"Sidney's a little happier this year," Garner said in an interview. "She's not as lonely, and she has a sister, which I love. I'm loving working with Mia [Maestro, who plays Nadia]."
Garner said that Alias will get back to the feeling of previous seasons. "We definitely go back to the feeling of season one," Garner said. "It's not just the story structure, but there's a casualness in the relationships, like between me and Dixon [Carl Lumbly], that I haven't seen since the pilot at the beginning of season one. I love that relationship so much, and she and Vaughn [Michael Vartan] are trying to rekindle things. That's really fun to play."
Garner also said that she trained for the upcoming comic-book movie Elektra, which is a spinoff project for her character in Daredevil, which enabled her to make a smooth transition back into Sydney. Garner starred in Elektra during her hiatus following season three. "The great thing about playing Elektra is the training that I get to do," Garner said. "I trained an obnoxious amount on
Elektra, so it's so fun to do the fights. It's fresh and so good, and I know how to use all of these new weapons. It just adds a whole new element." Season four of Alias is currently in production and will return to the air in January.
Alias Team Back Together
arl Lumbly, who co-stars in ABC's spy series Alias, told SCI FI Wire that season four of the show will portray the ensemble cast as a more cohesive group than season three.
"If I can sort of give a broad overview for the season, we're going back," Lumbly said in an interview. "When we first found our group, they were dysfunctional. But they were together, and this season, I think we're heading back to that."
Lumbly plays CIA officer Marcus Dixon, who is the former partner of Jennifer Garner's Sydney Bristow. Lumbly said that the show's appeal lies in its willingness to forgo formula. But that sometimes creates off-kilter or unexpected results. "It's the first show in my experience where the formula, so to speak, doesn't mean anything," Lumbly said. "Most shows, when they find something that works, they cling to it, and our show is just continually transmuting itself to another level. It feels to me like the thing you must set out as part of a goal is to draw as many different storylines and then resolve as much as possible. But we're kind of all coming from the same place. This season, we're a lot clearer about who we are and where we are, and from that perspective we're turning more towards what was going on in the first two seasons." Season four of Alias begins in January.
DVDs Restore Star Wars Luster
ohn Lowry, chairman of Lowry Digital Images, told SCI FI Wire that he faced a challenge in restoring the original Star Wars trilogy of films for the new DVD set.
"These films did not look like they had been restored in the last 40 years, much less 1997," when they were re-released in theatrical special editions, Lowry said in an interview. "These were the dirtiest, grimiest films I ever had the pleasure of working on. We had 600 computers to do all of this stuff, and all kinds of disk space, and then [creator] George [Lucas] and his team gave us 30 days for each movie."
Lowry said that his normal attention to detail was exceeded even by Lucas, who provided frequent feedback about the footage he had completed. "If I had my way, we'd still be working on them now to make them just perfect," Lowry said. "We're very fussy people, and we want things to be as good they can possibly be. And we'd send the discs up to Lucasfilm. George was involved in each one of these screenings. And we'd get the feedback the next day. [He would say,] 'This is all beautiful, but I'd like this to look sharper,' just little things like that. I thought we were fussy, but boy, this guy is really fussy. But I guess that's why he's George Lucas."
Lowry added that some of the restoration efforts revealed flaws in the original footage. But he and his crew were extremely fastidious about preserving the images and not changing them for the worse. "When you clean up a movie, you very often see makeup lines on the actors when you go through a film," Lowry said. "You have to be very careful and clean them up really well, and we ask the studio first. We never change anything that is part of a film without getting permission." The Star Wars trilogy DVD set is now in stores.
Kershner OK With New Empire
rvin Kershner, who directed Star Wars: Episode V—The Empire Strikes Back, told SCI FI Wire that he doesn't feel that his vision has been compromised by series creator George Lucas, who enhanced and altered the movie in a 1997 special edition and this week's DVD release.
"I saw the special editions, and there were two slight changes, which I was a part of," Kershner said in an interview. "One of them was the addition of the snow monster [on Hoth], and the other one was opening up the windows in Cloud City. The color was enhanced, the sound was enhanced, and the technology was better. I have not seen the DVD, but I'm sure that it's even better. But the story hasn't been changed. The editing hasn't been changed. It's what I ended up doing as a director. That was my film."
