Paramount Refused Fan Money

Ahigh-ranking executive at Paramount Television, which produces Star Trek: Enterprise, not only denied to SCI FI Wire that the studio is in talks with Trek United, the fan group that is raising money to revive the show, but also sent a letter to Trek United chief Tim Brazeal last month saying that the studio would not accept fan money for such a purpose. "There are no talks going on with anybody at Paramount," John Wentworth, executive vice president for communications at Paramount TV, said in an interview. "And the decision to end the show is final."

Wentworth also provided SCI FI Wire with a copy of a letter sent to Brazeal on March 15, which read in part: "We cannot and will not be able to accept funds from viewers to produce Star Trek: Enterprise or any other series." The letter was sent to Brazeal and to the lawyer for Trek United, Andrew Beardall.

Paramount has previously disavowed any connection with fan groups collecting money in an effort to get UPN's canceled Star Trek: Enterprise back on the air. In a statement on the official Star Trek Web site, the studio said: "We would ... like to point out that there may be other campaigns underway to save [the] show that request a monetary donation. We would urge caution before you part with your money as these groups have no connection to Paramount, nor are their activities condoned in any way by the studio."

Trek United has been telling fans that it is in secret discussions with Paramount representatives about keeping the show alive, and that the reps have left open the possibility the show may return.

On April 12, Brazeal, the head of Trek United, confirmed to SCI FI Wire that he had received Wentworth's letter, adding that he responded saying that as the group was incorporated, they were not viewers and should be treated as a corporation. Brazeal maintained that the group is in talks with other Paramount representatives.

Earlier, a Trek United spokeswoman said that it was possible the Paramount spokesman wasn't aware of Trek United's talks. "I think it's probably a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing," Candice McCallie, the Houston-based spokeswoman for Trek United, told SCI FI Wire last week.

In other developments, the message boards on the official Star Trek Web site had removed Trek United's prominently displayed solicitations for funds as of April 11. Last week, the message boards for Trek Nation/TrekToday did the same, citing in part Trek United's aggressive fund-raising tactics and the resulting rancorous debate surrounding them.

Trek United has raised nearly $3.14 million in pledges and contributions from fans eager to finance a fifth season of Enterprise, and McCallie said that donors are promised their money back if the show doesn't come back, "except for the 5 percent handling fee to cover the banks and Paypal and all that kind of stuff."Weller Talks Enterprise Finale

Peter Weller, who plays a key role in upcoming final episodes of UPN's Star Trek: Enterprise, told SCI FI Wire that he will play a character who resembles some people today. "He's a xenophobe," Weller said in an interview at the April 13 wrap party for the cast and crew in Hollywood, Calif. "Isolationism is one thing, but he's actively pursuing the cleansing of planet Earth by ridding 'Terra Prime,' or Earth, of any alien impurity whatsoever. It kind of rings of some people walking around on this planet today."

Weller said that co-executive producer Manny Coto enlisted his participation because the two previously worked together in an SF TV show. "Manny Coto created and produced Odyssey 5 for Columbia-Tristar and Showtime, which I starred in and directed a bunch," Weller said. "We became fast friends, and he browbeat me and browbeat me into coming onto Enterprise and guest-starring on a couple of episodes. When he finally told me they were going to be the last two on planet E, I said I might as well put my feet in the cement of immortality and go to the Paramount lot and shoot the [next-to-the-] last two episodes ever of Enterprise.”

Weller, whose character is named John Frederick Paxton, added that he saw relevance in his xenophobic character's separatist behavior. "The great thing about the whole Star Trek legacy is that they ... metaphorize, they allegorize and they narrate what's going on the planet today," Weller said. "There's a lot of xenophobes walking around today who say, 'Only us, not them.' The bad news about that ... is that the great thing about the world is that people move. Rome tried to build walls to keep the people from moving, but the people will move. If they think they've got a good gig someplace, they will go there, and you can regulate it, but you can't stop it." Weller's episode "Demons" airs May 6 and "Terra Prime" airs May 13. Enterprise is on at 8 pm. ET/PT on Fridays.Lost Finale Is Super-Sized

