Exclusive Serenity Clip Posted
CI FI Wire has obtained an exclusive preview of an extended scene from the upcoming DVD release of Joss Whedon's SF space western movie Serenity, which has been linked through the Trailers page.
The scene features a bit more of Shepherd Book (Ron Glass). It's one of the features on the the upcoming DVD, which also includes commentary from writer/director Whedon; other deleted scenes and outtakes; the featurettes Future History: The Story of Earth That Was, What's in a Firefly and Re-Lighting the Firefly; an introduction by Whedon; and more.
The DVD streets on Dec. 20. The Serenity DVD is being distributed by Universal Home Entertainment, which is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Superman Documentary Flies
uperman Returns director Bryan Singer has engaged documentary director Kevin Burns to make Look Up in the Sky: The Amazing Story of Superman, Variety reported.
Singer will executive-produce with Burns and is working with Warner Brothers on ambitious plans to get the feature-length documentary a theatrical release and a TV viewing before Warner unveils Superman Returns on June 30, the trade paper reported.
Singer met the documentary maker when the helmer was a film student and told Variety that he always wanted to do a documentary with Burns. Singer loved Cleopatra: The Film That Changed Hollywood, which Burns directed with Brent Zacky, and the Burns-helmed Empire of Dreams: The Story of the Star Wars Trilogy.
The TV cut of the documentary would include a scene from Superman Returns and will also likely end up either on the DVD release of Superman Returns or in a freestanding DVD of its own.
Burns has already done 40 interviews with artists and actors from the various Superman films and TV shows and told Variety that he'll deliver the film by the end of April.
Filming on Superman Returns wrapped last month.
Lady Synopsis Revealed
arner Brothers released new information about Lady in the Water, the next supernatural film from writer/director M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense). The studio also released a new teaser poster, which has been posted on SCI FI Wire's Photo Gallery page.
Warner said that Shyamalan originally conceived of the modern-day fairy tale for his children. It stars Paul Giamatti as Cleveland Heep, who has been "quietly trying to disappear among the burned-out lightbulbs and broken appliances of the Cove apartment complex," according to the studio's official description. "But on the night that irrevocably changes his life, Cleveland finds someone else hiding in the mundane routine of the modest building: a mysterious young woman named Story [The Village's Bryce Dallas Howard], who has been living in the passageways beneath the building's swimming pool."
Heep discovers that Story is actually a "narf": a nymph-like character from an epic bedtime story who is being stalked by vicious creatures determined to prevent her from making the treacherous journey from our world back to hers. "Story's unique powers of perception reveal the fates of Cleveland's fellow tenants, whose destinies are tied directly to her own, and they must work together to decipher a series of codes that will unlock the pathway to her freedom," the description said. "But the window of opportunity for Story to return home is closing rapidly, and the tenants are putting their own lives at great risk to help her. Cleveland will have to face the demons that have followed him to the Cove—and the other tenants must seize the special powers that Story has brought out in them—if they hope to succeed in their daring and dangerous quest to save her world ... and ours."
Lady in the Water is slated to open in July 2006.
Trek Rumors Denied?
y Fy Portal reported that a Paramount Pictures source denied rumors that the studio is developing a Star Trek film that will feature Capt. Jean-Luc Picard, Capt. James T. Kirk and Capt. Jonathan Archer together.
"You're going to see this a lot right now," the unnamed source told the site. "Without anything announced, you're going to see speculation everywhere. But unless you hear it from someone actually involved, don't believe it, because it likely isn't true."
The Canmag.com Web site reported the rumor that William Shatner is one of the former Star Trek captains who would appear in a proposed new Trek movie set in the "mirror" universe. Citing an anonymous source, the site reported that a script is floating around for a proposed new movie.
"Paramount has only asked for one script, and yes, they are deciding whether or not that's the direction they want to go," the source said. "Erik [Jendresen's] script met with mixed reaction, but it has nothing to do with the quality. It has more to do with disagreements among those who are in decision-making capacities as far as it [Star Trek] is concerned. There are no other ideas on the table at this time."
Kong Racks Up $18M Worldwide
eter Jackson's King Kong generated nearly $18 million in its Dec. 14 debut at global box offices, but U.S. and Canadian ticket sales fell below the expectations held by some industry watchers, the Reuters news service reported.
Executives at Universal Studios, distributor of the roughly $200 million movie, played down opening day domestic ticket sales of $9.8 million, saying they expected business to pick up this weekend and throughout the holidays, the wire service reported.
Kong's domestic box office compares with $18 million for Jackson's 2001 film The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.
In international territories, Kong racked up $8 million in its debut in 36 regions. It will expand to 19 more regions, including the United Kingdom, Korea and Mexico, Reuters reported.
Universal Studios is a division of NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Tom Hanks Envied Kong's Hanks
ing Kong co-star Colin Hanks told SCI FI Wire that his father, Oscar winner Tom Hanks, was both proud and jealous that he'd landed a role in Peter Jackson's epic remake and got to shoot it in New Zealand. The younger Hanks plays Preston, assistant and would-be moral conscience of Carl Denham (Jack Black), the overzealous director whose effort to make a movie results in deadly encounters with a giant gorilla named Kong.