Kershner, who spoke at a recent press day for the DVD release of the Star Wars trilogy, said that he had to introduce philosophical content subtly when he initially worked on the film. That subtext was the key to the success of Empire, which is widely considered to be the best Star Wars movie. "I thought of myself as if I was living under communist Russia, ... where the writers and filmmakers always make two films—one for the censor and one for the audience who will understand what they are saying," Kershner said. "I did not think of it as science fiction. To me, it was a fable and a fairy tale. I wanted kids to love it, but I also wanted adults to find levels of meaning. There are many metaphorical concepts in it and many things that are symbolic, but I was more interested in the psychology of the characters. And I think that is what affects people." The director also suggested that there was another factor at play in The Empire Strikes Back's popularity. "People also love Yoda," he said. The Star Wars DVD set is now in stores.
Star Wars Grosses $115M
ans spent more than $115 million on the new Star Wars trilogy DVD set and the LucasArts Star Wars Battlefront video game combined on the first day of sale Sept. 21, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment told Variety.
Though Fox would not break that number down, it's believed that about 90 percent of the spending was for the DVD worldwide, with a big chunk of that coming from the U.S., the trade paper reported.
Most of the money goes to creator George Lucas' companies, which publish and distribute the video game and which pay only a distribution fee to Fox for all the home-video versions of the trilogy movies, except for Star Wars. Fox splits revenues with Lucas on the home video of the original film, the trade paper reported.
Though high, the first-day take did not set any records. Because of the DVD set's relatively high price ($69.98 suggested retail price) and a rough average consumer purchase price in the U.S. of $40-$45, compared to about $15-$18 for The Passion of the Christ, the trilogy DVD set will not come close to setting any single-day or single-week or all-time sales records in terms of the number of copies purchased, the trade paper reported.
But if consumers purchase somewhere close to 8 million copies in the U.S., a realistic projection, that could translate to nearly $350 million in consumer spending, which could rank the Star Wars trilogy as one of the top money-making DVDs of the year and among the top 15 or so of all time, according to Variety sister publication DVD Exclusive.
Vinton Readies Coraline
nimation house Vinton Studios has purchased film rights to Neil Gaiman's Hugo Award-winning children's book Coraline as a directing vehicle for Henry Selick (Nightmare Before Christmas), Variety reported.
Bill Mechanic's Pandemonium Films will produce with Vinton, the trade paper reported.
Adapted by Selick, Coraline is the story of a young girl who discovers an alternate version of her life after walking through a secret door in her new home. When her counterfeit parents try to keep her forever, Coraline reveals her heroic qualities, the trade paper reported. HarperCollins published the novel in 2002.
Black Guests On Stargate
laudia Black told SCI FI Wire that she recently wrapped production on "Prometheus Unbound," an upcoming episode of the SCI FI Channel original series Stargate SG-1.
The former Farscape star plays a character named Vala, who steals Earth's only deep-space starship, Prometheus, and does so with Daniel Jackson (Michael Shanks) on board.
"Vala was a lot of fun," Black said in an interview. "I did my best to beat the daylights out of Michael Shanks, and he was a very good sport. She's sassy. She's intelligent. She's manipulative. She's very hard and mercurial. She does what she has to [to] survive, so it's very hard to tell what the real core of Vala is, and I'm hoping that if they do write her back in again that that will be explored."
Black, who will reprise her role as Aeryn Sun in the upcoming SCI FI Channel four-hour miniseries Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars, added, "I've not played a character like [Vala] before. That was the appeal of doing it. She's a real piece of work. It's quite honestly very hard to tell if she's an ally or a thorn in their side. For the sake of the drama in this particular episode she seems to be a thorn in their side, but it's quite ambiguous, and that's what I loved about it. She's constantly teetering on that ambiguous edge. It was nice to push that. I asked [director] Andy [Mikita] on the phone when I accepted the role how far I could push that, and he said, 'Go the full mile.' So it was, creatively, a very playful environment."