Javier Grillo-Marxuach, a writer and supervising producer on ABC's hit series Lost, told SCI FI Wire that the much-anticipated season finale will clock in at three hours and give fans everything they love about the show. "In terms of epic storytelling and shocking destiny, you ain't seen nothing yet!" Grillo-Marxuach said in an interview. "We were going to do a two-hour finale [over two weeks], and then ABC asked if we could do 90 minutes [the second week] so they could schedule it against American Idol. Carlton [Cuse] and Damon [Lindelof, who co-created the show with J.J. Abrams,] did an amazing job on the finale script, and their first draft came in a little long anyway. [ABC] looked at it and decided to do a two-hour. So 'Exodus Part 1' will air on May 18th, and the epic saga that is 'Exodus Part 2' will air May 25th. The final two hours is so full of incident and character and shocks and scares and drama, all the things that people love about Lost, that it would have been silly to cut things out. So we've got a 25-hour first season! We busted our butts on it, but it's not going to feel like it's been padded. We are very proud of it."

Grillo-Marxuach wrote five episodes in the freshman season and confirmed that he would return for the second season, which begins production in July. Reflecting on his efforts this year, he said, "'... In Translation,' which I wrote with Leonard Dick, is my favorite episode this season." The episode revealed the troubled backstory to Jin, played by Daniel Dae Kim. "It was such a great character piece for Jin. Daniel's performance was fantastic. I don't think it's our flashiest episode. There are episodes that have more incidents in them, but it was so emotional and was so much a closure for me, because I wrote the first episode ['House of the Rising Sun'] about Jin and Sun. My dad even wrote me an e-mail after that episode telling me he was proud of me."

As to what the castaways will have to endure next season, Grillo-Marxuach said: "The second season is strictly top secret right now. Damon has alluded to his ideas about what the second season is going to be like, and once the first season is over, we are going to begin secret summit meetings to start bashing out how it will lay out over the course of the season. Come May, we'll have a lot more information about what's going to be happening. But our masterminds are very much at work on what that second season will be about." Lost airs on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT.Somerhalder Finds The Breed

Ian Somerhalder, whose character recently became the first casualty of the popular ABC series Lost, will soon become a castaway again in the Wes Craven-produced horror film The Breed, the Moviehole Web site reported. Somerhalder will play one of a pair of brothers who are stranded on an island inhabited by evil but strangely smart dogs.

Nick Mastandrea, who has worked as an assistant director to Craven on most of his recent films, will direct. The Breed begins filming this week in South Africa and is scheduled for a 2006 release, the Web site reported.Somerhalder Eyes Pulse

Ian Somerhalder, whose Lost character Boone perished last week, is in talks to appear in Pulse, Jim Sonzero's upcoming horror movie, according to The Hollywood Reporter. He would join Kristen Bell (TV's Veronica Mars) in the movie, which is based on the Japanese horror movie Kairo.

Written by Ray Wright, Pulse centers on a group of college students who discover that a computer hacker friend of theirs unwittingly pirated a strange wireless signal that opened a doorway for a terrifying evil to cross over into the world. As it spreads, everyone in its path is consumed, and the students must race to find a way to stop it, the trade paper reported.Episode III Meets LEGO

Lucasfilm, the LEGO company and Cartoon Network have joined forces to produce a Star Wars-inspired minifilm, LEGO Star Wars: Revenge of the Brick, according to the StarWars.com Web site. The animated film will feature LEGO versions of the characters from the upcoming film Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith.

A joint announcement describes the film as an adventure in which "good and evil clash, imagination explodes and creativity saves the day when the heroic Jedi Knights battle the villainous Sith." Revenge of the Brick premieres May 8 on Cartoon Network at 7:00 p.m. ET/PT.Davis Wants To Make Half A Film

Warwick Davis (Willow, Harry Potter) told SCI FI Wire that he is very close to realizing his dream film, Agent One-Half, a spy adventure that he would star in and produce. "That is a film that's in very early preproduction," Davis said in an interview while promoting his latest project, the SF adventure-comedy The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. "It's a story that I came up with when I was filming on Willow, actually, 17 or 18 years ago. It's my dream role."