"He was very excited," Colin Hanks said of his father during a news conference in New York. "I had actually told my sister first, because she is a huge Lord of the Rings fan, and she screamed for about a good five minutes. And then he actually called me, and he left a message on my voice mail. He was singing, 'King Kong!' And he said, 'You don't remember this, but there was a TV show in the 1960s called King Kong.' He was unbelievably excited."
Colin Hanks (Roswell) added: "In our correspondence while I was in New Zealand, I was telling him about the experience of what it was like making this movie and the people I was making it with. And he said, 'As a father, I'm very, very happy for you. As an actor, I'm unbelievably jealous.'" King Kong opens on Dec. 14 and is being distributed by Universal Pictures, which is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Jackson To Take Time Off
eter Jackson, who went directly from helming the epic Lord of the Rings movies to his upcoming King Kong remake, told SCI FI Wire that he's actually going to take some time off. "We got to get through this and take ... time off and write some scripts, basically," Jackson said in an interview by satellite from New Zealand during post-production on Kong back in September. "Next year we're ... going to rest. ... I can't begin to describe how tired I am, you know?"
Jackson has spent the better part of the last decade working either on the three Lord of the Rings movies or his long-anticipated remake of 1933's Kong, which opens this week nationwide. Because he took no break in between, Jackson characterized Kong as "like a fourth Lord of the Rings film."
Jackson said that he wanted to go straight into Kong "because it just seemed crazy not to, in the sense that we had this ... incredibly well-oiled ... pipeline down there in New Zealand for doing big, complicated visual-effects films. And we were able to keep everybody on board. ... During the year that we did the post-production on Return of the King, we were doing animatics [animated storyboards] for King Kong, like the tyrannosaurus fight. ... And then we were immediately able to finish off the miniatures on Return of the King and start shooting the jungle shots for the [King Kong] T. rex fights with the miniature team."
Now that the film is finally coming out, Jackson said, "We haven't really stopped working in seven or eight years, and so ... next year ... I'm going to read some books and watch some movies and ... then also ... think of new ideas. I mean, one of the things I'm most looking forward to next year is ... being able to think of something new. ... [It's] been 10 years of my life where I had two projects that I've been working on: ... King Kong and Lord of the Rings. ... That's a long, long time to be just thinking about two particular projects. ... I'm just so much looking forward to next year, ... having the freedom to recharge the batteries and just think of fun ideas for the future." King Kong opens Dec. 14.
Kong Based On The Real Thing
oe Letteri, senior visual effects supervisor on the upcoming King Kong, told SCI FI Wire that filmmakers studied real gorillas to imbue the title ape with behavior that was as realistic as possible. In the movie, Peter Jackson's remake of the 1933 classic SF film, Kong's lonely existence on Skull Island is forever disrupted by a film crew, his affection for an actress (Naomi Watts) and his forced relocation to New York.
To make sure that Kong behaved like a silverback gorilla, Letteri said that he, the Weta Digital team and Andy Serkis, who provided the computer-generated ape's movements, studied the real thing. "We looked at thousands of photos and hours and hours of video footage," Letteri said in a news conference in New York. "Andy Serkis got to spend a week in Rwanda with the mountain gorillas and brought back some amazing footage. We just talked about gorillas a lot. There was so much that we learned about them that we really wanted to bring to the screen. Probably the most important thing was that we wanted Kong to be a creature whose thoughts you could understand, or at least believe you could understand. But we didn't want him to be a man in [a] suit."
That was a hard line to walk, Letteri said, because gorillas are very expressive. "They look so much like us that you could look at them and think, 'I know what he's thinking.' But you really don't," he said. "And that's the line that we were always trying to walk: that you had this creature, who was still a wild creature, thrust into this situation. But we needed to know that you could empathize with him, that you could understand what was happening to him, whether or not he understood it. That was also important, because animals live so much in the moment. They are not aware of what's about to happen to them. So that [was] really important to the character, that we could keep that emotional state believable as much as possible."
King Kong opens on Dec. 14 and is being distributed by Universal Pictures, which is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Kong's Jackson Gets Golden Nod
eter Jackson won a nomination for the best director Golden Globe from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association in a field that otherwise mostly shut out science fiction and fantasy films and TV shows. The Golden Globe nominations were announced Dec. 13, and the winners will be named on Jan. 16 in Beverly Hills, Calif., in a ceremony to be broadcast on NBC at 8 p.m. ET.
Jackson was joined in the best director category by nominees Woody Allen (Match Point), George Clooney (Good Night, and Good Luck), Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain), Fernando Meirelles (The Constant Gardener) and Steven Spielberg (Munich).
King Kong also received a nomination for best original score (James Newton Howard), as did The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Harry Gregson). Narnia also got a nomination for best original song, "Wunderkind," with music and lyrics by Alanis Morissette.
Among the acting nominations, only Johnny Depp received a nod among science fiction and fantasy films, for best actor in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
On the TV side, ABC's Lost was nominated for best drama television series, alongside ABC's Commander in Chief and Grey's Anatomy, Fox's Prison Break and HBO's Rome. Lost's Matthew Fox also got a nod, for best actor in a drama TV show, and Naveen Andrews got a nomination for best supporting actor in a drama.