Black added that she was physically exhausted before and during her time on the Stargate SG-1 set in Vancouver, B.C. "I was delirious," she said. "It was really a choice of laugh or cry, and I chose to laugh. So I was a madwoman, laughing like a hyena in the time after takes. That was my response to the lack of sleep. I was so, so jet-lagged. It was probably the worst jetlag I'd ever had, because I'd been traveling for quite a few months, and I kept crossing the dateline every week and didn't know where I was. So I was in Australia doing the [dialogue looping] for Peackeeper Wars and then with two days' notice I got on a plane to Canada to do Stargate. And I was awake on average for 21 hours a day."
Black continued, "I just could not sleep. And I was loath to take anything like a sleeping pill, because I was worried that I wouldn't hear the alarm go off to get to set. So I watched a lot of informercials. Were it not for the charm and grace of Andy Mikita and Michael Shanks, I don't think I would have survived. The two of them kept me very well entertained. They were all very tired because they were heading into their break, but they were great. So I was very grateful." Black's Stargate SG-1 episode will air in early 2005.
Black Back In Wars
laudia Black told SCI FI Wire that she was thrilled to return to action as the Peacekeeper warrior Aeryn Sun in the upcoming SCI FI Channel four-hour miniseries Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars.
"I loved it," Black said in an interview. "It's dynamic. It's big. Personally, what I got out of it, more than anything, was the experience of working again with people I really care about and being able to again play a character that's been a privilege to play."
The Peacekeeper Wars picks up where Farscape's fourth season finale, "Bad Timing," left off. In that episode, an alien ship appeared to have killed Aeryn and John Crichton (Ben Browder). She had just informed him she was pregnant with his child, and he had just asked for her hand in marriage. Now, in the miniseries, the resurrected duo reunite with some old friends and encounter familiar enemies as war breaks out between the Scarrans and the Peacekeepers.
"Every day was full of typical Farscape experiences," Black said. "We were constantly pushing the envelopes of time and money and energy and resources and creativity. Andrew Prowse, our producer, makes it all look easy, because he's just so skilled at what he does on the tail end. My memories of making it are so different to what ends up on the screen, because so much [computer graphics] has to go in.
"You, as an actor, in good faith, have to look at an invisible spot on the horizon where they later on put in a scary monster," Black added. "So it's a relief to watch it all finished. And it's always great to watch other people's scenes that I haven't been involved with, because I can be a more objective observer, a member of the audience, and get emotionally involved in the other characters' stories." Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars premieres on SCI FI Oct. 17 at 9 p.m. ET/PT and will air on two consecutive nights.
Darabont Enters The Mist
rank Darabont confirmed to SCI FI Wire that he plans to write and direct a film version of Stephen King's horror tale The Mist, which appeared as a short novel in King's Skeleton Crew collection.
Darabont previously scored successes with The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, both of which were based on King stories. "I love the fact that The Mist is a pressure cooker that's character-driven and that's a down-and-dirty monster movie," Darabont said in an interview while promoting the upcoming 10th anniversary special-edition DVD of The Shawshank Redemption. "I just love it."
Darabont added, "It's that wonderful Steve King taste in the mouth. I'm excited about getting back to my horror roots. I'm also excited about getting in there and shooting something down-and-dirty. I envision the monster barely glimpsed, just like in the story. These are things that you don't quite ever fully see. So I'm going to take a cue from everybody's godfather, Mr. Spielberg, and show the shark as little as possible," he added, referring to Steven Spielberg's Jaws.
The writer/director added that he'll start work on the Mist script "next week," but wasn't sure when it would get made, as he's already attached to direct a Fahrenheit 451 remake and may also take on Mine, a thriller to be based on a Robert McCammon novel in which both the hero and the villain are female. "That one may go first," Darabont said. "It's all in the hands of the film gods."
Hot For Fahrenheit
riter/director Frank Darabont told SCI FI Wire that he will definitely direct a new film version of Ray Bradbury's seminal SF novel Fahrenheit 451 in the near future.
