Don't Believe Alias Rumors
.J. Abrams, creator of ABC's Alias, told TV Guide Online's Ask Ausiello column that rumors of Agent Vaughn's (Michael Vartan) demise are exaggerated. "It ain't over 'til the fat lady sings," Abrams told the site. "You have to see what the story is. And when I said at the beginning of the year that [Vartan] is back this season, I wasn't lying. So in the way that Alias does things that you might not expect—in a way that you might not expect—it's typical of that. The conclusion people are coming to isn't exactly what it is."
As for tabloid reports that Alias star Jennifer Garner, Vartan's ex-paramour, pressured producers to dump Vartan? "When you read that no one on the set is allowed to look at her in the eyes, you can't help but laugh at that," Abrams said. "It's so preposterous that it's one of those things that doesn't even warrant a response, because it's so silly. When people achieve a certain status, it is inevitable that they are the ones who become the targets. But I think there are very few voices who are saying this. The majority of people who really care about the show and about Vartan are not the people who are indiscriminately attacking Jennifer Garner. The majority of [Alias fans] really do, and rightfully so, appreciate Michael Vartan. And I hope they keep watching. And I would say one thing: Watch carefully, because there are clues as to what's going to happen in the episodes. And if [Vaughn] happens not to be in the episode that you're watching, it doesn't mean he's not part of it." Alias returns Sept 29 in a new Thursday 8 p.m. ET/PT timeslot.
Whedon Not Serene About Serenity
oss Whedon, writer and director of the upcoming SF movie Serenity, told SCI FI Wire that he's just starting to get nervous about the potential reception for his film, which is based on his failed Fox TV series Firefly. "How nervous am I? Uh, I'm actually pretty calm," Whedon said in a new conference in Beverly Hills, Calif. "I am being medicated right now steadily to keep me that way. I got really nervous when I realized, ultimately, I have absolutely no idea how this movie is going to do. I believe that if people see it, they will like it, and that is sort of my first job, and I feel like that was more or less accomplished. But I have no idea if they actually will see it. And if they don't see it, how can they like it?"
Serenity picks up the story of Capt. Mal Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) and the crew of a transport ship 500 years in the future as they run the edge of the galaxy trying to evade the malevolent Alliance and the rapacious Reavers. Though the show was canceled in the middle of its first season, it found a loyal audience on DVD.
Whedon said that he's trying not to panic on the eve of Serenity's premiere. "I sort of realized it's out of my hands," he said. "I will do everything in my power to try and get people to see it, but there's only so much that's in my power, and if ... they don't, ... or if they—how can I put this?—hate it, then that's just ... what's going to happen. There's nothing I really can do about it. I believe in the film. I loved making it. I love what we came up with. I love everyone. I'm really proud of all my actors. So that's going to have to sustain me. You know, that's me now. Talk to me on the morning of the 30th, when I'm hiding in the bathtub with a hat on." Serenity opens Sept. 30. It's being released by Universal Pictures, which is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Fillion Reboards Serenity
athan Fillion, who reprises the lead role of Capt. Malcolm Reynolds in the upcoming SF movie Serenity, told SCI FI Wire that his character shows more depth than in the canceled Fox TV series Firefly, on which the movie is based. "Malcolm was allowed to be a little darker ... than the series allowed him to be," Fillion said in a news conference in Beverly Hills, Calif. "In the series we experienced a little pressure [from Fox] to make him more likable and nicer. 'Let's make him, like, funnier. Let's make him funnier. Lets make the show more action.'"
In Serenity, Fillion plays the skipper of a transport ship and its ragtag crew 400 years in the future as they try to evade the malevolent Alliance, as well as the rapacious and cannibalistic Reavers. Joss Whedon—the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly—wrote and makes his feature-film directing debut with Serenity.
For Fillion and the rest of the cast, having the failed Firefly rise again as a movie was a vindication, Fillion said. "We never stopped seeing each other, but you know what actually was good was seeing ... the characters again," he said.
Fillion added: "Joss had that plan of ... finding another home [for Firefly]. He said, 'I'll find another home.' And I said, 'That sounds great. That's a really wonderful thing to say.' [Mocks crying] 'It's really dead, isn't it?' It's dead.' I wasn't prepared to fall in love with Firefly the way I did, and I wasn't prepared for Firefly to dump me the way it did. So I was really depressed. I was pretty sad [when it ended]. ... I wasn't prepared to kind of have that hope [again] and say, 'Maybe. Maybe.' ... I didn't want to set myself up for another depression and gain 20 pounds sitting in my house, not going to work." Serenity opens Sept. 30. It is being released by Universal Pictures, which is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Serenity Cast Reveled In Time
he cast of the upcoming SF movie Serenity told SCI FI Wire that they had one big luxury making the movie version of their canceled Fox TV series Firefly: time. "I think it was the time factor," Jewel Staite (Kaylee) said in a new conference. "We had so much more time on the movie than we did on the series. We could do a three-page scene all day long if we wanted to, which was nice. You know, when you're doing series work, you have 12 hours, and then that's it, and in those 12 hours, you have about eight or nine pages to shoot. And yeah, on the movie I just felt like we had all this rehearsal time. We could stop. We could talk about the characters, we could talk about the vibe of the scene, what we were going for."
Serenity centers on the crew of a transport ship 500 years in the future. It picks up the story of Firefly, which Fox canceled in the middle of its first year.
For the movie, "We had two weeks of rehearsal time before we started filming, and I think we focused a lot on the main dialogue scenes early on," said Adam Baldwin (Jayne). "But we also focused on that 'Mule' [a hovercraft] chase scene, because we had two weeks of exterior work ... on location that we had to get in those two weeks to stay on budget and on time. And the weather cooperated, and we were able to get all that stuff in. And I feel that once we got to the studio, the controlled atmosphere on the soundstages, we were home free. ... It just, it felt like we were back workshopping our little TV show ... on the gigantic Universal soundstages."
"It was very strange," agreed Sean Maher, who plays Dr. Simon Tam. "We had obviously a lot more time to tell the story than we did when we were shooting the series. But ... to me it just felt like so similar ... to the show. ... Everything just felt a little more spectacular. It just felt a little grander, and there was a wonderful feeling of redemption to sort of come back with these people. It was this great reunion, and so it was a wonderful energy on the set." Serenity opens Sept. 30.
Universal Hosts Serenity Fans
niversal Studios Hollywood will host a Serenity Fan Fest on Sept. 24 for fans of the upcoming SF movie Serenity and its Fox TV predecessor series, Firefly. Fans will have the chance to meet the film's stars, special-effects team and writer/director Joss Whedon and view clips and behind-the-scenes footage from the film.
The Fan Fest will take place inside the Southern California theme park, with a cast question-and-answer session at 2 p.m. and an autograph session at 3:30 p.m. Cast members scheduled to appear include Summer Glau (River Tam), Adam Baldwin (Jayne Cobb), Morena Baccarin (Inara Serra) and Whedon. Movie props, including the 14-foot "Mule" hovercraft, will be on display.
The Serenity Fan Fest will be included in the general-admission price. A discount is available on the Web.
