B5 Movie Falls Apart
abylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski told fans in a Usenet group post that a proposed B5 film, The Memory of Shadows, is on hold indefinitely. "The deal could not be put together, and it did not look as if that was going to change at any point in the foreseeable future," Straczynski wrote in a Feb. 26 post on the rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated newsgroup, which is archived at JMSNews.com. "So the option has reverted, and to all intents and purposes, the project has dead-ended. Nor do I think this particular incarnation will arise again at any point in the future, though prognostication has always been a tricky art, especially if you have to do it without the benefit of hindsight."
Straczynski had been approached a year ago by a company that had optioned the B5 rights from Straczynski and ordered a script. "On Dec. 27th of 2003, the script for The Memory of Shadows was turned in, and the process began of trying to make the deal work with all the various forces involved," he said. He added: "At times, it seemed we were inches away from a deal. ... Stages were reserved at Elstree. Actors were contacted. A director was in place. The script went through many revisions. A few key staff were hired. .... It was really a year-long roller-coaster ride. During that time, the people involved, with every good intention, tried very hard to pull the necessary pieces together on the deal." Ultimately, though, the project failed to come together.
Straczynski has not given up hope of making a B5 film at some point. "Eventually, it will happen, because such things are simply inevitable," he said. "If they can do a Brady Bunch movie, you can be sure that, sooner or later, somebody's going to do a B5 movie. The only thing I can say without equivocation is that when that day comes, as the rights-holder, I will make darned sure that it's done right, because I'd rather have no B5 movie than one that doesn't live up to what fans and I myself would want to see. To that end ... I can wait."
FCC Exonerates Angel
love scene from The WB's canceled Angel that showed a female character turning into a vampire and biting her partner's neck did not overstep federal indecency rules, the Federal Communications Commission ruled on Feb. 25, according to The Hollywood Reporter. It was one of two scenes from a November 2003 episode of Angel that were not "sufficiently graphic or explicit to render the program patently offensive" by contemporary standards, the FCC said in denying an indecency complaint from the Parents Television Council.
Angel, which was canceled by The WB last year after five seasons, starred David Boreanaz in the title role of an 18th-century vampire who tried to atone for past evil deeds in present-day Los Angeles, the trade paper reported.
Trek Fans Claim Big Pledge
ans of UPN's soon-to-be-canceled Star Trek: Enterprise formally announced that three anonymous contributors have pledged $3 million to a fund to finance a proposed fifth season of the show. The TrekUnited.com Web site reported that the promised contribution will come from "investors" in "the commercial space flight industry."
The fan group also published a statement from the prospective donors, which read in part: "We ... would like to testify that at least one out of two of all the actual entrepreneurs involved in this industry has been inspired by Star Trek, and we are not only good at watching TV sci-fi , we are also good at writing checks. Big checks. "
TrekUnited said that money raised will be used for "anything that will guarantee a fifth season of Star Trek: Enterprise." Fans have previously estimated that it would cost about $36 million to outright finance a fifth season of the show.
No network has stepped forward to pick up Enterprise once UPN drops the show, and Paramount, which produces the series, has not said it is shopping the series to anyone else. Both UPN and Paramount are owned by Viacom.
Batman Flies To Imax
max Corp. said that the upcoming Batman Begins movie will be released in its giant-screen theaters and traditional 35mm theaters on the same day, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins marks the eighth digitally remastered Warner Brothers movie to premiere in Imax theaters, the trade paper reported.
The studio's The Matrix Reloaded marked the first-ever so-called "day-and-date" release of a Hollywood event movie by Imax in April 2003.
Batman Begins stars Christian Bale, Michael Caine and Katie Holmes and explores the Batman legend and the origins of the character. It opens on June 17.
Miller Doubles Up On Batman
omic-book legend Frank Miller told SCI FI Wire that he's currently at work on two new Batman titles. "One of them I'm 120 pages into right now, and it's called Holy Terror Batman," Miller said in an interview while promoting the upcoming film version of his comic film Sin City, which he co-directed with Robert Rodriguez. "It's a 'propaganda comic book' of Batman versus of Al Qaeda. Come on, somebody had to do it."
Miller, who's best known for creating Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One, added: "And I'm working with Jim Lee on a new series called Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder. That's the early training of Robin." Holy Terror Batman and Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder will be published later this year.
Potter IV Is Trim, Hip
avid Heyman, producer of the upcoming fourth Harry Potter movie, The Goblet of Fire, told SCI FI Wire that filmmakers, led by director Mike Newell, trimmed the 700-plus-page book by following a simple principle: "Anything that doesn't really relate to Harry and Harry's journey is less relevant." Speaking during a break in filming on the set at Leavesden Studios outside London earlier this month, Heyman added in an interview: "That's not to say that there're not minor detours. Inevitably there are. But there are certain things that we don't spend as much time with as they do in the book, just by the very nature of the material."
One example: The film will not deal with the subplot involving Winky and Dobby, two house elves, and the issue of elf liberation. "It's Hermione's issue," Heyman said. "Not to say Hermione's [not important]. Hermione's a vitally important character. But you have to make some choices. ... One piece of information ... we've put into another character, which feels perfectly organic [and] works. ... The story works perfectly without [the elf story]. And we consulted with Jo [Potter author J.K. Rowling] about it, and she was fine [with it]."
