Fanning Voicing Coraline
akota Fanning has signed on to voice the title character in Laika Entertainment's animated feature Coraline, based on the best-selling novel by Neil Gaiman, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Henry Selick (Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas) is writing and directing the film. Bill Mechanic will produce through his Pandemonium Films, along with Laika's Mary Sandell, the trade paper reported.
Coraline centers on a young girl (Fanning) who discovers an alternate version of her life after walking through a secret door in her new home. On the surface, this parallel reality is similar to her real life, only much better. The adventure turns dangerous, however, when the girl's counterfeit parents try to keep her forever.
Lost Robbery Suspect Nabbed
olice have arrested a man described as "a possible suspect" in the home-invasion robbery of Lost actor Josh Holloway in Honolulu, where the show is filmed, the Associated Press reported.
The man matches the general description of the robber who held the star of the ABC drama and his wife at gunpoint Oct. 12 at their home, the AP reported.
The man was arrested Oct. 18 on outstanding burglary and felony assault warrants. He and a companion were taken into custody after the car they were in was stopped by police. Police said they fired rubber and wooden bullets, as well as pepper spray, when the men initially refused to get out of the car.
Neither Holloway nor his wife was harmed during the robbery, in which his Mercedes and other items were stolen.
Lost Cast Member Tailed
s someone stalking the cast of ABC's hit Lost? TV Guide Online reported that on Oct. 12— the same day that Lost star Josh Holloway and his wife were robbed at gunpoint inside their home—cast mate Harold Perrineau was followed by two men as he drove to fellow cast member Daniel Dae Kim's house.
The Honolulu Advertiser reported that Perreneau (Michael) attempted to shake those tailing him, then pulled over and phoned Kim, advising him to stay inside. At that point, the mystery car U-turned and sped away.
Vartan Back On Alias
V Guide Online's "Ask Ausiello" column reported that producers of ABC's Alias series have closed the deal to bring back co-star Michael Vartan, whose character, Michael Vaughn, appeared to perish in the season opener.
"The deal officially closed late last week, and Vartan returned to work on the Alias set yesterday," the site reported on Oct. 18. "Please don't ask me who he's playing or how long his return engagement will last, because that I can't tell you. (Mostly 'cause, well, I don't know.)"
Torchwood Spins Off Who
he BBC announced that it has commissioned a spinoff series of its hit revival of Doctor Who for its BBC Three network. The new series, from the new Who's creator Russell T. Davies, will be called Torchwood—an anagram of "Doctor Who"—and will feature the character of Captain Jack (John Barrowman), a swashbuckling spacefarer who was introduced in Who last season. The network has ordered 13 episodes.
"Torchwood is a British sci-fi paranoid thriller, a cop show with a sense of humor," Davies said in a statement. "It's dark, wild and sexy. It's The X-Files meets This Life. It's a stand-alone series for adult audiences, which will have its own unique identity. I have just begun working on the scripts with a team of writers and cannot wait to see the results."
Set in modern-day Cardiff, Torchwood will get its launch in the Christmas special and second season of Doctor Who and will center on Torchwood, a renegade group of investigators. No stories will cross over between Torchwood and Doctor Who, the BBC said.
Charmed's McGowan Handcuffed
harmed star Rose McGowan was handcuffed and booted from a party for the T-Mobile cellular service on Oct. 18 in Hollywood, Calif., after getting into a scuffle with a security guard, the New York Daily News reported.
McGowan was dancing at the Vanguard club when something she was doing with her keys caused security guards to surround her, one witness told the newspaper. They grabbed McGowan, searched her purse and showed her out the door.
Dominique Appel, a representative for the actress, had a different take on events. "There was a man standing uncomfortably close to her," Appel told the paper. "When she asked him to move away, words were exchanged. It happened he was a security guard. She was handcuffed and taken outside." Appel says McGowan "was detained," but police were not called.
Lucas Opens Singapore Toon Unit
ore than a year after its formation was announced, Lucasfilm Animation Co. Singapore will open Oct. 27, Variety reported.
The U.S.-based vice president and general manager of Lucasfilm Animation, Gail Currey, will be in town for the opening ceremony at the facility in Changi Business Park, the trade paper reported.
Heading up the 50-strong operation is G.M. Chris Kubsch, a German native who was previously a production executive at DreamWorks Animation and produced major animated features, as well as visual-effects and character animation for many live-action pictures.
The Singapore studio is expected to handle much of the animation and special effects for the upcoming Star Wars toons and live-action TV series announced by George Lucas earlier this year.
Doohan Beams Up For Last Time
tar Trek star James Doohan's cremated remains will be launched into space in accord with his last wishes, the Reuters news service reported.
Commercial space flight operator Space Services Inc. will launch the late actor's remains into space aboard its Explorers Flight on Dec. 6, a company spokeswoman told the news service.
Doohan, who played the U.S.S. Enterprise's chief engineer Montgomery Scott on the original Trek series and subsequent films, will be among more than 120 others whose remains will be aboard the flight, including those of an unidentified astronaut and Mareta West, the astrogeologist who determined the site for the first spacecraft landing on the moon.
Doohan died in July at age 85. To mark the flight, Doohan's family will hold a service for fans on a 60-acre site near Vandenberg Air Force Base north of Los Angeles the day of the launch to pay tribute to him.
Doohan's cremated remains will be packed into a special tube that is ejected from the rocket and expected to orbit Earth for about 50 to 200 years before plunging into the planet's atmosphere and burning up.
