Serenity Opens At No. 2
oss Whedon's SF adventure film Serenity, based on the short-lived Fox TV series Firefly, debuted in second place at the box office with a lukewarm $10.1 million in ticket sales for the weekend of Sept. 30, the Associated Press reported. It was overtaken by the Jodie Foster vehicle Flightplan, which earned $15 million in its second week of release.
Also opening this weekend in limited release was the independent fantasy film MirrorMask, from director Dave McKean and writer Neil Gaiman, which appeared on just 18 screens. The film earned $127,000 for a respectable average of $7,055 per screen.
Meanwhile, the animated fantasy Corpse Bride, from director Tim Burton, had a third-place finish, earning $9.8 million over the weekend and lifting its total to $32.9 million after two weeks in wide release. Just Like Heaven, starring Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo, was sixth with $6.1 million in ticket sales, for a total of $38 million in three weeks. The horror film The Exorcism of Emily Rose continued to exceed expectations with a weekend gross of $4.4 million in its four week, bringing its total to $68 million overall.
Dushku Wants Wonder Woman
liza Dushku, who played the vampire slayer Faith in the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, told attendees at the Wizard World convention in Boston on Oct. 1 that she would love to be considered for the main role in Buffy creator Joss Whedon's next film, Wonder Woman. "I would follow that man anywhere," she said in a panel session. "He's a genius. He writes women and he gets women. It's not that I'm done with TV, but I hear Joss is doing a little movie called Wonder Woman [laughs]. I'd slap on the dukes for that."
Dushku last appeared on television in the series Tru Calling, which lasted for a season and a half on Fox. Her next film will be the drama Nobel Son, in which she plays an insane-asylum escapee alongside Alan Rickman, Bill Pullman, Danny Devito and Peter Boyle.
Star Wars TV Shows Ramp Up
ick McCallum, who served as producer on the recent Star Wars films, revealed to Now Playing Magazine some of the details of the two upcoming TV series based on the franchise created by George Lucas. "The live-action television series is something we're planning for just at the beginning of 2007," McCallum said in an interview while promoting the upcoming DVD of Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith at Lucas' Skywalker Ranch in northern California. "We're just starting to interview writers and trying to really figure out which direction [to go]."
McCallum added that the series will have a different tone than the features and will introduce characters that weren't seen on the big screen. "It is going to be much darker, much grittier. It's going to be character-based. [Lucas] envisions somewhere like 100 hours, [set] between Episode III and Episode IV, with a lot of characters that we haven't met, but [who] have been developed in some of the novels and other things. We're really excited about that, because I think finally we're going to have the opportunity to answer everybody's questions once and for all by the time we finish the series.”
McCallum also revealed that the live-action series is likely to be based in Sydney, Australia, and will be filmed in hi-def, while production on the animated series is already underway at Skywalker Ranch. "The animation is being done as we speak," he told the magazine. "It's starting to prep. That's being done here at the Ranch. A lot of the effects are being done in Singapore. ... I think it's just now in the conceptual work and script work [phase]. I think George is trying to get 13 scripts done first before we really start to get into the pipeline of it. But that'll start happening probably at the end of March."
Cage Comes To SCI FI
icolas Cage is set to executive-produce The Dresden Files, an original two-hour back-door pilot scheduled to air next summer on SCI FI Channel, the network announced. The project, produced by Lions Gate Television in association with Cage's Saturn Films, will be Cage's first foray into television.
Based on a series of novels by Jim Butcher, the pilot, written by Hans Beimler (Profiler) and Robert Wolfe (The 4400, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), tells the story of Harry Dresden, a Chicago-based private detective and the only wizard listed in the city's yellow pages. Where others see typical crimes of assault, kidnapping and murder, Harry sees otherworldly forces at work. Whether consulting for the police on inexplicable crimes or following his own cases, Dresden does battle with the forces of darkness, always maintaining a wry sense of humor and a unique perspective on our world.
Cage is the latest in a growing list of Hollywood elite to join forces with SCI FI. This December, the Channel will premiere The Triangle, executive-produced by Bryan Singer and Dean Devlin. SCI FI is also currently in development on projects with Steven Spielberg (Nine Lives), Martin Scorsese (The Twelve) and Frank Darabont (The Thing).
Favreau Goes To Mars
on Favreau (Zathura) will direct the upcoming film adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' story John Carter of Mars for Paramount, Variety reported. The serialized story centers around a Civil War veteran who retreats to a cave to escape a group of Indians and discovers a time portal to another planet, where he's taken prisoner by 12-foot-tall green men.
The studio is hoping to build a franchise out of the 11 volumes written by Burroughs, the trade paper reported. Ehren Kruger (The Skeleton Key) rewrote a script by Mark Protosevich. Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News is co-producing. Robert Rodriguez (Sin City) and Kerry Conran (Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow) were formerly attached to direct.
Jackson Rises To Halo
eter Jackson, who directed of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the upcoming remake of King Kong, will serve as executive producer of the upcoming film based on Microsoft's blockbuster Halo video game, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Jackson's wife and partner Fran Walsh, who served as writer and producer on his previous films, will co-executive-produce under the team's WingNut films banner. Jackson's New Zealand-based Weta companies will also provide creatures, miniatures and visual effects for the production.
Universal Pictures and 20th Century Fox, the companies behind the project, hope to be in production in the spring with an eye toward a summer 2007 release, the trade paper reported. Prior to Jackson's involvement, Microsoft hired Alex Garland (28 Days Later) to write the screenplay and will have its own consultants on the production, along with the game's developer, Bungie Studios. An announcement about the film's director is expected soon.