SCI FI Wire glimpsed a bit of filming during the recent set visit, including shooting inside the Weasleys' suprisingly spacious tent at the Quidditch World Cup. New sets for the film include the tent, a massive cemetery (where the film's climax takes place), a trophy room filled with silvered plaques and cups of various sizes, the Ministry Box at the Quidditch World Cup stadium, and a faux marble Trial Chamber, which rises several stories high. Filmmakers also constructed a large tank surrounded by green screens, where Daniel Radcliffe (Harry) and other actors performed underwater scenes, which will be enhanced with computer animation in post-production. And a massive Dragon Arena sits outdoors, where Harry and other contestants in the Triwizard Tournament will try to procure eggs from the flying beasts.
Hogwart's Great Hall, meanwhile, has been redressed for the Yule Ball, a big dance that occurs midway through the movie. Every surface has been silvered, with giant icicles to hang from the beams, and a giant Christmas tree sits at the head of the space. Heyman also revealed that the sequence will feature the Weird Sisters, a band consisting of singer Jarvis Cocker and members of the rock bands Radiohead and Pulp, which will give the movie a more hip feel.
"It's pretty interesting," Heyman said. "It's good. That's most definitely a different twist on the whole Potter thing. I think people will enjoy seeing the world getting bigger. I think the tasks are going to be great. And I think the kids [stars Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint] are better actors. They're just better actors, so you're seeing more nuance than you may have in the first film, and you saw more in the second and you saw more in the third." Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire opens in November.
Do Robots Dream? Eat? Sleep?
hris Wedge, director of the upcoming computer-animated Robots, told SCI FI Wire that the project challenged his production team to be clever in their conception of the characters' world. "That was tough, because every time you answered a question [about the internal logic of Robots' world], you wanted to be clever," Wedge said in an interview. "But ideas swarmed around ... how you explained where they came from, how they grew up, what they would eat, would they sleep, and if we didn't come up with a clever enough thing, I just wouldn't do it."
Robots deals with a world of sentient machines. Wedge said that some ideas proved difficult. "Some of them came easily, [but] you know, it took us a long time to figure out where babies came from," Wedge said. "There was a scene in the movie that we finally moved off of. It was a silhouette of Mom and Dad on the couch, and Dad was saying, 'Are you tired?' And she would say, 'Why?' [He would say,] 'I don't know. We could do that thing.' 'What? Tonight? Come on!' 'I read all of the books, and I know how to do it.' She says, 'OK.' And then she stands up and puts the box up and says, 'OK, let's make a baby.' That was the joke, but we thought it might not work."
Wedge, who also directed Ice Age, said that animators simply bypassed many of the robot functions they could not successfully or cleverly design. "You don't really see guys eating in our movie," Wedge said. "I know the Iron Giant would pick up a tractor and take a bite out of it, but it didn't make that much sense to me. We had the one scene where you think they are going to drink some hot grease, but they just pour it on themselves, because it would feel nice and relaxing." Robots opens March 11.
Robots Let Williams Wing It
hris Wedge, director of the upcoming computer-animated movie Robots, told SCI FI Wire that he gave actor Robin Williams carte blanche to improvise much of his dialogue, and then edited it later to suit the movie. "It was different for Robin, because he does kind of a stream-of-consciousness thing, and you can tell when he thinks it's working and when he doesn't," Wedge said in an interview. "I think he's always incredibly conscientious about giving us what we needed for the scene. He would always read the pages first, and he would go off into his own little orbit, but I know he was always thinking, 'OK, I think that's stuff they can use.'"
Williams voices Fender, one of the mechanical denizens of a world of sentient machines. Wedge said that he typically structured recording sessions for actors to suit the needs of the script, but added that Williams' unpredictability challenged his team to assemble a coherent collection of dialogue at the end of each session. "Some actors, they read the line, and you just say, 'Um, let's try it this way, OK?' But with Robin, it's like he was done when he was done," Wedge said. "When we were done with each session, we would line up all of the takes so we could go through them, so we can go through and put the ones we want into the movie. We couldn't do that with Robin, because he almost never said the same thing twice."
Wedge (Ice Age) said that he was not intimidated by Williams' illustrious history as a voice-over actor in such animated films as Aladdin. "I almost thought, 'He hasn't done anything in a long time,' and he really responded to the material, and he got into it," Wedge said. "I said if he wants to do it, and he's that excited about it, I think it's going to be pretty hard to fail. But when you're making the movie, you just can't compare it to what's been done or what you think is going to be done. You have to be in your own thing." Robots opens March 11.
Brody Sensed Jacket Vibe
scar winner Adrien Brody, star of the upcoming SF thriller The Jacket, told SCI FI Wire that he conducted specific research to understand the feelings his character might have when sealed in a morgue locker for treatment. "I actually found a sensory deprivation chamber where we were shooting in Glasgow," Brody said in an interview. "I would do quadruple sessions that they were pretty amazed that I could endure."
