Bale Iced Batman
hristian Bale, who stars in the upcoming comic-book movie Batman Begins, told SCI FI Wire that he shot early scenes in Iceland, which was a cold, lonely experience.
"We were in a little wooden hotel with miles of nothing on either side," Bale said in an interview. "I would go running, and there was nothing but these incredible glaciers. It's an amazing country, the actual structures, the mountains, the sea and how rough the whole place is."
Bale, who plays Bruce Wayne and his alter ego, Batman, said that the environment provided some unique opportunities for the production, as well as some unique hazards. "These really beautiful glaciers were this incredible blue color, and we were filming a scene where we had to get out there and run around on it," Bale said. "We were out there, and it was splitting as we were on it. There were big cracks appearing down it, and we all had to stand still and not break it. By the next day there was all this water again. It was a very nice, enjoyable beginning to Batman, because it was something very different from what I think traditionally making a movie like that would have been."
Batman Begins is the fifth film in the Warner Brothers franchise, based on the venerable DC Comics series. Bale said that he feels that he brought something fresh to the caped crusader, who has been played by actors from Michael Keaton to George Clooney. "Often you hear actors saying that, and you're like, 'I'm going to check that out.' And you look at it and go, 'What did you really do? Is there anything different there?'" he said. "I do feel that, but we're going to have to wait and see if I managed it. If I didn't, then there'll be someone else in there for number two, if it ever happens." Batman Begins is scheduled for release June 17, 2005.
Star Digs Deep Into Batman
hristian Bale, star of the upcoming prequel film Batman Begins, told SCI FI Wire that it will delve more deeply than previous Batman films into the character's origins and motivations.
"It's very much looking at how Bruce Wayne came to invent and create this character," Bale said in an interview. "[We explore] how he got to be this nutcase that runs around dressed as a bat."
Bale plays the title role in the comic-book-inspired movie, the fifth in the Warner Brothers franchise, based on the DC Comics series. Christopher Nolan (Memento) directs. Bale said that he initially had reservations about playing the character, because he didn't feel like Batman was particularly scary. But Bale began to discover the character when he donned Batman's trademark cape and cowl. "The first couple of times wearing the mask was great, because it really helps you to [understand] how to play it," Bale said. "I always found it kind of laughable: The guy thinks he's going to be scary by walking around dressed as a bat. I'd look at him and go, 'What kind of nutcase are you? Get out of my face.'"
Bale added that the key to playing Bruce Wayne was figuring out the emotional dynamic between his real life and his alter ego and melding the two. "I thought, 'How can he really have this rage and this focus on despising criminals and this promise that he makes to rid the city of them?'" he said. "I saw that it's really difficult to make a promise to yourself and then keep that clarity of thought that you had at that lucid moment and maintaining that intensity. Adopting this different persona helps him to maintain that kind of intensity."
Bale said that he had to adopt a different persona in the suit than the one he played as Bruce Wayne. "In donning the suit and everything, I no longer wanted to present this as Bruce Wayne dressed as a bat," Bale said. "He becomes a different creature, partly out of necessity of disguise, but also out of necessity to keep himself sane in his own life. It really helped me. Once I put [the suit] on, I felt like if I don't play it this a certain way, then I'm just going to feel like an idiot standing in a bat suit the whole time." Batman Begins is in post-production and is currently slated for release June 17, 2005.
Raimi Super-Sizes Spidey 2.5
am Raimi, who directed Spider-Man 2, told SCI FI Wire that he is adding all-new scenes to the film for the upcoming Spider-Man 2.5 special-edition DVD.
"I'm kind of completing scenes that I didn't have the money to complete when we did the movie," Raimi said in an interview. "I mean, the movie really was the best I could make it. It's not like I think I could make it better. But I said, 'OK, well, if you want to spend money and really give the kids a few more action scenes, OK, that's fine.' It's the kids' choice if they want to spend that money. And then I think it's fair."
