Covert Serenity Promo Afoot?
wo short film clips have appeared online that may be the beginning of a viral marketing campaign for the upcoming SF film Serenity, based on the short-lived FOX TV series Firefly. The first film clip, which features a title card reading "R. Tam, Session 416, Second Excerpt" was posted on the iFilm Web site on Aug. 16. It features a man who appears to be choking, followed by a brief appearance by Summer Glau, who plays a character named River Tam in the film.
A second clip, labeled "Session 1 Excerpt," was discovered on Aug. 23 and shows more of Glau being interviewed by a man possibly portrayed by Serenity writer/director Joss Whedon himself, with clear references to characters, situations and places mentioned in Firefly. The existence of the second clip was revealed on various Firefly fan groups and message boards by a poster using the name "John Dowses" which, as noted by several fans, is an anagram for Joss Whedon.
A representative from Universal, the studio releasing the film, told SCI FI Wire that she had no knowledge about the origin of the footage. Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM. Serenity opens Sept. 30.
Alias' Garner Guarded About Life
lias star Jennifer Garner told InStyle magazine that she became "hyper-protective" about her marriage to Ben Affleck and her impending motherhood after the news of her pregnancy "got out when I was in the middle of my first trimester," according to an Associated Press report.
"I hadn't even had a chance to tell my friends," Garner told the magazine. "That alone was so ugly."
Garner and Affleck were wed June 29. "We were able to have a beautiful, private wedding, and I couldn't be happier," the 33-year-old actress said.
Garner added: "If we were just chatting I would tell you everything, but I feel uncomfortable with people reading too much about my pregnancy or my relationship. It grosses me out. It's too sweet to read about or dissect or talk about."
Garner's interview is in the September issue of InStyle, now on newsstands. Alias returns to ABC Sept. 29 in its new Thursday night timeslot.
Head, K9, Guest On Who
nthony Stewart Head, best known as Giles in TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, will guest-star in the upcoming second season of the BBC's hit SF show Doctor Who, the BBC Web site reported. Head will appear in an episode in which the Doctor (David Tennant) battles the evil Krillitanes, the site reported.
The episode will also mark the return of Elisabeth Sladen, who'll be making her first TV appearance as Sarah Jane Smith since 1983.
And the Doctor will also be reunited with his faithful robot dog, K9, last seen as the companion to Tom Baker's Doctor between 1977 to 1981.
"I am delighted to have been invited back on board the series, and a little gathered rust is no object to a fully functional K9," John Leeson, the original voice of the robot dog, told the BBC Web site.
The episode will be seen in the United Kingdom next spring. In it, the Doctor and his team investigate sinister events at a modern-day comprehensive school.
Campbell A Lock For Spidey 3
ruce Campbell told SCI FI Wire that he'll no doubt make an appearance in Spider-Man 3, directed by longtime friend Sam Raimi, but that he has no idea yet what he'll play. "Oh, I think I'll be in it," Campbell said in an interview while promoting the upcoming SCI FI Channel original movie, Man With the Screaming Brain, which he wrote, produced, directed and stars in. "But in classic big-budget movies they don't tell you anything, and they won't tell you anything."
Campbell has a tendency to turn up in films directed by his Evil Dead partner and pal Raimi. In the first Spider-Man movie he played the ring announcer who provided Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) with the nickname Spider-Man. And in Spider-Man 2 he was the snooty usher who didn't let Parker into the theater to catch Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst) star in a play.
"When I get the [Spider-Man 3] script it won't be the full script," Campbell said. "It will only be my pages. And then my name will be stamped across each page and numbered. They take this stuff really seriously. So I don't even know. The only thing I can probably say is that I will probably be enlisted to torment Spider-Man. That seems to be my job." Spider-Man 3 will be released in 2007. Man With the Screaming Brain premieres Sept. 10 at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
Halo Film Deal Sealed
ox and Universal have closed their deal to make a movie based on Microsoft's hit video game Halo, with plans to release it in 2007, Variety reported. Universal will oversee the production and is handling domestic distribution, while Fox will take foreign distribution. The studios will split revenues 50-50 out of a shared pot, the trade paper reported.
Former Columbia president Peter Schlessel, who served as a Hollywood liaison for Microsoft, is producing. 28 Days Later writer Alex Garland was paid $1 million by Microsoft to write a script that met its approval. He'll now do a rewrite with studio notes, after which Universal will go out to directors.
Microsoft is guaranteed extensive consultation on the project, but won't have approval over any elements. Several employees at Bungie, the Microsoft-owned development studio that created Halo, will serve as Microsoft's creative consultants.
Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Masters Of Sci-Fi In The Works
he creators of Showtime's upcoming Masters of Horror anthology series told SCI FI Wire that they are developing a second show: Masters of Sci-Fi, which will adapt famous SF stories for TV. Producer Keith Addis said that he hopes to get the show on the air by the fall of 2006, though no network has picked up the idea just yet.
Addis said that the SF anthology will begin by adapting some of the best-known short stories of SF, including works by Harlan Ellison, Robert A. Heinlein, Polish writer Stanislaw Lem (author of Solaris) and Ray Bradbury.
Addis and his partners, Brad Mendelsohn and Andrew Deane, picked stories that fit their budget and that "have the potential to be the most satisfying hours of television that can be produced wonderfully without cutting corners," Addis said. He added: "We really want to do the very best material with as much integrity as humanly possible."
Michael Tolkin (The Player) will adapt Heinlein's "Jerry Was a Man." John Milius (Conan the Barbarian) will rework Lem's "The Hunt." Bradbury will adapt his story "Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed." Similarly, Ellison will adapt his short story, "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the TicktockMan," Addis said.
For his part, Ellison expressed enthusiasm for the project. "Scripts are, in a hundred ways, more difficult and stylistically [demanding] than a straight story," he said in a separate interview. "It takes a conscious paradigm shift in thinking to adapt something from narrative to visual media. With only a half dozen exceptions in my 40-plus years [in Hollywood], I've never allowed anyone else to stir my porridge. And as far as 'Repent, Harlequin!' is concerned, well, even I consider this gig to be a ball-buster. I wouldn't trust it to anyone else. If anyone should fail at the task, it ought to be me, just to be fair."
Ellison added that he's in the process of signing a contract for the show. "I've turned down half a dozen requests to purchase ['Repent, Harlequin!'], one of which came from Michael Jackson," he said. "But Keith Addis seems to be a straight arrow. He's very smart, which is a wonderful sea change from other people I've worked with who have the intellectual capacity of an edamame bean. So I sort of talked myself into it."
Superman Due For Hiatus
roduction on Bryan Singer's Superman Returns, currently shooting in Sydney, will take a five-week production hiatus beginning Sept. 9, when principal photography ends, according to reports in Encore Magazine and on the Dark Horizons Web site.
According to a spokesperson for the production, industry speculation that the break is to allow director Bryan Singer to return to the United States to celebrate his birthday is false, the site reported. "He's much too professional for that," the spokesperson reportedly said.
Production on Superman Returns is slated to resume in mid-October, when filmmakers will shoot pick-ups. It's believed the shoot will wrap at the end of November, the site reported. Superman Returns, starring Brandon Routh, Kevin Spacey and Kate Bosworth, will open in June 2006.
Carell In For Carrey In Almighty 2
teve Carell is making a deal to star for Universal in Evan Almighty, a follow-up to Jim Carrey's Bruce Almighty, Variety reported. Carell will likely increase his $500,000 salary for The 40-Year-Old Virgin at least tenfold, the trade paper reported.
Conceived for Jim Carrey until he declined to reprise his Bruce Almighty role, the sequel will take the news anchor character Carell played in that film and put him on an almighty-inspired quest to build an ark in preparation for a great flood, the trade paper reported.
Tom Shadyac will return as director, and Morgan Freeman is negotiating to encore as God. Steve Oedekerk wrote the script. Plans are for the film to begin production early next year.
Carrey isn't expected to reprise his role from the original, nor will Jennifer Aniston.
Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
SG-1 Game Forges Ahead
he GamingHorizon.com Web site reported that Namco has agreed to publish the Stargate SG-1: The Alliance video game in the wake of a public falling out between the game's previous developers. The game, based on SCI FI Channel's original series Stargate SG-1, is still slated for a fall 2005 release.
The game made headlines last week as publisher JoWooD announced that it was canceling an agreement to publish the game and was considering legal action against developer Perception for breach of contract. JoWooD claimed that Perception's game didn't meet its quality control standards and that Perception was going to hand over all code and source material to JoWooD, the site reported. Within days Perception countered with a press release of its own, claiming that it was JoWooD, not Perception, that had violated the terms of the agreement and that development of the title would continue and Perception would seek a new publisher.
Apparently Namco has stepped in and agreed to publish the game, the site reported.
Writer Sues ABC Over Lost
Los Angeles writer has sued ABC and Touchstone Television for allegedly appropriating his 1977 television concept Lost for the network's current hit series, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Anthony Spinner filed the suit Aug. 19 in Los Angeles Superior Court, seeking unspecified damages for claims including breach of contract and fraud, the trade paper reported.
Spinner claims that he was hired by Sid and Marty Krofft Productions in 1977 to write, produce and develop a script for a TV program to be produced by ABC that was titled Lost. It was about a group of airplane crash survivors who struggle to survive in a jungle where they encounter strange creatures and dangerous characters, the trade paper reported.