"As a gaming fan, I'm excited to bring Halo's premise, action and settings to the screen with all the specificity and reality today's technology can provide," Jackson said. "Fran and I are intrigued by the unique challenges this project offers, and we're delighted to be working again with our friends at Universal, and with our new ones at Fox and Microsoft. I'm a huge fan of the game and look forward to helping it come alive on the cinema screen."
The movie will be shot entirely in the New Zealand capital of Wellington, with a budget of more than $100 million, the trade paper reported. Universal Pictures will handle domestic distribution and Fox will distribute internationally.
Universal Pictures is owned by NBC Universal, which owns SCIFI.com.
Lost Comic In Limbo
amon Lindelof, co-creator of the hit ABC TV series Lost, told SCI FI Wire that a comic-book version of the show maybe a long while in coming. "We've been trying to do a Lost comic book since the show's inception," Lindelof said in an interview. "It's just a matter of figuring out what the comic book is going to be. We don't want the comic book to function outside the mythology of the show. We wouldn't want the comic book to give people more insight into the show and its characters than the average viewer would have."
Lindelof, who is currently writing Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk for Marvel Comics, said that the big stumbling block for the Lost comic book is how to tell stories about the island without using the characters that are currently on the show. "My guess is that if there is a Lost comic book, it will be an outside-the-box idea," he said. "We've been talking about variations on the backstories as one possible way of doing it. Something along the lines of the French woman's team coming to the island; something that would not bump into what's going on with the show."
Lindelof offers that while decisions about things like comic books are ultimately handled by the network and the studio, which own the show, he would love to be involved in a Lost comic book if it happens. "I would love to do a Lost comic, but it would be tough. Ideas for the show are so hard to come by that any ideas I got for the comics, I would automatically want to put them on the show."
Lindelof Marvels At New Comic
amon Lindelof, co-creator of the ABC TV series Lost, told SCI FI Wire that his latest endeavor as writer of Marvel's Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk happened by chance. "I play poker with a bunch of guys, including Sam Simon [one of the executive producers on The Simpsons] and, during one game, I mentioned how I would love to write a comic book," Lindelof said in an interview. "Sam tells me, 'You've got this hit show, so who wouldn't want you to write a comic book for them?' I didn't know it worked that way. Sam said, 'Let me call my friend Joe [Quesada, editor in chief at Marvel Comics].' The next day, I get an e-mail from Joe saying, 'I hear you want to write a comic book.' I said yes and we got on the phone and had a series of conversations."
The conversations led to Lindelof's first-ever comic book assignment, Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk. In the story, the Hulk has gone on a rampage in New York City, resulting in the death of 800 people. Dr. Bruce Banner, the Hulk's alter ego, is ultimately tried for the crime, found guilty and reportedly executed, thus saving Nick Fury, agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., the problem of dealing with the big green monster. But reports soon filter in that the Hulk has been spotted. Fury has to figure out a way to defuse the situation and to get rid of The Hulk, so he turns to Wolverine for help.
"My first choice was that I wanted to do something in the Ultimate universe, because the complex continuity of the regular Marvel universe would make it almost impossible for me to do it justice," Lindelof said. "When Joe suggested that idea of doing a miniseries in which Wolverine and Hulk meet for the first time, that was like a dream come true for me. Hulk number 181, which introduced Wolverine, was one of my prized possessions. And now, 20 years later, here was the opportunity to tell that story again."
Armed with suggestions and sample scripts from the Marvel editorial team, Lindelof began his maiden voyage in comic-book writing. "I'm still sort of finding my way," he said. "In comic writing, you're sort of directing every shot. In a TV script like Lost, you're explaining what the characters are doing and what they're saying to each other. In a comic book script, it's a little more detailed in terms of what you're trying to do visually. That's been a bit of a challenge for me, and it definitely makes the process move much slower."
Lindelof finds more than a touch of irony in his moonlighting from the most popular show on the planet to enter the world of comic-book writing. "The irony is that I had to create a hit TV show to get my foot in the door with comics," he said. "The idea that I'm writing a comic book is the coolest thing going on in my life right now." Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk begins its multi-issue story arc in December.
Knightley Talks Pirates
eira Knightley, who is simultaneously shooting two sequel films to the hit fantasy adventure Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, told the ComingSoon.net Web site that the project has consumed all of her energy. "It is my life now," she told the site in an interview while promoting her latest film, Domino, a biography of model-turned-bounty hunter Domino Harvey. "There is nothing else. We're doing them both at the same time, and we were halfway through as of yesterday. We were at 100 days yesterday, and we have at least another 100 to go. We've been going since February, but we've had about a month and a half off for hiatus because it's hurricane season."
Knightley said that she is very critical of her own work, but enjoyed having the chance to return to the character with new ideas. "I possibly hate every performance I've done and I would like to completely change it," she said. "So it's really difficult, therefore, to go back to a performance that I'd like to do completely differently and try to keep that continuity with it, because you suddenly go, 'Oh, but I wish I hadn't done that' and 'I wish she had been like this.' What's kind of nice is that it's three years on, so she's grown up a bit. So I can perhaps fix some of those things."
Knightley also promised that the first sequel, Dead Man's Chest, will defy expectations. "You have no idea what's going to happen in the second [film], and I promise you, it will surprise you." Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is scheduled for release in the summer of 2006.
Auction To Benefit Buffy Author
charity walk and auction will be held Oct. 8 in Logan Township, N.J. to raise money for brain-tumor research in honor of Matthew Passarella, the son of John Passarella, author of several novels based on the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, organizers announced. The eBay auction will be a 10-day auction timed to end at midnight on the day of the two-mile walk.