The new version will include extended action scenes and computer animation created specifically for the DVD release. Though most of the changes amount to only a few seconds of screen time, Raimi said that they involve a significant amount of planning on his part. "It may not seem like a lot to you, but it's a lot to me," he said. "There's like six seconds new of the train. There's going to be like eight seconds new of some water fight you never saw. There's like 12 seconds new on the Bugle building. For me, though, 12 seconds is six shots that all have to be figured out, and within that two seconds, the amount of animation of each of those tentacles and how Spidey's going to move. It's very complicated for me."
Though he's enthusiastic about the new material, Raimi admitted that the studio's decision to release two versions was mainly financially motivated. "It's just a financial decision by the studio," he said. "They know the people who like the second movie would want to own it as it is on DVD. And then it's just a gamble. 'Oh, if we spend another $4 million can we make another $10 million?' I think that's how it works with them. I'm assuming that's what it is." Raimi's work on the new cut will be finished at the beginning of next year. The theatrical version of Spider-Man 2 will be released on DVD Nov. 30.
T-Birds Inspired America Team
rey Parker, co-writer and director of the satirical puppet movie Team America: World Police, told SCI FI Wire that his initial inspiration for the film came from watching reruns of Thunderbirds on television.
"We were just sitting around watching TV, and Thunderbirds was on Tech TV," Parker said in an interview. "We said, 'God, this could be really funny. We'll do this, but we'll make it f--king filthy.' We said, 'Let's do South Park does Thunderbirds.'"
Parker said that he and partner Matt Stone thought their thunder was about to be stolen by another production with a similar idea. "We called our agents, and we were like, 'We want to do Thunderbirds,'" Parker said. "They were like, 'Sorry, guys, someone's already doing it.' For like a day, we were super bummed out, because we were like, 'Someone's doing a puppet movie, and that's genius.' It wasn't until the next day we found out that they were doing it live-action," referring to this year's Thunderbirds movie.
Parker said that his film went through a number of major changes to arrive at the final story, which follows a group of international agents who fight terrorists from a stronghold in Mount Rushmore. "We rewrite well into post-production," Parker said. "And not just slightly. We were changing whole storylines. [The studio] was really nervous, because they knew that our style was to get to set and change absolutely everything. People were like, 'You know you can't do that with this, because these are puppets.' And we tried. But we found out you can't do that, because every day you would get to set, and it would be like, 'With this set these puppets can't do that.' We were like, 'We're going to do what we do, which is just sort of guerrilla-style figure out how to get something on film.'" Team America opened Oct. 15.
Puppets Tough On America Team
rey Parker, co-writer and director of the satiric puppet movie Team America: World Police, told SCI FI Wire that working with puppets was harder than it first seemed.
"For the sort of [research and development] phase, we were always riding this line between wanting them to stay endearing and charming and wooden and clumsy, [but] we knew we needed a little bit more emotion than the Thunderbirds puppets had," Parker said in an interview. "After eight years of doing [South Park], we knew that we can get any emotion across with the right eyebrow position and the right mouth shape. So we told the guys making the puppets all that matters is that we have total control over the mouth and that the eyebrows can do all different kinds of things."
Unlike the misbehaving cartoons Parker co-created with writer Matt Stone for South Park, Team America features a quintet of puppets who travel the globe preserving peace and fighting for freedom. Parker said that he quickly discovered how difficult it was to film marionette characters. "We were shooting that dressing-room scene where Spottswoode first comes and meets Gary," Parker said. "It was very simple. It was just two puppets, with Gary sitting down the whole time and Spottswoode standing there. We went to shoot thinking, 'OK, well, we'll spend a few hours shooting that, and we'll shoot it a couple of ways.' After spending like 18 hours, we had just barely gotten one version of the scene."
After conquering problems with the puppets, Parker said that he would not subject himself to such an arduous production ever again. "It has been the worst year of our lives," Parker said. "It was on, average, 18 hours a day, seven days a week. Not one day off, except for the Fourth of July, and all just super hard and all just left-brain things. It was all problem-solving. There was a lot less creativity and a lot more just 'How the f--k do we do this?' No more movies." Team America opened Oct. 15.
Tru's Fate In Doubt
on Harmon Feldman, producer of Fox's up-in-the-air supernatural series Tru Calling, told Zap2it that he's not hopeful the show will ever return to the airwaves.