Spinner said the assignment was memorialized in a written contract among himself, Krofft and ABC. He said he was entitled to a "written by" and "created by" credit, as well as episodic royalties, producing fees and a percentage of the profits.
ABC declined to comment to the trade paper on the lawsuit.
Reaping Cast Expands
avid Morrissey and Idris Elba are joining Hilary Swank in the upcoming supernatural thriller film The Reaping for Warner Brothers Pictures and Village Roadshow Pictures, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Dark Castle and Chime Films are co-financing, while Joel Silver, Robert Zemeckis, Susan Levin and Herb Gains are producing, the trade paper reported.
The Reaping centers on a university professor (Swank) who debunks miracles. She is summoned to a small Louisiana town by a man (Morrissey) to investigate a series of bizarre occurrences that appear to be the 10 biblical plagues. Swank begins to fall for Morrissey, but soon learns that he is not all that he appears, the trade paper reported. Elba will play a scientist and Swank's partner.
Morrissey recently completed shooting the lead role opposite Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction and stars opposite Clive Owen and Jennifer Aniston in Miramax's upcoming Derailed.
London native Elba, who was a mainstay in British theater and TV, is best known for his three-year stint as Baltimore drug lord Stringer Bell on HBO's The Wire.
Alba Eyes Jeannie Over Four 2?
essica Alba may forego an expected sequel to this summer's Fantastic Four in favor of a proposed movie version of TV's classic sitcom I Dream of Jeannie, the New York Post's Page Six column reported.
"After starring in the first flick with Michael Chiklis and the lesser-known likes of Ioan Gruffud, Chris Evans and Julian McMahon, the sexy starlet is uncertain the follow-up would be a judicious career move," the column reported. "Instead, we hear Alba has agreed to star alongside Jimmy Fallon in the movie remake of the classic sitcom I Dream of Jeannie. She'll get to show a lot more skin than Barbara Eden, who was forced by censors to cover her navel. Alba declined to comment."
Lawless Batty About Vampire
ucy Lawless, who stars in the upcoming CBS horror movie Vampire Bats, told SCI FI Wire she's reprising her role as a bug specialist and college professor from last year's telefilm Locusts. The former Xena: Warrior Princess star played Dr. Maddy Rierdon in Locusts, which dealt with a town taken over by swarming bugs. Now, she's battling bloodthirsty bats, Lawless said in an interview.
"Yeah. I'm saving the world from vampire bats," Lawless said with a laugh from the movie's set in New Orleans. "It's very serious business."
Would she do a series based on her character? "Oh, you know producers," Lawless said. "They're always trying to wrangle something. I wouldn't put it past them. Sure, I'd consider it."
In Vampire Bats, Rierdon moves from California to the swamps of Louisiana. "She's really cool, because she's got this posse of really groovy young people who are bringing such energy and such fun to the set," Lawless said. "You can only imagine. All the crew and myself, we just love them so much. We're having a great time."
The cast includes Dylan Neal (Dawson's Creek), who reprises his Locusts role of Dan Dryer. Brett Butler, Timothy Bottoms and Craig Ferguson (The Late Late Show) are also in the suspense thriller, about rogue vampire bats responsible for a bizarre series of murders.
Lawless said that she has yet to handle any live bats, though she isn't squeamish. "I haven't met one yet," she said. "I'm not real fond of frogs. A plague of frogs, that would be a difficult series for me. Frogs I find to be a little disgusting, and I own several of them or my boys own several of them. So frogs I'm not crazy about. But I've rats and spiders and all of that stuff on Xena. I'm not particularly squeamish, but I don't like frogs. They feel horrible."
New Zealand native Lawless brought her two young sons with her to New Orleans, and she said that they love the swamps. "They're crazy about Louisiana, because it's full of bugs and frogs and lizards and gators and all the things that little kids love," she said. What does Lawless love about the swamps? "I kind of like being surrounded by sweaty men," she said.
Vampire Bats is slated to premiere Oct. 30. "There will be hoards of vampire bats descending on Beverly Hills," Lawless said with a laugh. "We'll see if they can find any real flesh to puncture. I don't know."
Coolio Hot For Pterodactyl
oolio told SCI FI Wire that he plays the hero in the SCI FI Channel original movie Pterodactyl. "I'm an Army captain," the rapper-turned-actor said in an interview. "I'm on another mission, and I get caught up in saving these civilians that are out in the woods being attacked by pterodactyls."
Cameron Daddo (SCI FI's Riverworld) and Amy Sloan (The Day After Tomorrow) co-star alongside Coolio (Dracula 3000) in Pterodactyl, which was directed by Mark Lester, who's best known for Class of 1984, Firestarter and Commando. Coolio said that working with Lester made for a memorable experience.