Serenity is being released by Universal Pictures on Sept. 30. Universal and the Universal Studios Hollywood theme park are owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Whedon: Expect Future Buffy TV
oss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, told SCI FI Wire that he definitely plans to revisit the "Buffyverse" in a future, unspecified TV project. "I think it's realistic," Whedon said in an interview while promoting his upcoming SF movie, Serenity. "I like my chances. But it is absolutely still too amorphous for me to make any kind of announcement about it. I'm out there trying, and there's other people trying, to put it together. But until something falls in place, I really can't say."
Whedon is especially keen on doing a movie centering on the vampire character of Spike (James Marsters). "Let's say it's a good jumping-off point," he said. As for Marsters' reported comments that he is growing too old to play the eternally youthful former bloodsucker, Whedon said: "Well, we're working. We're trying. I know. ... James is in very good shape. Keep working out, James."
Whedon Is A Goner
niversal Pictures has paid seven figures for Goner, a supernatural thriller spec script that Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) wrote and will direct, Variety reported.
Mary Parent and Scott Stuber will produce. The studio premiered Whedon's directorial debut, Serenity, on Sept. 22 at Universal City Walk, and the movie opens to the public on Sept. 30.
Whedon was cryptic in describing the project. "It's the story of a young woman's journey that involves a great deal of horror and some heroics," Whedon told the trade paper. "It's certainly darker than Serenity, and there are a lot of left turns along the way. It is something I had in mind for a while, and it just poured out of me when I finished my film."
Whedon is writing and will direct a Wonder Woman movie for Warner Brothers.
Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Fillion Slides Into Slither
athan Fillion, who moves from the bridge of the spaceship Serenity to the science-fiction horror movie Slither, told SCI FI Wire that the latter will be a return to old-fashioned splatter films. "There's stuff blowing up. There's some nasty [stuff]. There's some sliming," Fillion said at a news conference to promote Serenity. "There's a lot of prosthetics. We leaned away from the CGI and leaned towards the prosthetics as an homage to the horror movies of yesteryear. Our creator/director, James Gunn, said it will be the last time he ever does that."
Slither, written and helmed by Gunn (writer of Dawn of the Dead and the Scooby-Doo movies), deals with a small town in which a sheriff (Michael Rooker) is infected by an alien parasite. Fillion plays a deputy who must deal with the resulting infection, which quickly spreads to other townspeople, with gruesome results.
"This is Bill Pardy," Fillion said. "He was the football hero in high school. He was the good-looking guy, very popular in town, in this economically depressed town. He becomes a police officer. It's a government job. There's no crime going on. He just gets to kick back and do nothing. He's a guy who's kind of letting [time] pass him by in that he let his high-school sweetheart get away, and he realizes this, that he's kind of missed the boat. He's not accustomed to responsibility. Life has been handed to this guy. And now, Slither, when it opens up, he's faced with impending alien world domination and, for the first time, some real responsibility. This man is blissfully unprepared for it, for the challenge. This is a man acting in much the way you'd expect someone to act if these situations were real, and you were a real person. He's not someone saying, 'I'm going to rise this challenge. I know just what to do. Everybody relax.' No. He's in a panic. He's upset. No one's prepared. That's what I think makes this movie so great: ... People act as you'd expect real people to act in this situation." Slither opens in January of 2006.
Slither's Banks Loves The Gore
lizabeth Banks, who stars in the upcoming horror film Slither, told SCI FI Wire that she wasn't bothered at all by the movie's excessively gooey special effects. "It's funny, because when you're there in the moment, I mean, everything's disgusting, but you see the strings," Banks said in an interview. "You see the smoke and magic. I didn't realize how gross it was. ... My husband came to visit the set, and he was like, 'This is disgusting.' Also, I like all that stuff. I'm not grossed out easily at all. So I just thought it was all kind of cool, all of the dead animals and the blood and the KY Jelly that they literally smother you with all over."
In Slither, Banks (The 40-Year-Old Virgin) plays the small-town wife of a man (Michael Rooker) who becomes infected with an alien plague that gradually turns him into a monster. Nathan Fillion also stars as the town's sheriff, who is forced to confront his feelings for Banks' character as they fight the creatures side by side.
For all its sliminess, Banks said that the real challenge of the film came during a dramatic scene with Rooker in his fully mutated form. "A lot of it was just trying to concentrate on doing scene work with Michael Rooker, who's made up, and he's unrecognizable in this makeup, and he's dripping goo and KY Jelly all over," she said. "And there's like five dudes dressed in black ninja outfits running around the floor with these tentacles, and I'm just trying to cry and, like, act. It was very sort of confusing and overwhelming."
As a fan of horror movies herself, Banks said that she was glad the producers and director James Gunn chose to be daring by not holding back, making an R-rated gorefest. "I've been saying that if you're going to do this genre, if you're going to make a horror monster movie, go 100 percent," she said. "There's no reason to do it half-assed. What does that mean when you're like, 'It's kind of scary, and it's kind of gross?' It should be disgusting. Just go for it." Slither opens March 31, 2006.
Lost Will Finally Give Answers
ost executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse told SCI FI Wire they are finally going to provide some answers at the beginning of the Emmy-winning ABC show's upcoming second season. Honest.
"In terms of just the narrative and the characters, the second year is going to be different," Cuse said in an interview. "The first year was really about denial of their circumstances. They were looking for a way off the island. The second season of the show is about looking inward. Going into the hatch is the perfect metaphor for that concept. As they look inward, they're going to look more inward towards themselves. And obviously the revelation that there are survivors of the tail section is going to have a major impact on the society of our survivors."
The hit series about a group of plane-crash survivors who run into mysterious things on a not-so-deserted island returns on Sept. 22 in a new Wednesday 9 p.m. timeslot. The season premiere will take place moments after the events in the season-one finale, which left some of the characters looking down the opened hatch and others having just suffered an attack while trying to escape on a raft.
Lindelof, who created the series with J.J. Abrams, told SCI FI Wire that the big mysteries will still exist this season. "What we find inside the hatch is going to drive the majority of season two," he said. "And the other side of season two is obviously what happens to our boys who were out on the raft." The audience will also learn more about the mysterious Others. "Who are these people? What are they doing here? And why do they keep f--king with us? That becomes a big part of it," Lindelof said.
The two cagey producers won't give away too many details. But Lindelof said that the first three episodes will provide an "enormous" amount of island mythology. Especially the third episode.
And, according to Cuse, the show's writers are planning to inject more romance into the series. Several new characters have been added to the cast this season, including Michelle Rodriguez, who plays a passenger from the tail section with whom Jack (Matthew Fox) had a brief encounter in a flashback last season.
But don't look for the show's "bread and butter" to vanish, Lindelof said. Lost will continue to reveal "personal, character-based stories" through flashbacks. "The thing that's very exciting with Lost is there are still all these chapters of these people's pasts before the plane crashed," he said. "Everybody thinks with Locke [Terry O'Quinn], all we need to know is how he got in that wheelchair, and then we're done." No so, he said.
Cuse added that there's still a lot to learn about the characters. "Hopefully you'll be surprised," he said, adding: "People have more [to] them than one defining event in their lives. I think we all have at least a handful of them, and they shape the people that we become."
Lost Debut Breaks Record
BC's Emmy-winning SF series Lost opened its second season to record numbers on Sept. 21, and ABC's new SF show Invasion followed at a good pace, Variety reported.