Renewed for a second season, Tru Calling was scaled back before its season premiere, to six episodes from 13, and its Nov. 4 premiere date was handed over to North Shore. Tru still has no berth in Fox's schedule, though six new episodes are now in post-production.
"The network has not said they won't air these six," Feldman told the site, "but obviously you don't know what will happen. I am not planning a viewing party at this point."
The first season of Tru Calling, which stars Buffy the Vampire Slayer alumna Eliza Dushku as a morgue assistant who can rewind time, is set to be released by Fox Home Video on DVD on Nov. 30, the site reported. "There has been talk of releasing season two, the six episodes, to DVD as well," Feldman said. "I hope that happens. It won't allow us to complete the arc that we were starting, but perhaps if we do release season two to DVD, at least it will give some of the creative people an opportunity to not only show those six episodes, but also tell the fans what was going to happen. Those are stories worth hearing, worth telling."
As for the likelihood of Tru Calling finding another home on TV? "There have been rumors flying about [Tru's going to] The WB," Feldman said. "Although, at this point, I believe them to be only rumors, nothing more. [Fox] picked us up, as I was told, because they were excited about the direction of the show. They know what a tough timeslot we were in, and they really believed that, based on the growth of the show, where we were heading, what we had planned for next season, that they wanted to see more of us."
Family, Smallville Honor Reeve
bout 100 family members and friends of Christopher Reeve remembered the Superman actor in a private ceremony Oct. 12 at the family's Westchester County home in Pound Ridge, N.Y., the Reuters news service reported.
Plans for a larger memorial service for Reeve, who became an ardent campaigner for spinal-cord research after being paralyzed in a riding accident nine years ago, are expected to be announced next week, a family spokesman told the news service. Reeve died Oct. 10 in Northern Westchester Hospital in Mt. Kisco, N.Y., after suffering a heart attack at his home during treatment for an infected bedsore wound.
Meanwhile, producers of The WB's Smallville, on which Reeve had guest-starred, are preparing a tribute to the actor, TV Guide Online reported. The dedication will air at the top of the Oct. 13 episode, which airs at 8 p.m. ET/PT, a network spokesman told the site. Reeve had a recurring role on the Superman prequel series as the mysterious Dr. Swann.
Separately, The Hollywood Reporter ran a story saying that a computer-animated feature film that Reeve had been directing at the time of his death will remain in production. Yankee Irving centers on a father and his baseball-playing son, who overcomes personal obstacles to realize his dreams. Reeve previously described the project, which he had overseen for the past year, as "captivating, with the perfect blend of warmth and wit," the trade paper reported.
Alias Door Open For George
elissa George, who played the duplicitous Lauren Reed in the third season of ABC's Alias, told SCI FI Wire that she tried to leave the door open for her character to return to the show, despite her apparent death in the season finale.
"I think she should come back," George said in an interview on the set of her upcoming film, The Amityville Horror. "She got shot a lot. Like, a lot of times. Like, more than any regular person can take. But it was nothing in the heart. [It was in] the arms. And I played it like it didn't hurt her so I could come back. Like, maybe she had a vest on or something. They're like, 'Can you just look like you're in pain?' I'm like, 'Nope. I refuse.'"
The fourth season of Alias is currently in production without George and another former regular,
David Anders, who played British henchman Sark in the second and third seasons. George said that she thinks the audience will miss the characters and their interactions with the lead couple, Vaughn (Michael Vartan) and Sydney (Jennifer Garner). "Where's the blond assassin ruining their love life?" George said. "It's like, don't you want the Aryan-looking blondies in the leather?"
Although George won't be returning to the show as a regular character, she has spoken with Alias
creator and executive producer J.J. Abrams and several former co-stars about making a guest appearance this season if her schedule permits. "Yeah, they want me to so bad," she said. "So I'm trying to work it out, if I have time. They're all calling me. All of them. Like, 'Please come back!'" Alias returns for a fourth season in January 2005.
Hitchhiker Faithful To Adams
ooey Deschanel, co-star of the upcoming SF movie The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, told SCI FI Wire that the movie will be faithful to the late Douglas Adams' beloved book.