"It was cool, man," Coolio said. "It was like working with a mild Vincent Price. He's a weirdo, straight up. Mark Lester is a weirdo, but he's cool. He's one of those cool weirdos. It's kind of a controlled chaos. Sometimes he doesn't know what he wants. He just wants you to give him something, and then, when you give it to him, he knows that's what he's looking for." Pterodactyl premiered Aug. 27 at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
Chaos! Comics Offers Guarantee
haos! Comics publisher Joe Hovorka told SCI FI Wire that the company has announced a year-long money-back guarantee on the company's titles. It's more than a mere publicity gimmick, Hovorka said in an interview.
"Certainly a publicity gimmick is part of it," Hovorka said of the company he bought out of bankruptcy in 2003. "We're trying to resurrect a bankrupt company, and there's a stigma associated with that." The guarantee on Chaos! Comics titles will run from September to August 2006.
The first incarnation of Chaos! Comics was a thriving mid-level independent publisher built on the strength of such titles as Evil Ernie, Purgatory and Chastity. But Hovorka said that there were problems near the end. "When a company is nearing its end, and there are financial problems, you're not always putting out the best books. Some of their later stuff was not as good as what the company had put out earlier. There was a lot of questionable quality towards the end. So when we restarted this company, we knew that the last impression retailers and buyers had was the bankruptcy and some of the poor-quality books. With this money-back guarantee, we're just trying to get people to try the books with little or no risk to themselves."
Chaos! Comics' problems are just part of a larger industry trend. Comic books bottomed out in 2001. But, Hovorka said, the business has been building since then. "Most of the growth is obviously going to Marvel and DC," he said. "Things are still pretty competitive on the independent side. But right now, we probably have the strongest retail system in place that we've had in a long time. There's a lot more retailers willing to carry a lot more publishers than those that are just carrying Marvel and DC."
The current incarnation of Chaos! Comics, which is being published through Devil's Due Publishing, will feature the Evil Ernie, Purgatory and Chastity titles. "If all or even half of the books are returned, then we're going to incur considerable losses," Hovorka admitted. "But we think that once they try the books, they're going to like them and not return them."
Fable: Lost Chapters Coming Soon
icrosoft Game Studios has announced that Fable: The Lost Chapters, the role-playing game for the PC, is ready for manufacture and will hit retailers in North America on Sept. 20, the RPGamer Web site reported. The title is also scheduled for release on the Xbox later this fall, the site reported.
The Lost Chapters adds to the original Fable, with new destructive weapons, more protective armor, new spells and new enemies and other threats. The title has been optimized to work with Windows XP and will retail for a suggested price of $49.99.
Miéville Gets Short In Jake
hina Miéville, the award-winning SF author, told SCI FI Wire that his latest book, Looking for Jake, marks a departure for him: It's a collection of short stories, including one illustrated narrative. Miéville's previous works, such as Perdido Street Station and the Hugo Award-nominated Iron Council, were novels. "Although I love novels, I think a good short story is an untouchably perfect medium," Miéville said in an interview. "When a short story goes well, there's nothing like it. But they're hard to do well, which is why I don't do many."
Miéville found himself collaborating with artist Liam Sharp for one of his stories, told in graphic form. "Someone at Del Rey had the idea," he said. "I've never collaborated with an artist before, and it was so nice to do." Sharp's work includes X-Men, Spider-Man and 2000 AD titles.
Although the short stories are not interconnected, Miéville's work displays a similarity of theme. Most of his stories are set in London and veer toward the bleak. "Kakfa said we ought to read books that bite and sting us, and I like books that challenge, that discomfit," he said. "Happy sucks." A former candidate for the British House of Commons, Miéville has written stories that are politically engaged. Does he have a favorite? "You can't make [a choice]," he said. "It would be like Sophie's Choice."
Miéville is currently working on his next book. Superstition forbids him to mention the plot, but he admits it's about language. That's not surprising: His writing is like a beat poetry love letter to the English language. On occasion, the verbally dense material requires a trip to the dictionary. "I'm not trying teach anyone a lesson," he said. "But if [I] think a word is evocative, I won't worry about people not knowing what it means. To be truthful, if I like a word, I pinch it." Miéville’s first book, King Rat, was recently optioned for a movie adaptation. Looking for Jake hits retailers on Aug. 30.
Rock: Spy Hunter Still Due
wayne "The Rock" Johnson told MTV.com that the upcoming movie Spy Hunter, based on the hit video game, will be made, despite the long development period. "Spy Hunter is going great," Johnson told the site. "We've got Stuart Beattie, who's writing it right now, who wrote Collateral, as well as Pirates of the Caribbean, so he's a great writer. He's got a great take on it."