The second-season premiere of Lost garnered a 10.2 rating among adults aged 18-49, or 23.47 million viewers overall, crushing the competition in every category from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. and racking up its best delivery to date across the board, the trade paper reported.
Invasion followed with a 6.8 rating or 16.43 million viewers, which racked up the best series score in the hour for ABC in the five years it has aired dramas there.
Garcia Is Lost By The Numbers
orge Garcia, who plays Hurley in ABC's Emmy-winning series Lost, told SCI FI Wire that he's as curious as everyone else about what Hurley's cursed numbers really mean. "I'd gotten some hints about the lottery situation when we added the scene where I'm playing backgammon with Walt, and I tell him he'll get the money that I owe him," Garcia said in an interview. "That kind of [made me suspect], 'OK, I do have money.' But it's the cool, Twilight Zone aspects of my story that really make me anxious and anticipating. ... I want to find out why those numbers are on the hatch."
Last season on Lost, the audience learned that Hurley had accidentally used cursed numbers to win the lottery before he wound up on the fateful flight that crashed on a deserted island. When Hurley saw the numbers on the mysterious hatch, he tried unsuccessfully to stop the others from opening it.
The mystery numbers have become an obsession to viewers interested in the mythology. Executive producer Carlton Cuse said that he didn't anticipate the passion fans would have when it comes to speculating about the numbers. "If you were to ask us back during that story, the numbers were on a fundamental level a plot device for Hurley to go on this journey," Cuse said. "We understood that they were part of the mythology of the show, but we never thought that they would loom larger than the fact that Hurley was a lottery winner, or that people would be so engaged and interested and dissecting the meaning behind the numbers."
Garcia said that he is surprised at the lengths people have gone when it comes to the cursed numbers. "There was a piece of toast on eBay that had the mystery numbers on it," Garcia said. "I'm anxious to find out how much it sold for. ... There were two more copycat toasts that came after it, one with the numbers backwards. The other one was a kid's piece of toast, like a plastic toy toast. The first toast, if I remember correctly, I went and looked, and it was like $50. When I looked again it was $200. And I swear I saw it over five grand at one point. That's so incredibly insane ... for a piece of toast!"
Like the other actors and anyone who watches the show, Garcia is curious about what's going on. "Particular people have their theories that we're in purgatory," he said. "I always feel like that's too easy. And they're going to have to explain how that creature in the woods does it by being a smoky tendril. How exactly does that tendril grab you and suck you down the hole? I know they know how it works, because I was talking to the guy who created the effect for it. He said, 'They explained to me how it was, and it's really fascinating. But we're not allowed to tell you how it happens.'"
But Garcia has his own theory. "I think it's based on that cartoon thing when they put the pie on the windowsill, and it would drag the character to the window," he said. "Yeah, the whole thing's going to be a big pie on the windowsill. ... A pie on the windowsill of purgatory." The second season of Lost premieres on Sept. 21 in its new Wednesday 9 p.m. ET/PT timeslot.
Lost, Housewives Win Emmys
BC's hit series Lost won the Emmy Award for best drama in ceremonies broadcast on CBS Sept. 18 from Los Angeles, the Associated Press reported. Felicity Huffman of ABC's Desperate Housewives and Patricia Arquette of NBC's Medium, meanwhile, became first-time Emmy winners as they received lead actress honors, the AP reported.
Lost also won the award for best directing for a drama series for series co-creator J.J. Abrams. Desperate Housewives won the comedy series directing award.
NBC is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Star Angles For Millennium Film
ance Henriksen, who starred in the defunct Fox SF series Millennium, told SCI FI Wire that he would love to return to the character for a feature film. "There's many reasons why I would be [interested]," Henriksen said in an interview. "I remember when we shot the pilot, I thought it was a movie. It took us a month to shoot the pilot, and it was great. It was a great experience. Doing a film you'd have more language. You wouldn't be straddled by the network censors, and it would be very interesting to get into more detail about certain things."
In the Fox TV series, which ran for three seasons 1996-'99, Henriksen played Frank Black, a former FBI profiler with heightened sensitivities, who joined a shadowy group trying to forestall the apocalypse. Henriksen said he's even spoken with Chris Carter, who created the show as a follow-up to the more popular The X-Files, about what the story of the film would be. "We've broached the subject quite a few times," he said. "That's like offering somebody a tremendous amount of work. But he's smart. He could make it work."
Millennium was canceled before the actual turn of the century, but Henriksen's character did make an appearance in a millennium-themed episode of The X-Files during its seventh season. Still, Henriksen feels that his character never got a proper sendoff. "The episode was about zombies," he said. "And I didn't really know what Chris was thinking when he said it would be closure. You know what I mean? I mean, the only closure was that the ball dropped, and it was now the year 2000. The zombies didn't have anything to do with it."
With the third and final season recently released on DVD, Henriksen hopes that the fans will show enough support for the series to justify a film. "I wonder if the sales of these will tell us how many people loved the show and whether or not the movie ought to be made," he said. "I mean, the guy still is alive. Maybe it's a good thing there was no closure for Millennium, because now if we did a movie it would be good closure for me."
Burton Finds Inspiration In Corpse
im Burton, whose stop-motion-animated Corpse Bride opens this week, told SCI FI Wire that he got his fascination with the dead, as well as his inspiration for the fanciful images of the world of the dead, from his days growing up in the Los Angeles suburb of Burbank.
"Well, I think dealing with the undead comes from growing up in Burbank," Burton said in an interview at the Toronto International Film Festival. "It was sort of living in a suburban Night of the Living Dead during the day, in the bright sunlight."
In the movie, the world of the dead is more lively than the provincial village of the living. Corpse Bride centers on Victor (Johnny Depp) as he inadvertently marries a dead bride (Helena Bonham Carter). She drags him to her world of skeletons and goblins in a lively musical underworld.
"I've just always liked monster movies, and I've always been fascinated by death," Burton said. "Again, growing up in a culture where death is sort of looked [on] as sort of a dark subject, and then living so close to Mexico, where you see the Day of the Dead [with] skeletons, and it's all humor and music and dancing. That [Mexican celebration] is an uncanny celebration of life, in a way, and I just always felt it was a more positive approach to things. I always responded to that much more than the dark, unspoken cloud ... in the kind of environment that I grew up in."
Burton said he used to collect the Mexican figures of skeletons doing household chores, and they inspired his vision of the worlds he concocted in Corpse Bride and its predecessor, The Nightmare Before Christmas. "I used to have those figurines," he said. "I would buy them, and they would always have these nice scenes with them and clothes, and there was a lot of humor and fun involved with those characters. That's what I felt was really inspiring to me."
Burton also confessed an interest in the work of special-effects master Ray Harryhausen, whose stop-motion animation appears in the films Clash of the Titans and Jason and the Argonauts. "He was the guy," Burton said. "He was the one. If I saw his name on a movie, I went. No actor meant anything. But his name certainly meant something. That's where the love of this type of animation came for me. You can see an artist at work. His monsters had more personality than most of the actors in the movies that they were involved in. Even if the monster is just a monster, the death scene was always just so beautiful and tragic. [He'd] find a little twist of the tail or whatever, the one final breath. He just brought such passion into the work. ... He was the guy that not only inspired me, he inspires almost any animator."
