Tarantino Mulls Friday The 13th?
ew Line has contacted director Quentin Tarantino about helming what would be the "ultimate" Friday the 13th movie in the wake of the success of 2003's Jason vs. Freddy, and Tarantino is reportedly interested enough to take an initial meeting, Variety reported. The director of Kill Bill is being asked to write a script for the latest incarnation of the 25-year-old slasher franchise, which features the antics of hockey-masked Jason Voorhees, the trade paper reported.
Tarantino's representatives at William Morris confirmed to Variety that a meeting with New Line is on the books, but also cautioned that Tarantino frequently takes off months, if not years, between projects.
Doctor Who Leaks Out
he BBC was forced into damage-control mode when the first episode of its new Doctor Who series leaked out onto the Internet, the Reuters news service reported.
Thousands of fans have reportedly downloaded the episode three weeks before it is scheduled to premiere on the British network, using the popular file-trading software BitTorrent and other file-trading networks, the wire service reported.
The BBC revived the venerable SF franchise in the first new series in 16 years.
Ejiofor Plays Bad In Serenity
hiwetel Ejiofor, who plays the main villain in the upcoming SF movie Serenity, told SCI FI Wire that he enjoyed working with writer-director Joss Whedon on the big-screen version of Whedon's canceled Fox TV series, Firefly. The film reunites the cast of Whedon's show, including Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk and Morena Baccarin, and features Ejiofor in the pivotal role of a character referred to simply as The Operative. "You know, Joss is just a terrific talent," Ejiofor said in an interview while promoting his new film, Woody Allen's Melinda and Melinda. "And if you've seen any of his TV shows, his line of science fiction is very intelligent and drama- and character-based. That's what he brought to this."
Like Firefly, Serenity centers on the crew of a salvage ship 500 years in the future. "I'd read the script, and I thought it was great," Ejiofor said. "I hadn't really thought of doing science fiction, but just reading the script was really inspiring. I thought it was great." Asked to describe The Operative, Ejiofor said, "I'm just hunting them down, basically."
The role is a major change of pace for the British actor, who's best known his dramatic works in such films as Amistad, Dirty Pretty Things and She Hate Me. "It's so different from anything I've done," Ejiofor said. "Like I say, SF and all that involves martial arts and wires and green screens. It's a whole different world in terms of the acting experience." Universal Pictures will release Serenity on Sept. 30. Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Episode III To Benefit Kids
ucasfilm Ltd. and 20th Century Fox announced that Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith will have its world premiere on May 12 in 10 U.S. cities to raise funds for charities that benefit children and families. "These charitable organizations are the leaders in direct services and advocacy for children and families," director George Lucas said in a statement. "I'm delighted that the screenings can help these amazing organizations, which do such important work."
At each premiere, a portion of the theater seating will be made available to disadvantaged children. The film will be released in theaters on May 19.
Hughes Spalding Children's Hospital in Atlanta will be the beneficiary of the world premiere to be held at Dragon*Con in that city.
Other charities that will benefit include the Alliance for Education in Seattle, Artists for a New South Africa in Los Angeles, the Children's Defense Fund in Washington, Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago, City Year in Boston, the Colorado Children's Campaign in Denver, the Koret Family House in San Francisco, Miami Children's Hospital Foundation in Miami and the Children's Health Fund in New York.
Episode III Trailer Goes Live
fter the theatrical trailer for Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith premiered March 10 on Fox during an episode of The O.C., it will go online at America Online and the Star Wars official fan club site, Hyperspace.com, Lucasfilm announced.
The trailer went live on Moviefone.com and Star Wars.com on March 14. Episode III hits theaters worldwide on May 19.
Lucas: Episode III Will Earn PG-13
eorge Lucas told 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl that Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith will be more violent than previous installments and will likely be the first to earn a PG-13 rating. "I don't think I would take a 5- or a 6-year-old to this," Lucas says in an interview that will be broadcast on CBS at 7 p.m. ET/PT March 13. "It's way too strong."
Episode III completes the story of Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) as he makes the transition to the evil Darth Vader. "We're going to watch him make a pact with the devil," Lucas tells Stahl.
Lucas confirms that the prequel ends on a planet composed entirely of erupting volcanos. "Yes, ... the lava at the end. ... It ends in hell," Lucas reveals. "[The film] is much more dark, ... more emotional. It's much more of a tragedy. My feeling is that it will probably be a PG-13, so it will be the first Star Wars that's a PG-13."
Potter VI Cover Image Revealed
cholastic released an image of the cover of J.K. Rowling's highly anticipated sixth Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which is due in stores on July 16. Mary GrandPré, the acclaimed illustrator of all five previous U.S. editions of the Harry Potter books, came up with the design.
The cover of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is drawn in tones of green with purple shadows and depicts 16-year-old Harry and Professor Dumbledore gazing into a basin from which a mysterious green light is emanating, the publisher said.