Davis said that it would just take the commitment of an A-list actor to get the film rolling quickly. "We have a major name now who is interested in doing the movie, but I can't mention him by name yet," he said. "Once I can, that will really help us get the money and backers and everything behind the film so that we can go ahead and make it. If we get the money, we could start shooting it just a few months after that. And when it happens, I'll get to work with my other friends in the business who are also short, a lot of the people who were with me in Willow, and several of the short people who are well known in America would be in it [too]. So it's my dream project and I'd love to see it come to fruition."

Davis described Agent One-Half as a "James Bond sort of story." The basic concept is that spies typically appear to be suave and sophisticated, but they're not really the heroes. "The heroes are these four agents who are hidden under the roulette table, hidden behind the potted plant," Davis said. "They're the ones doing all the work while these other guys take the credit. All their code names are fractions. So my name would be One-Half and then there's Seven-Eighths and Two-Thirds, etc."

He added, "The story goes that this agent who is called Lance Stone is retiring and we have to bring in another agent to train up. It happens that the guy is the goofiest guy you could imagine, who's got in somehow, and the story follows the comedy between me having to train him up and then him becoming the unlikely hero. The arch-villain is also short. He's actually shorter than me. So it's a lot of fun. It doesn't take itself too seriously, but what I like is that children love the Bond films, love to relate to these spy characters, love to emulate their heroes. But it can be a little bit difficult because the heroes are tall and big. Well, they'd be able to relate perfectly to a character on their own level. So I'm interested to see how that will work from an audience perspective, in having kids watch it."Davis Shared Guide Role

Warwick Davis, who plays Marvin the Paranoid Android in the upcoming big-screen version of Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, told SCI FI Wire that he was neither shocked nor offended when the film's producers brought in his Harry Potter co-star Alan Rickman to provide Marvin's voice. Davis portrays Professor Flitwick in the Potter adventures, while Rickman essays the ever-dour Professor Snape. "I knew there was a possibility, as you do when you do something like this," Davis said in an interview. "Because you are unseen, you are kind of open to being re-voiced. Of course, during the filming I was talking and performing the lines and everyone was happy."

Davis, who stands 3'6" and weighs 85 pounds, stepped into a 55-pound, enclosed costume in order to play Marvin, the cynical and sarcastic sidekick to the story's hero, Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman). Dent is a man tossed far out of his element when he's plucked from Earth just seconds before its destruction. He then travels about, accompanied by Marvin, Trillian (Zooey Deschanel) and Ford Prefect (Mos Def).

Davis, best known as the title characters in Willow and the Leprechaun horror films, went on to note that the voice-casting of Rickman boiled down to a business decision. "It's one of those things where, when it comes to marketing a movie, you think, 'Well, let's get some names,'" Davis said. "I think I would have been disappointed being dubbed by another actor, but Alan is so unique, his voice is so unique. Nobody has a voice quite like Alan's, and I'm friends with him anyway from working on Harry Potter. When he was asked to do it he checked with me. 'Is this cool? Do you mind if I do this?' I said, 'No, no, it's great. I feel kind of honored that you're collaborating with me and that we're bringing this character to the screen together.' So it's fine. I think it sounds good." The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy opens on April 29.Freeman OK With Hitchhiker Sequel

Martin Freeman, who plays Arthur Dent in the upcoming film verson of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, told SCI FI Wire that he's open to a sequel if one is made, with conditions. In the movie based on Douglas Adams' beloved SF book and radio series, Freeman plays Dent, a human whisked off Earth moments before its destruction, who then embarks on a bizarre adventure through space. He is accompanied by his alien best pal (Mos Def), a depressed robot (Warwick Davis), the president of the galaxy (Sam Rockwell) and a pretty alien female, Trillian (Zooey Deschanel).

"I'd be interested if the same team was interested," Freeman said in an interview, referring to director Garth Jennings and producer Nick Goldsmith. "I'd be interested if Spielberg or someone else I could really trust was going to do it. Then we could talk."