"Pretty much everything from the book is included," Deschanel said in an interview. "Most everything that was changed was Douglas Adams' idea to begin with; [the filmmakers] had his hard drive, so any changes that were made were pretty much according to his wishes." Adams, who created the Hitchhiker series based on his own original radio serial, drafted the first script for the film before he died unexpectedly in May 2001 of a heart attack.
Deschanel, who plays Trillian, said that there is one significant addition to the eccentric cast of characters, which includes Ford Prefect (Mos Def), Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman) and Zaphod Beeblebrox (Sam Rockwell). "There's a new character played by John Malkovich, who's like the leader of a sneezing cult," Deschanel said. "They worship the mighty Arkleseizure, and it's on planet Viltvodle VI. We go there, and it's great." Deschanel added that the film version will incorporate different iterations of the story as it has appeared in novels and radio and television series. "With each incarnation of that story, there were changes made. Between the radio series and the book and the TV series, there were a lot of different things [changed]."
Deschanel said that she is particularly proud of the chance she's had to work with her co-stars. "It's a great cast," she said. "[Martin Freeman of the U.K. series The Office] is a great Arthur Dent. He's a really good actor, and he's perfect for the part. It's different than the original Arthur, Simon Jones, but still so great. Sam Rockwell is playing Zaphod, and Mos Def is amazing and so funny as Ford Prefect."
Deschanel (Elf), who has played in a number of more intimate, character-driven pieces, said that Hitchhiker was different for her because of its large budget. "They had to create all this stuff, and that takes a lot of time and money and energy," she said. "We had a lot of time to shoot it, and they had to create entire alien planets and spaceships. They had the most amazing puppets and stuff. But the interesting thing about Hitchhiker's is it's also a character piece. It's just within the context of all this fantasy." The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is scheduled for release May 6, 2005.
Deschanel Hip To Hitchhiker
ooey Deschanel, co-star of the SF movie The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, told SCI FI Wire that production has wrapped on the upcoming film adaptation of the late Douglas Adams' beloved satire.
"It's done," Deschanel said in an interview. "It was great. It was so much fun to make that movie. We had these 7-foot-tall alien Vogon puppets. They built four different alien planets, the Heart of Gold set, like, the most amazing sets, and all the actors were great. I'm making up my own system to control the ship and everything. It was really fun."
Deschanel plays Trillian in the adaptation of the first of Adams' Hitchhiker books, which were inspired by his original BBC radio serial, about a hapless Brit (Martin Freeman) taken aboard a starship by a wacky crew of aliens after Earth is destroyed. Adams wrote a draft of the screenplay before he died unexpectedly in May 2001 of a heart attack. Deschanel (Elf) said that it was an exciting experience for her, particularly in light of the more serious character roles she's played in the past. "Trillian's like a genius," she said. "It was fun to play that."
Deschanel said that much of the production was kept in secrecy, but she was able to reveal a few details about her costume. "I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be talking about it, because they were very protective," she said. "We had to wear robes if we were ever out in public. ... I have a couple of different costumes, but the main one is this sort of aqua one-piece suit, sort of like a karate one-piece. It's really cool."
Deschanel said that she enjoyed the challenge of performing in such a fantastical story. "That was a real
'going-back-to-your-childhood' sort of thing," she said. "It's just the most fun to walk on set and have it be a spaceship that you're running around, and you have to pretend to be hit by missiles." The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is scheduled for release May 6, 2005.
Lucas Eyes TV
tar Wars creator George Lucas may eye TV projects after the release of his upcoming third and last prequel film, Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith in spring 2005, Variety reported.
"Lucasfilm would like to move into TV programming after Star Wars: Episode III," Jeff Ulin, the senior director of distribution and business affairs and head of Lucasfilm's TV activities, told the trade paper at Mipcom in Cannes, France.
Lucas' company is already into animated series. An episode of Lucasfilm series Clone Wars was shown to distributors at Mipcom.