Johnson admitted that it's taken a while for the movie to come together. "Spy Hunter is one of those movies that we announced almost two years ago, and everybody who I run into is like, 'Where's Spy Hunter?'" he said. "It's one of those movies that you cannot get wrong. That's why it's so important that the writing is right, the feel, the tone is right. You see the car, you see [my character] Alec Sects. So it's going to be the real deal once it's done."
Johnson added that no one has been cast yet. "Not yet," he said. "Just myself and the car, the Interceptor. And that thing is bad. We've already seen some early drawings of it and early renditions of it on video. It just jumps off a cliff, turns into a boat, then into a motorcycle when it comes back on land. It's badass."
Johansson Flees Photogs, Crashes
he Island star Scarlett Johansson collided into another car just outside the entrance of Disneyland when she swerved to escape from persistent photographers on Aug. 19, Los Angeles TV station KABC reported.
"The fender bender was induced by the paparazzi, who chased her for 45 minutes," Johansson's publicist, Marcel Pariseau, told the TV station, according to a report on the Zap2It Web site.
Johansson's Mercedes damaged the side of the other vehicle, which was driven by a woman with two young daughters as passengers. Eyewitness reports say the 20-year-old Lost in Translation actress was badly shaken up, but unharmed.
CBS Has A Ghost Of A Chance
BS' new supernatural drama Ghost Whisperer has a strong chance of winning a solid audience, according to sentiments expressed by average TV viewers on the Internet as tracked by the 2005 TV Trends survey produced by Trendum, according to The Hollywood Reporter. NBC's Surface, CBS' Threshold and Fox's Bones and Kitchen Confidential are other new series being talked up positively online among potential viewers, the New York-based company's trend reports found, based on monitoring of daily Web conversations about television, movies and celebrities on message boards, bulletins, online communities and in-digital media.
The findings run contrary to opinions of media buyers and TV critics, who generally reacted lukewarmly to all of the above-mentioned series, the trade paper reported.
Trendum, started in 2000, became a business affiliate of Mediaweek and The Hollywood Reporter's parent company, VNU, earlier this year. In its 2004 TV Trends survey, Trendum predicted, based on the unsolicited Internet conversations it monitored, that ABC's drama Lost would be a breakout hit, an opinion not shared by most media agencies and TV critics going into last season. Trendum also predicted the runaway success of ABC's Desperate Housewives last season, when other media observers hedged their bets on the show.
Not everything Trendum forecast to succeed was indeed a hit. NBC's Joey was picked as the show with the biggest buzz last season.
For its 2005 TV Trends report, Trendum software looked at 14 million unsolicited messages on the Internet from 360,000 viewers and found 2,600 messages from 2,000 viewers that talked about new TV shows. Its monitoring period for the survey ran from April through July of this year.
Ghost Whisperer ranked first among viewer sentiment—positive, negative or neutral opinions of the online chatter—followed by The WB's Supernatural, UPN's Everybody Hates Chris, CBS' How I Met Your Mother and Fox's Prison Break.
Lawless Wants Reunion
ena: Warrior Princess star Lucy Lawless told SCI FI Wire that she hopes her next film project will reunite some of her old pals from the cast, including Bruce Campbell (Autolycus), Ted Raimi (Joxer) and Renée O'Connor (Gabrielle).
"Josh Becker came up with this really great storyline for a movie that we'd all love to do," Lawless said in an interview. "It's kind of a spoof, because that's the kind of people that we are, but we're all just busy on other projects at the moment." Becker wrote for the Xena series and also scripted Hercules in the Maze of the Minotaur and Alien Apocalypse for TV.
With a working title of Lost in Dino World, Lawless said the film project will be an SF comedy, but it will have no connection to their characters on Xena. "I remember laughing out loud, just howling with laughter, when I was reading the synopsis, and that was a good year ago," Lawless said. The only hold-up at the moment is coordinating all of their schedules.
"I certainly want to work with Bruce and Renée and Ted again," Lawless said. "The point being is that we would love to work together, but these things are harder to coalesce than people might think."
Lawless will next be seen on the Sept. 9 episode of SCI FI Channel's original series Battlestar Galactica. She will also appear in The Darkroom, a film in which she plays the mother of a boy who's haunted by visions of a terrible murder. Lawless describes it as "a cross between a Freddy Krueger movie and Psycho." Lawless is now in New Orleans filming the CBS TV movie Vampire Bats.
Myst V Demo Now Online
bisoft has released a demo of Myst V: End of Ages on the GameSpot Web site, a taste of the upcoming latest installment in the decade-old puzzle franchise. The demo contains no instructions, only a short introductory sequence to acquaint gamers with the mystery of the pedestals.