Patricia Arquette received a nod for best performance by an actress in a drama TV show, for NBC's Medium.
NBC is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Kong Recreates Old New York
oe Letteri, senior visual-effects supervisor on Peter Jackson's upcoming remake of King Kong, told SCI FI Wire that the F/X team scoured old photos and other archives to create a completely believable 1933 version of New York. Letteri (The Lord of the Rings) said that he and his team at New Zealand's Weta Digital used original Empire State Building blueprints, as well as aerial and ground-level photographs, to create a digitally rendered 3-D Empire State Building and surrounding New York cityscape. Computer graphics were also used to fill in the finer details of a practical New York set erected on a backlot at a former paint studio in New Zealand.
Jackson chose to set his remake of King Kong in the same year that the original movie came out, in part to capture the same sense of freshness and wonder.
"If you look at what made the [1933 classic] movie work, you had two elements," Letteri said during a news conference in New York. "You had the gorilla; this came out of the Schoedsack-Cooper documentary tradition, where gorillas had only been discovered 30 years beforehand. So people didn't know who these wild creatures were. ... You couple that with the Empire State Building, that amazing climax of the original film, where you look all around New York ... [and] there wasn't much around it. That was a brand-new building."
Letteri added: "The experiences that people would have had, going to the Empire State Building, flying in an airplane and seeing those kinds of views, were new to most people. So seeing that film brought those two worlds together, where most people hadn't had experience with either one. Setting the [new] film in contemporary day would have wiped that out. I mean, you go to the Empire State Building right now, and it's surrounded. It's not the same thing."
In Jackson's King Kong, as in the original, a crew of filmmakers, led by Carl Denham (Jack Black), brings a giant ape from an uncharted island back to New York, where he escapes and goes on a rampage. "We really wanted to bring people back as much as possible, where you could still believe that there was an uncharted island somewhere out in the Pacific; that these creatures could actually exist there," Letteri said. He added: "We wanted to make that as real as possible, and the only way we thought we could do that is to build New York. We thought, any place we had to go to shoot, we would have to recreate so much of it anyway. Why bother? We would just do the whole thing that way."
King Kong opens on Dec. 14 and is being distributed by Universal Pictures, which is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Brody Empathizes With Kong
drien Brody, who co-stars as Jack Driscoll in Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong, told SCI FI Wire that he thinks his character, a playwright turned unlikely hero, and the film's title giant ape have more in common than initially meets the eye. "The parallels between Kong and Jack are really interesting," Brody said during a news conference in New York. "It kind of came to light more in seeing the film [recently], ... and it is also the type of role that I'm attracted to as an actor, ... that it's the kind of guy who is thrust into certain circumstances beyond his control and out of his element and has to survive in those circumstances. You know, Kong does his best, but [his circumstances] were overwhelming."
Brody (The Jacket, The Village) added: "I think that it was very important for Peter to make New York the jungle that was oppressive. As opposed to Kong rampaging a city, it was Kong victimized or Kong out of place, just like I would be: a screenwriter or a young man like myself in the jungle trying to save my girlfriend [Ann Darrow, played by Naomi Watts,] from a giant gorilla. It's a very similar thing, but you have to rise to the occasion as best as possible and do what you can. So it's an interesting parallel; we're both kind of in the same predicament."
King Kong is now playing and is being distributed by Universal Pictures, which is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Lost Gets WGA Nomination
BC's hit series Lost received a nomination for outstanding achievement in writing for a dramatic series for the 58th Annual Writers Guild TV Awards, the Writers Guild of America, East, and the Writers Guild of America, West, announced. Winners will be named on Feb. 4, 2006.
The guild announced a nomination for the Lost writing staff that includes Jeffrey J. Abrams, Kim Clements, Carlton Cuse, Leonard Dick, Paul Dini, Brent Fletcher, David Fury, Drew Goddard, Javier Grillo-Marxuach, Adam Horowitz, Jennifer M. Johnson, Christina M. Kim, Edward Kitsis, Jeffrey Lieber, Damon L. Lindelof, Lynne Litt, Monica Macer, Steven Maeda, Elizabeth Sarnoff, Janet Tamaro, Christian M. Taylor and Craig Wright.
TNT's The Librarian: Quest for the Spear, meanwhile, got a nomination for best long-form program. It was written by David Titcher.
Ghost Rider Bumped To 2007
host Rider, the Nicolas Cage supernatural action movie based on the Marvel comic of the same name, has been pushed back to President's Day weekend 2007 from its original July 14, 2006, release date, Variety reported.
Sony bumped the $120 million movie to Feb. 16, 2007, to make way for its other 28 titles opening next year from its five divisions, which include Columbia, Screen Gems, TriStar, Revolution and MGM, the trade paper reported.
Sony's other summer '06 SF&F movies include Columbia's The Da Vinci Code (May 19), Columbia/Revolution's Click (June 23), Sony Pictures Animation's Monster House (July 21) and Revolution's Tim Allen fantasy movie Zoom (Aug. 11).
The change means that Marvel Studios must now undo a carefully laid-out plan of ancillary tie-in deals, the trade paper reported.