In the film, Brody plays a young man who is convicted of a murder he did not commit and sentenced to a mental institution, where he is placed in a straitjacket and locked in a morgue drawer. Brody said that the sensory deprivation chamber allowed him to meditate about the mindset of his character during his claustrophobic imprisonment. "You become very aware of how your mind works and how cyclical thoughts are and how you sort of ... can guide them," Brody said. "It's an interesting way to meditate, in a way, but also to separate yourself from your physical being."
Brody added that the chamber gave him time to consider the underlying themes of the film. "In that utter blackness of space, it's a chance to kind of let go of your own physical being, so it was a pretty fascinating process," Brody said. "I have my own ideas of what it's about, but I also have to suspend that, too, when I'm doing it. My process is that I have to kind of believe everything my character is believing while he's believing it or while he's enduring it or experiencing it. My character is going mad, whether I'm dead or I'm dreaming or whatever. I'm going mad in that moment, and I have to experience that as part of my reality." The Jacket opens March 4.
Brody Locked Into Jacket
scar winner Adrien Brody, star of the upcoming SF thriller The Jacket, told SCI FI Wire that he shot many of the scenes from the film in an actual mental institution. "We shot in a mental institution in the basement," Brody said in an interview. "They built this in the basement of a mental institution, and it had that vibe. We were using real gurneys, and there were all kinds of ... professional instruments around that were frightening."
Brody plays a young man who is put in a straitjacket and repeatedly sealed in a morgue locker to treat violent impulses after being convicted of murder. Brody said that he chose to remain isolated from the cast and crew during the sequences where he was supposed to be locked in the morgue. "The crew was nice, but the state of mind I was in, I don't even try to communicate with anyone when I'm working," he said. "I was restrained in the jacket, and I would often ask to be left alone on the gurney and wait while they set up the next shot, instead of them getting me out of it and sitting around and having a conversation. I think it's just important to stay centered, so therefore it doesn't matter where it is, what it is, I would be in the same place as we were shooting."
Brody added that the production staff helped develop an atmosphere conducive for his emotional explorations. "On all levels, it was a very creative environment, including the process [in which] they edited the film and did the effects," Brody said. "It was very organic and very much like crafting something. They were crushing moth wings and blood on negatives and blood on my outfit and coffee stains and hopefully not urine, but things that were very reminiscent of urine, and it had a real artist's feel to everything, which is wonderful. It was pretty inspirational." The Jacket opens March 4.
Brody Says Jacket Fits Fine
scar winner Adrien Brody, who stars in the upcoming SF film The Jacket, told SCI FI Wire that the upcoming film is a melange of genres ranging from drama to psychological thriller to time-travel adventure. "In a way it's kind of indefinable," Brody said in an interview. "And that's part of what attracted me to the film as a whole and what attracted me as an actor to [this] character."
Brody, who won an Oscar for The Pianist and counts among his credits The Village and the forthcoming King Kong remake, plays Jack Starks in The Jacket. Starks is a Persian Gulf War veteran who returns home to Vermont an amnesiac after a near-death experience, only to be charged with killing a cop and committed to a mental institution. There, he's drugged, straitjacketed and placed in a morgue drawer as part of a doctor's (Kris Kristofferson) offbeat treatment. Inside the drawer, Jack is transported to the future, where he learns he's soon to die. He also meets Jackie (Keira Knightley), a troubled young woman he recognizes from his past, with whom he forges a bond in an effort to change their respective futures.
"The character is indefinable as well, in the sense that as a human being he's a mystery even to himself," Brody said. "He can't really draw from his experiences in life because so many of them are inaccessible to him. Even in the script he's not defined in the ways you'd normally see. You don't learn about his ethnicity or his beliefs or any of that, and none of that is really relevant. So for me it was an opportunity to be a very specific person, yet Everyman at the same time. I think that enables people to be able to be more invested and connected to the character." The Jacket opens on March 4.
Brody: Kong Was Real
scar winner Adrien Brody, star of Peter Jackson's upcoming King Kong remake, told SCI FI Wire that he performed opposite an imaginary giant ape, but played it as if he were real. "You take it seriously, and it's not a joke," Brody said in an interview. "It's not like, 'Oh, my God, there's the monkey again!'"
Brody plays Jack Driscoll, a fighter pilot who squares off against King Kong several times while trying to rescue Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) in Jackson's remake of the classic 1933 SF movie. Brody said that he carefully considered the reality of each sequence, no matter how far-fetched the scenario might have been. "What do you do when there is a 25-foot creature that sees you and senses you and smells you and doesn't like you from before?" he said. "What do you do? You smile or you run, and that's the only choice. And you run for your life, and you run many times on many different-colored green and blue treadmills and do the best you can to believe."
Brody added that director Jackson's character-driven approach helped him find the feelings he needed to bring King Kong's world to life. "The beauty of it is that it's character-driven, including the depth that's going into the creation of Kong," Brody said. "It is going to be, in my opinion, the best combination of elements, because it's going to have Peter's unbelievable team for effects, but also his own creative vision for something that he's been so passionate about since he was 10, [with co-writers] Fran [Walsh] and Philippa [Boyens]. It's very much similar to an independent movie, even though it's probably costing Universal a fortune." King Kong opens in December and is being released by Universal Pictures, which is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Brody Conquers Kong
drien Brody, who stars in Peter Jackson's upcoming King Kong remake, told SCI FI Wire that he sees his character as a departure from the emotionally charged roles he's played in the past in such films as The Pianist. "King Kong is really wonderful, because it's a chance to not subject myself to the emotional torment," Brody said in an interview. "Now I am physically abused. I'm spending 11 hours on a harness shooting stunts and doing these things that you can't put somebody else in there.”