Fans can post tributes to Doohan at the Space Services Web site. Those messages will be digitized, packed with Doohan and blasted into space.
Doom Stars Signed For More
arl Urban and Rosamund Pike, who play the brother-and-sister monster-hunting team of John and Samantha Grimm in the upcoming SF movie Doom, are signed for sequels, though producer John Wells said that no such sequel is yet in the works. "It would be nice if there was a sequel, but we have nothing planned," Wells said in an interview. But, he added, "we certainly did sit in Prague [where the movie was shot] a few times and talk about the possibility of it."
The film's other star, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, told SCI FI Wire that he may be able to do a sequel. "We've talked about it, and it's possible [I could come back]," Johnson said.
Wells added: "We had a blast working with Dwayne. We would love to do another picture with him, and if he wanted to do the next Doom, I'm sure we could figure it out."
Pike said that she would love to reprise her role as a savvy scientist, but added that next time she would like to have a gun. Her character learns how to escape rampaging demons by using her smarts rather than her shooting ability. "I'd like her to come back and be a bit more tough," Pike said.
The sequel idea won't be seriously discussed until after the video-game-inspired film opens, producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura said in a separate interview. "You can't start thinking about a sequel before a picture even opens, but that's why we ended on a surprise," he said. "We went with the best ending, and we know the audience is very sophisticated."
Doom opens Oct. 21 and is being released by Universal Pictures, which is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Columbine Delayed Doom Film
he adaptation of the hit first-person-shooter video game Doom to the big screen hit a snag after the Columbine High School shootings, in part because the two teens who killed 12 fellow students and a teacher were fans of the game, creator Todd Hollenshead told SCI FI Wire.
Producers of the Doom movie, John Wells and Lorenzo di Bonaventura, sidestepped questions about the film's delays. "Why did it take so long?" di Bonaventura answered in response to a question. "Yes, well, there were so many other predecessors that came out with movies, and there were different studios involved before we got involved, but the other movies were just imitating the granddaddy of all games, and that's why the company held back a little bit."
Id Software chief Hollenshead said plans for a Doom movie came together nine years ago, but were put on hold after the 1999 shootings. "Nobody wanted to mess with Doom after Columbine," Hollenshead said. The company focused on Quake, and the momentum was lost for a movie. "After a lull we went back to the Doom franchise, and we were able to convey to people what a cinematic experience the game could be." Agents at Creative Artists Agency provided a screening room for filmmakers to see the game on a big screen, and that helped renew the interest in the film, Hollenshead added.
Doom stars Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Rosamund Pike and Karl Urban. It opens Oct. 21 and is being released by Universal Pictures, a division of NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Doom's Hell Is Other People
n the video game Doom, creatures from a literal hell invade our dimension. But for the movie version of the game, hell is more a state of mind than an actual place, the film's creators told SCI FI Wire.
"In the game it's a literal hell," said Todd Hollenshead, chief executive of id Software, in an interview. "There's nothing figurative about it. We can change environments on our whim. In the movie, hell is in a more figurative sense. The facility becomes hell-like, and demons invade and overtake [the facility], as opposed to sort of the literal hell in the video game."
In the Doom movie, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson plays Sarge, whose Rapid Response Tactical Squad heads to a science lab on Mars where an experiment has gone horribly wrong and demons are killing people. "The movie [takes] a more cerebral approach," Hollenshead said. "The movie takes in the origin of the demons and explains it. The movie shows that the demons are inside us, good and bad."
Co-screenwriter Wesley Strick said in a separate interview that he was unaware of the game. But he said that his teenage children gave him tips about what creatures to keep in the film. (Strick worked on the script originally written by David Callaham.) "The places were all set already, and hell was like it is now," Strick said. "But the kids made me promise to keep in things like the Pinky Demon. They were a big help."
Hollenshead admitted that the movie has to be a bit more complex than the game and that the film was able to offer explanations and explore concepts, such as a soul being infected. "On the video game side we dispense with those questions and go on a more simple-minded basis," he said.
Doom also stars Rosamund Pike and Karl Urban. It opens Oct. 21. It is being released by Universal Pictures, which is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Zathura Star Trips Through Time
ax Shepard, who plays an astronaut in Jon Favreau's upcoming SF family film Zathura, told SCI FI Wire the movie marks his second adventure in time travel. Shepard plays an astronaut who says he travels through a "time sphincter" wormhole when he meets up with two boys. Next year, in Idiocracy, Shepard plays one of the dumbest guys on the planet about 500 years in the future.
"There wasn't much to prepare for the role," Shepard said about Zathura. "It wasn't like they had to put me in the space program. I think the biggest preparation I had to do was to put on the space suit." Shepard's character is part of a board game the boys find, which blasts them and their house into space.
Favreau, a self-professed SF fan, said that his actors were fascinated by the idea of time travel. But, he conceded, "I'll be the first to admit that time travel is a flawed notion. You can disprove there is time travel by definition, because you can keep going back until you hit a reality when time travel was never discovered and then get locked into that time and never change anymore. Science fiction accepts the fact that there probably isn't time travel, but this is a kiddie movie."
Idiocracy is written and directed by Office Space writer Mike Judge and also stars Luke Wilson as an average underachieving military private who volunteers for a hibernation experiment. When Wilson's character wakes up in the future, he discovers that he's the smartest guy on the planet. Maya Rudolph from Saturday Night Live portrays a prostitute who also agrees to the experiment. Shepard is one of the citizens from the future.