"Since I was 9 years old I've wanted to make this movie," Darabont said in an interview. "I think it is the most eloquent indictment of political intolerance—fascism, if you will—that's ever been written."
Darabont, who has already tapped out a Fahrenheit 451 screenplay, added, "It is particularly relevant to our society today, where the definition of patriotism is being twisted around to mean the opposite of what it should be. Society is always trying to become oppressive, and that's what Bradbury was writing about. He wrote it as a cry from the heart, as a reaction against the McCarthy era. So it's very timely again, in my view. Aside from that, it's just a walloping good story."
The writer-director of The Shawshank Redeption and The Green Mile added that he pretty much ignored the existence of Francois Truffaut's 1966 version of Fahrenheit 451. "It really missed on a lot of levels," Darabont said. "It was a very bland and lifeless movie, wasn't it? For such a passionate piece of literature the movie just kind of sat there. Also, in terms of visuals, boy, there's nothing we can't do now by comparison to the limited things they could do then."
For example, in his take on the material, Darabont intends to include Bradbury's mechanical hound. "They didn't even try to make the mechanical hound back in Truffaut's day," the filmmaker said. "I'm very anxious to put that on the screen. Early days, yet, but I'm guessing that we'll probably want to do it as a seamless combination of [animatronics and computer animation]."
Tapping Guests On Earthsea
targate SG-1 star Amanda Tapping (Lt. Col. Carter) makes a cameo appearance in SCI FI Channel's upcoming original miniseries Earthsea, the network confirmed.
Tapping will play the part of Lady Elfarran, a ghost who appears to the miniseries' main character, Ged (Shawn Ashmore), early on.
Tapping shot her brief appearance in July in Vancouver, B.C., working on a "teeter-totter rig" that approximated the appearance of her floating in air. Her image will be inserted into the scene with visual effects in post-production. The Earthsea production team had worked out Tapping's schedule with the Stargate producers to allow her to appear in the miniseries.
Earthsea, based on Ursula K. Le Guin's award-winning series of fantasy novels, stars X-Men's Ashmore, Smallville's Kristin Kreuk, Isabella Rossellini and Danny Glover. The four-hour miniseries premieres Dec. 13.
T4 Gears Up
fourth Terminator movie is readying to begin production in 2005, but it's unclear whether franchise star and current California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will reprise his most famous role, Variety columnist Michael Fleming reported.
John Brancato and Michael Ferris, who wrote the script for the last installment, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, have completed a draft of a T4 script, which was developed under the supervision of T3 director Jonathan Mostow, the trade paper reported.
Mario Kassar and Andy Vajna are returning as producers. Formal negotiations will open shortly for a deal that would bring Mostow on as T4's director, the trade paper reported.
Similarly, talks have begun with Schwarzenegger to return for an encore, but the likelihood is that it would be in a limited role, as the Austrian Oak is currently occupied with his duties as California's chief executive, Fleming reported. Sources told Fleming that the expectation is that T4 will break in a new Terminator model.
There is no word on whether T3 stars Nick Stahl or Claire Danes have been approached to return for the sequel. Neither is believed to have been signed to an option agreement, Fleming reported.
Stars Set For Exorcism
aura Linney and Tom Wilkinson are set to star in The Exorcism of Anneliese Michel, a supernatural movie inspired by true events, Variety reported.
Scott Derrickson will direct for Screen Gems, the trade paper reported. Derrickson wrote the script with Paul Boardman.
Linney will play an attorney who defends a Catholic priest (Wilkinson), who has been charged with the negligent homicide of a 19-year-old girl whose exorcism he presided over. The case reawakens faith in the lawyer. Shooting begins in November in Vancouver, B.C., the trade paper reported.
Musical Starfighter Opening
musical version of the 1984 SF movie The Last Starfighter takes the boards in an off-Broadway production at New York's Storm Theatre, Oct. 15-30, Playbill Online reported.
Lyricist-composer Skip Kennon (Time and Again) based the musical on Jonathan Betuel's screenplay, about a teenage video-game player enlisted to save the universe. Fred Landau wrote the libretto, the site reported. Storm artistic director Peter Dobbins directs.