Auction items include a variety of autographed photos, books and merchandise related to Buffy and Angel, as well as other celebrity-related items donated by fans. A full list of auction items is available on the eBay Web site.
Superman Game Takes Flight
lectronic Arts, Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment and DC Comics have announced the development of a video game based on the upcoming Warner Brothers film Superman Returns. The game, which features storylines from both the movie and more than 60 years of comic-book content, is being developed by EA Tiburon in Orlando, Fla. It will be released on the Xbox 360 platform as well as current-generation consoles.
Steven Chiang, vice president of EA Tiburon, said that the game will allow players to "experience a real sense of flying and master Superman's unrivaled superhero powers in order to save Metropolis." The game is scheduled for release in conjunction with the opening of the film—directed by Bryan Singer and starring Kevin Spacey, Kate Bosworth and Brandon Routh—on June 30 of 2006.
Elder Scrolls Has Celeb Voices
he upcoming sequel game Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion will feature a number of number of voices that will be familiar to science-fiction fans, the GameSpot Web site reported. Some of the names who will lend their voices to the role-playing game include Patrick Stewart (X-Men), Sean Bean (Lord of the Rings), Terence Stamp (Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace) and Lynda Carter (Wonder Woman).
Stewart will voice the Emperor, while Bean will provide the voice of his son. The roles played by Stamp and Carter have yet to be announced. "Quite honestly, we wrote the parts with these individual actors in mind," executive producer Todd Howard told the site. "It's an honor to have them lend their talents to the project." Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, developed by Bethesda Softworks, is expected to be released later this year for the PC and Xbox 360 formats.
Winged Boy Takes Flight
uis Mandoki (Trapped) has signed on to direct The Winged Boy for Gold Circle Films, Variety reported. The film, described as "a family film with a slice of magical realism," centers on a young Irish boy who grows wings and starts to fly. It was based on an unpublished story by Mary Hayley Bell, the widow of famed British actor Sir John Mills and mother of actress Hayley Mills.
The screenplay was written by Michael Geary along with Bell's grandson Crispian Mills. It is currently undergoing a rewrite by Malia Scotch Marmo (Hook). Production is scheduled to begin in Ireland and the U.K. in the spring.
Near Dark To Rise Again
ogue Pictures is developing a remake of the 1987 vampire film Near Dark, the Dread Central Web site reported. According to the site's "very reliable sources," producers Amy Kaufman and David Bixler have started soliciting pitches from writers for a new version of the script. Rogue recently produced the domestic horror films Cry Wolf and Seed of Chucky and distributed Shawn of the Dead in North America.
The original Near Dark centered on a young man (Adrian Pasdar), who falls in love with a vampire (Jenny Wright) and faces the choice to become immortal himself. The film also stars Lance Henriksen, Jenette Goldstein and Bill Paxton. The Web site reported that Rogue isn't planning any drastic changes to the story from the original version, which has become a cult favorite among horror fans.
Resnick Has Four Books In '05
uthor Mike Resnick told SCI FI Wire that he will have four new science-fiction books to his name by the end of 2005. "It's not that difficult," Resnick said in an interview. "I sit down, and I write six or seven hours every day." With that schedule, the author, who won his fifth Hugo award this year for his short story, "Travels with My Cats," said he can finish a book in two months. "I love to write," he said.
The first two of this year's four books were released in September. Lady with an Alien, a young-adult novel released in September, puts a genre spin on Leonardo da Vinci's painting Lady with an Ermine. It was published by Watson-Guptill, which typically publishes art and design books. Dragon America posits an alternate history in which the United States uses dragons in the War of Independence.
October will see the release of the fourth book in Resnick's Widowmaker series, A Gathering of Widowmakers, an adventure about a man and his two clones. And finally, Starship: Mutiny, about a mutinous first officer on a starship, appears in December.
Resnick carved a niche for himself by writing science fiction based on Africa and African culture. "It's such an alien land that the ideas pop up, and then I latch on to one," he said.
In more than 40 years of professional writing, Resnick has written in a variety of styles, from adventures to dramas. Does he have a preference? "My favorite type of writing is humor," he said. "I've done books and an awful lot of funny stories. I consider myself fortunate to be able to publish as much humor as I've had. But humor doesn't pay that much, unless you're an Englishman named Doug [Adams] or Terry [Pratchett]."
Resnick, who stands fourth on the Locus magazine list of all-time award winners, living and dead, has also edited over 30 anthologies and written a number of screenplays. Although none of his scripts are currently in production, five have been optioned. "This being Hollywood, it's entirely possible none will ever get made; it's just as possible three or four will get made."
Perez Joins Warrior
incent Perez (Queen of the Damned) has joined the cast of the upcoming independent film The Last Warrior, Production Weekly reported. The film, directed by John Eyres, is a post-apocalyptic thriller set in the year 2060.
Perez will play a character named Alexander, who is destined for extermination by the security chief of an all-powerful corporation called Genitek. Production is scheduled to begin this January in Prague.
Tut Wraps In India
allmark Entertainment announced that its upcoming four-hour miniseries The Curse of King Tut's Tomb, starring Malcolm McDowell and Casper Van Dien, has just finished shooting in India, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The film, billed as a "fact-based fantasy adventure," will be a period piece set in the 1920s, with incorporated flashbacks to ancient Egypt.
Van Dien plays an archaeologist in the film, while McDowell portrays Van Dien's nemesis, the head of an organization named the Hellfire Club. Leonor Varela (Blade II) co-stars as a fellow archaeologist and love interest for Van Dien's character. Newcomer Francisco Bosch (Alexander) also appears as the pharaoh Tutankhamen. Hallmark has not yet announced an airdate for the miniseries.