Brody plays Jack Driscoll, a fighter pilot who attempts to rescue damsel in distress Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) from the clutches of the title giant ape. He said that working with director Jackson taught him a lot about filmmaking. "I'm learning another aspect of filmmaking, which is very exciting," he said. "Like, physical pain is easier to deal with" than emotional pain.
Brody drew parallels with his recent experience shooting the psychological SF thriller The Jacket. "The challenge is having to experience things that don't exist, but that's also similar to what I'm doing [in The Jacket, in which I'm] having an out-of-body reaction in there in a drawer," Brody said. "You can do more to prepare for [the drawer], but at the same time, I do have a very vivid imagination. That's part of what drew me to being an actor." King Kong is slated for release in December and is being released by Universal Pictures, which is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Bay Reveals Island Secrets
ichael Bay, director of the upcoming SF film The Island, offered SCI FI Wire an exclusive glimpse at the making of the movie, which will mix Bay's trademark big action thrills, a hint of romance between stars Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson and a creepy SF scenario centered on the cloning of humans for spare parts. "This is very simple," Bay said in an interview on the film's set in Downey, Calif. "It's about humans ... that want to live longer. ... This is the slaughterhouse. We all eat meat. We don't want to see what goes on in the slaughterhouse. So to me, it's got a real basic human thing. Everyone in our audience or in the world would want to live longer if they could, you know? And that's what this is about. And it's ... the extent to which you go [to achieve that]."
SCI FI Wire visited the 48,000-square-foot set, situated in a converted aircraft plant in the Los Angeles suburb of Downey, which looks like a high-tech office building with a central atrium, elevator banks and concrete corridors leading off in several directions. The film's main characters, Lincoln Six-Echo (McGregor) and Jordan Two-Delta (Johansson), dressed in identical white uniforms, are members of a community of about 2,500 similar people who live in what they believe to be the only remaining colony of humans in a world devastated by a biological disaster. In fact, they are clones who have been raised to provide spare parts for unseen wealthy sponsors, and their memories have been implanted artificially. When Lincoln discovers the truth, he and Jordan attempt to escape, pursued by security personnel led by Djimon Hounsou. That pursuit includes a thrilling high-speed chase on flying motorbikes called "wasps" through the skyscraper canyons of a futuristic Los Angeles.
Unlike many directors, Bay (Armageddon, Pearl Harbor) has ordered that most of the movie's elaborate effects be shot practically where possible. That means using actual locations—including Detroit, downtown Los Angeles and the California desert—and real stunts instead of computer graphics. In one big set piece, Bay hung Johansson from the side of a building on a wire to simulate her dangling 70 stories above street level. In another portion of that same sequence, Bay rigged explosives onto a two-story steel letter "R"—part of the sign on the top of a skyscraper—and dropped it onto a Los Angeles street, where it burst into flames. Bay's approach has meant the construction of large sets in Downey, including a so-called "Incubation Silo," in which realistic adult-sized human clone embryos lie in clear liquid inside giant plastic sacs, connected by snaking black "umbilical" hoses to the silvered walls. On a nearby set, full-sized "wasps," which look like two-person open fighter jets, rest in front of blue screens on various rigs to simulate flying movements.
Unlike other recent SF films, including McGregor's upcoming third Star Wars prequel, Bay said, "this is not a movie about making your own sci-fi world, because everything has been done so much. What's interesting to me about this movie, it's got a whole [humanistic] aspect. ... Some sci-fi movies to me are about a bunch of mumbo jumbo, you know what I mean? Sometimes I can't even figure out what Star Wars is about, you know? I mean, with the Senate and I don't know, I get lost." The Island, which wraps production this week, is slated for release on July 22.
Sky Blue Is A Breakthrough
unmin Park, co-producer with director Moon Sang Kim of the Korean animated feature Sky Blue, told SCI FI Wire that the film took seven years to make and was realized with high-definition multi-layered animation that allowed the filmmakers to blend live-action miniatures, 3-D computer-generated backgrounds and traditional 2-D character animation. "One of the reasons it took seven years was because we knew the HD format would be the only way we could make this multi-layer composite animation, because every frame was shot 60 to 100 times and then composited to one layer, which meant that we could achieve a depth of field," said Park, who also oversaw the English-language adaptation. "So there were a lot of things happening technologically, and then we had to find the balance between technology and story. The story has to navigate the film."
Set in 2140, Sky Blue was released in Korea as Wonderful Days and has played at international film festivals under that title. It posits that Earth and mankind have been all but decimated by endless fighting and pollution. Some powerful survivors live in an organic city, Ecoban, while ill-treated refugees mine carbonite, a pollutant, in order to supply Ecoban with the food it requires. When a rebellion against Ecoban and its corrupt leaders begins to take shape, Jay, a teenage female Ecoban trooper, and Shua, her childhood sweetheart and the rebellion's leader, are compelled to make choices that will affect their lives and the lives of many others.