"I don't know why it's taking so long for it to come out, but I know all of Mike Judge's movies take a bit of time to come out," Shepard said. "America has dumbed down, which is probably happening right now, and [Wilson] is the smartest man in the world, and I'm arguably the dumbest man in the world. To get [into the role] I decorated my trailer with monster truck posters, which was the extent of my research for that movie, and I gained 35 pounds, which is something I wouldn't do again."
Zathura, based on the children's book by The Polar Express author Chris Van Allsburg, also stars Tim Robbins, Jonah Bobo, Kristen Stewart and Josh Hutcherson and opens on Nov. 11.
Stewart Chills In Zathura
een actress Kristen Stewart, who co-stars in the upcoming SF family movie Zathura, told SCI FI Wire that she had to have a life-sized mold made to appear in the film as if she were frozen.
"There's a life-sized Kristen Stewart standing in a warehouse next to the Terminator," Stewart said with a laugh. She described the uncomfortable process of having her likeness created by the Stan Winston special-effects crew. "It's an incredible experience standing next to something like that, something that no human being has ever experienced unless they have a twin. Of course, her lips are all blue and her hair is frosted. She's not that good-looking at all."
Stewart plays the older sister of two brothers who play a board game that causes their house to blast off into space. Stewart's character gets frozen temporarily while in the bathroom. "I did have to stand really still" while the mold was being made, she said. "It was an arduous process when modeling for the cast. They did a digital scan of my body, but I did have to breathe through a tube when they did my head. It was kind of scary. Then I had to sit there while they were painting her. I stood next to the mannequin the whole time and watched, [and] every freckle in my arm is on that body."
Zathura also stars Dax Shepard, Tim Robbins, Jonah Bobo and Josh Hutcherson. It opens Nov. 11.
Zathura Used Old-School F/X
on Favreau, director of the upcoming SF family film Zathura, told SCI FI Wire that he purposely wanted to rely on old-school special effects, a la the original Star Wars movies, rather than on computer-generated effects.
"The biggest thing that we did as opposed to how it would normally be done is to shoot the spaceship scenes like they would have done with the old Star Wars, not the new ones," Favreau said in an interview. "Rather than pouring money into CG, we built miniature models and did stop-motion control and shot it on miniature sets and cobbled it together. That's the way they used to do it. It's fun, and you have something to hang up in your house."
Special-effects master Stan Winston helped Favreau design Zathura's robot and Zorgons. (Zathura, like its predecessor Jumanji, is based on a book by Chris Van Allsburg.) The robot is bulky and awkward, reminiscent of Robbie in Forbidden Planet, but it has one major difference. "You look at Forbidden Planet, and it looks like a person hiding inside it," Favreau said. "And Alien was scary, but when you finally saw the Alien, you could see the creature was just a guy in a suit. We built the robot puppet first and made it so that the legs and arms were too small for a person. There was a guy inside the costume, with his arms folded across his chest, and we put his feet on with CG and connected it to the torso. You can't see how a person could be in there, but there was, so it was a perfect mix of the two."
Winston's team also kept the giant lizard-like Zorgons from looking too frightening, but also kept them from looking silly. "They bump into each other. They're clumsy. There is some comic relief, but they do eat meat, there is some threat," Favreau said.
Zathura stars Tim Robbins as the father of three children, played by Jonah Bobo, Kristen Stewart and Josh Hutcherson, who find a magical board game that transports their house into outer space. Favreau decided to keep the film's look close to that in Van Allsburg's book. "It would have been great to show the house blasting off," Favreau said. "It would have been like the little kid opening up the door in Close Encounters, with the light under the door. But we wanted the discovery to be the same as it was in the book. It would have been a real cool shot, but the whole idea of the house is like the parable of The Wizard of Oz: It is a parable for a dream, and every movie should be seen as [if] it could be a dream."
One special touch Favreau added himself was a red bicycle floating near the house through most of the movie and landing back with the house at the end of the film: a nod to E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. "It was something mundane that really grounds you when something really extraordinary is happening," Favreau said. "And we used the model of the house and the CG bicycle, which was another marriage of the technologies we used in this movie." Zathura opens Nov. 11.
Favreau Says No To Elf 2
irector Jon Favreau told SCI FI Wire that he definitely will not be involved in the sequel to his hit fantasy film Elf, which starred Will Ferrell. The New Line sleeper grossed $173 million during the 2003 holiday season and became director/actor Favreau's biggest success.
"I will not be involved with Elf 2," Favreau said during an interview for his upcoming children's SF film Zathura: A Space Adventure. "Will is on board, I understand, but I won't be."
Favreau added: "You get one Christmas movie as a director. I did mine. I would not know where to go with it." No director has yet been named for Elf 2.
Meanwhile, Favreau is currently promoting Zathura, based on the children's book by The Polar Express author Chris Van Allsburg.
A follow-up of sorts to Jumanji, Zathura stars Tim Robbins, Jonah Bob, Kristen Stewart, Josh Hutcherson and Dax Shepard and opens nationwide on Nov. 11.
Favreau is acting occasionally, but said, "directing has taken a precedent for me. I do acting whenever it's convenient." He is appearing with his longtime buddy Vince Vaughn in The Break Up and is the voice of Riley the beaver in the Sony animated film Open Season, both coming up in the next year.
Favreau Talks Carter Of Mars
irector Jon Favreau told SCI FI Wire that he thinks technology has finally allowed Edgar Rice Burroughs' classic fantasy story John Carter of Mars to be made into a feature film. "John Carter's Mars has been around a long time," Favreau said in an interview. "I heard it was competing with Snow White as far as an animated movie idea. It only has one human in it and Tharks, these 15-foot-tall green aliens with four arms. It has expansive scenes and cities and big war scenes. I wonder if we have finally reached the tipping point where we can do it. I don't know if all the problems have been solved."