"In creating the Harry Potter artwork, I try to bring a certain amount of realism and believability to the characters and setting, but still add an element of wonder and the unknown," GrandPré said in a statement. "For the cover of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the mood of the art is truly eerie. I wanted the colors to be strong, and I chose upward lighting and dramatic shadows to convey a kind of surreal place and time."
Scholastic also announced the simultaneous July 16 release of a deluxe edition of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which will include a 32-page insert on special paper at the end of the book with near-scale reproductions of GrandPré's interior art, as well as a never-before-seen piece of full-color art for the frontispiece. The book will come in a foil-stamped cardboard slipcase printed with the cover image and will also include a blind-stamped cloth case, full-color endpapers printed with the jacket art from the regular edition, luxurious foil and a wraparound jacket featuring exclusive, suitable-for-framing art from GrandPré. The deluxe edition will be a total of 704 pages and have a retail value of $60, Scholastic said.
Enterprise To Get Spiked?
he Boston Herald reported that cable network Spike TV may be mulling whether to pick up UPN's canceled Star Trek: Enterprise. "It would definitely be something we would look at, and we know how devoted the show's fans are," Spike TV spokeswoman Debra Fazio told the newspaper.
UPN has said the current fourth season will be Enterprise's last, with the series finale set to air in May. Production on the final episode was expected to wrap this month. A UPN spokesperson told the Herald that the network's decision to cancel Enterprise is final, and no other network has come forward with an offer to pick the show up.
But fans have been vocal about lobbying for someone to pick the show up for a fifth season, and have even raised funds to pay for it themselves, claiming more than $3 million in pledges toward an estimated $36 million goal.
Spike TV already holds the rights to reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
Spike Backs Off Enterprise Talk
spokeswoman for Spike TV backed off comments that the cable network was considering picking up UPN's canceled Star Trek: Enterprise in an interview with SCI FI Wire. The Boston Herald had quoted Debra Fazio saying: "It would definitely be something we would look at, and we know how devoted the show's fans are."
But Fazio clarified her remarks on March 8. "The quote was misconstrued," she said in an interview. "We can't say yes or no until it's proposed to the network, and that hasn't happened yet." Fazio added: "That's not something that we're actively going out and pursuing."
UPN announced earlier that it is canceling the low-rated Enterprise at the end of the current fourth season. No other network has stepped forward to pick up the show, and executive producer Rick Berman previously said that he was not interested in shopping the series around.
Fans, meanwhile, have been actively campaigning to revive the series for a fifth season, going so far as to raise funds to finance a fifth season themselves. They claim pledges of more than $3 million toward their goal of $36 million.
Boyle Talks 28 Days Sequel
anny Boyle told SCI FI Wire that his follow-up to the 2002 hit zombie film 28 Days Later, called 28 Weeks Later, will deal with the aftermath of the first movie. "It's got a very good idea in it," Boyle said in an interview while promoting his latest film, Millions. "[The idea] is that ... Britain has been emptied. There's nobody there. It's completely dead. And six months later the Americans arrive to reboot it back up again, particularly the franchises, obviously."
In the first movie, a deadly virus devastated the nation, turning most of its population into the running undead. The sequel, which Boyle will produce but won't direct, is "sort of to reintroduce life into the country," Boyle said. "So that's the premise of it. It's got a good idea in it. I like that."
28 Weeks Later will feature a new cast, Boyle added. "It won't be the people who were in the first one," he said. "They're too busy. Naomie Harris is doing [the sequels to] Pirates of the Caribbean, and Cillian Murphy is in Batman [Begins]. They're doing really well. So good luck to them, really."
Boyle said that he is also commited to direct an SF film entitled Sunshine. "We're going to do [Sunshine] next," Boyle said. "28 Weeks Later will be done, but I probably won't be directing that. I'll kind of be an executive producer. [Producer] Andrew Macdonald is looking for a director at the moment for that."
Boyle Forecasts Sunshine
irector Danny Boyle told SCI FI Wire that his next film will be Sunshine, an SF drama about a perilous mission to the sun. "A section of the sun is failing, and it has to be restarted," Boyle said in an interview while promoting his latest feature, Millions. "So they build this bomb, which is vast, absolutely enormous."
Boyle (28 Days Later) added: "We've been saying it's the size of Kansas, but you can take any reference point. It's just something on a scale that you think, 'Whoa!' It will be built in space, where there's no limit to the size of something you can build. And [a crew] sets off to the sun. What's happened is that a mission has gone before them, seven years earlier, and has failed. And they come across that mission, or what remains of that mission, quite close to the sun. To tell you any more than that would kind of spoil it. Also, we haven't really finished [the script] yet. We're still working on it." Sunshine will likely be released in 2006.
Galactica Podcast Begins
CIFI.COM has begun posting "podcast" commentaries—MP3 audio files that can be accessed on the Internet or downloaded to a portable MP3 player—about upcoming episodes of SCI FI Channel's original series Battlestar Galactica.
The five-week podcast event of DVD-style audio commentaries feeds fans behind-the-scenes details from series creator and executive producer Ronald D. Moore about the final five episodes, leading up the season's finale on April 1.