"For me, one of the reasons I got involved with this film was absolutely for my concerns about the environment," Park said in an interview. "I was always flying into metropolitan cities, and I was always seeing this brownish-gray tone in the sky. I said to myself, 'My God, we're very near to when we're no longer going to have blue in the sky.' That was a center and focus for me, as was where we're going in terms of class differences and the elitist culture." Blue Sky is currently in limited release in the United States and, based on its critical and box-office reception, will roll out wider in the coming weeks.
Incredibles Gets The Gold
he Incredibles won the animated-feature Oscar at the Academy Awards ceremony in Hollywood, Calif., on Feb. 27, beating 2004's biggest box-office hit, Shrek 2, the Associated Press reported. It was the second-straight animated Oscar for Pixar Animation, which won a year ago for Finding Nemo.
"I don't know what's more frightening, being watched by millions of people, or the hundreds of people that are going to be annoyed with me tomorrow for not mentioning them," said Brad Bird, the film's writer-director, upon receiving his statuette.
Among other SF&F movies, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind took the original-screenplay award for Charlie Kaufman, and John Dykstra and his team of visual-effects artists shared the Oscar for visual effects for Spider-Man 2, the AP reported.
Indigo Details Revealed
tari announced new details about its adventure video game Indigo Prophecy, which is slated for release for the PlayStation 2, Xbox and PC this fall. Marketed as Fahrenheit in Europe, the game is being developed by Quantic Dream.
Set in New York City's near future, Indigo Prophecy tells the story of a man whose destiny is irrevocably altered when he unwillingly commits a brutal murder and must partner with the woman assigned to bring him to justice. The company calls the game "interactive cinema."
New York City is stunned by a series of mysterious murders, all following the same pattern: Ordinary people are killing absolute strangers in public areas. Lucas Kane becomes another one of these murderers when he suddenly kills a stranger in a men's bathroom. Covered in blood, Lucas regains consciousness with no recollection of why he committed murder. Hunted by police, Lucas must uncover the supernatural forces behind his crime before being incarcerated for life.
Players can assume the role of multiple characters and experience the game from multiple viewpoints, and Indigo Prophecy allows players' actions to affect the plot by offering a scenario-driven interactive experience.
Fox 2000 Options Icemark
ox 2000 has optioned the film rights to Stuart Hill's fantasy best-seller The Cry of the Icemark, with Courtney Pledger and Sarah Radclyffe of London-based Jigsaw Films attached to produce, Variety reported. The book, which has sold 25,000 hardback copies since its U.K. publication a month ago, will be launched stateside in April via Scholastic.
Set in a mythic, quasi-Nordic prehistory, the story concerns a teenage queen fighting to save her homeland from a powerful invading army. She and her best friend, a witch's son, must bring together an alliance of werewolves, vampires and talking snow leopards to combat the invaders.
Barry Cunningham, the book's U.K. publisher, will act as executive producer via his Chicken House Entertainment arm, which he set up last year to manage the film and TV rights of his authors, the trade paper reported.
Baker Dead And Loving It
imon Baker, star of George Romero's upcoming zombie sequel film Land of the Dead, told SCI FI Wire that he had a bloody good experience shooting it. "In classic George style, there's a lot of subversive social comment," Baker said in an interview while promoting his latest project, The Ring Two. "It's a good time, historically, to make a film like it. I got really into that and enjoyed that aspect of it."
Baker added: "At the same time, because I was never really a huge zombie movie fan, I was impressed by this. George's movies are at a different level, on an absolutely different level. He does so much more than just make a zombie movie. I'm what you could call a reluctant hero. We've got a great cast: Asia Argento, Dennis Hopper, John Leguizamo, Robert Joy. It was a good experience. I had a really good time making it. We shot in Toronto for 40-something nights. I think we had one or two split days, but the rest of the movie was shot at night. And it wasn't warm by any means. We finished shooting on the 24th of December, I think, and it was freezing. Even though it was cold and difficult, I had a lot of fun making that movie."
Universal Pictures will unleash Land of the Dead on Oct. 21. Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Lee, Evans Back Foreverman
obert Evans and Stan Lee are teaming up to produce Foreverman, a new superhero franchise for Paramount Pictures, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Hellboy writer Peter Briggs has been hired to write the screenplay in collaboration with Lee, who is creating an original superhero, complete with all the trappings of the best-known of Lee's other creations, the trade paper reported.
Evans and Lee's POW! Entertainment is producing the feature in tandem with Idiom Films. The partners plan to create a range of ancillary ventures to complement the franchise, which will include comic-book material on the superhero and other characters in the story.
While not divulging many details, the producers said the new superhero will be akin to those Lee created at Marvel Comics. He will have all the problems of saving the world as well as the problems of dealing with everyday life, the trade paper reported.