Gnomes Coming To Theaters
anguard Films has struck a deal with writers Micah Herman and Kyle Newman to produce their feature comedy script Gnomes!, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Herman and Newman will also co-direct the project.
The story centers on a boy who discovers that the garden gnomes in his backyard actually are alive. When he starts to suspect that his mom's new suitor is a gnome-eating troll, the boy enlists the help of the gnomes, the trade paper reported.
Vanguard's John Williams will produce the picture, with Eric Bennett and Margaret French Isaac executive-producing. Williams' previous producing credits include the CG-animated films Shrek and Valiant.
Blackbirds Had Horrific History
herie Priest, author of the gothic horror novel Four and Twenty Blackbirds, published by Tor, told SCI FI Wire that the road to publication of her first novel was a bumpy one. "There might be legal proceedings headed his way at some point soon," Priest said of her novel's first publisher in a recent interview.
During the course of writing her novel, Priest decided to post excerpts of the work-in-progress to her LiveJournal. "Mostly I did this to test the waters and get a little feedback from some of my writer friends," she said. "I didn't really expect it to get me published or anything. I was treating the LiveJournal community as my own personal writer's workshop."
But it was because of LiveJournal that an editor from a small press based out of the Atlanta area became a fan of Priest's writing. "[The editor] liked what I'd posted so far, and wanted to see the whole manuscript," she said. "At the time, the manuscript was only barely 'whole,' but I wrapped it up and sent it along. A few months later, the publisher of this small press contacted me with an offer. It wasn't a big offer, but it was enough to send me into paroxysms of joy. Lacking an agent, or any other prospects, I counted my blessings and signed with all due haste."
However, after a series of publishing snafus—including the publisher's dismissing of the acquiring editor, a failure to pay freelancers and some questionable accounting practices—Priest was understandably upset. "So I did what any grown-up, mature, responsible sort of writer does," she said. "I got drunk and made a rambling, irate post on my LiveJournal about it. I kept it locked so that only people on my list could see it, but there was definitely some need to vent."
While she was feeling despondent about the turn events had taken, she received another email from a publisher, this time from Liz Gorinsky at Tor Books. Gorinsky, having discovered Priest's two-year-old proposal in the Tor slush pile, loved Four and Twenty Blackbirds and wanted to see more. "Unfortunately, the book was being held hostage in the miserable deal that had been forged in the meantime," Priest said. "Liz and I continued to correspond, though; we discussed other options, other manuscripts, other rights that might be up for purchase."
At this point, Priest acquired an agent who helped her extricate herself from the two-book deal she'd signed with her original publisher, and negotiated a three-book deal with Tor, the first of which would be a revised and expanded edition of Four and Twenty Blackbirds. "My experience with Tor has been inversely proportional to my first foray into publishing," Priest said. "The people there have absolutely spoiled me, and I have nothing but wonderful things to say about them."
A sequel, Wings to the Kingdom, is already in the works, and is scheduled for publication sometime in late 2006.
Quake 4 Goes Gold
ctivision has announced that the upcoming first-person shooter game Quake 4 has gone gold and will ship on Oct. 18, the GameSpot Web site reported. The fourth game in the popular PC franchise was developed by Raven Software and executive-produced by id Software.
According to the site, Quake 4 will continue the storyline from the 1999 game Quake II. This time, it follows a new protagonist, Matthew Kane, as he and his team of special forces operatives, known as the Rhino Squad, land on the hostile planet of Stroggos. Gamers will fight solo, side by side with other space marines, and in mechanized walkers and hovertanks, the site said. The multiplayer aspects of the game will be similar to Quake III: Arena, including jump pads and various multiplayer tricks, such as rocket jumping and grenade jumping.
Quake 4 is rated M for mature and will carry a suggest retail price of $49.99. It is also scheduled for release on the Xbox 360 later this year.
SCI FI Acquires Horror Titles
CI FI Channel has acquired the exclusive broadcast rights to several titles from Lions Gate Entertainment, including the network television premieres of Saw, starring Cary Elwes and Danny Glover and Alone in the Dark, starring Christian Slater, Stephen Dorff and Tara Reid, the network announced. The two films will premiere on SCI FI in 2007. In an unannounced deal earlier this year, SCI FI also acquired the rights to the network television premieres of Lions Gate's Cabin Fever and House of the Dead, which are slated to air in 2006.
In a statement, Thomas Vitale, SCI FI's senior vice president, said that films are a good fit for the network's expanding audience. "We are extremely excited to have the premiere network windows for these Lions Gate titles," he said. "We have a long history with them, and their movies are always enjoyed by the audience of our highly successful Saturday night movie strand."
Other Lions Gate titles in the acquisition include Monster Man, Rottweiler, Leprechaun 3 and Leprechaun 4: In Space.
Majesco's Worms 4 Ships
ajesco Entertainment announced that it has shipped the sequel strategy game Worms 4: Mayhem for the Xbox video-game system. The game, from developer Team 17, will also ship for the PC platform on Oct. 11, the company said in a statement.
Worms 4: Mayhem allows players to create a customized team of up to six worms to battle each other in numerous environments, including multiplayer battles for up to four players. The game also includes a new weapons factory, a random level generator and unlockable features that provide more creative ways to destroy an opponent. It carries a suggested retail price of $19.99.
Uncut Dead Lands On Screen
he unrated director's cut of George Romero's latest zombie film Land of the Dead will be shown in theaters for one night only on Oct. 17 at 36 Regal, United Artists and Edwards movie theatres across the country, organizers announced. The screening will be hosted by Fangoria Entertainment, publisher of Fangoria magazine, along with Universal Studios Home Entertainment, which is releasing the original theatrical version on DVD the following day.