The Last Starfighter, which starred Lance Guest and featured the final feature-film performance of Robert Preston, was notable for marking the first extensive use of computer animation in a movie.
The musical Starfigher will take the stage Monday through Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday at 2 p.m.
Universal Buys New Dead
niversal has acquired most of the distribution rights to George A. Romero's Land of the Dead, the latest installment in Romero's zombie franchise, Variety reported.
Land, written and to be directed by Romero, will begin production Oct. 11 in Toronto, with casting already underway, the trade paper reported.
Two months ago, Atmosphere Entertainment announced that Land of the Dead would be the first film in a new series of zombie films, marking Romero's return to the genre he created, starting with 1968's Night of the Living Dead, the trade paper reported. Land of the Dead takes place in a zombie-dominated world in which the living inhabit a walled city.
Universal this year released Zach Snyder's remake of Romero's Dawn of the Dead, earning $59 million in domestic box office, and Edgar Wright's zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead, which is being released through Universal's Rogue Pictures label, opens Sept. 24. Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Spidey Paintings Auctioned
olumbia Pictures and Marvel Enterprises are sponsoring a charity auction of Spider-Man paintings by renowned comic artist Alex Ross, which were used in the opening credits of this summer's Spider-Man 2.
The auction, which runs through Oct. 20, will take place on eBay to benefit the United Cancer Front Women's Cancer Research Program at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Spider-Man 2 director Sam Raimi and producers Laura Ziskin and Avi Arad came up with the idea of hiring Ross (Kingdom Come) while they were working with title designer Kyle Cooper on the opening title sequence. Ross' paintings depict key images from the first Spider-Man film as a way to introduce the sequel.
Carrey Voices Snicket Game
ctivision confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter that Jim Carrey will reprise the role of Count Olaf in its tie-in video game to Paramount Pictures' upcoming feature film Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events.
The game, which ships Nov. 9 on all game platforms, features Carrey's likeness as well as his voice, the trade paper reported.
Carrey has approval rights over every aspect of his virtual counterpart, so he has been in on the game-creation process since its inception, the trade paper reported. The game also features the voices and likenesses of Liam Aiken and Emily Browning, who play the two Beaudelaire orphans. Tim Curry, who narrates the related audio books, also is a significant voice in the game, the trade paper reported.
In the game, players take on the roles of the orphans Violet, Klaus and Sunny Beaudelaire as they strive to keep their family fortune from the devious clutches of Olaf. The adventures go beyond those in the movie, which is drawn from the first three books written by Daniel Handler under the name Lemony Snicket, as Activision has added original challenges and inventions inspired by the popular children's series, the trade paper reported. The Lemony Snicket movie opens Dec. 17.
Rygiel Takes On Bunyan
im Rygiel, who won three visual-effects Oscars for his work on the Lord of the Rings films, is set to make his directorial debut on the upcoming fantasy film Bunyan and Babe for Exodus Film Group, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Based on the legendary figure of Paul Bunyan, Bunyan and Babe is a live-action family adventure following Bunyan's attempts, with the help of a couple of kids, to rescue his ox from the evil clutches of a demented circus owner. The film will feature the voice of Eddie Griffin as the computer-animated Babe the Blue Ox, the trade paper reported.
Bunyan was written by Michael A. Nickles and Julia A. Wall. Babe's computer animation is being done by Exodus' animation team, ElectroAge, the trade paper reported.
Brody Handles The Truth
drien Brody will star in Truth, Justice and the American Way, about the man who played TV's Superman in the 1950s, Variety reported.
Allen Coulter will direct the Focus Features film, written by Paul Bernbaum, about George Reeves, the trade paper reported.
Bernbaum's script details the investigation into Reeves' mysterious 1959 death in Hollywood, as well as the actor's complex relationship with the iconic role that propelled him to stardom. Brody will play the lead detective on the case, the trade paper reported. Focus hopes to begin production early next year.
Brody is currently shooting King Kong for director Peter Jackson.