King Pens Colorado Kid
new book from horrormeister Stephen King, The Colorado Kid, will be the lead title in the second year of Winterfall's Hard Case Crime series of pulp-style paperback crime novels, the publisher announced. The Colorado Kid tells the story of two veteran newspapermen and their investigation into the mysterious death of a man on an island off the coast of Maine. The book was written specifically for Hard Case Crime and has never previously been published.
Launched in September 2004 by novelists and pulp mavens Charles Ardai and Max Phillips (and recently nominated for two Edgar Allan Poe Awards by the Mystery Writers of America), Hard Case Crime revives the storytelling and visual style of the great pulp paperbacks of the 1940s, '50s and '60s, the publisher said. The line features a mix of lost pulp masterpieces from some of the most acclaimed crime writers of all time, as well as new novels from the next generation of great hard-boiled authors, all with new painted covers in the grand pulp style.
The Colorado Kid will be published in October in the classic pocket-sized mass-market paperback format in which hundreds of millions of books were sold during the heyday of pulp fiction.
Hauser Wired For The Cave
ole Hauser, who stars in the upcoming SF thriller film The Cave, told SCI FI Wire that he got to do wire stunts with many of the same crew who worked on the Matrix films. "Probably the first thing that I really did that was, like, ... the wire-work thing," Hauser said in an interview at last month's WonderCon in San Francisco. "That was the first time I had ever done anything like that, and that was like ... being Superman. I mean, you literally ... point, ... and they sling you, and you feel like you have, you know, strength beyond ... measure. And it's just unbelievable."
Hauser plays the leader of a team of divers who are sent into an underwater cave to rescue a group of lost spelunkers and encounter unknown creatures along the way. The film was shot in Romania, which Hauser called "the Mexico of Europe." "I guess a better way of putting it, it's like going back 20 years," he said. "Everything is like stuck in the '80s to an extent. It's kind of weird when you come from America, where you're expecting Internet access, this, that. All the amenities are there and so on. So that part of it was weird, at first, getting used to. But then, like anything, you kind of adapt to the environment. The Romanian people were great, though. They were really nice to me, took care of me well. But it was an experience, as you can imagine. An underwater film. That alone is an experience. And with all the visual effects and stuff, it was pretty special." The Cave opens Aug. 19.
Adams' Desire Drove Hitchhiker
obbie Stamp, producer of the upcoming film version of Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, told SCI FI Wire that he talked about the film with Adams in a telephone call shortly before the writer's untimely death in 2001. "To be honest, before he died, the movie wasn't in a great place," Stamp said in an interview at last month's WonderCon in San Francisco. "We were talking about [how fellow producer] Jay Roach had decided that he wasn't going to direct it, so we [were thinking], 'What do we do next? Who do we talk to?' And he was meeting people, as ever enthusiastic. But, I mean, on that phone call, the thing I remember as much as anything else was the new ideas he was having. ... I think one of the reasons when he died that I felt so strongly that if we could make a movie we should, and that his family felt it, was that Douglas so desperately wanted there to be a movie."
Adams died unexpectedly of a heart attack in May 2001, after having completed a draft of the film's script and contributed several ideas for its realization. He receives a posthumous executive producer credit on the movie.
"He believed with every fiber of his being that this could be a sensational movie," Stamp, a longtime friend, said. "This could be a phenomenal movie in the way that it had been a phenomenal radio series and a phenomenal book, and I think we felt that in some ways he found that quite hard to escape its clutches. ... Because I think there was an element of him being overwhelmed by the amount that he wanted the movie to happen, ... he found it quite hard to escape the clutches of that desire. So getting that movie made was really important. But that phone call, I remember him talking about new ideas." Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy opens April 29.
Paramount To Film Invincible
aramount Pictures has bought film rights to Robert Kirkman's teen-superhero comic Invincible and set up the potential franchise starter with Paramount-based Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Circle of Confusion, Variety reported. Kirkman has been tapped to pen the story, based on the best-selling Image Comics series, about the coming of age of teen Mark Grayson, son of the world's most powerful superhero.
It's the first screenplay for Kirkman, who recently signed an overall deal with Marvel and was nommed last year for an Eisner Award for best new series, the trade paper reported. The story will focus on the father/son dynamic during the time that the son, who appears to be a normal teen, begins to exhibit his father's powers.
Jackson Sues Studio Over Rings
eter Jackson's production company, Wingnut Films Ltd., sued New Line Cinema for allegedly withholding profits, including home-video revenue, from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, the first film in the trilogy, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The suit filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles seeks unspecified damages, restitution and an order barring New Line from striking any more deals without seeking the most competitive and beneficial terms from unaffiliated third parties, the trade paper reported.
The suit against New Line and its subsidiary Katja Motion Pictures Corp. concerns only the trilogy's first Rings film, which the suit noted has grossed $314.8 million at the U.S. box office and more than $556 million internationally, not counting merchandising and video revenue. The suit makes no mention of the other two films in the trilogy. One of the principal claims of the suit is that New Line engaged in various forms of self-dealing, an issue that has been vigorously pursued by plaintiffs attorney Stanton "Larry" Stein, the trade paper reported.
New Line officials told the trade paper that they do not comment on pending litigation.