The February date allows some buffer space between Ghost Rider and another Marvel franchise film, Spider-Man 3, which Sony is releasing three months later, in May.
Sony found the February date a better launching pad than the fall, which has become a haven for horror and family dramas, and when SPE will release such films as its sequel to The Grudge.
Moreover, Ghost Rider no longer has to worry about opening in such close proximity to the June 30 bow of Superman Returns and the July 5 bow of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.
A Lot Of Bear Is Coming Soon
F author Elizabeth Bear, winner of the 2005 John W. Campbell Award for best new writer, told SCI FI Wire that she's sold eight books so far: two fantasy novels, five science fiction books and one short-fiction collection. Three of these books have been published already; her most recent, Worldwired, concludes the trilogy revolving around military officer Jenny Casey, which began with Hammered in 2005; it was released late last month.
Though her first three books were science fiction, Bear's forthcoming Promethean Age series, which begins with Blood and Iron, is a historical urban fantasy. "The Promethean Age books ... are an interlinked secret history, a kind of Darkovian sprawl of narratives," Bear said in an interview, referring to Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover series. She added: "[They're] set through the last 500 years [and] take as their premise the idea that, not only are stories true, but ... all stories, given sufficient retellings, become true. So some of [the books] are historical, and some are contemporary. I have ... the first five written, and seven or eight more planned out."
Also due out in '06 is Bear's high-concept SF novel Carnival. "It's sort of what you'd get if you mashed the worst possible outcome of a bunch of failed social experiments together. The representatives of a totalitarian government from what's left of Earth after a successful eco-terrorist nanotech release destroys most of the population arrive at a holdout colony that has a sort of scary feminist libertarian dystopia thing going on, and wackiness ensues," Bear said. "It's a hard book to explain. I've been calling it the unholy love child of Robert A. Heinlein and Joanna Russ, with elements that recall the work of Greg Bear, ... Andre Norton ... and John Varley. Also, it has spies. And some really cool hacks of quantum mechanics. And more funky aliens."
Also in the works is an SF novel called Undertow, which is due in 2007. "[It] deals with the observer effect, floating cities and a group of rather shady protagonists, including a hit man, a conjure man, a pistol-packing mama and an alien I call the 'iguana-frog boy-girl,'" Bear said.
In addition to these novels under contract, Bear is currently shopping a few other projects, including a "Norse second-world fantasy" that she says is an "attempt to undermine the tropes of the Psychic Companion Animal subgenre," and a young-adult historical mystery, both of which are collaborations with fantasy author Sarah Monette, whose first novel, Melusine, was published in August. "I'm also revising a steampunk second-world fantasy ... with heavy infusions of Norse myth," Bear said. "I love this stuff. I love it."
Frankowski Reworks Conrad
F author Leo Frankowski told SCI FI Wire that his upcoming book, Conrad's Lady, will comprise books four, five and six of his out-of-print Cross-Time Engineer series. The books "have been off the market for many years, and a new generation of readers [will] enjoy them," Frankowski said in an interview. The last entry in the series was Lord Conrad's Crusade, which came out in September.
Conrad's Lady is the first of two books Frankowski will release in December; the second is the paperback release of The Two-Space War, co-written with Dave Grossman (a Pulitzer Prize nominee for On Killing). "I was junior author on that one, playing cheerleader and devil's advocate," Frankowski said.
Frankowski sets many of his books in Eastern Europe, a world not often frequented by science fiction and fantasy writers. "Very few writers write about Eastern Europe, because very few writers know anything about the history or the culture of this magnificent area," he said. "Alone among the European nations, Poland emerged independently, without the influence of ancient Rome or the Christian Church at first. The first Polish kings [have] their own coinages, paid professional armies and a formalized legal system when Charlemagne was trying to organize France."
Frankowski currently makes his home in Tver, Russia. "I visited Russia and found more personal freedom than I'd seen in America since the '60s," he said. "The fact that living here was inexpensive, the ancient cities were lovely, and the women were both strikingly beautiful and very friendly were all definite plus factors." Even after five years, he uses body language to get along, as he admits to knowing only 40 words in Russian.
When not at work on his forthcoming books, Frankowski and his wife supervise the building of his new home: a castle. Why build something as expensive and time-consuming as a castle, when a house can be had cheaper? "Now where [would] you have room for the horses, the armor, the serfs and the slave girls?" he said, with tongue in cheek. "Not to mention the peacocks, the unicorns and the moat monsters!"
Sheckley Dead At 77
F author Robert Sheckley, who wrote scores of novels and several episodes of the original The Twilight Zone TV series, died in New York on Dec. 9 after undergoing surgery for a brain aneurysm in November, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Web site reported. He was 77.
Sheckley died at Vassar Brothers Medical Center in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. He was first hospitalized while in the Ukraine in April of this year and returned to the United States in late May. He underwent surgery on Nov. 20 at Mount Sinai Hospital, the site reported.
Sheckley wrote scores of novels and hundreds of short stories. When the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America honored Sheckley as Author Emeritus in 2001, then SFWA president Paul Levinson said that Sheckley's "writing helped our genre grow up by giving it an irresistible sense of humor."