Burton said that he got a chance to meet Harryhausen while making Corpse Bride in London. "Several months ago Johnny [Depp] and Helena [Bonham Carter] and I went to his house in London and met him for the first time," he said. "And he was just such an amazing man and so generous with his time and enthusiasm and all. Then he went to the set of Corpse Bride, and production sort of ground to a halt that day, because everybody was just like, 'Uhhh!' You know? He truly inspired, not just stop-motion animators, but any animator." Corpse Bride opens Sept. 23.
Corpse Character Came To Depp
ohnny Depp, who voices the lead character in Tim Burton's stop-motion-animated Corpse Bride, told SCI FI Wire that he prepared for his first animated feature role during the walk from the studio where he was simultaneously shooting Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in London.
"Everything for Corpse Bride happened very quick," Depp said in an interview. "It all happened in about 15 or 20 minutes, literally, because I had finished the day as Wonka, and then right after work Tim and I were going into the studio for the [recording] session. So the process lasted about the length of the walk from the soundstage to the recording studio, which was pretty quick. I just went, 'OK. Where's he from? What do you want him to sound like?' And then it was sort of born in that little bit of time, and I didn't hear any of it until later."
Depp got the added benefit of seeing the two-foot-tall puppet of his character Victor before he created the voice of the hapless young man who mistakenly marries a dead bride. Victor is the son of two fish merchants, Nell and William Van Dort, who have arranged a marriage to the daughter of an aristocratic family. The daughter, Victoria (voiced by Emily Watson), falls for Victor, but he flubs his marriage vows during rehearsals and is told to go practice them before the wedding can commence. When rehearsing his vows in the forest, he puts a ring on a dead twig, which turns out to be the skeletal finger of the Corpse Bride (Helena Bonham Carter). She drags him to her world of the undead and insist that they are married.
Depp said that he waits for inspiration to hit him about a character. This is his fifth collaboration with Burton, and his first animated feature. "With any character, it all comes from somewhere in there," Depp said. "There's some place of truth within you. And then I don't know. It's weird. When I read a script, I get these sort of images and stuff. It's like a set of ideas come to me, and then sometimes it's people who come to me, like in Sleepy Hollow I kept seeing Roddy McDowall and Angela Lansbury, that kind of thing, and so it became the sort of inspiration for me."
Burton admitted that he rushed Depp to the voicing of his character, but said he did it on purpose. "We were shooting Charlie, I think, one day, and I said, 'Let's go over the recordings of him, do you mind? Let's do some recording.' And ... as he's walking over, ... he's saying to himself, ... 'S--t, I've never worked on [this before], what am I doing? What is this character? I have no idea.' The great thing is that he and I just work spontaneously, too," Burton said. "So really in that one session he got it." Corpse Bride opens Sept. 23.
Star Wars TV Seeks Writers
GN FilmForce reported that Lucasfilm is seeking screenwriters for its planned TV series based on George Lucas' Star Wars film saga.
Keeping with Lucas' penchant for security, the show will be written at the secluded Skywalker Ranch, the site reported. Work will commence this January. Lucas and his colleague Rick McCallum will produce the still-untitled show.
The series is slated to run 50 hours and will be a mixture of live action and computer animation. Principal photography will begin in 2007, with filming to take place in Australia. The show will reportedly take place after the Empire has risen to power.
Newell Saw Goblet As Thriller
ike Newell, who directed the upcoming Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, told SCI FI Wire that he has envisioned the screen adaptation of the fourth book in the J.K. Rowling series as a thriller. "The first question that I asked myself was, 'Can I find a spine in this thing, which will allow me to tell the story of this book in a single film?'" Newell said in an interview. "And I found for my own satisfaction a very good way of pulling everything together, and it was that the thing is a thriller. And the thriller is that Voldemort, the creature of ultimate evil, is now feeling his power again, and he needs to reform himself. He needs to get his body back. And the only way that he can do that is to subject himself to a particular potion, which, in order to be effective, needs three drops of Harry's blood. And so this whole year is set up by Voldemort as a way of getting the boy sufficiently in his power."
In order to condense the novel, which is more than 700 pages long, into a two-hour film, Newell and screenwriter Steve Kloves stripped out everything that didn't directly support the story. Newell said that the scene he most regrets losing is a brief appearance by Harry's uncaring Muggle family, the Dursleys. "I'm sorry about the Dursleys, actually," he said. "Because I think there's a kind of a convention in the movies that it's enjoyable to see the Dursleys each time. But, in fact, if you read the books, the Dursley incident is absolutely tiny and not central at all."
Newell—the third director to take on the Harry Potter franchise and the first who is British—said that although the story has fantastical elements, he wanted to approach it as realistically as possible. "People ask me, 'What was it like dealing with such a fantastical story?' And it wasn't a fantastical story to me at all," he said. "It was absolutely real. OK, it's got wands and stuff like that, but you could say that this was what it was like living in Europe in the '30s. There was something really bad out there, and people were either going to do something about it, or they weren't going to do something about it. And that really bad stuff was creeping ever absolutely remorselessly forward. It was getting worse. And so there are all sorts of things that you can do, really quite recent manifestations of this, that you can point to. And you can make a very real world out of it." Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire opens Nov. 18.
Fiennes Is Real In Goblet
ike Newell, who directed Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, told SCI FI Wire that he cast Ralph Fiennes as the dark lord Voldemort because of his ability to play the character as a realistic and frightening villain, rather than a simple caricature. "You have to have the actor to do it," Newell said in an interview. "And Ralph was the actor to do it, because Ralph doesn't chew the scenery, and he isn't a sort of 19th-century melodrama figure. He's absolutely real and cold and chilling and absolutely dedicated to doing bad. And as soon as you have that, you can do it."
Goblet of Fire is the fourth in the Potter series of movies and is based on J.K. Rowling's book of the same name. It marks the first appearance of the present-day incarnation of You-Know-Who. Newell said that he and Fiennes talked a lot about the character's motivations for becoming the ultimate force of evil.
"What does he want?" Newell asked. "Why does he want to come back? What sort of a person is he that he wants to come back? What sort of a person is it who wants to impose a reign of evil? Does somebody who wants to impose a reign of evil actually see that it's evil? Or is it in fact for them a kind of good? So there was a lot of that stuff, which is the sort of thing that you discuss with an actor when he's getting to really concentrate on the part. And that was all very, very profitable."
Although much of the character's history is revealed in the sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which was just released in July, Newell said that he hasn't had time to read it, because he's been working on the film. "It's another huge, wacky novel, and, simply, I've been busy," he said. "I obviously read the fifth one, because that has relevance. But, no, I didn't do that. Nor did I change my view of things for any of the stories that might be coming up. I've been very strongly encouraged by the producers and by Warner Brothers to think of this as a specific one-off film. Perhaps it's a link in a chain. There are going to be seven of these. Each is a school year, and therefore you can't be irresponsible, but that was simply never even discussed. It was simply assumed that this was a one-off film, for which I was very grateful." Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire opens Nov. 18.