Stars Get Spellbound
hristine Baranski and Barry Bostwick have joined the cast of Fox's Spellbound, a Warner Brothers TV-produced pilot for a supernatural series, Variety reported.
Spellbound centers on a male witch who is forced to decide whether to give up his powers after falling in love with a mortal woman. Baranski and Bostwick will play parents, the trade paper reported.
Rob Greenberg and Suzanne Martin write and executive produce. Andy Ackerman is on board to direct and also executive produce, the trade paper reported.
Battlefront Ships
ucasArts and Pandemic have shipped Star Wars: Battlefront, a video game set in the Star Wars universe, timed for release with the Star Wars trilogy DVD box set, the GameSpot Web site reported.
The SF shooter game is available for PC, Xbox and PlayStation 2.
Star Wars: Battlefront lets players engage in 16 battles from both the original Star Wars films and the more recent prequels. Battles take place on 10 different planets, including Hoth, Geonosis, Naboo, Kashyyk and Endor, and players can join one of four factions: the Rebel Alliance, Imperial Army, Clone Army or Droid Army, the site reported.
Battlefront has both single-player and multiplayer components, the site reported. All versions of the game will be enabled for online play.
Garris Fires King's Bullet
ick Garris, who wrote and directed the upcoming independent film based on Stephen King's e-book Riding the Bullet, told SCI FI Wire that it blends supernatural horror with a coming-of-age story, two themes commonly found in King's books but rarely in their big-screen adaptations.
"My whole intent on this film was to marry the two sides of Stephen King that we're all familiar with," Garris said in an interview. "The scary ghost-story side and the nostalgic-drama-Stand-by-Me side. All of the books do it, and damn few of the movies do. The studios, they wanted one or the other. They didn't understand the idea of both."
Garris, who worked with King previously on the television miniseries The Stand and The Shining, said he felt an emotional connection to the story and contacted King directly about turning it into a feature. "Because we've worked together a lot in the past, I was able to have the access to call him and tell him how it resonated with me and would he be OK with me writing the screenplay on spec," Garris said. "And it became one of his dollar babies. He gives you the right to do a movie for a dollar, and then you sell it afterwards, and he gets more money. But mainly it was just something that I wanted to try, and I had written a script very quickly, in a couple weeks. [It was] either inspiration or insanity, depending on what you think of the movie. And he was enthusiastic about it."
Riding the Bullet stars Jonathan Jackson (Tuck Everlasting) as a death-obsessed college student who hitches a ride to visit his mother in the hospital on Halloween night and comes face to face, literally, with his own mortality. David Arquette, Cliff Robertson, Barbara Hershey and Erika Christensen also star. Garris said that he chose to make the film independently after the major studios balked at the film's introspective sensibility. "They liked the idea of Stephen King, but even when they liked the movie, they found it a tough sell because it's not Dawn of the Dead," Garris said. "It's not a Texas Chainsaw remake. Something like that. It's a kinder, gentler horror film that really goes as much for the heart as well as the jugular. There's a little bit of blood in it, but not as much as they would want from what they would want to sell as a horror movie. ... It's a smaller, intimate kind of film. But if it works, you'll leave with something more than having jumped." Riding the Bullet opens in limited release Oct. 15.
Superhero! Spoofs Comics
he team behind Scary Movie 3 will create Superhero!, a lampoon of comic-book movies, for Dimension Films, Variety reported.
Craig Mazin will write the script, David Zucker will direct, and Robert Weiss will produce, the trade paper reported.
The deal comes as the trio is working on Scary Movie 4, the fourth installment in the franchise. The third Scary Movie grossed $110 million.
The first two Scary Movie films were done by Keenen Ivory Wayans and his brothers Shawn and Marlon, the trade paper reported.
Allen Zooms In Comedy
ete Hewitt will direct Tim Allen in Zoom's Academy, a Revolution Studios comedy about an out-of-shape former superhero called back into action to save the world, Variety reported.
Adam Rifkin wrote the script, and Jordan Roberts did a rewrite, the trade paper reported.
Zoom is based on Jason Lethcoe's graphic novel Zoom's Academy for the Super Gifted. Hewitt most recently directed Garfield: The Movie.