Sheckley also wrote 15 episodes for the TV series Captain Video and 60 short short stories that were read aloud by Basil Rathbone on Monitor Radio. He also wrote "The People Trap," which became the basis for a television special. And Sheckley wrote several episodes of The Twilight Zone, the site reported.
Sheckley was fiction editor of Omni magazine from 1980 to 1982 and was a visiting scholar at the Artificial Intelligence Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1983. In 1991, Sheckley received the Raymond Z. Gallun award for contributions to the genre of science fiction.
Corman Talks Producing Honor
egendary B-movie producer Roger Corman told SCI FI Wire that he's delighted to be in the same company as Clint Eastwood and Norman Lear when he is honored by the Producers Guild of America on Jan. 22. Corman and the others will receive special honorary awards from the Producers Guild. "I guess I'm in pretty good company," Corman, 80, said with a laugh. "I like their work."
Corman will receive the David O. Selznick Achievement Award in Theatrical Motion Pictures, joing past honorees Brian Grazer, Jerry Bruckheimer, Dino DeLaurentiis and Laura Ziskin.
Corman has produced more than 400 movies and directed more than 50. In the next year many of his films will be distributed by Buena Vista Home Entertainment in special-edition DVDs, including Brain Dead, Big Doll House, School Spirit, Welcome to Planet Earth and Attack of the 60 Foot Centerfold.
"A lot has changed since I started," said Corman, reflecting on his 50-year career. "In the horror and science fiction genres, I think the biggest change has been the level of quality of the special effects, obviously. The CGI is so far superior [to] anything we had available. But I think the special effects are so good, and there's so much focus on it, there's no time spent on developing the characters. They're paying less attention to characters, and that makes the whole project suffer."
Corman made his share of graphically violent movies, so it may come as a surprise to hear that he thinks films today are too bloody. "I think some of the movies today are much too graphic and bloody for me," Corman said. "I think the way we did it was with a bit of style." The first wave of Corman DVDs, including DinoCroc and Death Race 2000, is scheduled for release on Dec. 13.
Empress Is Toned Down
F author Tamora Pierce, whose latest novel is The Will of the Empress, told SCI FI Wire that she tones down the sex and violence in her books. "This generation of teenagers, by and large, is happy to wait for the books with lots of sex and violence, forget the nattering of the national press and the politicians," Pierce said in an interview. "I don't understand this myself. All I needed was for someone to tell me something was banned for sex, and it was in my hands the next day. ... I tone down the sex and violence within limits, but there are people who ... have written to me about other books of mine who would tell you my limits [on violence] aren't close enough, just as there are people who have written me to inform me that my limits on sex aren't close enough. If I had a dollar for every time I've heard someone say, 'I can't believe they let you get away with that!' I'd be as rich as J.K. Rowling!"
Will of the Empress is Pierce's ninth title in her young-adult series featuring the Circle of Magic children Sandry, Tris, Daja and Briar. In Will, the kids are now 18 and facing adult issues for the first time, realizing that the more carefree past is gone forever. But Pierce has no intention of writing these characters for an adult market; reaching youth is too rewarding for her.
Pierce said that readers have written her saying they took up martial arts, archery, riding, fencing, weaving, spinning and writing as a result of her books, or that the books got them through bad days, divorce, surgery and death. "I change lives where I am," she said. "Moreover, I create idealists who work to create a better world in ecological movements, free-speech movements and politics. I make as much of the crafts, science and militaria in my books historically accurate [and] try to make sex and violence as realistic as I can. But I prefer remaining where I make a difference. And I have found that readers who discover writers as teenagers, given a chance, return to them as adults. Perhaps we offer something that the books with more sex and violence don't."
4400 Writer Travels In Time
ouchstone Television has signed a two-script deal with The 4400 co-creator Scott Peters, starting with a time-travel-themed drama tentatively titled Revision for Fox, Variety reported.
Peters and Touchstone-based producer Warren Littlefield are collaborating on the pilot, about a man who finds himself returning to the past in order to prevent disaster in the future. Peters is writing the pilot script and will executive-produce with Littlefield.
The 4400 was originally developed by Peters for Fox, but the network's top management ultimately passed, allowing the show to move to USA Network. Peters executive-produced the most recent season of the show and directed the first hour of the two-part season finale. Peters snagged two Emmy nominations for his work on the 4400 miniseries.
USA is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Angel Star Gives Up Ghost
ngel star David Boreanaz will play a ghost writer—or, rather, a writer who's a ghost—opposite Alan Cumming in Suffering Man's Charity, an independent dark comedy that Cumming will also direct, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Boreanaz, who currently stars in Fox's Bones, will play a struggling writer who is accidentally killed by Cumming one evening. Cumming discovers the writer's novel and ends up taking credit for penning it. When it becomes a success, the writer comes back to haunt him.
Suffering Man's Charity also stars Anne Heche, Henry Thomas and Carrie Fisher. Also in the cast are Karen Black and Jane Lynch.
Witchblade Resharpened For Film
latinum Studios, IDG Films and Relativity Media are financing and producing two back-to-back features based on the comic-book series Witchblade, Variety reported. Shooting is set to begin late next year in China; no writer or director is yet attached, the trade paper reported.