The Mars project will be the next directorial film for Favreau, who said he learned a lot about mixing real models and creatures with computer-generated technology in his upcoming SF children's film Zathura: A Space Adventure, coming out Nov. 11. He used Stan Winston's studio to create creatures and a robot for the film and mixed computer technology with the models created by Winston.
At one point in time, Spy Kids director Robert Rodriguez and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow's Kerry Conran were each attached to direct the Mars stories, written by Tarzan creator Burroughs. The story follows a Civil War veteran who is mysteriously transported to Mars, where he finds himself caught up with aliens and a princess. Favreau was approved by Paramount Pictures to helm the project, and Scream 3 writer Ehren Kruger is taking a crack at distilling the 11-part series of stories.
"The problem with the story is that it only has one human, and I don't want to have just CG characters," Favreau said. "I want a mix of them. We don't have a John Carter yet. We don't even have a script yet."
Stewart Gets Messengers
ctress Kristen Stewart (Panic Room) told SCI FI Wire that she has just finished a spooky horror movie directed by Hong Kong's Pang brothers, a very different take on Asian horror. Oxide and Danny Pang co-directed The Messengers, a movie about a family that gets haunted by a dark force when it moves to a seemingly serene sunflower farm in North Dakota.
"I'm catatonically terrified most of the time," Stewart, 15, said in an interview to promote her upcoming SF family film Zathura: A Space Adventure. She screams a lot in Zathura, but she said that she screams a lot more in Messengers. "Yeah, there's a lot of screaming," she said. "I don't think that it's the typical Asian horror that we've seen."
The Messengers is a horror thriller from Columbia Pictures written by Mark Wheaton, Stuart Beattie and Todd Farmer and also stars Dylan McDermott, Penelope Ann Miller and John Corbett. It's planned for an August 2006 release. In the film, Stewart's character has some unusual psychic abilities, she said.
"The movie is about a family going through a rough time in their lives," Stewart said. "Financially, they are not stable, and there is animosity between the daughter and the parents for a few pretty good reasons. They move out to a farm, escape the hectic city life and enter a pretty spooky house. The only person who sees what's going on is my character, but because of her history, no one believes anything she says. It's a pretty claustrophobic movie set in the middle of nowhere, and you feel very closed in, and she's a very vulnerable character who is determined to get to the bottom of what's going on."
The Pang brothers, best known for their Hong Kong action and supernatural horror films, shot The Messenger in Saskatchewan, Canada.
"It's not like their previous movies, no," Stewart said. "And it's not like typical Asian horror films [adapted for an American audience]. It's through different eyes. In fact, when we were on the set at the end of the movie they gave us shirts that read 'Pang Vision' instead of 'Panavision.'"
Bisson Explores 'Planet Of Mystery'
ultiple award-winning SF author Terry Bisson told SCI FI Wire that his upcoming novella, "Planet of Mystery," will be serialized in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction—the first serial the magazine has run in more than 17 years. "I wasn't sure if this was a long story or a short novel," Bisson said in an interview. "And it came out somewhere in between. F&SF was kind enough (hip enough) to run it as a two-parter, which, by recalling the days of the SF serial, gives a proper old-fashioned setting to what is, I hope, a very modern tale."
"Planet of Mystery" was inspired, in part, by Edgar Rice Burroughs. "The origin of the story is in an introduction I wrote to a [University of Nebraska Press] edition of The Moon Maid, in which I 'pointed out' that Burroughs' literary reputation has soared with the recent discovery that the moon actually is a hollow sphere inhabited by rapacious centaurs lusting after Earth's women," Bisson said.
Bisson took the idea to Venus and found he was writing an SF reversal of Don Quixote. "The commander of the first Venus lander assumes that the buxom Amazons that capture him are figments of his imagination," Bisson said. "But his engineer (his 'Sancho Panza') simply accepts them as real. And, in fact, falls in love."
So where does this fit in the literary spectrum? "One might say (in post-modern lit language) that 'Planet of Mystery' is 'an interrogation' of the interface between dream and reality," Bisson said. "Or at least between fantasy and SF. Then the flying saucer shows up, and the game gets real indeed. Or does it? How well it succeeds is for the reader to decide."
Part one of "Planet of Mystery" will appear in the January issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (on sale Nov. 29), with part two to follow in February.
Surface Gets Full Season
BC has picked up a full season of NBC's SF drama Surface, which has been improving in the ratings on Monday nights, Variety reported.
Surface's ratings among adults 18-49 have grown 17 percent between its Sept. 26 debut and its most recent airing on Oct. 10. NBC is still determining the exact episodic order for Surface, plotting its season around the Winter Olympics, which will force several weeks of pre-emptions, the trade paper reported.
To date, the show has averaged a 3.3 rating among adults 18-49 and 10 million viewers.
Josh and Jonas Pate created and executive-produce Surface, which stars Lake Bell as Laura Daughtery, an oceanographer who discovers a mysterious deep-ocean creature, with Ian Anthony Dale and Rade Sherebedgia as government officials who are trying to keep the discovery a secret.
NBC is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Invasion Gets Full Order
BC has ordered up a full season of its SF series Invasion, giving the green light to another nine episodes, Variety reported. ABC now has given 22-episode orders to two of its three freshman dramas; there's no word yet on Thursday's Night Stalker, the trade paper reported.