The final installment in the popular series, Myst V: End of Ages will retail for $49.99 when it's released in September, GameSpot reported. A $59.99 limited-edition version of the game will feature a strategy guide, an individually numbered lithograph, the game soundtrack CD and a bonus DVD with a series retrospective produced by Turner Broadcasting.
Lost's New Woman Revealed
amon Lindelof, co-creator of ABC's hit Lost, told Variety that new cast member Cynthia Watros will play a helpful character on the SF show. "What's really cool about her character is that she's going to bring a flavor to the show that doesn't exist right now," Lindelof told the trade paper. "She's not as intense as some of the other characters. She's that person you want in the trenches with you who can take lemons and make lemonade."
Watros won the role over several other actresses, including Jennifer Jason Leigh (The Jacket), the trade paper reported.
Watros will join Lost newcomers Michelle Rodriguez, who will play Ana-Lucia Cortez, another passenger on doomed Oceanic Airlines flight 815, and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, who plays the mysterious character Emeka, who suddenly appears on the island.
Eldest Upsets Harry Potter
hristopher Paolini's Eldest, the second volume in the Inheritance trilogy of fantasy books, has displaced J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince from the top slot on Amazon.com for the first time since the sixth Potter book debuted, the Reuters news service reported. Eldest, the tale of magically gifted farm boy, Eragon, and his dragon, Saphira, and their fight against an evil empire, went on sale Aug. 23 and promptly bumped Half-Blood Prince to second place.
Paolini, a home-schooled country boy who daydreamed of sword-fights, spells and rescuing beautiful elves, wrote down his fantasies at the age of 15 and sold 2.5 million copies of his first book, Eragon, Reuters reported.
"At least I'm young enough to get through the trilogy before I die," Paolini, now 21, told Reuters. He still lives with his parents in Montana, where he writes seven days a week.
Paolini's parents self-published Eragon and took him on a tour of schools, where he dressed up in medieval costume to promote the book. Eragon caught the eye of publishing giant Random House, and filming has just started in Hungary on a movie of the book, with a cast that includes Jeremy Irons and John Malkovich.
Charlotte's Web Previewed
SA Today offers a sneak peek at director Gary Winick's upcoming film adaptation of E.B. White's beloved children's classic Charlotte's Web, starring ubiquitous child actor Dakota Fanning as Fern. Winick (13 Going on 30) told the newspaper that the story will remain timeless: "Fern isn't listening to her iPod," he said.
"When people hear about the movie, they say, 'Wow, that's great,'" Winick said. "But that remark is often followed by 'Don't screw it up.'"
Based on White's 1952 ode to friendship, the barnyard story also stars Julia Roberts, who recorded the voice of Charlotte the spider at home in Taos, N.M., after the birth of her twins, the newspaper reported. Steve Buscemi is the gluttonous rat Templeton. Kathy Bates and Reba McEntire voice Bitsy and Betsy the cows. Robert Redford is Ike, an old workhorse, and John Cleese is chief sheep Samuel. Yet to be announced: Wilbur. Forty-six pigs will play Wilbur at various ages.
Sony Ponies Up For The Grays
ony Pictures will pay screenwriter Ken Nolan (Black Hawk Down) $3 million for his 75-page "script-ment" (less than a script, but more than a treatment) of Whitley Strieber's as-yet-unpublished alien SF novel The Grays, one of the studio's largest payments for a treatment, Variety reported.
The Grays concerns an alien race that essentially functions as the "United States of the cosmos," running things on Earth as well as on other worlds. Operating in secrecy, the aliens are unwilling to reveal themselves for fear of altering mankind's development, the trade paper reported.
It's not clear who'll star in The Grays, but insiders say the lead role is intended for a woman, the trade paper reported.
An ex-advertising executive, Strieber began his career as a novelist with the horror titles The Hunger and Wolfen, both of which were turned into feature films. More recently, Strieber co-authored with Art Bell a book about doomsday climate change, The Coming Global Super Storm, which served as the inspiration for Fox's The Day After Tomorrow. Strieber also authored a novelization of that film. He first gained national notoriety for his 1987 book Communion, about his alleged abduction by aliens.
Trek Communicator Phone Due
ona Mobile and Nickelodeon & Viacom Consumer Products announced that they will develop a mobile phone device modeled on the Star Trek communicator. The special-edition Star Trek Communicator Phone will offer fans the ability to play a multiplayer online Trek game, stream real-time video and surf the Internet, as well as access ring tones, wallpapers, news, information and Trek fan activities, Sona said.
The Star Trek Communicator Phone will come equipped with a custom Trek faceplate and other themed features. The phone will be available beginning Sept. 30.
Musical Lestat To Hit Boards
fter more than two years of development, Warner Brothers Theatre Ventures on Aug. 23 told the Los Angeles Times that it will be ready to premiere a musical adaptation of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles at San Francisco's Curran Theatre in December, with a Broadway opening planned for next spring.