Freeman added: "But if Garth and Nick were going to do it I'd be immediately interested. The next book [in the Hitchhiker's book series] is Restaurant at the End of the Universe. So I'm presuming that they'd probably make that if they do a sequel. But it took 20 years to get a Hitchhiker's script into a film. So I don't think you could just rush into another one of these." The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy opens April 29.Wachowskis Talk Matrix Online

Larry and Andy Wachowski, the notoriously reclusive creators of The Matrix, talked on the record with Paul Chadwick, who worked with them on the Matrix Online massively multiplayer online game, about their ambitions for the game and its impact on the MMO genre. "Our expectations are high, perhaps unreasonably so, but only because we're as anxious for a really good MMO as every other gamer," the brothers said in an interview posted on the IGN.com Web site. "Obviously, the most important thing we're looking for is for it to be fun, to be a game that we'd be interested in playing. Right now, the idea of MMOs—a multitude of gamers jacked into the same computer-generated dream world— is more interesting than the games themselves. We are hoping that The Matrix Online changes that."

The brothers said that the concept for the game was an interactive story in which fans of the films could participate in expanding the world of The Matrix. "The fact that the Matrix films are three of the most successful adult films in history (despite of what much of the media would have us believe), suggests that there are other people like us," they said. "Those are the people, the people who thought about it, who worked at it, who we ultimately made the trilogy for, and it now makes perfect sense to us that they should inherit the storyline. For us, the idea of watching our baby evolve inside the virtual bubble-world of this new radically developing medium—which has, in our opinion, the potential of combining the best attributes of films and games, of synthesizing reality TV with soap opera, RPGs and Mortal Combat—is fantastically exciting."

The brothers also told Chadwick that they will be playing the game anonymously, so players may actually encounter their avatars without realizing it. "For us, it sounds a lot more fun if people don't know it's us," they said. "But if you're looking, you might try asking the goth chick what vis-a-vis really means."War Game Going Online

Paramount will release an online game based on Steven Spielberg's upcoming remake of H.G. Wells' SF classic War of the Worlds, the company announced. The game, which echoes the themes and real-world environments of the film, will debut April 14 at WaroftheWorlds.com.

Players, working alone or in groups, will have to rescue survivors and collect objects while trying to escape mazes and avoid cataclysmic alien destruction. Additional levels of increasing difficulty will be added in the weeks approaching the film's release on June 29, the company said.Cat Cast Grows By Four

Sean Astin (Lord of the Rings) will lend his voice to the upcoming computer-animated feature Cat Tale, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Elisha Cuthbert, Stanley Tucci and Alan Cumming have also been added to the cast, which already includes Fred Willard, Catherine O'Hara, Billy Idol, Rip Torn and Chazz Palminteri, the trade paper reported.

Astin will voice the role of Rover, a cat raised in Dogtown who returns to find his feline roots in Catopolis. Cumming will play his friend and guide, Newton. Tucci is set to play a rival for the affections of Rover's love interest, Cleo, played by Cuthbert. The film, produced by Imagi Services, is expected to be completed by next year, the trade paper reported.Half-Life 2 Expansion Due

Valve Software is currently developing the first expansion to the popular Half-Life 2 PC game, the GameSpot Web site reported. The company will produce the game, titled Half-Life 2: Aftermath, internally rather than outsourcing to another studio as it did with the expansions of the previous game.

The new game will take place immediately after the conclusion of Half-Life 2, and will once again feature the character Gordon Freeman, with a possible expanded role for Freeman's female sidekick, Alyx, the site said. An official announcement with more details and a release date is expected in the coming weeks.New Line Bites Into Meg

New Line has acquired Steve Alten's best-selling novel Meg, about a voracious prehistoric shark, and slated the film adaptation for release in the summer of 2006, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The film, which will have an estimated budget of $75 million, has been fast-tracked after languishing at Disney's Hollywood Pictures for more than a decade. The title refers to the Carcharodon megalodon, an 80-foot-long ancestor of the great white shark, which terrorizes the California coast in the novel.

Jan de Bont (Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, Speed) is set to direct, with Shane Salerno (Armageddon) rewriting Alten's original script. De Bont will also produce along with Larry Gordon, Lloyd Levin, Guillermo del Toro, Ken Atchity, Chi-Li Wong and Nick Nunziata, the trade paper reported.Animator Quits Scanner?