Rock Reveals Southland Tales
wayne "The Rock" Johnson, who stars in Richard Kelly's upcoming SF apocalypse movie Southland Tales, revealed to SCI FI Wire a few details about his role as Boxer Santaros, an action-movie star with amnesia, and the movie set in a near-future Los Angeles on the eve of the end of the world. "It's realistic, and it's a love letter to Los Angeles, and I think it could be a bitch slap as well," Johnson said in an interview on the film's set in Manhattan Beach, Calif., on Sept. 16.
Southland Tales, written and directed by Kelly (Donnie Darko), stars Johnson, Seann William Scott and Sarah Michelle Gellar, in a wide-ranging and complex story that mixes music, comedy, drama, science fiction and a little time travel, Johnson said.
Johnson's Santaros, a half-black, half-Samoan actor, has forgotten the past two years. He's in a ride-along with Scott's character, a police officer, and has a girfriend, porn actress and entrepreneur Krysta Now, played by Gellar. And he's written a script, which he begins to see unfold in the events around him, Johnson said. Johnson appeared wearing nearly full-body tattoos under his white tank-top shirt: some his own, mixing Samoan and other ethnic imagery; some featuring religious symbols, including a Star of David around his navel and a life-size image of Jesus' face on his back.
"[Santaros] has forgotten ... the past two years," Johnson said. "He doesn't remember that he's married to the senator's wife [played by Mandy Moore]. He doesn't ... know that he's ... this big movie star. ... There are many, many times where his schizophrenia kicks in, and he starts to hear voices, and the voices talk to Boxer, and all that comes out."
Johnson added: "His relationship with Seann is, [he's] doing research for a role. ... There's a screenplay that Boxer writes, which he wants to direct as well, and he is doing some film research. And Seann is a Los Angeles cop, and I go on a ride-along essentially with him and things ensue. ... And my relationship with Sarah is ... Sarah is the one person in my life who I feel like I can trust, and when I come ... out of my amnesia state, ... she's there." Southland Tales is currently in production for release sometime in 2006; it is currently seeking a U.S. distributor.
Tales' Scott Reunites With Rock
eann William Scott, one of the stars of Richard Kelly's upcoming SF movie Southland Tales, told SCI FI Wire that he finds himself reteamed with his The Rundown co-star Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson—only their roles are somewhat reversed. "It was strange," Scott said in an interview on the set of the movie, which is shooting in and around Los Angeles. "When we did our first scene together, it was a lot of fun. ... [In] The Rundown, you know, my character was just like Chatty Cathy and was in his ear yapping the whole time. And my character is much more quiet in this movie, and he's the guy that's kind of like crazy in my ear. So it was pretty fun."
Scott plays a dual role of Roland Taverner and Ronald Taverner in Tales, which centers on characters in Southern California on the eve of an apocalypse in 2008. "I play a brother who's a cop, and [also] his twin brother, who's a bit mysterious," Scott said. "He has amnesia, ... much like The Rock's character. The brother who has amnesia really only remembers things from the last six days, and he's pretty much been under control of this neo-Marxist group who [are] using him to pull off this big blackmail scam involving The Rock's character [a movie star named Boxer Santaros]. And he's trying to piece things together as the movie goes along, and he feels like maybe he's not being told the whole truth about maybe who he is or what's going on."
Southland Tales also stars Sarah Michelle Gellar. It is currently in production with an eye to a release sometime in 2006.
Gellar Morphed Into Tales
arah Michelle Gellar, who plays an entrepreneurial porn star in Richard Kelly's upcoming SF apocalyptic comedy film Southland Tales, told SCI FI Wire that she originally auditioned for another role before getting the lead female part.
"I was originally playing Amy Poehler's character, and Amy Poehler was playing my character," Gellar said in an interview on the film's set in Manhattan Beach, Calif., last week. The character was a struggling actress who works as a waitress—and dies in the first half-hour of the movie.
"Richard called one day and said, 'You know, I want to pitch this movie to you,'" Gellar recalled of her first contact with Kelly (Donnie Darko). "And I said, 'Great. I'm going to Japan tomorrow [to work on The Grudge], and I'll be back in two months.' ... And he said, 'No. tomorrow.' And I was like, 'I'm going to the airport.' And he's like, 'I'll meet you there.' And I'm like, 'You're kidding, right?' I didn't even know him. ... He's like, 'No, no, no!' And I said, 'Well, could you just send me the script?' And he says, 'No, no, no. I have to explain it to you. It's visual. I have to show it to you.' And I was like, 'Who is this crazy person?' So then I went and had lunch with him ... that fateful day. I went and had lunch with him before I went to the airport, and he pitched this just spectacular idea, and my favorite part of this whole story was we must have met for about three hours and he brought video footage to show me, these visuals of colors and sketches and all this. And my character, ... she wants to be this actress, but she's struggling, because she's working at [California Pizza Kitchen], but she knows she has a greater gift, and her dad is supporting her, and she's cutting an album. ... It's so exciting. I get on the airplane to read it, and my character died in the first 30 pages in that draft. And I was like, 'I spent three hours, and I die in the first 30 pages?' And it just showed how spectacularly rich Richard's ideas were, because everything was so fully developed to him. And I signed on instantly, before I even read it."
Eventually, Kelly and Gellar decided her role should be bigger, and also that he needed to expand another character, a porn actress named Krysta Now, who at the time was being played by Poehler (Saturday Night Live). "He had this idea that the Krysta character would be in love with Boxer [Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson], and through different things we just sort of realized that Amy and I would probably be better off swapping," Gellar recalled. Southland Tales is currently in production with an eye to a 2006 release.
Tales Backed By Web, Comics
ichard Kelly, writer and director of the upcoming SF apocalyptic film Southland Tales, told SCI FI Wire that the movie is supported by Web sites and a series of graphic novels that will flesh out the movie's elaborate backstory.
They include a site for a fictional company called Treer Products; one for porn-star-turned-entrepreneur Krysta Now, a character played by Sarah Michelle Gellar; and several 100-page graphic novels that will set the stage for the movie.
"It's all about ... the story being bigger than the film and me just wanting to tell the whole thing and just get it out of my system," Kelly said in an interview on the film's set in Manhattan Beach, Calif., last week. "The graphic novels and the Web servers [are] a great way for me to have that outlet. You know, the film will always exist on its own. You don't need those things to enjoy it. They might deepen your understanding of it, and they might expand your understanding of it, but they are mutually exclusive ... if you want them to be. You don't have to look on the Web site. You don't have to read the graphic novels, and you can still enjoy the film. And vice versa. If you read them and read up on the Web site, it doesn't mean the whole film will be ruined. We're trying to make that balance."
Southland Tales stars Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Seann William Scott and Gellar as three characters whose lives intersect during a momentous day in Los Angeles in 2008, on the eve of an apocalypse. Southland Tales is in production with an eye to a 2006 release.
Kelly Thinks Tales Is Funny
ichard Kelly, writer and director of the upcoming SF movie Southland Tales, told SCI FI Wire that the movie is about the end of the world. And it's a comedy.
"There's many other influences, but more than anything it's a comedy," Kelly (Donnie Darko) said in an interview on the film's Manhattan Beach, Calif., set last week. He added: "We wanted to try to make a film that's sort of conveying the feeling of frustration and unease, I guess, that a lot of my friends are feeling about a lot of things that are happening right now in the world and to sort of tell it in the most entertaining, fun way possible."