The commentaries are meant to supplement the episode and may contain spoilers. New commentaries will be posted each Friday in advance of the upcoming episodes, which air Fridays at 10 p.m. ET. Season two of Galactica will premiere on SCI FI in July.
A weekly audio feed of SCI FI Wire, meanwhile, is now available for podcast through the link in the column to the right. The feed will contain a summary of SCI FI Wire stories.
Phillips Back In SF In Island
than Phillips, who played the alien cook Neelix for seven years on Star Trek: Voyager, told SCI FI Wire that he's glad to be back in the SF fold as a clone in Michael Bay's upcoming action thriller film The Island. "It's nice that I don't have to wear the makeup," Phillips said during a break in filming last week on the movie's set in Downey, Calif. "I really appreciate that. I save myself five hours a day of sitting in a makeup chair."
In The Island, Phillips plays Jones Three-Echo, one of several "agnates," or human clones, living in a top-secret compound. He co-stars with Scarlett Johansson and Ewan McGregor (Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith). The Island is "science fiction, but it's more of a thriller that takes place in the future," Phillips said. "It's not aliens, and it's not outer space, things like that. It's more like the evolution of science and what's happening with genetics and things like that."
Surprisingly, Phillips and McGregor never talked between takes about their participation in two of SF's biggest franchises. "I think he knows I was on Star Trek for seven years, and I know he did two Star Wars movies, and we never really ... talked about that," Phillips said. "No, that's weird." The Island opens July 22.
Bay Gave Life To The Island
alter F. Parkes, who is producing Michael Bay's upcoming SF movie The Island, told SCI FI Wire that the director brought his signature action to the project, which started as a spec script about human cloning by Caspian Tredwell-Owen. "Well, I think two things happened in development," Parkes said in an interview during a break in filming on the movie's set in Downey, Calif. "Absolutely ... there is that signature big [action] set piece in the middle of the movie now. Not that the movie didn't call for that. This was, at its heart, a story about characters who are on the run. So it makes sense. But there were also many other issues of the story that we had to change."
The Island stars Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson as human clones raised in a completely secure environment who discover the truth of their existence and attempt to flee, pursued in various ways by armed representatives of the company that created them.
Parks said that Bay also introduced a provocative question: Who has the right to survive, the clone or the original human? "The question arises, does the clone have as much [right] to the life out there?" Parkes said. Ultimately, Alias writers Alex Kurtzman-Counter and Roberto Orci will also receive screenplay credit on The Island.
It was DreamWorks honcho Steven Spielberg who brought Bay onto the project. "For this scale project, there is really a small list of directors, because they have to deal with action, and they have to really be able to create worlds, and those are two things that Michael's ... shown [he has the] ability to do," Parkes said, referring to Bay's movies, which include Pearl Harbor and Armageddon. "The other thing about Michael is, unlike a lot of modern directors, he's an expert in physical effects, as opposed to [computer-generated] effects. His CG work is great, but what's amazing about Michael Bay is what he can actually create that will be photographed by a camera lens." The Island opens July 22.
Miller Talks Sin City Direction
rank Miller told SCI FI Wire that he was as surprised as anyone that he ultimately co-directed Sin City, the upcoming big-screen adaptation of his popular graphic novel series of the same name, in partnership with Robert Rodriguez (Spy Kids, From Dusk Till Dawn). The film aims to recreate the mostly black-and-white panels of a printed Sin City page and depicts three of Miller's stories, "Sin City," "That Yellow Bastard" and "The Big Fat Kill," with Mickey Rourke starring as a vengeance-seeking lug and Bruce Willis as a cop with a bad heart. "There were two points in my process as a director," Miller said in an interview. "One of them was when Robert first said, 'Come on, jump in.' And then he said, 'What do you want to direct?'"
Miller is a comic writer whose only previous Hollywood experiences include writing the ill-fated films RoboCop 2 and RoboCop 3 and writing/creating the TV series Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot. "At first we were talking about directing different segments" of Sin City, Miller said. "Then [Rodriguez] just shook his head at one point and said, 'I need you every day, and also I don't want to hang you out to dry. So why don't we just co-direct the whole way through?' I went 'Cool.' Talk about going to school. It was great. Later, the Director's Guild gave him some trouble and said I couldn't get credit. Robert and I were in his office, and he said, 'Well, Frank, maybe I'll give you sole credit.' I said, 'Robert, I can't take that. We're co-directors. I'm not going to take your credit.' And he said, 'I guess I'll just quit the Director's Guild' [which he did]. I mean, what a mensch." Sin City, which also stars Rosario Dawson, Nick Stahl, Clive Owen, Brittany Murphy and Jessica Alba, opens on April 1.
Electra Will Trip The Rift
CI FI Channel announced that Carmen Electra has joined the voice cast of its computer-animated series Tripping the Rift. The second 13-episode season is slated to debut in July.