The film, starring John Leguizamo, Dennis Hopper, Simon Baker and Asia Argento, will be presented in high-definition and cinema surround sound in cities nationwide including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Dallas, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Houston, Seattle, Tampa, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Cleveland, Miami, Denver and Pittsburgh. The event will also feature an exclusive big-screen interview with Romero. Tickets are available online at Fangoria's Web site or at participating Regal, United Artists and Edwards movie theatre box offices at the standard movie ticket price.
Universal Studios Home Entertainment is owned by NBC Universal, which owns SCIFI.com.
WB Engineering Species X
urt Sutter (The Shield) has been hired to write the SF screenplay Species X for Warner Brothers, about a police detective who realizes he might be from another world, Variety reported. David Goyer (Blade, Batman Begins) will executive-produce the film along with Basil Iwanyk (Laws of Attraction).
The story centers around a murder investigation, during which the detective discovers his extraterrestrial origins and becomes involved in a struggle between good and evil aliens. The idea is the brainchild of Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment's Jason Hall and Nathan Hendrickson, who are simultaneously developing the concept as a video game titled The Condemned: Criminal Origins. The studio hopes to introduce the game first, followed by a movie release to coincide with a sequel game that expands the universe, the trade paper reported.
Fanning Talked To Animals
akota Fanning, who stars in the upcoming film adaptation of the classic children's book Charlotte's Web, told SCI FI Wire that almost all of the animals in the film are live-action, but a few of the key creatures will be computer-generated. "Everything is live-action except for the spider and the rat," Fanning said. "They were so good."
The novel, by E.B. White, tells the story of a spider named Charlotte who helps save a farm pig named Wilbur from being sent to the butcher. Fanning plays Fern, the daughter of the farm's owner, who takes in the pig as a pet. The animals on the farm will be voiced by an A-list cast including Oprah Winfrey, Robert Redford, Cedric the Entertainer, Kathy Bates, John Cleese, Steve Buscemi, Andre "3000" Benjamin, Thomas Haden Church and Julia Roberts as Charlotte.
Of all the live animals she worked with, Fanning said that the pigs were her favorite. "There was like 47 to 60 pigs, it was crazy," said Fanning. "There were tons of them in all different sizes, and then they would get too big, and then they would have to get some more to bring in. Pigs grow so fast. I mean, one minute it would be like this small, and then the next minute it'd be that big. I got to hold them and feed them with the bottle. It was so cute." Charlotte's Web is expected to be released in June of 2006.
Harrelson Channels Darkly
oody Harrelson told SCI FI Wire that even after he read the Philip K. Dick novel A Scanner Darkly and the script of the film adaptation in which he co-stars, he wasn't sure what it was all about. "It was very interesting, I read that book and I honestly had no idea what the hell was going on," Harrelson said in an interview at the Toronto International Film Festival, where he was promoting his upcoming film North Country. "Then I did the movie because I just wanted to do it."
It was the people involved, not the story, that captivated Harrelson, he said. Director Richard Linklater (Dazed and Confused, Waking Life) re-wrote the script with Dick about a futuristic paranoid world where two out of every 10 people are hired to spy on the rest. "I wanted to work with Richard Linklater, Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr. and Winona Ryder," he said. "I wanted to do it, but I really still don't know what the hell that film is about. But I just know it's really interesting."
Harrelson said the finished product may look like Linklater's previous animated film Waking Life. "We shot it hi-def, and so Rick [Linklater] is doing it just like Waking Life, and animating over the film," he said. "But it was cool shooting it, because he'd have like six cameras lined up everywhere. It was cool because I hadn't really shot that much hi-def, and because there was a little bit of spontaneity."
Harrelson added, "Of course Downey will go off. He really is a genius. One time we did this scene where the four of us are all around in the living room, talking about this bike, and Downey just went off on this great tirade. And then Rick cut, and me and Winona just looked at each other and she says, 'I am so glad we got to see that.' And I said, 'Me too. That was amazing.'"
Harrelson got to see a bit of the footage before it was animated, he said. "They sent the clips, but it was all still just us. It wasn't animated yet. Although I think they've got a lot of it animated by now." A Scanner Darkly is scheduled for release in March of 2006.
Boy, Girl Cast In Boy Girl
evin Zegers (Dawn of the Dead) and Samaire Armstrong (Entourage) have joined the cast of It's a Boy Girl Thing, a teen comedy being produced by Elton John and David Furnish's Rocket Pictures and Prospero Pictures, Variety reported. Nick Hurran (Little Black Book) is directing from a script written by Geoff Deane ("Kinky Boots").
The film is about a high-school boy and girl who are next-door neighbors and sworn enemies. When they wake up one day in each other's bodies, they each set out to destroy the other's reputation in school. The cast already includes Sharon Osbourne, Maury Chaykin (Being Julia) and Mpho Koaho (Get Rich or Die Tryin'). Production is currently underway in Toronto and will move to the U.K. in November, the trade paper said.
Prime Books Launches Magazine
ean Wallace, senior editor at Prime Books, told SCI FI Wire that he will be editing new magazine published by Prime called Fantasy Magazine. "I think it's about time that this was launched, with an eye toward new writers, new stories and new approaches," Wallace said in a recent interview.