The film stars Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Seann William Scott and Sarah Michelle Gellar, among a cast of dozens, as Los Angeles residents caught up in events on the verge of the apocalypse in 2008.
"It's really, really, really complicated," Kelly said. "In a way that is sort of intentional, because if you look at our ... metaphor, ... it's a metaphor for the situation that ... our country is in right now. ... To make a movie about that and to try to oversimplify it or to try to sort of say it's ... all about one thing would sort of be the wrong way to go about it. ... You're kind of trying to make a piece of social satire. ... I think that we've been very careful with this film to try to create a really elaborate tapestry. ... It's much bigger than Darko. It's much more elaborate, but at the same time it's different in that this is much more of a comedy."
Southland Tales also draws from a wide variety of pop culture as its influences, Kelly said. "I think it's a time capsule," he said. "Some of the big influences clearly are Philip K. Dick, film noir, certain musicals, ... and maybe a bit of [Kurt] Vonnegut, too. We create near futures that don't exist, ... a speculative, alternate future as a way of kind of speculating on where we're going. And it's clearly an exaggerated future ... at some levels, and that's kind of what we're doing. But it's still grounded in reality."
Southland Tales is currently in production with an eye to a release sometime next year.
Kelly Still In The Box
riter/director Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko) told SCI FI Wire that he's still developing an SF movie called The Box with director Eli Roth, based on an unpublished story by Richard Matheson, with an eye to a 2006 start. "We are still just trying to get the script right," Kelly said in an interview on the set of his next movie, Southland Tales, in Manhattan Beach, Calif., on Sept. 16. "I hope we make it early next year. Eli, I think, he wants to do it next. We're dying to do it. It's just us getting the script just right."
Kelly acquired the rights to Matheson's story, which was turned into an episode of the 1980s TV show The Twilight Zone entitled "Button, Button."
"I just, we have so much respect for Matheson's work, and there's so many horror movies that just get churned through, and we don't want it to be in any way like a conventional horror film," Kelly said. "We really want it to be something special. ... But it's definitely very high ... on the priority list for both of us."
The premise of the story is that a financially strapped couple is given a box with a button on top and told that if they push it, they'll immediately receive $200,000, but someone they don't know will die.
Kelly's Southland Tales is currently in production with an eye to a 2006 release.
Threshold Debut Scores Well
he Sept. 16 two-hour premiere of CBS' SF drama Threshold, starring Carla Gugino, scored well with audiences, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Threshold averaged 8.5 million viewers and drew a 2.9 rating among adults aged 18-49 from 9-11 p.m., according to preliminary estimates from Nielsen Media Research, the trade paper reported. Among adults aged 25-54, Threshold was competitive, with a 3.8 average rating.
The good news for CBS was that the SF drama's numbers inched up steadily during its two-hour timeslot, and it marked an improvement in demographics compared to CBS' performance this time last year, with the Friday premieres of JAG and the short-lived 10 p.m. drama Dr. Vegas.
Threshold Is Balancing Act
s CBS' SF series Threshold returns with its third produced hour on Sept. 23, an episode entitled "Blood of the Children," executive producer Brannon Braga told SCI FI Wire that the show will balance stories of the week with a season-long arc.
"It's worth noting that the weekly stakes of the show will be out in the real world, involving everyday people like all of us," Braga said. "And [wherever] the team is going, ... whether it's Miami or Ohio or Indiana or Baltimore, they're going to be going out to investigate strange occurrences, all related to what the aliens are doing, and trying to put out fires, save the people who are in danger and try to figure out what the hell they're doing and how they're doing it."
In the first two hours of the show, which aired last week, viewers met Dr. Molly Caffrey (Carla Gugino) and her Project Threshold "red team" of experts, who discovered that a mysterious alien threat was trying to reprogram the DNA of human beings through sound and images. In "Blood of the Children," airing at 9 p.m. tonight, the team travels to a military academy, where staff and students seem to have fallen under the influence of the alien signal, for no apparent reason.
In future episodes, producers will mix threat stories with ones involving politics and even the media. "There's also an interesting aspect to the show, though it's more of a sub-aspect, which we call the West Wing aspect," Braga said. "In one episode there's a senator who doesn't know about Threshold, who discovers $50 million has been diverted to something called Threshold, and he wants to know what the hell is going on. And the lid is almost blown off the whole operation. So the team is not only trying to figure out what's going on, they're trying to keep people from finding out." Threshold airs Fridays at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
Bello Enters The Dark
aria Bello told SCI FI Wire that while she's not generally interested in horror films as either a moviegoer or an actor, she couldn't resist signing on for The Dark. Based on the novel Sheep by Simon Maginn, The Dark stars Bello, Sean Bean (The Lord of the Rings) and Sophie Stuckey (Doctor Sleep).
"It's a psychological thriller, kind of [a] ghost film," Bello said in an interview while promoting her latest film, director David Cronenberg's A History of Violence. "I've never been attracted to slasher-horror films. I don't like that sort of thing, but this was deeply psychological."
Bello added: "It's about a woman [Bello] and her daughter [Stuckey] and how she loses the daughter and has to spend the whole film trying to get her daughter back and coming to terms with her own guilt and shame about being a bad parent, which every parent can understand, I'm sure. ... I go to a different plane [than Bean, who plays the husband/father and is also trying to rescue his dead daughter]. It gets pretty supernatural. You have to see it." The Dark is currently in release overseas and is seeking domestic distribution.
Asaro Balances Science And Art
F writer Catherine Asaro, author of the upcoming The Final Key, told SCI FI Wire that the title is really the second half of a book that started with Schism, which was just released in paperback. "When I realized how long it was, my publisher and I decided to split it in two," Asaro said in an interview. The Final Key will be released in hardcover in December.
Schism is the 10th book set in the Skolian Empire, Asaro's universe that marries hard SF with romance. In that, her writing is an extension of her life: Asaro received a Ph.D. in chemical physics from Harvard, and she calls herself "a romantic at heart." "My books are not just about the big events, like wars, but how people relate [to] each other and fall in love," Asaro said. "It makes the characters more interesting to write." Not surprisingly, Asaro also writes fantasy books for Luna, a genre offshoot of Harlequin books.
Before Asaro discovered physics, she performed ballet. "Ballet for me was the physical equivalent of theoretical physics," she said. "Most people think of ballet as purely an art, but you actually have to have an immensely developed sense of spatial perception and an ability to quickly process patterns and project them forward. These are the same skills and mental talents that you use for math." She believes that ballet and physics have other traits in common. "You have to master your technique, but then you need artistry, creativity ability and the joy of discovery."
Asaro recently completed a non-Skolian SF book, Alpha. "It's a thriller, involving present-day technology extrapolated 30 years into the future," she said. "Alpha deals with an android who kidnapped an Air Force general. The general has to take over as pilot of this rather nifty experimental jet fighter that the bad guys are building."
Asaro recently stepped down from her role as a two-term president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. "And now I'm enjoying a well-deserved rest," she said. During her presidency, SFWA created the Andre Norton Award, which recognizes books of excellence in the young adult science fiction/fantasy field.