Cut Asks Big Questions
mar Naim, the 26-year-old director of the upcoming SF movie Final Cut, told SCI FI Wire that he came up with the idea for his feature directorial debut while editing his student film, the Oscar-nominated documentary Grand Theater: A Tale of Beirut.
"While editing my documentary, it really became clear that the myth of objectivity in documentaries is just a myth," Naim said in an interview. "There's a style involved, and you make decisions and you end up manipulating and making a drama out of something that is people's lives, supposedly."
That thought led to Naim's script examining the way memory interacts with media and technology, an idea that attracted the attention of the film's star, Robin Williams, and co-stars Jim Caviezel and Mira Sorvino. Final Cut is a science-fiction drama about a man (Williams) who edits the memories captured over a person's lifetime by an implanted chip.
Caviezel (The Passion of the Christ) said in a separate interview that the story intrigued him enough to join the cast. "For a kid to write and direct something like this, and the themes of it are very complex, I can see why Robin Williams was drawn to do this," Caviezel said. "I wasn't planning on doing anything right after The Passion, and this was perfect, so I'm a pig, and I had to do it."
The film is set in what Naim calls "an imaginary present." He added that the film gave him the opportunity to ask questions that intrigue him about the role of media in our present-day culture. "I believe cinema, movies and television have become our mass-cultural memory," he said. "Our group memory is now attached to this visual memory, which is in itself innately manipulative. Movies resemble much more the way we remember than the way we live our lives. Those kinds of questions about why is cinema so powerful and what are the threats to our culture when it's consumed by manipulative visual arts, which I love, I'm not against it; it's just worth asking."
While Final Cut asks many questions, Naim admits that he himself has few answers. "I don't know, that's why I'm asking the questions," he said. "I'm curious. I don't have any answers; I'm just starting. I found it funny that when I finished the film, I said this is a film I should have made when I'm 60. Not now. This is like a last film. I'd be very curious, actually, to make it again when I'm 60, and I'm sure it would be a very different movie. But it's based more on my curiosity about life and movies than my own knowledge or ability to preach on the matter." Final Cut opened Oct. 15.
Final Cut Is True SF
mar Naim, director of the SF movie Final Cut, told SCI FI Wire that the film's futuristic world is not very different from our own.
"There's very few [science fiction elements]," Naim said in an interview. "There's only enough to get the ideas boiling."
Naim sees the film as part of a new trend in the genre that reaches back to the roots of SF. "I think there's a new wave of science fiction movies like, you can call Being John Malkovich a science fiction movie and Final Cut. It's more intimate, less speculative. Like, 'Let's find a metaphor to talk about now,' which is the way science fiction started. I think the more 'bling bling' science fiction, as I call it, sort of took over for a while, because we found that, 'Wow, we can make anything!' you know? And we sort of lost touch with what science fiction was all about, which is sort of us now and the human condition, with just a small poetic device to get things going."
Final Cut is set in a near future, where parents who can afford it can choose to implant a chip into their children's brains that will record their whole lives, negating the need for memories. While shooting the film, writer/director Naim was aware that the technology he had made up could very well become reality before the release of the film.
"While we were shooting, every couple weeks some new report would come out; 'Pentagon is developing such-and-such chip to put God-knows-where to track God-knows-what.' Now Microsoft has something called an eye chip: you wear it and it takes a photograph every two seconds," he said. "People told me, 'Patent this thing. You're going to make a fortune.' It's like, 'Forget the movie thing!'" Final Cut opened in theaters Oct. 15.
New Line Conjures Strange
ew Line has made a pre-emptive deal for screen rights to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke's best-selling fantasy novel, Variety reported.
Strange is set in 19th-century England and deals with a master practitioner of real magic and his apprentice, who share an uneasy alliance when they channel their powers in the war effort against Napoleon. It is the first novel by Clarke, a former cookbook editor at Simon & Schuster, the trade paper reported.
Clarke will be a producer on the film, along with Nick Marston. Strange will be produced through Cuba Pictures, a company formed as an offshoot of the British literary agency Curtis Brown, the trade paper reported.
Roberts Gets Antsy
arner Brothers and Playtone have set Julia Roberts to top the vocal cast for Ant Bully, the upcoming computer-animated film written and being directed by Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius helmer John Davis, Variety reported.