Invasion, starring William Fichtner and created by Shaun Cassidy, has been turning in solid if not spectacular numbers in its 10 p.m. Wednesday timeslot opposite CSI: NY and Law & Order.
On the downside, Invasion is losing about half of its huge lead-in from the megahit Lost. Such dropoffs for shows slotted behind monster hits aren't uncommon, however.
Meanwhile, NBC has decided to trim its commitment to its midseason supernatural drama Book of Daniel, ordering eight episodes (including the pilot) vs. the previously announced 13. NBC is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Ghost Sets Ratings Record
he Oct. 19 second-season finale of SCI FI Channel's Ghost Hunters nabbed record ratings, the channel reported. The finale episode, which investigated a string of paranormal occurrences in the town of Eureka Springs, Ark., nearly doubled ratings and delivery for the season-one finale last December.
The second-season finale of the alternative reality series drew a 1.7 household rating and more than 2.3 million viewers. The episode was the number-one program of the day among cable shows for viewers aged 25-54.
Over the season, Ghost Hunters grew its audience considerably, and this season's final five episodes, going head to head with ABC's hit Lost, averaged a 1.3 household rating and 1.6 million viewers.
An all-new Ghost Hunters Halloween special, featuring investigations in Savannah, Ga.,—"America's most-haunted city"—will air Oct. 31 at 10 p.m. ET/PT. Nine new episodes of the show will premiere on SCI FI in 2006.
Creepshow Rises From Dead
arner Brothers is developing a remake of Creepshow, the 1982 horror anthology movie written by Stephen King and directed by George A. Romero, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Roy Lee and Doug Davison of Vertigo Entertainment will produce, along with Taka Ichise of OZ LA and Tony Ludwig. James Dudelson, the original rights holder, also is attached to produce, the trade paper reported.
Unlike the original film, in which the stories were unconnected, the plan is to structure the new movie a la Go, where individual stories will have interconnected characters and situations. The project is out to writers.
Shore Out, Howard In Kong
irector Peter Jackson's longtime score composer Howard Shore (The Lord of the Rings) has dropped out of Jackson's upcoming King Kong movie, to be replaced by James Newton Howard, Universal Pictures announced. Jackson cited "differing creative aspirations" as the reason for the change.
"I have greatly enjoyed my collaborations with Howard Shore, whose musical themes made immeasurable contributions to The Lord of the Rings trilogy," Jackson said in a statement. "During the last few weeks, Howard and I came to realize that we had differing creative aspirations for the score of King Kong. Rather than waste time arguing with a friend and trying to unify our points of view, we decided amicably to let another composer score the film. I'm looking forward to working with James Newton Howard, a composer whose work I've long admired, and I thank Howard Shore, whose talent is surpassed only by his graciousness."
Howard is perhaps best known as M. Night Shyamalan's frequent collaborator, having scored the films The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs and The Village.
Shore won three Oscars for his work on Jackson's Rings trilogy.
King Kong will be released on Dec. 14. Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Category 7 To Trash Landmarks
he Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, the Great Pyramids, Mount Rushmore and the Arc de Triomphe are some of the world's great landmarks that the CBS digital effects team takes great delight in destroying in the upcoming miniseries Category 7: The End of the World, visual effects supervisor Craig Weiss told SCI FI Wire during an exclusive tour on Oct. 14.
The super-storm drama is a sequel to last year's hit Category 6, and the only character reprising a role is Randy Quaid as a storm chaser. The four-hour sequel co-stars Gina Gershon as a new FEMA director, Shannen Doherty as a discredited scientist, Tom Skerritt as a pilot and James Brolin and Swoosie Kurtz as a televangelist couple saying that the storm is the coming apocalypse.
Only weeks before the miniseries' Nov. 6 and 13 premiere, the digital team is working on destroying some of the world's most recognizable landmarks. The first one, the Eiffel Tower, is struck by lightning and sucked into a tornado while diners are blown off the structure and a car smashes into one of the legs of the tower.
"There are more than 100 special-effect shots in that one sequence," Weiss said. The Eiffel Tower is the first landmark to be destroyed in a sequence that lasts 10 minutes, and more than one-fourth of the miniseries' nearly 400 special-effects shots will go into that one sequence alone.
In another nearly completed sequence, the Arc de Triomphe is struck by lightning in the heart of Paris and comes crumbling down. Can a lightning strike bring down solid stone like that? Christopher DeCristo, the show's 2-D supervisor admitted: "We don't really know."
Silverheart A Long-Distance Work
ichael Moorcock and Storm Constantine, co-authors of the new SF novel Silverheart, told SCI FI Wire they wrote the entire 484-page novel without ever having to meet face to face, conducting their collaboration entirely through e-mail and other correspondence. In fact, the Texan Moorcock and the English Constantine have only met a few times at conventions, but Moorcock is a big fan of Constantine's Wraeththu stories.
According to separate interviews with the authors and Moorcock's introduction in the novel, Moorcock originally wrote Silverheart as an interactive game and movie script for Chris Roberts of Wing Commander fame. When Electronic Arts bought out Roberts' company, the project was abandoned, Moorcock said, for being "too ambitious."
Moorcock then showed his work to John Jarrold at Simon and Schuster, and Jarrold was very enthusiastic. Moorcock approached Constantine to see if she was interested in collaborating to produce a finished novel.