Cinderella Looks Better Than Ever
he cast and crew of the 1950 animated Disney classic Cinderella told SCI FI Wire that a recent restoration makes the movie look and sound better than ever. DTS Digital Images specialist John Lowry said in an interview that the restoration project is the most extensive ever attempted and makes the movie look better than it did in its original form.
"This could be the rebirth of cel animation, because we went back to the original art of the cel animation and took out all the scratches, scuffs and dirt in the original print," Lowry said at a screening of the movie in Hollywood, Calif., last week. Lowry said that the original Disney footage is kept in a vault at the Library of Congress. "Now, this movie will be equally pristine 100 years from now."
Visual-effects specialist David Bossert, who led the Disney restoration project, said: "In six or seven months we cleaned up more than 10 million pieces of dirt from the original nitrate negative. It took a lot of care."
At last week's screening, the guests of honor included members of the film's original voice cast: Ilene Woods Shaughnessy (Cinderella), June Foray (Lucifer the cat) and Lucille Bliss (Anastasia the stepmother), as well as Ollie Johnston, 92, one of the original "Nine Old Men" of Disney animators, who received a five-minute standing ovation from the crowd.
"We looked at little old ladies in the supermarkets. We studied a lot of girls," said Johnston, talking about how he animated the stepmother and two stepsisters for the film. He's also known for working on Pinocchio and Bambi. "You have to feel the characters in your heart before you can love to hate them."
Bliss, who still does voice work (Robots, the Star Wars: Bounty Hunter video game and the Battlestar Galactica video game), said that she was hand-picked by Walt Disney himself. "He was ever so meticulous and would have loved to see how this restoration came out 50 years later," she said.
Shaughnessy said she landed the role of the fairy-tale princess by recording the songs as a favor to her friends, songwriters Mack David and Jerry Livingston. "Then, Walt Disney called me in and said he bought the songs and loved the singing and asked me to be the voice of Cinderella," she said. "I haven't avoided ... a favor for a friend since." She added that Disney himself came up with the idea of recording her three-part harmony for "Sing, Sweet Nightingale" and playing it as Cinderella's image is duplicated in soap bubbles.
Disney is releasing the restored Cinderella in a two-disc platinum edition on Oct. 4. The movie will screen in a limited engagement at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood until then.
Universal Turning The Screw
enry James' classic creepy tale The Turn of the Screw is being adapted for the big screen by Universal Pictures and Vertigo Entertainment, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Universal has acquired The Turning, a pitch that Chad and Carey Hayes (House of Wax) will write and Vertigo's Roy Lee and Doug Davison will produce, the trade paper reported.
The Hayes brothers have come up with a contemporary take on the story of a caretaker hired to look after two orphaned children at their family's isolated estate. Upon the caretaker's arrival, the young woman finds that the children are not quite what they seem, and that she might be losing them to malevolent spirits with a secret tie to their past, the trade paper reported.
The story was first published in serialized form in 1898 in Collier's Weekly and has been hailed by literary critics as one of the ghost story genre's finest tales.
Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
No Bodies Snatched In Invasion
haun Cassidy, creator and executive producer of ABC's upcoming SF series Invasion, told SCI FI Wire that the show's mysteries are in its people. "I really view our show, at the core, as a family show ... and a blended-family show," Cassidy said in an interview. "The family trying to recover from divorce and remarriage is allegorical to the community trying to recover from the hurricane, and ultimately in the big picture maybe there's a species trying to recover. And if that's human or alien, that remains to be seen."
Invasion deals with the aftermath of a devastating hurricane on a small town in Florida. The series hints at the possibility that aliens are among us, and it appears to have similarities to a certain classic SF film about pod people.
"The element of the invasion, ... the title hearkens back to sci-fi movies of the '50s," Cassidy said. "But it really is also representative of the invasion of my household. ... Who is this new step-parent? Who is this baby that's coming into my body? You know, some of the scariest genre films, again, are the most grounded. Rosemary's Baby had a core fear that almost every parent can relate to. 'Is my baby all right?'"
But, Cassidy added: "This isn't [Invasion of the] Body Snatchers. And a lot of people expect that, first because of the title, but also because of the genre. People are so educated because of pop culture. And in these kind of shows, 'Oh, I know an alien planet, and people have been taken, and blah, blah, blah, blah.' Well, maybe. Maybe not. And if it's maybe not, then some people are going to have [to] throw out their expectations and actually go along for the ride." Invasion debuts Sept. 21 and will air Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET/PT.
Black To Voice Kung Fu Panda
reamWorks Animation is developing Kung Fu Panda, an animated film featuring the voice of Jack Black, which is set for 2008, Variety reported.
The film will be influenced by cartoonish live-action movies like Kung Fu Hustle and will star Black as the voice of a lazy panda prophesied to save the Valley of Peace, the trade paper reported.
The film will be directed by John Stevenson and Mark Osborne. Melissa Cobb will produce, from a screenplay by Dan Harmon and Rob Schrab.
For 2009 and beyond, DreamWorks Animation has four additional potential projects planned, including How to Train Your Dragon, Rex Havoc, It Came From Earth! and Route 66.
Mystique To Marry Quinn Mallory
ix months after X-Men star Rebecca Romijn's divorce from John Stamos, she became engaged to Sliders star Jerry O'Connell over the weekend in New York, Zap2It reported.
"We couldn't be happier and are looking forward to the next chapter of our lives," the couple said in a joint statement.
Romijn, 32, first married Stamos (Full House) in 1998, then split amicably with him in April 2004. Their divorce became final in March of this year.
O'Connell, 31, is best known to SF TV fans for the series Sliders. His big screen credits include Mission to Mars.
Neo Game Enters Matrix
hiny Entertainment animation director Gabriel Roundtree told SCI FI Wire that the company's upcoming The Matrix: Path of Neo video game remains faithful to the Matrix films that spawned it, only more so. The game, written by Matrix filmmakers Larry and Andy Wachowski, hits stores Nov. 8 for the PC, Xbox and 2Xbox platforms, from Atari and Shiny.
"The game really is the world of the movies," Roundtree said in an interview. "But it is even more of a video game. Everything is bigger, while still in the vein of the films. In the movies, when Neo dives and shoots, he's only a few feet off the ground. In this game he bounces off a pillar, off a wall, off a ceiling and flies 20 feet over the head of his enemies, shooting down on them."
The storyline of The Matrix: Path of Neo parallels the storyline of the three movies, with the player evolving from a lowly game developer, becoming Neo and fulfilling his destiny as The One. As scripted by the Wachowski brothers, Path of Neo allows for alternative characters, storylines and scenarios. In the game, Neo may succeed in a task he failed to perform in the movies or may find different ways to solve problems. Roundtree also promised "a special secret ending that is different from the films."
"What expands in this game is that you are Neo," Roundtree said. "We've expanded sections that are only alluded to in the films and, in the game, you get to experience a lot of things that were only hinted at in the films."
Number's Up For Carrey
im Carrey and director Joel Schumacher are negotiating to team on The Number 23, a fantastical movie written by Fernley Phillips for New Line, Variety reported. The movie is slated to shoot in November.
Carrey will play a man who becomes obsessed and haunted upon reading a book that seems to be about his life, but ends with a murder. The number 23 is woven throughout the plot, the trade paper reported.