Platinum is producing through its partnership with independent comic publisher Top Cow Productions, which holds the rights to Witchblade.
The comics follow the story of a female detective who comes into possession of a mystical and powerful weapon that she uses to battle crime and evil. The comic was previously adapted as a TNT TV show, which was the most successful original series in the network's history during its brief run.
Producers are Relativity's Ryan Kavanaugh and Lynwood Spinks, Platinum chair Scott Mitchell Rosenberg and IDG Films' Steven Squillante and David Lee. Top Cow founder Mark Silvestri and Arclight's Gary Hamilton and Harrison Kordestani executive-produce. Co-producing are Top Cow's Matt Hawkins and Platinum executives Jay Burns and Aaron Severson.
Butcher Praises Dresden Files
antasy author Jim Butcher told SCI FI Wire that he's pleased with The Dresden Files, the SCI FI Channel's upcoming TV movie adaptation of his wizard detective novel series.
"I saw the clips [of the movie] and thought my jaw was going to fall off my skull," Butcher said in an interview. "I'm very pleased with how well [screenwriters] Robert [Hewitt Wolfe] and Hans [Beimler] get the whole wizard detective concept, and I liked the movie script very much."
Paul Blackthorne (24) stars as Chicago-based wizard and detective Harry Dresden in The Dresden Files, from executive producers Wolfe (Andromeda), Beimler (Profiler), Nicolas Cage, Norm Golightly and Morgan Gendel.
Based on Butcher's best-selling series of novels, The Dresden Files tells the story of Dresden, a Chicago-based private detective and the only wizard listed in the Chicago yellow pages. Where others see typical crimes of assault, kidnapping and murder, Dresden sees otherworldly forces at work.
Butcher said that he optioned his books to Gendel, a producer and writer on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Now, Butcher said, "I am in regular contact with Robert Wolfe, the show's producer, who has been great about letting me suggest things here and there and about asking for my thoughts on things."
Butcher added that he plans to visit the movie set in Toronto. If the movie, a pilot, becomes a series, will Butcher write any episodes? "Not if I want to meet my book deadlines," he said. "If the show goes on and on for seasons and seasons, maybe I'll try to write an episode. But outside of that, I'll probably just focus on my job and let the screenplay writers do theirs." The Dresden Files will premiere on SCI FI in the summer of 2006.
SCI FI To Air Night Stalker
CI FI Channel will air repeats of ABC's canceled supernatural drama Night Stalker—including three never-before-seen episodes—starting next summer, the network announced. SCI FI acquired all 10 produced episodes of the Touchstone Television series, which starred Stuart Townsend as journalist Carl Kolchak.
ABC aired seven episodes of the show, based on the 1974 series Kolchak: The Night Stalker, before pulling it from the schedule—in the middle of a two-part episode—because of low ratings. Night Stalker is executive-produced by Frank Spotnitz (The X-Files) and also stars Gabrielle Union, Eric Jungmann and Cotter Smith.
The show centers on Kolchak, a crime reporter whose wife was mysteriously killed 19 months earlier. Now, in the eyes of the FBI, Kolchack is the primary suspect. His determination to discover the truth behind his wife's murder leads him to investigate other crimes that seem to have some kind of supernatural component.
Underworld Creatures Get Fancy
atrick Tatopoulos, the creature designer and supervisor on the upcoming sequel film Underworld: Evolution, told SCI FI Wire that he takes the franchise's werewolves and vampires to a new level in the follow-up to 2002's first movie. Tatopoulos and his crew designed the elaborate makeup and full-body suits for the supernatural movie's werewolves (called Lycans), vampires (called Death Dealers) and hybrids of the two.
Underworld: Evolution features two new creatures: the winged vampire Marcus (Tony Curran) and a souped-up version of the vampire-Lycan hybrid Michael, played by Scott Speedman, who was introduced at the end of the first movie.
"Scott will go to different levels also this time," Tatopoulos said in an interview at his F/X shop in Burbank, Calif. "You're not going to see him exactly the way you saw him on the first one. You'll see different stages. ... There is more to see there. ... There [are] in fact different levels of makeup that you haven't seen in the first one. It is substantially more, and I think the movie altogether has opened up a lot on this one."
For Marcus, Tatopoulos devised a unique vampire wing. It folds into Marcus' back when furled, then opens first as a spindly arm, then unfurls with clawed fingers as a full-fledged bat-like wing. Tatopoulos even designed a puppet mechanism to depict the first stages of the wings' unfurling. "The wings actually have three positions: inside the [back], opening up as spider legs and then ... real wings," he said. "At that point, ... it becomes the [computer-generated] wings, for all the flying."
Tatopoulos and his crew also fabricated most of the movie's makeup effects, including a Lycan suit that includes leg extensions and an animatronic head operated remotely by puppeteers, who move the head's lips, jaw and eyes. "All the makeup effects, from the blood you see on the victim to whatever," he said. "[It] includes a lot of stuff. I mean, you have werewolves. You have Marcus now, which is a ... full suit [and] full makeup. ... You've seen the trailer. ... The beginning sequence, when you [see] all the wolves standing, the guys turning, that's a lot of makeup work that those guys applied in the snow in the middle of the night. ... A lot of actual makeup you haven't seen on the first one." Underworld: Evolution, which also stars Kate Beckinsale, opens Jan. 20, 2006.