Vinge Signs New Book Deal
F author Vernor Vinge told SCI FI Wire that SF publisher Tor has signed him to a multi-book deal. Vinge will write three new novels, and several of his out-of-print books will be re-issued, starting with Marooned in Realtime, Vinge said in an interview. It was nominated for a Hugo Award after Bluejay originally published it in 1986.
Vinge's next novel under his contract with Tor is Rainbows End. "I expect Rainbows End to be turned in in a month or two, for publication early in 2006," he said. "Rainbows End takes place in California in the near future and is approximately a prequel to 'Fast Times at Fairmont High.' After Rainbows End, I expect that my next novel-length project will be a sequel to A Deepness in the Sky [1999]. This sequel wold follow Pham Nuwen and Anne Reynolt as they seek to overthrow the Emergency."
Marooned in Realime centers on Wil Brierson, the only remaining cop on Earth 50 million years into the future, as he tries to uncover the mystery of who or what killed off most of the human race not long after the 21st century. Vinge said that 50 million years is "almost as far in our future as the dinosaurs are in our past. In some ways, the novel is a murder mystery. At the same time, it is looking at the great mystery of our immediate future, from the other side of the event."
Marooned in Realtime was the sequel to The Peace War (1984), which was also nominated for a Hugo. Vinge finally won the Hugo in 1993 for his novel A Fire Among the Deep. Vinge has also won Hugos for his novellas "Fast Times at Fairmont High" in 2002 and "The Cookie Monster" in 2004. He also is known for a 1993 essay, "The Technological Singularity," in which he argues that technology will grow so exponentially that humankind will one day be unable to predict the consequences.
NBC Trims Hercules
BC has cut its planned four-hour Robert Halmi-produced Hercules miniseries to three hours and will air it on a single Monday night, May 23, rather than spread it over two nights, Variety reported. The trade paper speculated that the move was designed to take the miniseries out of competition with ABC's hit Desperate Housewives on Sunday night, which is typically when NBC airs the first part of a two-part miniseries.
Halmi's past multipart projects for NBC, such as Gulliver's Travels, aired in two parts and were Nielsen blockbusters used as sweeps month weapons, the trade paper reported. NBC is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Hampton To Adapt Strange
ew Line Cinema has set Oscar winner Christopher Hampton (Dangerous Liaisons) to adapt Susanna Clarke's best-selling supernatural novel Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell for the big screen, Variety reported. The book concerns a magician and his apprentice who use their powers in the war against Napoleon, but are eventually pitted against each other.
New Line is also developing a movie based on The Golden Compass, the first installment of Philip Pullman's fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials. A director will be named soon to replace Chris Weitz, who wrote the last draft of the script.
4400 Gears Up For Year 2
SA Network's highly rated SF series The 4400 will begin production on its second season soon and returns to the cable network in June, Zap2It reported. The show, about 4,400 people presumed missing or dead who return to Earth looking exactly as they did when they disappeared, is scheduled to premiere June 5.
When it comes back, The 4400 will pick up six months after the events of the first season, with Homeland Security agent Tom Baldwin (Joel Gretsch) having been reinstated to his job and continuing to investigate the returnees with partner Diana Skouris (Jacqueline McKenzie).
Meanwhile, would-be 4400 leader Jordan Collier (Billy Campbell) has published a book about the abductees containing some rather controversial allegations about the group, the site reported.
Other cast members returning for the show's second season include Patrick Flueger (Shawn Farrell), Mahershalalhashbaz Ali (Richard Tyler), Laura Allen (Lily Moore), Chad Faust (Kyle) and Conchita Campbell (Maia).
USA is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Dragon Ball Z Due For Consoles
tari announced that development is complete on Dragon Ball Z: Sagas, the first Dragon Ball Z action game for console systems, which will be available March 22 for the PlayStation 2, GameCube and Xbox. Since its introduction, the Dragon Ball Z video-game franchise has sold through more than 8 million units in the U.S., and the TV series is consistently ranked as one of the top-rated shows on Cartoon Network's Toonami Block, Atari said.
The release of Sagas coincides with FUNimation Productions' re-release of the first 67 episodes of Dragon Ball Z on home video.
Developed by Avalanche Software, Dragon Ball Z: Sagas offers fans and newcomers alike the opportunity to explore destructible DBZ environments and use their superhero abilities to complete exciting missions based on the first half of the animated series, from the Saiyan Saga through the Cell Games.
Owen Denies 007 Rumors
scar-nominee Clive Owen denied to Access Hollywood persistent rumors that he's a finalist for the role of James Bond in the upcoming Casino Royale, the 21st 007 movie. "They have never approached me," Owen told the show, according to a report on the MI6 Web site. "It's nothing but a rumor."
Owen's next project will be director Wolfgang Petersen's remake of The Poseidon Adventure. He'll portray the role originally played by Gene Hackman.
Cage Burns For Wicker
icolas Cage's next film will be director Neil LaBute's remake of the 1973 thriller The Wicker Man, with Millennium Films, Equity Pictures and Emmett/Furla Films producing, Variety reported. LaBute adapted the screenplay, in which a sheriff investigates the disappearance of a young girl on a remote island off the coast of Maine. His hopes of unraveling the girl's disappearance become increasingly uncertain when he discovers evidence of pagan rituals, the trade paper reported.