Carrey and Schumacher last worked together on Batman Forever.
Charmed Begins Anew
rad Kern, executive producer of The WB's Charmed, told SCI FI Wire that he believes they've created a series with "a canvas that seems to be infinite."
"We can paint whatever picture we want to paint," Kern said in an interview. "We can go anywhere we want to go. But it really does start with the characters and the stars, because they are real women, and they are real sisters. At least that's the way we portray them. And they grow up, and as they grow up they experience different things in their lives. Certainly different, 23 versus 30. And that opens up the door for new metaphors and new demons to resonate and challenge them in their next stages of life."
Charmed—starring Holly Marie Combs, Alyssa Milano and Rose McGowan as the witchy Halliwell sisters—is set to begin its eighth season this weekend after a last-minute renewal last season. "We'll have done 178 episodes [by the end of the season]," Kern said. "It's such lofty territory, [especially for] genre shows in prime time. I feel like I've got a nosebleed [laughs]. I think that obviously it's a challenge coming out of the season finale, which was designed in part to be a series finale, in case we weren't going to come back. Because we have come back, it has created some challenges for us. The one thing I know we don't want to do, and we're not going to do, is get out that cheaply or easily."
Last season the Charmed Ones took on Zankou (Oded Fehr), a demon who stole their powers in an attempt to take in the power of the Shadow. In the seventh-season finale, the sisters were able to defeat him, but ended up having to fake their deaths to the demon and the mortal world. As season eight begins, Paige, Piper and Phoebe will continue to let the world believe that they are dead, Kern said.
In some ways the sisters will like their new lives better, Kern added. "And they should like it a lot better," he said. "I think that's going to open up more stories for us, because we're able to send the women out into the real world, for really the first time, full-time, in seven years. But at the same time they're going to be challenged by what they see around them, which is bad things happening. Demons taking advantage of the Charmed Ones supposedly being gone. And how are they going to reconcile that while they live their own individual lives? How can they pretend like it doesn't matter? How can they watch bad things happen and do nothing about it? Yet if they decide to do something about it, then they risk losing the very thing that they've wanted, which is normal lives."
This season a new character named Billie (Kaley Cuoco) has been added to the cast. Billie is "kind of a brash thrill-seeker, a 19-year-old kick-ass witch, who they're going to end up reluctantly recruiting," Kern said. He added that he believes it's time for the girls to "pass the baton off, or at least attempt to pass the baton off. It's not going to be an easy baton pass to this new character." Charmed's eighth season premieres on Sept. 25 at 8 p.m. ET/PT.
Seitzman Sets Sights On Sparrow
creenwriter Michael Seitzman told SCI FI Wire that he's adapting Mary Doria Russell's debut SF-religious novel The Sparrow for the screen for Warner Brothers and Brad Pitt. "The Sparrow asks a big question, and it asks a very relevant question," Seitzman said in an interview while promoting his latest film, North Country. "Can one culture ever reach its hand out to another culture without a built-in arrogance and dynamic that is sure to doom that relationship, regardless of how benign their intentions? And that's what The Sparrow is about."
Seitzman offered additional plot details. "We've heard radio signals from another planet," he said. "The Vatican has sent a mission. And through a series of very benign mistakes, the [Jesuit] priests set off a civil war on the planet. I think it asks that question, which I think is the most relevant question facing the world right now." The Sparrow was followed by a sequel, Children of God.
Rose Seeks Teens And Tweens
ravity Interactive marketing director David Kim told SCI FI Wire that Rose Online, the company's new massively multiplayer online game, aims at a "teen and tween" audience.
"Our particular take on the genre in this game is to tailor it toward a younger game-playing audience and to have it be more friendly," Kim said in an interview. "The game is not violent. The characters are drawn in a very cute way, and we've incorporated science-fiction and fairy-tale elements in a very lighthearted way."
Rose centers on a group of gods who fall into a power struggle after one god takes it upon himself to create a whole series of new worlds. Game players take on the role of The Visitors, who enter the struggle in an attempt to set things right. Rose Online allows players to inhabit star systems, wage intergalactic wars and rule galaxies. Along the way, Visitors have the option of joining factions, controlling the economics and politics of different worlds and creating separate alliances.
"Each of the planets in the game has its own unique environment, which gives users the advantage of having adventures on different worlds," Kim said. "A lot of the quests in the game follow the storyline, complete objectives and illuminate conflicts going on in the worlds. It's a very social game."
Kim added: "Multiplayer online games have traditionally been medieval or science-fiction-based and have primarily catered to an 18-to-34-year-old male audience. We wanted to create a viable option for people who were not into those things, people who are a bit younger and into things that are a bit more lighthearted. You really don't see too much in the way of family-oriented games in the MMO space, and we're trying to fill that niche." Rose Online is set for a commercial launch in late November.
Briefly Noted
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The world premiere of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe will take place as a Royal Film Performance in a charity gala event for the Cinema and Television Benevolent Fund on Dec. 7 at the Royal Albert Hall in London before the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
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Paramount tapped Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Auburn to write an off-kilter adventure film version of the seminal knight's story St. George and the Dragon, Variety reported.
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CCP Games announced its EVE Online: Cold War Edition role-playing game has surpassed 15,000 peak concurrent users and 70,000 active subscribers.
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Warner Brothers announced the resumption of production in and around St. Francisville and Baton Rouge, La., on the supernatural film The Reaping, which had halted in advance of Hurricane Katrina.
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Sean Maher, who plays Dr. Simon Tam in the upcoming SF movie Serenity, told SCI FI Wire that he will appear in an early episode of CBS' new supernatural series Ghost Whisperer, to be written and directed by series co-creator John Gray, in which Maher will play the spirit of a deceased man.
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Now Playing magazine has posted interviews about the upcoming Battlestar Galactica episode "Pegasus."
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NBC's SF series Surface drew an impressive 10.9 million viewers in its Sept. 19 debut, TV Guide Online reported.
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Greg Grunberg, who has starred in longtime pal J.J. Abrams' TV series Felicity, Alias and Lost, has reunited with the writer/director/producer again for Mission: Impossible III and spent the last week filming a top-secret cameo, TV Guide Online reported.
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Essayist and genre novelist Jonathan Lethem is one of the 25 recipients of a $500,000 MacArthur Fellowship for 2005, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Web site reported.
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ABC has posted a new clip from its upcoming SF series Invasion, which debuts Sept. 21, on a new official Web site.
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Katey Sagal is the latest actor tapped to guest-star on ABC's Lost in its upcoming second season, playing a woman named Helen in the new season's third episode, airing Oct. 5 and also featuring another appearance by Locke's father (played by Kevin Tighe), TV Guide Online reported.
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Serenity director Joss Whedon will appear in the sixth episode of the upcoming second season of UPN's Veronica Mars, playing a car-rental agent named Douglas in a scene with star Kristen Bell; the episode will air in November, UPN announced.
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Scribner announced that Stephen King's forthcoming novel Cell will be released in February 2006 and Lisey's Story will be released in November 2006.
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Johnny Depp, star of Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, signed his name and placed his handprints and footprints in wet concrete in front of the Grauman's Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard on Sept. 16, the Associated Press reported.
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