Fantasy Magazine will primarily be a fiction magazine, but each issue will also include book reviews and interviews. The first issue features stories from multiple-award-winning fantasy author Jeffrey Ford and World Fantasy Award-winner Jeff VanderMeer. There will also be new fiction from rising stars Tim Pratt, Holly Phillips, Sonya Taaffe, Catherynne M. Valente and Nick Mamatas, along with stories from several talented newcomers, including Sarah Brandywine Johnson, Megan Messinger and Erzebet YellowBoy.
Speaking about his vision for the magazine, Wallace said that he wanted to capture a feeling neglected by many current publications. "For Fantasy Magazine, I want the reader to come away with a sense of wonder and excitement, both of which I think are missing from a lot of today's genre magazines," he said. "Perhaps it's because we've forgotten what that actually means or represents, as [a] sense of wonder isn't just the province and property of children, left behind only to our early years and imaginations. . . . I think it's actually gotten a bit buried these days. And I want Fantasy Magazine to be the key that unlocks that, providing today's readers—those particularly with a love for language, for style, for imagination—with something new, original, and fresh."
The magazine is not currently open to submissions, but writers, both new and established, will be invited to submit their work once the first issue appears. "I believe very strongly in publishing new material," Wallace said. "And I hope to discover many more promising authors for our readers."
Fantasy Magazine will debut at the World Fantasy Convention, which takes place Nov. 4 through Nov. 6 in Madison, Wis. The magazine will appear quarterly, and each issue will have a cover price of $5.95. Readers wishing to subscribe now can place advance orders through Project Pulp, Clarkesworld Books and Wildside Press.
Prime Books is the publisher of the World Fantasy Award-winning anthology Leviathan 3, and Wallace himself is a two-time World Fantasy Award nominee for editing.
Boll Reveals Dungeon Details
we Boll, director of the new movie based on the Dungeon Siege video-game franchise, told SCI FI Wire that the film will be called In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Adventure, and is set for a fall 2006 release.
"The short story is, we have a farmer, [played by] Jason Statham, who is attacked in the beginning by Krugs," Boll told SCI FI Wire in an interview on the film's set in Vancouver. "His wife gets kidnapped and he must go on a journey to get his wife back." Farmer is quickly drawn into larger events as the Krugs—an army of beast-men raised by the evil wizard Gallion—storm the Kingdom of Ehb.
Drawing its inspiration from the Dungeons and Dragons "party of adventurers" model, the Dungeon Siege PC game, developed by Gas Powered Games and published by Microsoft in 2002, features a group of as many as a half-dozen heroes roaming through cave complexes, mountain peaks and swamps, meeting allies and enemies at every step.
In addition to Statham, the cast features Claire Forlani as Farmer's wife, Ron Perlman as his helpful neighbor Norrick, John Rhys-Davies as the good magus Merrick, Leelee Sobieski as Merrick's daughter Muriella, Kristanna Loken as the forest warrior Elora, Ray Liotta as the villainous Gallion, Matthew Lillard as his lieutenant, Duke Farrow, and Burt Reynolds as King Konreid.
Translating the feel of the game to the screen has resulted in a sprawling fantasy epic. "There are a lot of side stories going on," Boll said. "That's why the movie right now is three hours and 20 minutes. We're ending up with three hours and 45 minutes in the rough cut. ... It will obviously be a very long movie no matter what." Much of the cut footage will likely be used in an expanded DVD release, Boll said.
Rock Went Dark For Doom
wayne "The Rock" Johnson, who stars in the upcoming video-game adaptation Doom, told SCI FI Wire that he liked the fact that the film doesn't hold back for the sake of a less restrictive rating. "I was wanting to do a rated-R movie that was unapologetic, and that's what you find with Doom, unlike the other video-game adaptations," Johnson said in an interview on the set in Prague last January. "We're not trying to be PG-13, and we're not making any apologies for what we are, which was what the original Doom did."
As a result, the film is more terrifying, which was Johnson's hope from the beginning. "What really sealed the deal for me was when I finally talked to Andre Bartkowiak, the director," Johnson said. "I said, 'We have this liberty that we can scare people.' I said, 'What're your feelings on that?' You know, I wanted to scare the s--t out of people. And he said, 'Well, we're not going to scare the s--t out of people.' There's this long pause. [I'm thinking], 'Oh God. I just signed a contract.' I said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'We're going to f--king terrify them.' I was like, 'Oh great.' To hear that passion, that was great too."
Johnson was originally considered for the role of the heroic John Grimm, which eventually went to Karl Urban, but after reading the script he convinced the producers that he'd be better as Sarge, a much darker character. "I think I can relate more to Sarge," he said. "I love Sarge. [He's] a guy who's just steadfast, and he believes what he believes in at all costs. And he is that passionate about the corps. ... He is unforgiving, I will give you that. At times he is a little dark. I don't know if he's so much disturbed. That wasn't my interpretation of him, certainly not what we put on screen." Doom opens Oct. 21.
Myst Developer Gets Reprieve
eports of the demise of Myst developer Cyan Worlds have been greatly exaggerated, according to the San Jose Mercury News and the GameSpot Web site. Cyan Founder Rand Miller confirmed separately to both sources that the company is rehiring most of its workforce and will continue to develop new games.
In early September, Richard A. Watson, Cyan's official historian of the D'ni culture featured in the Myst games, told SCI FI Wire that Cyan was shutting its doors and laying off its staff indefinitely, but said the closure might be temporary.
According to Miller, the company's doors have now reopened. "We've had a reprieve," Miller told the Mercury News. "[We've] managed to pull a rabbit out of the hat (that I can't give details about yet), so we rehired almost everybody. Crazy industry. It's giving me whiplash!" Miller gave a similar confirmation to GameSpot, but provided few details to either source.