"Mike sent me the original novella of Silverheart, plus reams of notes, character sketches and pictures to help me immerse myself in the world of the novel," Constantine said. Moorcock estimated it was 45,000 words. "We also swapped lots of e-mails about the book. I then began to flesh out the original, adding scenes and plot details."
Constantine said she found it very simple to "write around what Mike had already done. I liked the characters and the story and enjoyed spending time in their world. I wouldn't say it took more or less time to write the book than any of my other novels. I have been involved in shared-world projects before, and I think that as long as you like that world and are prepared to do a bit of research into it (much as you would have to for—say—an historical novel set in the real world), then it isn't that difficult a task."
Silverheart follows three characters in Karadur, city of metal, steam and ancient families. Max Silverskin has six days to discover his heritage or die from the silverheart, a witch mark that will devour his heart. Lady Rose Iron is daughter of the Clan Iron ruler who uneasily allies herself with Max as she searches for the secrets that could save her city. And Capt. Cornelius Coffin is the head of the Clan Iron's security forces, who loves Lady Rose and desperately wants to capture Max.
Moorcock and Constantine are again collaborating through cyberspace on a sequel to Silverheart called Dragonskin. Constantine will be the primary author. Meanwhile, Moorcock's Elric comic will continue to appear in DC Comics.
Marley Melds Music And SF
F author Louise Marley, whose novel The Child Goddess has been nominated for an Endeavour Award, told SCI FI Wire that she also sings opera and benefits from both writing and music. Both classic opera and speculative fiction are complete figments of their creator's imagination, she said in an interview: "the willingness of both the creator and the audience to suspend disbelief and explore essential themes in unfettered realms."
The Child Goddess follows Mother Isabel Burke, a member of the Priestly Order of Mary Magdalene, an order of celibate women priests devoted to the search for truth in all things. "Of course, as women priests are not yet allowed in the church, I suppose you can see the novel as a nudge in that direction," Marley said. "There will be women priests one day, because there have to be, and I'm sure they will meet just as much opposition as Isabel does."
Marley added that she practices both SF and operatic singing the same way: by working at predictable, regular times. "The brain likes predictability, and I think the subconscious counts on being let out of its box at dependable intervals," she said.
Next up for Marley will be her first young-adult novel, Singer in the Snow, which will be released Oct. 20. Marley said it's set in the world of her The Singers of Nevya trilogy, but is not related. She said she also is at work on a fantasy novel that will be a departure from anything she has previously written.
The Endeavour Award honors outstanding published SF or fantasy by a Pacific Northwest author (Marley mentions the St. James Cathedral in Seattle in The Child Goddess). It will be presented at OryCon in November and carries a $1,000 prize.
Category 7 Uses Rings F/X
he makers of CBS' upcoming disaster miniseries Category 7: The End of the World made use of the same visual-effects software developed for the Lord of the Rings trilogy of films, visual effects supervisor Craig Weiss told SCI FI Wire.
The program is called Massive and can create believable hordes of digital people. "We are using Massive to digitize the extras, like Lord of the Rings," Weiss said. "People can be running or walking in a crowd scene and be randomized so they each won't have to be programmed in separately. What used to cost $100,000 you can now get off the shelf for about $3,000."
For Category 7, about a killer worldwide storm, the digital visual-effects team is not only filling skies with lightning and clouds, it is also destroying landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower, Mount Rushmore and the Pyramids. In one sequence, the arm of the Statue of Liberty is ripped off by a tornado, an effect accomplished with a 14-foot model on the Price Is Right stage at CBS Studios in Hollywood, Calif.
The team is also make use of a digital compositing system called Inferno. With it, the team can mesh disparate pieces of footage, matching film shot in Winnipeg, Canada, for example, with footage of miniatures shot in a studio or in the CBS parking lot. In one scene, footage of a tumbling 10-foot miniature house can be combined with footage of stars Randy Quaid and Shannen Doherty, making it appear that they are standing behind a telephone pole while the house splits around them.
In another scene, a tornado machine was used to create a synthetic whirlwind on a soundstage filled with smoke. Those images were added to footage of the actors, Weiss said.
The super-storm drama is a sequel to last year's hit Category 6. The four-hour miniseries also stars Robert Wagner, Gina Gershon, Tom Skerritt, James Brolin and Swoosie Kurtz. Category 7 premieres Nov. 6 and 13.
Music Inspired Trap's Sketchley
ritish SF author Martin Sketchley told SCI FI Wire that he dedicated his new novel, The Affinity Trap, to, among others, the band Radiohead and fellow SF author David S. Garnett. Listening to music while writing helps Sketchley set the appropriate mood for the world he's creating, and Garnett showed him the importance of making the rounds at SF conventions, Sketchley said in an interview.
"I listen to music a lot when I'm writing," Sketchley said. "The novel I'm working on right now—The Liberty Gun—has been written to Prodigy, P.J. Harvey, The Wedding Present, Nirvana, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Rage Against the Machine, The Zutons and Ian Brown. That's all pretty dark! But, interestingly, no Radiohead, or little enough for me not to make a note of it."
Sketchley said Radiohead has personally inspired him, so he sent a copy of The Affinity Trap to the band. He received a letter indicating the book will be passed on, "but I don't know if they ever got it, or read it, and I wouldn't like to hazard a guess as to what they might think of it if they did," he said. "I've told my wife I want Pyramid Song played at my funeral. That track's like me, in a song."