Electra will voice the sexy and brilliant love slave "Six," the most advanced android ever created. Electra joins a voice cast that includes Stephen Root as ship captain Chode, Maurice LaMarche as Gus, Gayle Garfinkle as T'Nuk, Rick Jones as Whip and John Melendez as the halting voice of the Jupiter 42, or Bob, as he's known to the crew.
Tripping the Rift will anchor an evening of SCI FI original programming on Wednesdays, featuring Ghost Hunters, which returns for a second season, and the new alternative reality series Master Blasters.
Shrek 4 Already Developing
reamWorks has begun developing Shrek 4, hiring Tim Sullivan to write the script, while a third installment nears preproduction, Variety reported. The first two films grossed more than $1 billion worldwide and have been the cornerstone of DreamWorks' vaunted computer animation operation, the trade paper reported.
Sullivan landed on DreamWorks' radar by working on several feature animation projects for DreamWorks honcho Jeffrey Katzenberg, the trade paper reported. Sullivan was invited to pitch a take for a fourth Shrek, and the studio sparked to his idea.
DreamWorks is plotting a May 2007 release for Shrek 3, which has Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz and Antonio Banderas once again voicing the signature characters.
Reeves To Play Sinbad
eanu Reeves is set to star in The 8th Voyage of Sinbad, a fantasy film from Columbia Pictures and director Rob Cohen (xXx), Variety reported. Neal Moritz will produce the movie, which will feature Reeves as Sinbad the sailor, the legendary character from The Arabian Nights.
The film, set in eighth-century China, deals with Sinbad and his shipmates as they embark on a quest to find the Lamp of Aladdin. Along the way, they meet a beautiful empress and battle fantastical creatures, as well as a rebellious Chinese general who threatens the kingdom with his supernatural powers, the trade paper reported.
Charlie Mitchell is rewriting a script by Cormac and Marianne Wibberly and Tedi Sarafian.
Columbia's handled the material before: Special-effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen worked on The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (1958), The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974) and Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977) for the studio.
Matrix Online Sneak Planned
arner Brothers Interactive Entertainment and SEGA unveiled a sneak preview of their highly anticipated game The Matrix Online, starting March 12 at 12 p.m. PT. The Matrix Online sneak preview is the final phase of beta testing before the game's official launch on March 22.
During the sneak preview, which will end at 9 p.m. PT on March 15, players will get a chance to see the newest version of the game, including many story elements from the continuation of the Matrix trilogy of films.
Players can get more information and sign up at the game's official Web site.
Writer Entered The Matrix Online
aul Chadwick told SCI FI Wire that writing the storyline for the upcoming Matrix Online game was about as mysterious as the inner workings of the Matrix universe itself. "I received a phone call from the Matrix Web site editor in July 2003," Chadwick said in an interview. "I was told that the Wachowski brothers [creators of The Matrix] wanted me to write something special on a project. They just didn't know what it was just yet. I was pretty sure it wasn't a Matrix movie."
It turned out to be The Matrix Online, the highly anticipated massively multiplayer online role-playing game, which makes its debut March 22. The game had already been in development for nearly two years, but the storyline was not gelling, Chadwick said. Chadwick came in after meeting with the brothers W and receiving his marching orders. "They had a lot of ideas," said Chadwick (the Concrete series of comics). "They had a theme for the game, which was peace and the things people do to screw it up. They had an idea for initiating an event they had in mind, sketches for some of the characters and the main thing that would be attractive to the thousands of gameplayers who would log in for many hours each week, which was to liberate the Bluepills."
Chadwick's story focuses on a troubled truce a year after the conclusion of the events of the movie The Matrix: Revolutions. The exiles are exploring their freedom. The machines are at peace. But there is the impending threat of the awakening of too may of the Bluepills disrupting the Matrix. And of course there are the humans who, as always, are not on their best behavior and are constantly testing the system.
Chadwick said that he wrote four drafts of the Matrix Online storyline between July 2003 and January 2004 and was challenged by the online nature of the game. "Initially I couldn't conceive of environments that could contain all these people at once," he said. "The whole social aspect of the game kind of blew my mind. The idea of people spending hours a week interacting with people they had never met face to face was an amazing concept to consider when creating the storyline."
Chadwick also encountered challenges creating levels of suspense suitable for mass participation, manipulating characters and action situations, detailing the intricate missions and, most important, making his creative notions mesh with the technical requirements of the game. "I would ask for the sun, the moon and the stars," Chadwick said with a laugh. "The technical people, if I was lucky, would come back with the sun and the moon. But it all seemed to work out."
The Matrix Online, from Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment, Sega and Monolith Productions, has a five-year, evolving storyline. Only the first year is plotted out, but Chadwick said that he would be more than happy to stay on staff for the entire five-year run.
Concrete Hard Up Again
riter Paul Chadwick told SCI FI Wire that his unorthodox comic-book hero, Concrete, has emerged from a six-year hiatus to celebrate the 20th anniversary of its creation with a new Dark Horse series entitled Concrete: The Human Dilemma. The first three issues of the six-issue miniseries, about the speechwriter whose mind has been transplanted into a stone behemoth, are currently available in comic shops.