Elysium Develops Muse
ledgling screenwriter Ali Russell has launched a new movie production company, Elysium Entertainment, with a pair of comic-book-based projects: The 10th Muse and an untitled Rob Liefeld vehicle, Variety reported.
The company will be overseen by Brooklyn Weaver of Energy Entertainment, who discovered the 21-year-old Russell in the UCLA screenwriting program, the trade paper reported.
Muse is based on the female superhero character created by Darren Davis, a modern-day daughter of the Greek god Zeus. Russell will write and produce, along with Weaver and Davis' manager, Daniel Alter, the trade paper reported.
BloodRayne 2 Pre-sales Set
ajesco announced a nationwide pre-sell program for BloodRayne 2, a sequel to its hit vampire-themed video game, which is scheduled to ship next month.
Consumers will be able to reserve copies exclusively through Electronics Boutique and GameStop, the publisher said.
Customers who pre-order the game will receive a BloodRayne collector's-edition comic-book preview that includes the first seven pages of Echo 3's new BloodRayne comic book, which is due out in December. They will also get eight additional pages of character sketches, pinup art and details on the creation of the comic book's final cover.
Underwood Bares Soul
lair Underwood told SCI FI Wire that he's about to realize his dream of producing and starring in a film based on the Tananarive Due fantasy novel My Soul to Keep.
"It's set up at Fox Searchlight, and [when it will go before the camera] depends on the LAX schedule," Underwood said in an interview, referring to his new NBC TV series. "But Rick Samuyiwa will be the director. He did a couple of movies, like The Wood and Brown Sugar. He's also a writer, so he's doing another draft of the script right now."
Underwood, whose previous genre credits include Gattaca and Deep Impact, would play David, a 500-year-old Ethiopian man. "He's immortal, and he's tired of living forever and watching everyone he's ever loved grow old and pass on," Underwood said. "He's at a time in his life where he has a new wife of eight years. They have a 7-year-old daughter. And he wants to keep that family unit forever. He doesn't want to watch them grow old and die. That's the crux of my character, though the story is really through the wife's eyes."
David ultimately attempts to invoke an ancient ritual that would enable him to stay with his current famility for eternity. Underwood added that the first few pages of Due's book had him hooked. "You see an eldery woman in a convalescent home," he said. "She's on her deathbed. She has oxygen tanks and tubes tied up to her. And you see a young man, who's in his mid-30s, walking down the hallway. He enters the room, and you can tell that they have a connection somehow. You don't know exactly what it is. I knew it was a supernatural story, so I was thinking that maybe they were lovers from another time."
The man, David, and the woman have a conversation, and she then asks him to put her out of her misery. He takes a pillow and, reluctantly, places it over her head. "Before he does it she says, 'Goodbye, Daddy,'" Underwood said. "'The fact that this was his daughter, who looks 98 or 99 years old, and he's in his mid-30s, I was hooked. I was completely hooked. That sets the stage. He's completely devastated to once again see someone he loved in this state, just skin hanging off her bones, and to have to put her out of her misery. He doesn't want to do it again. So he looks at his family now, his young wife and young daughter, and the strength of the love they have now, and he can't bear to watch it all happen again."
(NBC is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.)
Studios Eye Strange
everal studios are vying for the film rights to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, a fantasy novel by Susanna Clarke about two feuding magicians set against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars, Variety reported.
The 800-page book was published Sept. 8 in the United States and debuted at number nine on the New York Times best-seller list before rising to number three this week, the trade paper reported.
Nick Marston, Clarke's agent at Curtis Brown, told the trade paper that he's being bombarded with calls and e-mails from Hollywood producers. Lord of the Rings producer New Line, Harry Potter studio Warner Brothers, DreamWorks and Sony are among the studios in contention, the trade paper reported.
Jonathan Strange took Clarke, a 43-year-old editor of cookbooks, a decade to write. She's now working on a follow-up with some of the same characters, making the book even more tempting to filmmakers as a potential franchise, the trade paper reported.