The movie will begin production July 15 in Vancouver, B.C.. Millennium acquired the remake rights from Canal Plus.
Townsend Stalks Night
tuart Townsend (Queen of the Damned) will star as ABC's new Kolchak in the drama pilot Night Stalker, an update of the 1970s supernatural TV series, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Gabrielle Union will also star in Night Stalker, from Touchstone TV and writer-producer Frank Spotnitz (The X-Files), the trade paper reported.
Union will play Kolchak's colleague at the paper who partners with him in his pursuit of supernatural phenomena.
Penn Writing X-Men 3
ak Penn, who got a story credit on the second X-Men movie, X2, told SCI FI Wire that he has been hired to draft the script for a third X-Men, which he added presents the same challenges as the second one. "It's not just about including everyone," Penn (Elektra) said in an interview while promoting the DVD release of his latest project, Incident at Loch Ness. "It's really more about how you give everyone more and better screen time."
Penn added: "The answer is that you can't, and you have to make really difficult choices. That's actually the most difficult thing about writing an X-Men movie. I think on X-Men 2, I counted 14 main characters, and I haven't even begun to count how many there are now. It's actually very difficult. It might not seem it, but it's a very difficult writing assignment in a lot of ways, because it's so complicated juggling all these different storylines. The movie is still coming together, but I believe that all the major players are back."
Bryan Singer, who directed the first two X-Men films, will not return for the third film. That fact, Penn said, presents yet another series of challenges, as well as opportunities. "We don't know who the director is yet, which is fantastic," Penn joked. "I love our director right now. He's no one. Here's the thing. I actually got along pretty well with Bryan. He's got very strong opinions, but fundamentally, because he did such a good job on the movies, it was hard not to. ... There are people involved, I guess, who didn't get along with Bryan, but he clearly did an excellent job with the first two films. So it's going to be difficult to follow in his footsteps. That said, there's no question that because he's got strong opinions it's a little bit easier for me as a writer, because ... whatever ... it's one less argument you need to have.
"But given that he was right about a lot of things ... . I had a bunch of arguments with Bryan that he turned out to be right about," Penn said. "That doesn't happen very often with me, in my opinion. I've worked with a number of directors who've done things that I just strongly disagreed with, and when the movie came out I felt fairly vindicated by my opinions. Bryan was one of the few people where, when I saw the final movie, I was like, 'Wow, he really was right. That's a great scene. He did a fantastic job on it.' So there are definitely some mixed feelings there. But X-Men is a universe larger than any one person involved with it. So either way it's exciting to work on, because I really do love the franchise."
Briefly Noted
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The theatrical trailer for Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith will premiere on Fox during the March 10 broadcast of The O.C.
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DreamWorks has paid about $2 million for Ghost Town, a pitch for a romantic comedy film to be directed by David Koepp and written by Koepp (War of the Worlds) and John Kamp, Variety reported.
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Tom Rothman, co-chairman of Fox Themed Entertainment (Independence Day, Fantastic Four), and TV writer-producer Stephen J. Cannell (The Rockford Files, The A-Team) will be honored with life career nods at the 31st annual Saturn Awards, to be held May 3 in Los Angeles, Variety reported.
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Batman Begins star Katie Holmes and fiancee Chris Klein have broken off their engagement, US Weekly magazine reported. The two became engaged over the 2003 Christmas holidays after dating for five years.
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Blade: Trinity star Jessica Biel will be honored as ShoWest's Female Star of Tomorrow at the convention's annual closing-night ceremonies March 17 in Las Vegas, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
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Production Weekly reported that visual-effects supervisor Stefen Fangmeier will make his directorial debut this summer on Eragon, based on Christopher Paolini's best-selling fantasy novel about a youth whose discovery of a dragon egg leads him to become a knight and battle an evil king.
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William Fichtner has been cast as the local sheriff in ABC's drama pilot Invasion, about the bizarre occurrences in a small Florida town after it is ravaged by a hurricane, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
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James Marsters, 42, told TV Guide Online that he's up for a proposed telefilm based on his Angel charcter, Spike, "as long as I could do it within, say, the next four or five years; past that, I'm too old." No such film is in the works at the moment.
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New Line is still in talks to sign Will Ferrell to star in Elf 2, the proposed sequel to his hit holiday comedy film, Variety reported.
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The second teaser trailer for Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds movie, which opens June 29, will hit theaters on March 18, Paramount announced.
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The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America has created a
new literary award to recognize outstanding science fiction and fantasy
novels that are written for the young adult market, named in honor of Andre Norton, author of more than 100 novels, including the acclaimed Witch World series.
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The teaser trailer for Michael Bay's upcoming SF action thriller film The Island, which opens July 22, will appear in theaters on March 18, attached to prints of The Ring Two, SCI FI Wire has learned.
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UPN is inviting fans of Star Trek: Enterprise to vote online for their favorite episodes from the past four seasons, which will be broadcast March 25, April 1
and April 8.
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A good-natured Halle Berry, Oscar in hand, showed up Feb. 26 to claim her Razzie "award" for worst actress for her performance in last year's Catwoman, which also took the prize for worst film of the year, the Associated Press reported.
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