"I can't believe it's been 20 years," Chadwick said in an interview. (He also created the storyline for the upcoming Matrix Online game.) "I had a five-year plan when I first started Concrete. I was going to do comics for five years and then move to New York and become an illustrator. I didn't know at the time that comics would capture me."
The Human Dilemma centers on Concrete, a man who has been transformed into a being made of a concrete-like substance, as he is approached by a multi-millionaire businessman who wants the stone giant to come out in favor of a controversial program to encourage young people to be voluntarily sterilized to curb population growth. As with all Concrete adventures, the story is equal parts drama and humor, coupled with the hero's ongoing agenda when it comes to social issues.
"Concrete was never a character where there was only one story to tell," Chadwick said. "It's never been about getting vengeance for the great wrong that was done to him. It's basically been about making the best of life and going out into the world and having great adventures."
Chadwick, whose early comic work for the Matrix Web site, entitled Deja Vu, has been reprinted as part of the Matrix Comics volume two collection, hopes to return to Concrete on occasion for the rest of his life. "The character never ages, so I can keep using it as a vehicle to respond to events in my life."
Nakata Has Ring Deja Vu
imon Baker, who stars alongside Naomi Watts in the upcoming horror sequel The Ring Two, told SCI FI Wire that he observed an episode of deja vu in director Hideo Nakata, who also helmed the original Japanese Ring films. "I witnessed something very interesting the day we were doing a camera test," Baker said in an interview. "You know how Samara, the little girl with all the hair in her face, does the backwards walking thing?" he said, referring to a technique in which the girl is photographed walking backwards and the film is reversed to give her an otherworldy gait. "We were doing a camera test for that, and I looked over at Hideo. He had his hands sort of up on his face and he was just shaking his head quietly."
Baker (Land of the Dead) added: "I said to him, 'Are you OK?' And he said, 'This image ... this walking ... .' And he said it was seven or eight years ago, or however long, when he first did it in the Japanese Ring [entitled Ringu]. He said, 'Now here I am on a Hollywood soundstage and still doing it. Now I'm camera-testing it [again].'"
Nakata is the originator of the hit Japanese films that spawned 2002's hit supernatural film, which starred Naomi Watts, and the upcoming English-language sequel. Gore Verbinski directed the first U.S. Ring, and Nakata makes his English-language directorial debut with the new Ring Two.
Baker said, "It was interesting to watch him have that little moment and think, 'Wow, he came up with that': filming it backwards and having the Samara character do that in the very first Ring. They've made two in Japan, and now they're onto their second one in America, and he was there when they came up with it. It was very cool." The Ring Two opens March 18.
Heaven Marks A Change
roducer Walter F. Parkes told SCI FI Wire that one of his next films, the supernatural Just Like Heaven, represents a departure for him and his partner, Laurie MacDonald: a romantic comedy. "It's a lovely story, and ... one of the most fun things to do is to meld genres," Parkes said in an interview.
Just Like Heaven—which was originally titled If Only It Were True, based on Marc Levy's novel—stars Reese Witherspoon as Lauren, a workaholic doctor who has an accident just after achieving her career goals. Mark Ruffalo (13 Going on 30) stars as Arthur, a slacker young man who moves into Lauren's apartment six months later. "That night he discovers a young woman is living in the apartment, saying, 'Who are you? And [why] are you in my apartment?' And he says, ... 'Who are you, and why are you in my apartment?' ... As they try to discover what in the world this is, they make more stunning discoveries, ... and the story deals with them trying to understand why this is happening, ... but while they're doing it, they kind of fall in love." Just Like Heaven is slated for release in September.
No Man's Land Gears Up
roducer Walter F. Parkes told SCI FI Wire that he and partner Laurie MacDonald are in preproduction on a new SF thriller film titled No Man's Land. Parkes (The Island) described the film as War of the Worlds meets Chinatown. "It's really good, ... because it's kind of a melding of science fiction and noir cop fiction. Just yesterday, [makeup guru] Rick Baker just started working on designs for the aliens." Baker just worked with Parkes and MacDonald on the upcoming horror sequel film The Ring Two.
Les Bohem, who wrote and executive produced SCI FI Channel's original miniseries Steven Spielberg Presents Taken, wrote the script for No Man's Land. No director has yet been attached.
"It takes place in New York City eight years after ... the alien invasion that we lost," Parkes said in an interview. "And it imagines New York City kind of like Paris during the Vichy government [under Nazi occupation during World War II], where we've all sort of just given up. And there's this race of aliens living there that get all the good tables, and the shops are kind of collaborating. And there's an incipient underground movement to take the Earth back."
Parkes added: "The main character is a cop who lost his wife when the aliens destroyed London, and so he's given up trying. Just trying to keep his [eye] on his eight square blocks of Manhattan, his beat. And there's a murder there, and it seems to be the murder of a human by a 'blue' [an alien]. And he doesn't believe [it]. He thinks there's something fishy, and in finding the truth of that murder, [he] inadvertently reignites the rebellion, which will eventually take the Earth back."