Called Lestat and featuring a score by the famed pop writing team of Elton John and Bernie Taupin, the production will star Hugh Panaro, who has appeared on Broadway in Les Misérables, Show Boat and The Phantom of the Opera, the newspaper reported. Also in the cast are Carolee Carmello, Jack Noseworthy, Jim Stanek, Roderick Hill, Michael Genet and Allison Fischer.
Lestat, the first Broadway offering from Warner, has a book by Linda Woolverton and will be directed by Robert Jess Roth, both of whom filled similar roles on Disney's first Broadway hit, Beauty and the Beast. It will run in San Francisco from Dec. 17 through Jan. 29.
New Resident Games Coming
n commemoration of the Resident Evil series' 10th anniversary, Capcom is developing a remake of the original PlayStation version of Resident Evil for the Nintendo DS, reports the latest issue of Famitsu. The game will be titled BioHazard: Deadly Silence in Japan, according to a report on the GameSpot Web site. No release date has been announced, but the series' 10th anniversary occurs in 2006.
Last month, Capcom announced that Resident Evil 5, the latest installment in the zombie video-game franchise, would be coming to Microsoft's next-generation console, the Xbox 360, as well as Sony's PlayStation 3, GameSpot reported.
Capcom's announcement did not mention a ship date for Resident Evil 5 for the Xbox 360, which is due in the fourth quarter of this year, or the PlayStation, which currently has a spring 2006 launch window.
Bullock Has A Premonition
andra Bullock is negotiating to star in Premonition, the Hollywood debut of German director Mennan Yapo, Variety reported. Shooting begins in January in Louisiana.
The movie, from a Bill Kelly script, revolves around a woman who has a premonition that her husband will die in a car crash and sets out to prevent it, the trade paper reported.
Bullock, whose deal should be completed shortly, is wrapping Il Mare with her Speed co-star Keanu Reeves.
Visnjic Up For 007?
V Guide columnist Michael Ausiello reported a rumor that Goran Visnjic (Elektra) is under consideration for the role of James Bond. Ausiello offers no source for his report that the Croatian-born actor, best known as Dr. Luka Kovac on NBC's ER, is under consideration for the role, last filled by Pierce Brosnan.
"Yes, it's true," Ausiello writes. "But should he get the role, it wouldn't mean the end of Kovac." Ausiello quotes ER executive producer David Zabel as saying that the production could film a bunch of stuff with Kovac at one time for later episodes or that Visnjic could work on both at the same time.
Hugh Jackman has reportedly turned down the 007 role. The next Bond movie is a remake of Casino Royale.
Portman, Hoffman Top Magorium
atalie Portman will star opposite Dustin Hoffman in Mandate Pictures' fantasy film Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, directed by Zach Helm, Variety reported.
Hoffman will play an eccentric toy shop owner who wants to lift Portman out of her depression by leaving her the store, the trade paper reported.
Mandate is a partner in Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert's Ghost House Pictures, the horror genre label behind The Grudge, Boogeyman and the upcoming The Grudge 2.
Other Mandate projects in the pipeline include the supernatural thriller Passengers.
Asheron 2 Shutting Down
effrey Anderson, chief executive of game publisher Turbine, told gamers that the company would be shutting down Asheron's Call 2, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game and sequel to Asheron's Call, which remains up and running.
"In spite of our hard work and the launch of Legions, AC2 has reached the point where it no longer makes sense to continue the service," Anderson wrote. "We will be officially closing the Asheron's Call 2 service on 12/30/05. Until then, we plan to run live events, but we will not be adding any content or features. We deeply appreciate the many dedicated fans of AC2 who have stood by us over the years. You have our sincerest gratitude."
A Turbine spokesperson confirmed for the GameSpot Web site that the title was no longer profitable and will be shut down in all existing markets. All staffers previously working on Asheron's Call 2 have been reassigned, the site reported.
On the official Asheron's Call forums, Turbine's director of community relations (who posts on both games' forums under the name Calandryll), reiterated that the original game would remain live, GameSpot reported. "There are no plans to shut down AC1 at this time," Calandryll wrote. "Obviously I can't predict the future, but AC1 is in a very different situation than AC2 and it is our intention to continue supporting AC1."
Turbine is currently in development on two high-profile MMORPGs in the forms of Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach and Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar, which are both due for release in the first quarter of 2006.
Chatwin To Top The Invisible
ustin Chatwin and Margarita Levieva are in negotiations to star in The Invisible, Spyglass Entertainment's supernatural thriller, being directed by David Goyer for Touchstone Pictures, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The story centers on a teenager who, after being attacked and left for dead, finds himself in limbo, invisible to the living and racing against time to find his body before he truly perishes. The only person who might be able to save him is his attacker, a troubled girl who is on the run from the law, the trade paper reported.