Earthsea Becomes An Anime
apan's Studio Ghibli, the Japanese studio and home of anime master Hayao Miyazaki (Howl's Moving Castle), announced that it will adapt Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea fantasy novel series in an animated movie called Gedo Senki (Tales From Earthsea), the IGN FilmForce Web site reported. Gedo Senki will be released in Japan in July 2006 and will be based on the third and fourth books in Le Guin's six-volume series, which was first published in 1968, the site reported.
Miyazaki's son, Goro Miyazaki, is making his feature directing debut with the film, about the journey of a wizard named Ged and Prince Arrenis.
Le Guin's series was previously adapted as Legend of Earthsea, a live-action miniseries that aired on the SCI FI Channel in 2004.
In Dusk, Fantasy Happens
he Stoker Award-winning horror author Tim Lebbon told SCI FI Wire that Dusk, his new otherworldly fantasy novel, was a story he's always wanted to write. "I didn't consciously sit down and think, 'Right, I'm going to write a fantasy,' just as I never set out to write a horror novel. It's just the way it turned out, and this one was always going to be set in another world," Lebbon said in an interview. "I loved the freedom of that; I could have creatures that resemble sentient tumbleweed without having to explain them!"
Dusk is a "story set in a world where there was once magic, but that magic is no more," Lebbon said. But it's not the typical high fantasy about princes and the royal court. "I'm rarely interested in fantasy novels that deal with the kings and queens of a land, or the head politicians or wizards, because they're not the real people," Lebbon said. "Just as in real life, the real people are the ones who work the fields, dig the mines or fight to survive day by day."
The events in Dusk and its sequel, Dawn, are epic in scope, but the focus stays on the characters. "A whole land changes beyond recognition in the space of a few days, but it's the heroes of the people who make those changes happen," Lebbon said. "I'd much rather deal with real people. Among my little band of characters are a thief, a witch and a drug miner. A character has to have depth and soul, and it's easier to create them when they also have a history."
Up next for Lebbon, in January, is a horror novel, Berserk, then, in April, a Hellboy tie-in novel called Hellboy: Unnatural Selection. Also in the works is a new short-story collection and a novella for Necessary Evil Press. Meanwhile, Lebbon is finishing up Dawn, the sequel to Dusk, and readers can look forward to a Dusk-related novella to be serialized on Lebbon's Dusk Web site Noreela.com. "[In] Dusk, ... there's no such thing as pure good and evil, just varying shades in between," Lebbon added.
Majesco Sells Darkness, Ghost
roubled game publisher Majesco Entertainment announced that it has sold off the rights to two of its most anticipated releases, The Darkness and Ghost Rider, to an unnamed publisher for $8 million, the GameSpot Web site reported.
Developed by Starbreeze Studios (The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay), The Darkness is based on the Top Cow comic of the same name. The comic follows Jackie Estacado, a mob assassin who acquires a host of black magic powers, known collectively as "The Darkness." The game was scheduled for release in 2006 for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
Ghost Rider is primarily based on the Nicolas Cage movie of the same name, due in theaters from Sony Pictures in summer 2006. Directed by Mark Steven Johnson (Daredevil) and based on the Marvel comic, the horror-action movie will star Nicolas Cage as Johnny Blaze, a motorcycle-mad stuntman who becomes possessed by an avenging demon. The game is under development for Xbox, PlayStation 2 and PSP at British studio Climax, the site reported.
Frontier Wraps Coyote Series
F author Allen Steele, whose new novel Coyote Frontier completes his Coyote trilogy, told SCI FI Wire that he named an important character, Robert E. Lee, after the general of the Confederate army, even though the story takes place in the distant future. "If you were born and raised in the South, as I was, then reverence for Robert E. Lee is bred in the bone," Steele said in an interview. "You can't escape from his legend. What I find most interesting about him is that, as a West Point graduate who was highly respected among Union officers, he had a choice not to lead the Confederate army. Yet he felt a loyalty to the South that superseded his allegiance to the United States, and he risked everything to fight for his homeland. Which was why I had my character, Capt. R.E. Lee, be his descendent; his situation mirrors that of his ancestor."
Lee is only one of many characters who tackle issues of war, environmental destruction and social and political differences. Coyote is the name of the planet on which people from Earth first settled. Now Coyote's aging computers, aircraft and medical equipment are badly in need of replacement, and the colony's survival is in question. Meanwhile, Earth is sliding into ecological disaster and craves raw materials and room for emigrants. The two sides need each other, but it's unclear whether people have learned enough—or can control themselves well enough—to avoid making selfish little decisions like the ones that devastated Earth in the first place.
Steele said he would miss the characters he created, especially Carlos Montero, who in this book is in his 50s and has transformed from freedom fighter to leader. Steele said Montero is in many ways his alter ego. "If I ever write another Coyote novel, I'll be very tempted to bring him back," he said.
Though he has completed his trilogy, Steele is writing another book set in the Coyote universe, called Spindrift. "Straight-out space adventure this time; people who read Coyote Frontier will see the setup for it," he said.