Cyan previously stated that its recent release, Myst V: End of Ages, which came out Sept. 22, is the final installment in its signature franchise.
Museum Director Hired
hawn Levy (The Pink Panther) has signed on to direct A Night at the Museum, a live-action and computer-animated family comedy, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The 20th Century Fox project centers on a goodhearted but bumbling security guard at the Museum of Natural History who accidentally trips an ancient curse that causes the animals and insects on display to come to life, the trade paper said.
Director Stephen Sommers (The Mummy) was originally attached to the project, but stepped aside to write and direct the upcoming SF thriller When Worlds Collide for Paramount. The film is set to begin shooting early next year for an intended holiday release in 2006.
Rogue Ushers In Doomsday
ogue Pictures has joined forces with Crystal Sky Pictures to back Doomsday, the next project from British writer-director Neil Marshall (Dog Soldiers), Variety reported. The project will be the first executive-produced by Andrew Rona (Feast) in his new position as president of production at Rogue. Rona was previously an executive at Dimension Films.
Doomsday is described as a futuristic action thriller with political overtones, set in northern England and Scotland, the trade paper reported. "It's in the vein of Mad Max, set in the near future, when the world has become a very intense place to live," Rona said. "A disaster threatens the future of mankind, and a team of people have to stop it."
Rogue Pictures is owned by NBC Universal, which owns SCIFI.com.
Award Didn't Change Wolf Author
anadian SF author Edo van Belkom, whose new young-adult novel Lone Wolf is a sequel to his Aurora-award-winning novel Wolf Pack, told SCI FI Wire that winning an award had no impact on his writing of the sequel. "Winning the Aurora for the first book didn't really change anything about the writing of the second," he said in an interview. "All the while, I was just worried if the second book was going to be as good as the first one. That had nothing to do with any awards, it's just a feeling a writer has inside, knowing that you're not doing your best work. It all worked out well in the end, and Lone Wolf is a worthy successor to Wolf Pack, but during the writing of it, there were doubts."
Lone Wolf follows the same four werewolves raised as humans in Wolf Pack. Now, Noble, Harlan, Argus and Tora are teenagers with similar teen angsts. Tora wants desperately to be chosen for the school play. Harlan, who is smaller than his siblings, is the victim of a bully. Argus wants to help his little brother, but knows it would humiliate him. These daily problems are pushed aside, however, when the foursome must unite against a common enemy: an unscrupulous logging company which is planning to clear the woods where they run freely—and secretly—as wolves.
Wolf Pack won van Belkom his third Aurora, but nothing has changed for the author. He said that only a few awards really change things: the Hugo in SF and the Edgar for crime writing. Although winning any award is satisfying, van Belkom has his sights set on at least two other awards he would like to win. The Giller Prize earns the winning author $25,000 for penning the best Canadian-published novel or short story in English and the Booker-McConnell Prize (commonly known as the Booker) is awarded to the best full-length novel written in English, by a citizen of the U.K., the Commonwealth, Eire, Pakistan or South Africa. It carries a £50,000 cash prize. Van Belkom has yet to be shortlisted for either of these awards.
Kardia Wins Sloan Prize
he Alfred P. Sloan Foundation announced that the Canadian film Kardia, written and directed by Su Rynard, has won the $25,000 Sloan Feature Film Prize for 2005. The award honors feature-length films that explore science and technology themes in fresh, innovative ways and depict scientists and engineers in a realistic and compelling fashion.
The film, produced by Paul Barkin of Toronto-based production company Alcina Pictures, weaves fable, fiction, science and metaphor to tell the story of Hope, a pathologist who embarks on an unusual journey of reconciliation. Hope discovers that the experimental heart operation she underwent as a child has mysteriously linked her life with another. To unlock the secret of her past, Hope revisits the curious tale of her childhood and explores the landscape of love, loss and the human heart.
The prize comes from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's program in public understanding of science and forms part of a broader effort to stimulate leading artists in film, television and theater to create more credible works about science and technology. For the sixth consecutive year, the award will be presented at the Hamptons International Film Festival, which runs from Oct. 19 through Oct. 23.
Subterranean Is So Cliche
F author John Scalzi told SCI FI Wire that he's slated to guest-edit the spring 2006 issue of Subterranean Magazine, which will feature stories based around the theme of SF cliches. "I was actually initially interested in editing a book anthology on the theme of cliches," Scalzi said in an interview. "[Subterranean Press publisher Bill Schafer] liked the idea but thought it would be better suited for a magazine issue, and I could see how doing a magazine would give me more flexibility in terms of content. So that's the direction we went."
The subject matter was chosen because writers are taught that working with cliches is taboo. "They're forbidden fruit, things we can't write about because we won't sell our work if we do," Scalzi said. "I'm saying, 'Go ahead and play with the cliches and do something unexpected with them.' When I've told writers about the idea, they get this look in their eye. They pretty much all have a hackneyed plot device they've always wanted to take out for a spin. God knows there are enough good SF writers out there to do justice to any plot device you could mention. Why not see what they can do?"
Though writers have been parodying the hoariest of cliches for decades, that's not the sort of thing Scalzi is looking for. "My editorial nightmare would be submission after submission of broadly-played, rib-nudging fan farce; that's been done and it's what everyone expects," Scalzi said. "Show me the Amazon Women on the Moon story that's aware of its own metatext and you're doing the same parody everyone's done since the 1950s; show me the Amazon Women on the Moon story that can make me cry and you're on to something I might want to buy."