Chatwin (War of the Worlds) would play the teen, and Levieva would play the troubled girl. The screenplay was written by Mick Davis, with additional writing by Christine Roum.
Cave's Hauser Got His Bumps
ven with some of the wire experts from The Matrix backing him up, actor Cole Hauser told SCI FI Wire that he got banged up a bit during the filming of the SF movie The Cave.
"I got a little messed up a couple of times, but it wasn't from the underwater work," Hauser said in an interview. "It was doing the wire work. I kind of had like a trial by fire, a three-day program on how to do wire work, which again takes a long time to understand how to do it. We had the guys that did The Matrix, and they were great, but the thing is that when you're depending on someone else to pull you and make sure that you're actually going to fly over something, and they don't do it exactly when you do it, it's kind of human nature that there's going to be problems."
In The Cave, Hauser plays the leader of a team of divers who enter a deep underwater cave to rescue missing spelunkers in Romania. The first-time director, Bruce Hunt, was also the second-unit director for The Matrix, and he brought in stunt coordinator Glenn Boswell and stunt rigger Shea Adams from his work on that movie.
Underwater experts Wes Skiles and Jill Heinerth also tutored the actors in a two-week diving training course. Hauser said things could get dangerous with the air tanks. "You can kill yourself in four feet of water," Hauser said. "You start hallucinating, and all of a sudden, pop! So it was pretty intense. They were really adamant about not jerking around, not fooling around and playing with someone's stuff down there. No prankster s--t, because this was serious."
In the film Hauser's team encounters giant winged creatures, and Hauser's character battles one in a wire-work sequence. "I got thrown into the wall a couple of times, but, thank God, we had helmets on and pads," Hauser said. "I didn't break any bones. It was just bruises and bumps." The Cave also stars Morris Chestnut, Piper Perabo, Eddie Cibrian and Lena Headey and opened Aug. 26.
Briefly Noted
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Sasha Alexander (CBS' NCIS) has joined the cast of Mission: Impossible 3, Variety reported.
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ABC and TNT will share the network window to War of the Worlds, together ponying up a license fee that could hover somewhere around $25 million, Variety reported.
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The third installment in a series of clips related to the upcoming film Serenity has been
released on the Web by an unknown source. Like the previous clips, the
latest, titled "Session 22," features Summer Glau as River Tam in a session
with an off-screen interviewer voiced by writer/director Joss Whedon.
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Actress Scout Taylor-Compton, best known for her recurring roles on Charmed and Gilmore Girls, was reunited unharmed with her family Aug. 25, two weeks after she went missing; the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department offered no additional details about her disappearance, the Associated Press reported.
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Warner Sunset Records/Warner Bros. Records will release The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack to Tim Burton's Corpse Bride from Oscar-winning composer Danny Elfman on Sept. 20, three days before the stop-motion-animation film hits theaters.
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Lions Gate has signed a three-movie co-production and co-financing deal with RichCrest Animation, the L.A.-based subsidiary of Indian producer Crest Animation, starting with Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, based on the novel by late Shrek creator William Steig, Variety reported.
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Brock Peters, who played Adm. Cartwright in two Star Trek films and was perhaps best known for playing falsely accused rapist Tom Robinson in To Kill a Mockingbird, died on Aug. 23 after a battle with pancreatic cancer, TV Guide Online reported. He was 78.
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The CBS News Web site has posted several images from the production of Ron Howard's The Da Vinci Code, which is now filming in England.
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A sequel is in the works for the 1984 SF film Night of the Comet, with star Kelli Maroney and writer-director Thom Eberhardt producing, TV Guide Online reported.
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Sitcom staple Cynthia Watros (Titus) has joined the regular cast of ABC's hit series Lost, playing a newcomer to the island who, in her former life, was a therapist, Variety reported.
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Warner Brothers has posted a new Web site for Corpse Bride, Tim Burton's upcoming stop-motion-animated fantasy film, which opens Sept. 23.
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Blade: Trinity star Natasha Lyonne, who's been in the news for her erratic behavior and legal woes, is in Beth Israel's intensive care unit in New York struggling with hepatitis C, a heart infection and a collapsed lung, The New York Post reported.
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Marcia Cross, a star of the ABC hit show Desperate Housewives, is engaged to her stockbroker boyfriend, Tom Mahoney, Us Weekly magazine reported on Aug. 19.
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The C.H.U.D. Web site has posted the first look at a teaser trailer, first screened at Comic-Con International, from James Gunn's upcoming splatter SF movie Slither, starring Nathan Fillion and opening in January.
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