Garnett's role stems from being at a bar at a convention, Sketchley said. Attending his first convention told him how much he enjoyed Garnett's short story "The Only One," which led Garnett to introduce Sketchley to numerous writers throughout the evening. "If you want to get on as a new writer, you've got to attend conventions to gain contacts and advice by meeting editors, agents and other writers," he said. "This can be hard for people who tend to be pretty insular, as most writers are, but it's essential if you want to get anywhere. If you're prepared to put yourself out, are serious and professional, you stand a far better chance than someone who stays at home. You have to stick at it, though, and accept that every other person at an SF convention has probably had a go at writing a novel, so editors might not jump for joy when you say you have one, too. You have to pick your moment and try to make friends, rather than ramming what you've got down people's throats at the first opportunity."
Zappa's Monstrous Snapped Up
alt Disney Pictures and Jerry Bruckheimer Films have paid $1.5 million for film rights to the unpublished novel Monstrous Memoirs of a Mighty McFearless by first-time writer Ahmet Zappa, Variety reported.
The story concerns a young brother and sister who learn their family is part of a long line of monster hunters. The pair squabble constantly, but must band together against the most diabolical creature in the universe, the trade paper reported.
The book is scheduled for publication in August from Random House as a hardcover, with full-color art. Zappa wrote the story and penned some 300 illustrations.
Easter Eggs In Category 7
he visual-effects team behind CBS' upcoming SF disaster miniseries Category 7: The End of the World told SCI FI Wire that they managed to sneak their names and initials into several scenes. On a special weather plane, viewers will see "the letters on the plane, BAV. That's me," said Brian A. Vogt, the computer graphics lighting and texture guy in the CBS Digital department, which is handling nearly 400 effects shots in the four-hour miniseries.
Visual effects supervisor Craig Weiss added that sharp-eyed viewers will notice several names engraved on a plaque in front of the Eiffel Tower at the beginning of the film: the names of the digital team. "We sneak our imprint into just about everything we do here," Weiss said with a smile.
Weiss said the team also had to come up with scenes featuring a modified SR-71 military jet, which is no longer in use. Tom Skerritt plays a pilot who flies the jet into the eye of a deadly super storm. But because few SR-71s still exist, models were used for the filming and the digital drawing of the plane.
Category 7, the sequel to last year's hit Category 6, stars Randy Quaid, Gina Gershon, Shannen Doherty, James Brolin and Swoosie Kurtz. It premieres Nov. 6 and 13.
Vaugier Digs Up Unearthed
mmanuelle Vaugier told SCI FI Wire that she's currently shooting her next project, Unearthed, a horror film in the vein of The Thing and Alien. Unearthed co-stars Luke Goss (Blade II) and is being written and directed by Matthew Leutwyler of Dead & Breakfast fame.
"I play the sheriff of a small town in Pueblo, N.M., and there's a crash on the main highway in and out of the town, which is the only access to this small town," Vaugier (SCI FI Channel's upcoming original movie Cerberus) said in an interview. "I arrive at the crash site to investigate what's happened, and I find something that looks like a small crab leg. I bring it to Nodin [Tonantzin Carmel of Into the West], our DNA specialist, and she doesn't know what it is, other than that it's an unknown organic lifeform like nothing she's ever seen before."
Vaugier added: "So slowly things start to develop. Animals and things are dying, and people are disappearing, and all of a sudden we see the creature attack. We start running away from the creature and try to figure out how to kill it and how to get everyone out of there safe. Unfortunately, not many make it out, as is usually the case with these films." Unearthed will be released in 2006.
Chaos! Relaunches Purgatori
haos! Comics announced the relaunch of Purgatori, a comic mixing Egyptian history, vampire mythology and warring gods. The first comic book in the monthly series, Purgatori number one, is due in comic stores on Oct. 26.
The series is written by novelist and Marvel veteran Robert Rodi and penciled by Cliff Richards, with covers by Alex Horley and Rich Black. The first shipment of 20,000 copies of the first installment has already been printed.
The initial story arc will reprise the origin of Purgatori in ancient Egypt (18th Dynasty period, when the cross-dressing Queen Nefertiti reigned as King Smenkhare), revealing previously untold secrets of Purgatori and the history of vampires.
Game Developers Are White, Male
ideo-game players may be increasingly diverse, but a new study by the International Game Developers Association finds that the overwhelming majority of game developers are white, educated males, with just over five years of experience in the field. The IGDA's Game Developer Demographics report also revealed that the average age is only 31 in a sector thought to be very young. The IGDA's survey further revealed that more than half of studios find it tough to draw applicants of diverse background.
The IGDA's report examined the demographic makeup of the development community. Nearly 6,500 people participated in the survey, answering a series of questions pertaining to age, race, sexual orientation and education, among other variables.
Key results of the demographic survey: Developers are 88.5 percent male, 83.3 percent white, 92 percent heterosexual, have an average of 5.4 years in the industry and are more than 80 percent university-educated.
Knight Rider Still Rides?
avid Hasselhoff told Australia's Rove Live TV show that he's acquired the film rights to his old Knight Rider TV series and still plans to turn it into a feature film, according to the Moviehole.net Web site.
Hasselhoff reportedly plans to oversee a straight sequel to the TV series, centring on Michael Knight and his teenage son, who both have cars. The film is envisioned as slightly retro, the site reported.
Eisner To Helm Creature
reck Eisner is returning to the director's chair to helm Universal's remake of the classic SF movie Creature From the Black Lagoon, Variety reported. Gary Ross is producing via his Larger Than Life banner, the trade paper reported.
The son of former Disney chief Michael Eisner made his feature directorial debut on last spring's Sahara and also helmed a segment of SCI FI Channel's original miniseries Steven Spielberg Presents Taken.