Roberts will voice an ant named Hova, alongside a cast that includes Shirley MacLaine, Paul Giamatti, Alan Cumming, Cheri Oteri and Ricardo Montalban, the trade paper reported.
Based on the illustrated children's book by John Nickle, Ant Bully deals with a mischievous boy who menaces an ant colony and who finds himself shrunk to insect size and sentenced to hard labor in the colony. Newcomer Zach Tyler will voice the shrunken kid, Lucas Nickle, the trade paper reported.
Roberts is interrupting her maternity leave to record her role in the film, which will begin sometime over the next month, the trade paper reported.
Davis Sniffs Around Dog
ex and the City star Kristin Davis is in talks to star opposite Tim Allen in the remake of The Shaggy Dog for Disney, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Davis would play the wife of Allen's character, a man who occasionally changes into a sheepdog. Brian Robbins is directing the feature, scheduled to head into production Nov. 14, the trade paper reported.
Shaggy Dog would mark Davis' first major film role since her six-year turn as Charlotte on the HBO comedy series. The project will be produced by Mandeville chief David Hoberman. Boxing Cat Productions partners Allen and Matt Carroll are executive producing, alongside Mandeville's Todd Lieberman and the Robert Simonds Co. chief Robert Simonds, the trade paper reported.
JoJo Swims To Aquamarine
een pop star JoJo will make her feature-film debut opposite Emma Roberts in the big-screen adaptation of the Alice Hoffman fantasy novel Aquamarine, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The teens will star as best friends who discover that a recent storm has landed a mermaid in their beach club's swimming pool. Elizabeth Allen will begin shooting the movie in February, the trade paper reported.
JoJo's self-titled debut album included a summer hit single, "Leave (Get Out)." Roberts, the 13-year-old niece of Julia Roberts, has appeared in Blow and recently wrapped Daisy Winters.
Darwin's Children Evolves
CI FI Channel announced a partnership with producer and former studio executive Michael De Luca (Blade) to develop the original miniseries Darwin's Children, based on SF author Greg Bear's best-selling books.
De Luca's first-ever TV project, based on Bear's Darwin's Radio and Darwin's Children, explores what happens when the next step of human evolution becomes a threat to humanity's existence.
In Darwin's Children, evolution has brought about a new generation of children, who learn faster, grow quicker and are able to communicate and influence behavior in strange and ominous ways. Their appearance divides society between the fearful old generation and the "virus babies."
Darwin's Children is the latest miniseries in active development at SCI FI. The channel previously announced development deals with filmmakers Ridley Scott (The Andromeda Strain), Frank Darabont (The Thing), Bryan Singer and Dean Devlin (The Triangle), Steven Spielberg (Nine Lives), Martin Scorsese (The Twelve) and Gale Anne Hurd (Red Mars).
Ralph Vicinanza and Vince Gerardis (Riverworld, Red Mars) will executive produce Darwin's Children with De Luca, former head of development for New Line Cinema and DreamWorks. Howard Braunstein and Michael Jaffe (NBC's 10.5) will finance and also executive produce through their company, Jaffe/Braunstein Films, SCI FI said.
Brosnan: No More 007
ierce Brosnan confirmed to the Toronto Sun newspaper that he did not quit his most famous role as agent James Bond: He was fired.
And there is no going back, he told the newspaper. "It's over. It's over. It's absolutely over," Brosnan said.
Brosnan said that he was willing and eager to do a fifth and final Bond, adding that 007 producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson had asked him to return, although no contracts were signed. Brosnan's last Bond movie, Die Another Day in 2002, was the 20th official installment in the franchise, which started with Sean Connery in Dr. No in 1962, the newspaper reported.
"They invited me back right before I went to present that film, before I went on the road with Halle Berry to sell the movie," Brosnan said. "They said: 'We're so happy with the success. We want you to come back!' I went on the road a happy man, you know? I thought we'd get a fifth and no more. That would be it, really. I'd done it. You get bored. You get older. You give of yourself to something and then you have no more to give. But I thought a fifth would be good. And then one day the phone rang—I was here [in Nassau, Bahamas, shooting After the Sunset]—and my agents told me that the goalposts had moved and that they had changed their minds."