The WB Eyes More Creepy Shows
he WB has ordered scripts for two proposed one-hour supernatural drama projects in the wake of the success of its hit series Supernatural, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Pretty Little Liars revolves around four 16-year-old girls whose fifth best friend went missing two years ago. The girls become haunted by messages that suddenly start appearing from her. The show comes from Warner Brothers Television and Alloy Entertainment. The Tannenbaum Co. also is on board.
The second project, Midnighters, revolves around teens who were born at the stroke of midnight who have gained access to a 25th hour of the day.
Both projects are being adapted from Alloy book series published by HarperCollins. Lizzy Weiss (Blue Crush) is adapting Liars, while Darren Lemke (Boogeyman) is adapting Midnighters.
Pooh Gets New Girlfriend
he Walt Disney Co. is planning a new Winnie the Pooh television series for 2007, which will introduce a new character, an as-yet-unnamed 6-year-old girl, in place of a young boy, Christopher Robin, the Reuters news service reported.
A Disney spokeswoman told Reuters that the new character "is not a replacement for Christopher Robin" and added that the role of the character based on author A.A. Milne's son in the upcoming series is still to be determined, although it will not be central.
The girl will be the star of the series as she moves next door to the beloved characters created by the English author about 80 years ago: Pooh, Tigger, Piglet, Eeyore, Kanga and Roo, plus a new character, Lumpy, introduced in a recent Pooh movie.
A 22-minute pilot was produced and tested worldwide in focus groups of preschoolers and parents, all to very positive feedback, the spokeswoman told Reuters.
The series will be produced by Disney Television Animation and is scheduled to premiere in 2007 on Disney channels around the globe.
Witherspoon Develops Troubles
niversal Pictures has acquired Don Winston's supernatural spec script Our Family Troubles and will develop the drama as a starring vehicle for Reese Witherspoon, Variety reported.
Witherspoon and her Type A Films partner Jennifer Simpson will produce.
The movie, which will get a new title, casts Witherspoon as a first-time mother so plagued by unexplained phenomena that she doubts her own sanity. When she returns to her Tennessee home, she fixates on the legend of the Bell Witch and becomes convinced the evil spirit is intent on harming her son.
Witherspoon is Golden Globe-nominated for her portrayal of June Carter in the Johnny Cash movie Walk the Line.
Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Counting Took Time
F author David Marusek told SCI FI Wire that his first novel, Counting Heads, is an expansion of his novella "We Were Out of Our Minds With Joy." But he added that turning it into a novel was a long and arduous process. "I worked on it four hours a day, six days a week, for five and a half years," he said in an interview. "No other project. No new short stories. There's a cliff-like learning curve involved in writing a novel, and I climbed this curve at least twice. In the end, you can only learn how to write a novel by writing one. May the next one—or two—come out in much less time."
"We Were Out of Our Minds With Joy" is a story about a futuristic Earth where all needs are met, unless you can't pay. After the novella's appearance in the November 1995 issue of Asimov's, readers started e-mailing Marusek with suggestions to expand it into a novel. When then-editor Gardner Dozois made the same suggestion, Marusek said he didn't know how.
"That's how matters sat for years, until January 1999," Marusek said. "I suddenly realized that if I skip 40 years ahead in the story, I did know what happened to poor Samson Harger. So I embarked on the novel, and, lo, a mere six years late, the book."
Marusek said the novel took so long in part because he practiced what he called "organic plotting," which meant the story went every which way, ending up too large and convoluted and requiring heavy trimming. He also said he wrote at least three complete drafts by hand before entering them into a computer.
For Marusek's next novel, The Day of the Oship, which continues the Counting Heads story, Marusek saved time by writing a detailed plot outline.
Briefly Noted
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Paramount Pictures Corp. Chairman Brad Grey is aggressively pursuing a deal with Lost creator J.J. Abrams, who is also directing Paramount's upcoming Mission: Impossible III, three unnamed sources close to the talks told the Los Angeles Times.
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The new trailer for Ron Howard's upcoming movie adaptation of Dan Brown's best-selling The Da Vinci Code has been linked through SCI FI Wire's Trailers page.
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TV Guide Online reported that The X-Files' William B. Davis will guest-star as a possibly evil professor in the Jan. 10 episode of The WB's Supernatural, followed a week later by an episode that features guest star Julie Benz (Angel) as Layla, a woman with a brain tumor who seeks the help of an evil clergyman.
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Gerald Neal Williamson, who wrote more than 40 horror novels and 150 short stories under the pseudonyms J.N. Williamson and Julian Shock, died Dec. 8 at a nursing home near Indianapolis, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Web site reported. He was 77.
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Robert F. Newmyer, a prolific independent film producer whose credits included the Santa Clause movies, died of a heart attack in Toronto on Dec. 12, the Associated Press reported. He was 49.
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SCI FI Channel's original series Battlestar Galactica and ABC's hit SF series Lost were among the 10 TV shows singled out by the American Film Institute as the best of the year, the AFI announced.
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The new teaser trailer for the upcoming sequel film Mission: Impossible III has gone live and can be found through SCI FI WIre's Trailers page.
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