Ross wrote the current Creature draft, a present-day update of the 1954 monster classic. He has a particular interest in the project because his father, Arthur A. Ross, wrote the screenplay for the original film.
The original movie introduced the Gill Man, who terrorized archaeologists exploring the Amazon. Plans for the update call for shooting in the U.S. as well as in a Central or South American location.
Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Westerfeld Courts SF Teens
F author Scott Westerfeld, whose novel The Midnighters won an Australian Aurealis Award earlier this year, told SCI FI Wire that his novel So Yesterday was just awarded the Victoria Premier's Award for Young Adult Fiction, which is given by the Victorian government of Australia to books of outstanding literary merit. Though Westerfeld is American-born, he immigrated to Australia in 2001.
"Winning the Aurealis Award (from the SF world) and now the Premier's Award (a mainstream, government award) has really made me feel like I've fully arrived down under," Westerfeld said in a recent interview.
Westerfeld, who published two SF novels with Tor before switching to young-adult fiction, says writing for young people affords him a certain flexibility he finds comforting. "It's not uncommon for a teenager to walk out of a library with an SF book, a mystery novel, a biography and a book about sharks," he said. "In contrast, a lot of adults only read one genre or even one author. This teen voraciousness means I won't get stuck writing one micro-genre for the rest of my life. My Uglies series is set 300 years in the future. Midnighters is contemporary fantasy. Peeps is contemporary SF, and So Yesterday is more or less realistic, although its foundations are pure SF. And yet I've never got any fan mail complaining about the shifts."
Genre fiction appeals to Westerfeld because he finds that the material—everyday details of life, such as riding around in cars or turning on the TV—can get boring in contemporary, non-genre stories. "I'm always waiting for the door to dilate instead of just swinging open, and thinking about what that means," he said. "I love it that you can't write SF without the material details: You have to explain how transportation, communication and everything else actually works, instead of just taking it all for granted."
Westerfeld feels kids and teens are drawn to SF because they identify with the struggles of characters dealing with the unknown. "The golden age of SF is 14, the time of life when crazy thought experiments about the future, about utopias and other worlds, are already a part of any smart kid's day," he said. "Teens are less invested in the mundane world than adults, so they're more ready to question the fundamentals, which is what good SF does."
Section Eight Feels Wind Chill
eorge Clooney and Steven Soderbergh's Section Eight production company and Blue Print Pictures are producing the supernatural horror movie Wind Chill at Revolution Studios, Variety reported. Greg Jacobs is directing a script by Joe Gangemi and Steven Katz, the trade paper reported. Filmmakers are considering a start date in the first quarter of 2006.
The story concerns two college students who share a ride home for the holidays, but break down on a deserted stretch of road, where they are menaced by the ghosts of all those who died there.
Jacobs wrote, directed and produced Warner Brothers' Criminal and was first assistant director on Section Eight's Ocean's Eleven and Traffic.
Briefly Noted
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Star Wars creator George Lucas made a $1 million contribution to help build a memorial to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the Mall in Washington, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
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Hal Lieberman, producer of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, has signed on to produce Bridge to Terabithia, Disney's fantasy film based on the children's book by Katherine Paterson, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
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SCI FI Wire has posted three new images offering the first glimpses of Richard Kelly's upcoming SF movie Southland Tales in its Photo Gallery section.
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Antonio Banderas (Shrek 2, Spy Kids) has been presented with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, 16 years after he arrived as a penniless young actor from his native Spain, the Associated Press reported.
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Academy Award-winning filmmaker James Cameron will accept The Planetary Society's inaugural Cosmos Award for Outstanding Public Presentation of Science at the society's 25th Anniversary Gala Awards Dinner: Our Next Age of Exploration, Nov. 12 in Pasadena, Calif.
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Ron Perlman has signed on to voice Conan of Cimmeria for Swordplay Entertainment's Conan: Red Nails, the first animated film featuring the mythic barbarian, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
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Universal has bought a science fiction film pitch from Simon Kinberg (Mr. and Mrs. Smith) and Brett Matthews, but details on the thriller are being kept under wraps, Variety reported.
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Spike TV has engineered the biggest movie purchase in the net's 22-year history, ponying up between $65 million and $70 million for a six-year exclusive deal covering all six Star Wars movies, Variety reported.
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Ursula K. Le Guin's Gifts will receive the PEN Center USA award for Children's Literature and a $1,000 prize at a gala event in Los Angeles on Nov. 9, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Web site reported.
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SpongeBob SquarePants will begin airing in China on or around Dec. 28 on the dedicated children's channel of state-run broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV), according to The Hollywood Reporter.
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Jon Favreau has set up his original computer-animated movie Neanderthals at Sony Pictures Animation, Variety reported.
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Gold Circle Films and Vertigo Entertainment are teaming to produce In-Utero, a remake of the Hong Kong horror movie Jian Gui 2 (The Eye 2) for New Line; a U.S. remake of the original The Eye, which had a completely separate plot, is in development with Vertigo at Paramount, Variety reported.
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Marvel Entertainment has struck a deal with the Indian animation company First Serve Toonz to produce an animated X-Men TV show centered on the character of Wolverine, which will hit the air in 2007, Variety reported.
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USA Network has acquired broadcast rights to Universal Pictures' The Skeleton Key and Serenity, which will also air on SCI FI Channel, with the first airings after May 2008, Variety reported. USA, Universal and SCI FI are all owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
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