Brosnan added, "It's very hard to find the truth in that town [Hollywood] or in this business at times. But it was their prerogative to change their minds. They can do it." And they might have done it "to go younger," Brosnan added. "It was disappointing. It was surprising. And I accepted the knowledge after 24 hours of being in shock."
Kolchak Stalks Again?
rank Spotnitz, one of the creative forces behind The X-Files, is developing a fresh take on the classic supernatural TV series Kolchak: The Night Stalker for ABC, the original home of the spooky series, Variety reported.
X-Files creator Chris Carter often cited Kolchak as one of the inspirations for his own show.
Kolchak debuted as a pair of 90-minute telefilms in 1972 and 1973 and became a short-lived weekly ABC series in September 1974, with The Sopranos creator David Chase and film director Robert Zemeckis among its writers. Darren McGavin played a reporter named Carl Kolchak who had a tendency to uncover mysteries involving vampires, serial killers and other freakish occurrences, the trade paper reported.
It's unclear how closely the new Night Stalker will mirror the format and mood of the original, which was based on a novel by Jeff Rice, the trade paper reported.
30 Days Moves Forward
ob Tapert, who is producing the film adaptation of Steve Niles' supernatural graphic novel 30 Days of Night, told SCI FI Wire that the author has read the script and was pleased with its faithfulness to the original story.
"Steve has read [screenwriter Stuart Beattie's] draft that we just turned in to the studio and thought it was the absolute best representation of the graphic novel," Tapert said in an interview. "So he was incredibly pleased. And right now we're just waiting for the studio to get back to us as to how they want to proceed there."
30 Days of Night is a vampire story set in the Arctic Circle, where it remains dark for a month each winter. Tapert is shepherding the project under the banner of Ghost House Pictures, the production company he formed with friend and partner Sam Raimi (Spider-Man). Though the company was formed with the idea of making quality low-budget horror films, Tapert said the exotic setting of 30 Days of Night will likely drive up the cost of production. "Because it was such an expensive process, such an expensive movie to make, all set in the snow, we—Ghost House and our partners at Senator Entertainment—partnered right away with Sony on it, because it was going to be a $50 or $60 or $70 million movie," Tapert said. "We know that they're very excited with having read it. I think we're going to meet in the coming week or so."
Dead Zone Gets New Boss
SA Network's original series The Dead Zone has tapped a new show runner and added to its producing/writing staff in anticipation of a longer-than-usual fourth season, Variety reported.
Jack LoGiudice (Resurrection Blvd.) has been named show runner and executive producer of the top-rated USA drama, taking over from Karl Schaefer, who will stay on as an executive consultant, the trade paper reported.
USA ordered 22 new episodes of the show for its fourth season, up from the usual 13. Season three averaged 3.5 million viewers an episode. The series goes back into production next month, the trade paper reported.
Tommy Thompson (Dark Angel) has come aboard as co-executive producer, and Michael Taylor has been promoted to supervising producer. Loren Segan and Christina Lynch will serve as supervising producers, the trade paper reported. Shin Shimosawa and James Morris have joined the show's team of writers.
USA Network is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Kong Game Develops
bisoft and Universal Studios Consumer Products Group announced plans to release a video game based on Universal Pictures' upcoming King Kong movie.
The game will be available worldwide on all platforms in conjunction with the Dec. 14, 2005, theatrical release of Peter Jackson's update of the classic giant-ape movie.
Working with Jackson and Wingnut Films, Ubisoft's Beyond Good & Evil development team, based in France, and its Montreal studio will develop the game.
Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Raimi Spinning Spidey 3
am Raimi, who directed the first two Spider-Man films, told SCI FI Wire that he is
working on ideas for the upcoming third film in the franchise, but hasn't decided yet on a villain.