Enterprise Rebuffs Shatner
riginal Star Trek star William Shatner told TV Guide Online that his rumored guest appearance on UPN's Star Trek: Enterprise is on hold in a dispute over money.
"When I talked to [UPN] about money, they blinked," Shatner told the site.
Shatner added that there's still a chance it could happen "if they open their eyes." If it can be worked out, Shatner said his guest slot would be for two episodes, not one. Enterprise returns for a fourth season on Oct. 11.
War Landing In N.J.?
teven Spielberg will shoot his upcoming film version of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds in New Jersey, the Jersey Journal newspaper reported.
The movie, which stars Tom Cruise, has begun preproduction, and city lawyers are in the process of negotiating terms for use of various public properties in and around Bayonne, N.J., the newspaper reported.
Shooting may start next month and could wrap by December, one city official told the paper. It is slated for a summer release.
Spielberg reportedly scouted several homes in a Bayonne neighborhood as possible locations. Several city officials also told the newspaper that filmmakers said that Spielberg and company want to build a structure, probably a gas station or auto body shop, on a Little League field and then blow it up.
Spielberg's War of the Worlds will update Wells' story, which was previously adapted by Orson Welles in a well-known 1930s radio drama that was set in Grover's Mill, N.J.
Clarke Wins Heinlein Award
egendary SF author Arthur C. Clarke won the Heinlein Society's fourth annual Robert A. Heinlein Memorial Award in ceremonies coinciding with the 62nd World Science Fiction Convention in Boston earlier this month, according to a report on the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Web site.
Clarke accepted the award via satellite from his home in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
The award, named for the SF author, recognizes outstanding published work in hard science fiction or technical writings inspiring the human exploration of space. Also on hand were representatives of the Clarke Foundation, which plans, funds and operates the Arthur C. Clarke Center, a permanent research institution established and conducted in collaboration with the University of Nevada.
Briefly Noted
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ABC's SF thriller series Lost premiered Sept. 22 to strong ratings, dominating its timeslot with the best young-adult rating for a drama premiere on any network in four years, Variety reported. Lost scored a 6.8 rating among adults 18-49 and attracted 18.65 million viewers overall, winning its 8 p.m. timeslot in every ratings category from kids to 50-plus.
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Simon Baker (The Ring 2), Dennis Hopper, John Leguizamo, Asia Argento and Robert Joy have joined the cast of Universal Picture's upcoming Land of the Dead, a zombie movie written and to be directed by George A. Romero, Variety reported. Land will begin production Oct. 11 in Toronto; Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
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Nickelodeon has ordered another 20 episodes of its hit animated series SpongeBob SquarePants, bringing the total series order to 80 episodes, Variety reported. The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie opens Nov. 19.
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Media 8 Entertainment is co-producing, financing and distributing the SF feature film Reaper, which Circle of Confusion will co-produce, Variety reported. Production is slated to begin in February on the movie, about a private investigator who finds himself immersed in a surreal underworld where the boundaries between life and death are blurred.
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British actress Rosamund Pike has signed on to star in Universal Pictures' upcoming video-game adaptation Doom, playing Samantha opposite Karl Urban's John Grimm and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
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TV comic George Lopez will star in Robert Rodriguez's upcoming family film The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl in 3-D, Variety reported. Rodriguez wrote the script and is directing the film, which has already been earmarked for a June 10, 2005, release.
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Mexican actor Gael García Bernal is to star in the next film by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind director Michel Gondry, The Science of Sleep, about a man who learns to manipulate his dreams, Screen Daily reported.
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USA Today published new images of the cast of the upcoming Fantastic Four movie in full costumes and makeup.
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Cayden Boyd will star in Robert Rodriguez's upcoming Miramax/Dimension action film The Adventures of Shark Boy & Lava Girl, about a boy whose imaginary superhero friends come to life, Variety reported.
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Marco Mehlitz and German film fund and production outfit Cinerenta are bringing the Lions Gate zombie movie Flight of the Dead to Studio Babelsberg in Germany, Variety reported. The movie adds another horror title to Cinerenta's growing catalog of films as DVD exploitation becomes increasingly significant in the company's strategy.
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