Scalzi speaks from experience. His first novel, Old Man's War (which is patterned explicitly after Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers), takes some very familiar tropes and reinvigorates them. "I was aware I was going where quite a few had gone before," he said. "But I also thought I could bring something new to that particular party. I seem to have gotten away with it this time, in part because I didn't apologize for walking in [Heinlein's] footsteps. I just made sure that's not all I did. I think working with cliches is the same deal. Give people what they want, then also give them what they didn't know they wanted until you showed it to them."
The reading period for the spring 2006 issue is Oct. 1 through Nov. 1. More information about this special issue is available on Scalzi's blog, The Whatever. Subscriptions to Subterranean Magazine, as well as the first two issues, are available through Subterranean Press's Web site.
Park, Cleese Make Crude Team
ick Park, creator of Wallace & Gromit, told SCI FI Wire that he's next going to team up with actor John Cleese for a stop-action feature titled Crude Awakening. "It's about cavemen, and it's all going to be Plasticine," Park said in an interview while promoting his latest film, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
Park, who has won two Academy Awards for his Wallace & Gromit shorts, couldn't give much detail about the plot, but he did reveal one tidbit: "I think there's a lot of jokes in there about the French."
Cleese, a Monty Python alumnus and Oscar-nominated screenwriter (for A Fish Called Wanda), is known for his cameos (Nearly Headless Nick in the Harry Potter movies), as well as many recent voice-overs (Valiant, Charlotte's Web, Shrek). He will likely voice a character in the new feature, Park said.
Dungeon Aims For PG-13
irector Uwe Boll, whose new movie In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Adventure will be his fourth in a string of video-game adaptations, told SCI FI Wire that it will be the first to have a PG-13 rating. "This movie is way too big to risk not having a PG-13," Boll said in an interview on the set in Vancouver, B.C. "If a guy gets stabbed, we don't show the impact. We don't have a prosthetic with blood coming out. What we do is the guy is on the ground and he has some blood on his body. There are so many battles that if we featured the blood in a major way, with blood effects, we would have no chance to get a PG-13 at all. It will be, in total, not easy to get a PG-13. We will get the PG-13, but we will have maybe an R-rated DVD version."
Although Boll's directorial instincts have earned his films an R rating in the past, In the Name of the King's $60 million budget, easily the biggest of any film he's directed so far, led him to aim for a more inclusive PG-13 rating. 2003's House of the Dead had a budget of about $7 million, while this year's Alone in the Dark and the forthcoming Bloodrayne were made for around $20 million each. In the Name of the King has a much longer script, but another reason for the larger budget is that nearly everything had to be created from scratch.
"In Bloodrayne it's Transylvania in 1700," Boll said. "So we found original castles and original streets in Romania where you could just shoot for nothing. But for Dungeon Siege you need CGI castles. It's too big. You don't find that kind of fantasy stuff in the real world, so that drives the budget up."
Boll, who funds his movies through private investors, could have avoided those costs by doing a different project. But he says he felt it was time to do "a real tentpole movie."
"I was sitting there last year in front of my investors, and I said, 'We can do three movies with the money,'" he said. "'We can do Far Cry, Hunter: the Reckoning and Fear Effect. Or we can do one big one.' I was happy that we made the decision to do one really big one to attract a wide, wide audience."
Doom Shot In First Person
arl Urban, who plays space marine John Grimm in the upcoming adaptation of the video game Doom, told SCI FI Wire that part of the film will mimic the game's first-person-shooter style from his character's point of view. "There's a sequence sort of near the end of the film, where essentially the audience becomes John Grimm and goes around slaughtering all these creatures, mutants," Urban said in an interview on the set in Prague last January. "I've seen an animatic of it and it’s just thrilling. I'm pretty sure that it’s going to keep the audience in their seats."
Urban said that he was aware of the high expectations of the game's legions of fans, but he left those concerns to the director and producers. "The game is a starting point for this film," he said. "It was an inspiration. And we have incorporated a hell of a lot of elements from this game into the film, but at the end of the day, this is a screen adaptation of the film. You know, we've done, I think, our very best to honor what the gamers are into and what has been created, and hopefully add to it."
The film version will feature many of the weapons found in the game. To learn how to use them, Urban and his co-stars trained with a military specialist prior to shooting. The experience turned out to be one of his favorite aspects of the filmmaking process. "I love firing weapons," he said. "I love it. You know, I'm having a blast on this film, really. When you walk on sets and you see these moody corridors and they give you this mess of assault rifles to play with, I feel like the luckiest guy on the planet. I've got my own 3-D version of Doom and I get to play it every day. It's sort of cool."
Doom, also starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Rosamund Pike, opens Oct. 21. It is being released by Universal Pictures, a division of NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.com.
Briefly Noted
-
A new clip has been posted in SCI FI Wire's Trailers section fromthe upcoming Disney animated feature Chicken Little, a twist on the old fable about a chicken who mistakenly believes the sky is falling when an acorn falls on his head.
-
Uber-couple Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are now expecting a baby, People magazine reported. The couple have been dating since April and became engaged in June.
-
NCSoft has announced a single subscription fee of $14.99 per month for the massively multiplayer online game City of Heroes and the upcoming stand-alone sequel City of Villains.
-
Oscar-winning actor Nicolas Cage, who stars in the upcoming comic-book adaptation Ghost Rider, became a father for the second time on Oct. 3 and named his newborn son Kal-el, the Kryptonian birth name of Superman.
-
The horror sequel Final Destination 3 has been scheduled for release on Feb. 10, 2006, New Line Cinema announced.
-
A Finnish parody of Star Trek and Babylon 5 titled Star Wreck: In The Pirkinning has been released on DVD and the Web after seven years of production, according to a post on the Slashdot Web site.
Back to the top.