Halloween Co-Creator Hill Dies
ebra Hill, the longtime producing partner of Halloween director John Carpenter, died March 7 in Los Angeles after fighting cancer for more than a year, according to The Hollywood Reporter. She was 54.
Carpenter worked with Hill on the classic 1978 horror film Halloween, which the two co-wrote. Hill was one of the few female producers who embraced movies in the horror and action genres and had been closely involved in writing and casting her next movie, Rupert Wainwright's $17 million remake of Carpenter's 1980 ghost tale The Fog. Hill co-wrote the original version of The Fog with Carpenter as their second project together. Set to start shooting in two weeks in Vancouver, B.C., the movie will be dedicated "to keeping her memory alive in film," producer David Foster told the trade paper.
Born in Haddonfield, N.J., Hill grew up in Philadelphia. After serving as a script supervisor on The Streets of San Francisco and Assault on Precinct 13, on which she also assisted Carpenter in the editing room, Hill's breakout came when she co-wrote and produced Halloween. Hill and Carpenter reteamed with original star Jamie Lee Curtis for Halloween II and also produced Halloween III: Season of the Witch, Halloween 5, Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers and 2002's Halloween: Resurrection.
Hill also produced Carpenter's Escape From New York, starring Kurt Russell, and its 1996 sequel, Escape From L.A.
In lieu of flowers, Hill requested that donations be sent to Los Angeles' Our House and New York's Friends in Deed to help parents of adult children dying of cancer.
Hill is survived by her parents, Jilda and Frank Hill of Cherry Hill, N.J., and her brother, Bob Hill, of Jacksonville, Fla.
Priest Is A Vampire Western
ony's Screen Gems has bought the spec script Priest, a vampire western, by new writer Cory Goodman, Variety reported. Mike De Luca, Sam Raimi and Josh Donen will produce, the trade paper reported. No director is attached.
Priest deals with a warrior priest who disobeys church law by teaming with a young sheriff and a priestess to track down a band of renegade vampires who have kidnapped his niece, the trade paper reported.
Tyler Cast In Supernatural Show
isha Tyler has been tapped to co-star opposite Jennifer Love Hewitt in CBS' untitled John Gray drama pilot, about a young newlywed (Hewitt) who communicates with the dead, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Tyler (24) will play the woman's best friend in the Touchstone TV project, the trade paper reported.
Diesel Swims With Rockfish
in Diesel's One Race Films production company is partnering with Blur Studio to make a computer-animated feature film based on the indie short Rockfish, Variety reported. Diesel will also voice the lead character in the SF action movie, about a man on an alien planet trying to catch a giant "rock fish" that lives underground and disrupts the planet's miners, the trade paper reported.
One Race is seeking independent financing for the production, which it hopes to bring in for under $30 million, the trade paper reported. Diesel will produce with One Race partner George Zakk and Blur creative director Tim Miller, who wrote and directed the short and will helm the feature.
Diesel's Tigon Studio video-game production company may also produce a game connected to the feature, the trade paper reported.
Diesel provided the voice of the giant in Warner Brothers' critically acclaimed The Iron Giant.
Penn Pulls Off Loch Ness Hoax
ak Penn told SCI FI Wire that his improvised mockumentary Incident at Loch Ness came about through a series of circumstances, the most important of which was a commitment from his friend, German director Werner Herzog, to star in the film as himself on a quest to unravel the mysteries of the Loch Ness monster. "First of all, it all happened so quickly," said Penn, who is best known as a screenwriter of such films as Elektra, Inspector Gadget and X2 (on which he received a story credit). "I was working with Werner at the time, and I had this idea to do this kind of digital hoax about the Loch Ness monster. I ran it by Werner, and he said he'd love to be involved. Once he said he wanted [to do it], I kind of built the movie around him, instead of just doing my original conception of it."
Penn, who directed and (with Herzog) co-produced Incident at Loch Ness, added: "I'd wanted to make a movie about being friends with Werner and knowing him and being a huge fan of his work [which includes Nosferatu the Vampyre and Fitzcarraldo]. I actually had remarked to people that I wanted to make a movie called Herzog in Wonderland, about Werner living in Hollywood. So when he said he wanted to do this, all the ideas I had coalesced into one crazy conglomeration of movies" that tips its hat to everything from The Blair Witch Project to Spinal Tap to Herzog's own Fitzcarraldo, Penn said.
Incident at Loch Ness received a limited theatrical release last year, but Penn said that he shot the film on a budget of barely $1 million, with an eye toward turning a profit once the film hits the DVD marketplace. As a result, he loaded the DVD with extras that include deleted scenes, commentaries, behind-the-scenes featurettes and 13 easter eggs, some of which build on the film's main joke. "There's a lot on the DVD that I'm happy with. There's a documentary, a hidden documentary that was made by my line producer that's excellent, ... called The Non-Evidence: The Making of Incident at Loch Ness. There's a lot of stuff that I actually like.