"We're starting by determining what Peter Parker's journey is as a human being," Raimi said in an
interview. "What deficits does he have? Where was he at the end of the last film, and what is it that he
still has to learn? How will this relationship with the woman he loves evolve from this point forward, and what will be their new obstacles? Will it come from outside sources, or will it be something from within that destroys their love? These are the questions we're asking. And when we've got them figured out, when we know what they want and where they're headed and what it is they have to learn, ... we'll try and find the villain that best represents those conflicts."
Raimi said that he has enough ideas for additional Spider-Man films beyond an expected third movie, but that he suspects the sudio might prefer to end the series as a trilogy. "I'd love to make more," he said. "I never asked [Sony motion picture chairman Amy Pascal], but I have the feeling that she just wants this one to be the final one. She's very emotionally attached to them and wants us to have a sense of completion to it for the audience and feels that that's what the audience wants, that they don't want to see a Spider-Man 4, that they probably would like to see a Spider-Man 3, but not really any more. So she wants to make it complete and final, without setting up new things at the end."
As he did for the last two films, Raimi said he intends to bring on writers such as Alvin Sargent and
Michael Chabon to turn his ideas into a complete script when his outline is finished. Though the date
is not yet fixed, Raimi estimated that Spider-Man 3 will begin filming in January 2006. "I know it
seems like a long way away," he said. "But not for me."
Kruger Pens Princess
aramount Pictures has signed Ehren Kruger (The Ring 2) to write the script for the SF film A Princess of Mars, to be directed by Kerry Conran (Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow), Variety reported.
Alphaville Productions plans to begin shooting in 10 to 12 months for a likely 2006 release, the trade paper reported.
Princess is based on the first book in Edgar Rice Burroughs' 11-volume John Carter of Mars series, centering on Civil War veteran John Carter, who is transported to the planet of Barsoom, which he believes is Mars, and is taken prisoner by 12-foot-tall Green Men.
The previous script for Princess of Mars had been written by Mark Protosevich (The Cell) and was originally slated for director Robert Rodriguez. But he fell off after resigning from the Director's Guild of America in a dispute over his desire to co-direct Sin City for Dimension with Frank Miller, the trade paper reported.
Midway Arcade Sequel Ships
idway Games announced that it has shipped Midway Arcade Treasures 2, a new compilation of 20 classic Midway arcade games on one disk.
The sequel to 2003's Midway Arcade Treasures is available for the PlayStation 2, the Xbox and the GameCube at a suggested retail price of $19.99.
Midway Arcade Treasures 2 features hundreds of hours of classic gameplay action from arcade favorites, including Mortal Kombat II and Mortal Kombat 3, as well as the multiplayer collaboration of Gauntlet 2.
Midway Arcade Treasures 2 offers gamers the option of playing in one-to-four-player formats. A bonus DVD features video montages and trailers, as well as making-of featurettes for several of the titles.
Briefly Noted
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Residents of Metropolis, Ill., gathered in Superman Square Oct. 13 to honor late Superman star Christopher Reeve in a candlelight vigil before a black statue of the Man of Steel, the Associated Press reported. Residents also made donations to the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation and signed an oversized condolence card for the Reeve family.
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Writer-producer Carlton Cuse (Nash Bridges) has joined ABC's hit SF series Lost as an executive producer, Variety reported. Cuse will run the freshman series with Damon Lindelof, who co-created the show with Alias mastermind J.J. Abrams.
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DreamWorks has signed the Alias writing team of Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci to a two-year first-look deal to write, produce and direct films for the studio, Variety reported. The duo, who are expected to work with Alias creator J.J. Abrams on a new Mission: Impossible 3 script, are also slated to work on an untitled movie based on an idea generated by Steven Spielberg.
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CBS has set airdates for Category 6: Day of Destruction, its upcoming disaster miniseries: Nov. 14 and Nov. 17, right in the middle of the November sweeps, Zap2it reported. The miniseries, starring Brian Dennehy and Randy Quaid, deals with a landlocked storm bearing down on Chicago and the people about to be caught up in it.
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James Marsters, who played Spike on The WB's canceled Angel, guest-stars as the father of the Penn Badgley character in the Nov. 3 episode of the frog network's new series The Mountain, TV Guide Online reported.
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