"Werner does a couple of commentaries, and the real commentary, if you can find it, is really good," Penn added. "I like all of it, to be honest with you. Maybe there's a scene or two that I just kind of included, either because somebody wanted me to or to try to be helpful, but for the most part all the deleted scenes in there are scenes I really like that I wasn't able to include or were extras that help explain the world. You know what I like? Now that I think about it, I actually like the two deleted scenes, which are experts talking about how the special effects couldn't have been done. I find those pretty amusing." Incident at Loch Ness is available now on DVD.
Roberts Rides Broomsticks
mma Roberts will star in the teen fantasy-comedy Bras and Broomsticks for Fox 2000, based on Sarah Mlynowski's book, Variety reported. The story centers on an angst-ridden teenage girl who discovers that her socially inept younger sister, and not she, has inherited her divorced mother's magical powers, the trade paper reported.
Susan Cartsonis (What Women Want) is producing through her Store Front Pictures production company.
Roberts, the 13-year-old niece of Julia Roberts, is also co-starring with Sara Paxton in Fox 2000's mermaid fantasy film Aquamarine, which Cartsonis is also producing. Elizabeth Allen is the director on Aquamarine, which is now shooting in Australia.
Pulse Beating Again?
ulse—the on-again, off-again U.S. remake of the Japanese horror film Kairo—is back on the front burner, but without director Wes Craven, the Moviehole Web site reported. Filming begins in Romania, with Joel Soisson and Mike Leahy (Feast) producing for Dimension Films, the site reported.
The original Japanese film centers on a a group of young Tokyo residents who are strangely affected by a friend's suicide. The U.S. remake was shelved because studio heads thought it was too similar to The Ring, which was itself a remake of a Japanese horror movie.
Tiptree Honors Two Authors
he 2004 James Tiptree Jr. Literary Award, presented annually to a work that explores and expands gender roles in science fiction and fantasy, goes to two winners this year: Joe Haldeman, for his novel Camouflage, and Finnish author Johanna Sinisalo, for her novel Troll: A Love Story. The awards will be presented at Gaylaxicon, which takes place in Boston July 1-4. The winners may also be honored at WisCon 29 in Madison, Wis., May 27-30.
Each winner will receive $1,000, an original artwork created specifically for the award and the signature chocolate that always accompanies the Tiptree Award.
The James Tiptree Jr. Award is named in honor of SF author Alice Sheldon, who wrote under the pseudonym James Tiptree Jr.
Reitman May Helm Super-Ex
egency Enterprises is in talks with Ivan Reitman to direct the comedy film Super Ex, from Emmy-winning Simpsons writer/producer Don Payne, Variety reported.
The movie centers on a man who discovers that the needy, manipulative woman he's dating is a superhero. When he breaks up with her, she uses her super powers against him, the trade paper reported.
The development deal with Regency would represent the first helming project in four years for Reitman (Evolution).
Incredibles DVD Is Super
rad Bird, writer and director of the Oscar-winning animated film The Incredibles, told SCI FI Wire that he had the audience in mind when creating the extra features for the upcoming DVD. "Just because you could get away with doing less—and a lot of people do—I don't think you ought to assume that your audience deserves less than your best," Bird said in an interview at Pixar Studios in Emeryville, Calif. "If you want to become outmoded, I think you can start with starting to disrespect your audience and not give them your best. And I think you owe it to bring your A game. And quite frankly, this is what's going to be sticking around."
The Incredibles DVD features a new animated short titled Jack-Jack Attack; a video essay by writer Sarah Vowell, who voiced teenage daughter Violet in the film; Boundin', the short that accompanied The Incredibles in theaters; and an original episode from a "lost" pilot for an animated series of questionable quality starring Mr. Incredible and Frozone, with optional commentary by voice actors Craig T. Nelson and Samuel L. Jackson. The disc also includes several easter eggs, which viewers can find by clicking a special icon on certain menu screens.
Bird said that many of the ideas that ended up on the DVD were suggested by the film's creative staff of writers, animators and storyboarders. "[It's] our last opportunity to play with these characters that we've grown to love," he said. "You kind of create a family when you make a film, and there's a bunch of people, and they're funny and they're smart and they have lots of ideas and they want to play with different things. And so it's a way for us to also do things that are smaller ideas and kind of pack them in there. And I like DVDs that are just jam-packed with chocolaty goodness [laughs]. I think that just like we don't analyze what we can get away with, or anything like that, in terms of the movie, we try to make movies that we want to see. We've made a disc that we would want to own." The Incredibles will be released on DVD March 15.
New Line Revives Phantasm
ew Line Cinema is in final talks with filmmaker Don Coscarelli to bring the cult horror film Phantasm back to the big screen, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The first Phantasm, which Coscarelli wrote and directed, was released in 1979 and told the story of a young boy named Mike and his friends, who face off against a mysterious grave robber known as the Tall Man and his killer flying spheres. The film spawned three sequels, all of which were made by Coscarelli.
Coscarelli would act as producer on the new version, in which the Tall Man travels from town to town turning the dead into his own army and using his deadly spheres against anyone who opposes him. Mike, who is developing psychic powers, and his brother try to stop him. The movie is being developed as a relaunch and as a possible trilogy about Mike's coming of age, the trade paper reported.
Coscarelli said three elements made the franchise stand out in the horror field: the Tall Man, played by Angus Scrimm, the spheres and the setting.
Coscarelli Talks New Phantasm
on Coscarelli, creator of the Phantasm films, told SCI FI Wire that it's been a long and bumpy road to resurrecting the horror franchise and detailed how he wound up in final talks with New Line Cinema to oversee a fifth Tall Man tale. "About a year ago it became apparent that there was renewed interest by the studios in the cult-classic horror franchises from the late '70s and early '80s," Coscarelli said in an interview. "I was subsequently solicited by a number of executives about Phantasm."
Coscarelli wrote and directed the first four installments. "The general take these execs had was to do a generic remake and cast it with young actor-types from the WB network," he said. "This did not appeal to me. But I did give it some thought and came upon an approach which I thought might work for the 'mall audiences' these executives covet, and at the same time also appeal to our hardcore, longtime 'phans.' That's no easy task, by the way."
Coscarelli, riding the success of his 2002 cult hit Bubba Ho-Tep, started collaborating on a script with Phantasm comic creator Stephen Romano. He also met Jeff Katz, a "genuine horror fan" and New Line executive. "[Katz] 'got' the concept and was rabid in his enthusiasm to bring us into the studio," Coscarelli said. "He was also keenly aware that Angus Scrimm [the Tall Man, the films' creepy and lethal grave robber,] and Reggie Bannister [Reggie] would be crucial to the success of any further Phantasms. When I asked Angus if he was ready to pull on the tall boots and continue his invasion of the planet, he said, 'Tell them I'm not ready to hang up the old balls yet.' And Reggie is chomping at the bit to break out his four-barrel shotgun and burn some dwarf ass."
Coscarelli added: "By the way, the response from the Phantasm fans to the announcement has been overwhelming ... and humbling, actually. Now the pressure is on to make something good. I won't be directing this Phantasm, just producing. After all, how many Phantasms can one make in a life?"
Briefly Noted
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The editor of the American Family Association's journal is attacking We Are Family, a music video sent to 60,000 schools, featuring SpongeBob SquarePants and the Muppets' Miss Piggy promoting tolerance of diversity, as endorsing homosexuality, TV Guide Online reported.
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The official Star Wars Web site has released a cast and crew list for Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith, confirming among other things the appearance of familiar characters such as Gov. Tarkin, played by former Farscape star Wayne Pygram.
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Anna Faris has signed a deal to star in the upcoming Scary Movie 4, the fourth installment in the genre-spoofing film franchise, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
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Oscar winner Ellen Burstyn is joining Aidan Quinn in NBC's supernatural drama pilot Book of Daniel.
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The Latino Review Web site reported that Superman Returns director Bryan Singer plans on using stock footage of Marlon Brando as Jor-El, which was originally shot by director Richard Donner for 1980's Superman II, but never used.
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The SyFyPortal Web site quoted Band of Brothers writer Erik Jendresen saying that Paramount has asked him to draft a script for a proposed 11th Star Trek film, set in the era after Enterprise and before the original series.
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After a two-year courtship, 20th Century Fox Animation president Chris Meledandri has struck a deal to turn the Dr. Seuss classic Horton Hears a Who into a computer-animated film, Variety reported.
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In the latest video production diary from the set of Peter Jackson's King Kong, Naomi Watts and Andy Serkis discuss the filming of a pivotal scene, in which Watts' Ann Darrow finds herself in Kong's giant hand.
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George Lucas, whose Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith hits theaters May 19, will be honored at the ShoWest convention in Las Vegas with a newly invented award, the ShoWest Galactic Achievement Award, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
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Lions Gate Entertainment will release a selection of movies, including The Punisher, Total Recall and Saw, that can be played on Sony's PSP handheld device, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
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The first season of TV's The Pretender will come out on DVD on March 22, Fox Home Entertainment announced.
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Warner Brothers on March 4 announced the start of production in Berlin of V for Vendetta, the film version of Alan Moore's dystopic graphic novel, to be produced by the Wachowski brothers and Joel Silver and starring Natalie Portman, James Purefoy and Stephen Rea.
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Yahoo! Movies has posted a seven-minute behind-the-scenes featurette about the making of Michael Bay's upcoming SF thriller film The Island, which opens July 22.
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Dondre Whitfield, Graham Beckel and Angel Desai have been cast in the Fox supernatural drama pilot Briar & Graves, about a priest and a scientist who investigate religious mysteries, Variety reported.
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SCI FI Wire's Photo Gallery features three new images from the upcoming SF thriller film The Island, provided exclusively to SCI FI Wire by DreamWorks. The movie opens July 22.
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