The Austin Chronicle reported a rumor that the animator who was working with director Richard Linklater on the upcoming SF movie A Scanner Darkly has quit. Bob Sabiston created the rotoscoping animation process that Linklater used on his previous film, Waking Life, and was using the same method to animate sequences in Scanner, which stars Keanu Reeves and is based on a Philip K. Dick novel.

Warner Independent had pushed back the release of A Scanner Darkly to March 2006 from this September, citing delays in the animation process, the newspaper reported.

Sabiston declined to comment to the Austin Chronicle and did not respond to SCI FI Wire's request for an interview.Cage Toplines New PKD Film

Director Lee Tamahori told SCI FI Wire that he will helm Nicolas Cage in Next, the latest Hollywood adaptation of a work by SF writer Philip K. Dick. Tamahori (Die Another Day) said in an interview that the movie is set to begin production this summer for an as-yet-to-be-determined 2006 release date for Revolution Studios.

Tamahori said that he and Cage, who will also produce, are still defining their approach to the film. "I know that sounds elusive, but this is a very tricky project," he said. "This movie is about time shifting, and time shifting in movies has always been tricky. Nick Cage and I are both looking for a new approach. We're looking for something that is visually arresting as well as physically fascinating and believable. The technique can wear itself out and become boring very fast. We don't want to turn this into a science-fiction movie without the science fiction."

Next is based on Dick's short story "The Golden Man," about a man with the ability to see short distances into the future. As the story unfolds, he uses his gift to outsmart a secret government organization bent on his capture, as well as to win the love of a woman and to prevent a terrorist attack. The screenplay is credited to Gary Goldman and Jason Koomick.Heinlein Awards Announced

The Heinlein Society has chosen SF authors Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle to be the 2005 recipients of the Robert A. Heinlein Award, which recognizes outstanding published work in hard science fiction or technical writings inspiring the human exploration of space, organizers announced. The awards will be presented on Sept. 4 in Seattle at the 2005 North America Science Fiction Convention.

Niven and Pournelle served alongside Heinlein on the Citizens' Advisory Council on National Space Policy to the President. They have written extensive speculative fiction and non-fiction, both separately and together. Most notably, the two authors collaborated on the 1974 novel The Mote in God's Eye and its sequel, The Gripping Hand, published in 1991.

Previous recipients of the Heinlein award include Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Michael Flynn and Virginia Heinlein. Additional information about the award and the society's annual banquet can be found at the organization's official Web site.Anderson Site Hosts Auction

The Official Gillian Anderson Web site is hosting a charity auction on eBay featuring clothing and items from the X-Files star's personal collection and memorabilia from the series, organizers announced. Proceeds from the auction will benefit NF Inc., an organization dedicated to fighting Neurofibromatosis, a genetic disorder of the nervous system. Anderson's brother was diagnosed with the disease in 1984.

The auction began April 10 and will close on May 1. A list of items, most of which were donated by Anderson herself, is available on the organization's Web site. In a statement posted on the site, Anderson expressed her appreciation for the dedication of her fans. "Thank you all once again for all your support of both my work and other endeavors," she said. "[I] hope you all come together to bid on NF auction material coming up, 'cause there's some awesome and unexpected stuff, and the charity really needs financial support right now."Writer Talks X-Men 3

Simon Kinberg, who is writing the script for the upcoming third film in the X-Men franchise, confirmed to Now Playing that the story will deal with the Dark Phoenix storyline, which originally appeared in the comic book and was alluded to at the end of X2. "[Director] Bryan Singer left the groundwork in place to pursue the Dark Phoenix saga," Kinberg told the site. "And Famke Janssen will be back in the movie."

Kinberg, who also has a writing credit on the upcoming Fantastic Four film, said that there will be appearances by some characters familiar to fans of the comic book, but did not confirm who they will be. "You will see new characters and beloved X-Men characters in the third film, and they will play major roles—at least one of them will play a major role," he said. "The truth is, the biggest challenge of writing the movies is fitting all the characters [in]. I have so much love for these characters, I don't want to introduce one that I love as a cameo. I want to really get into it and let them get into the depth and the layers of the character."

Kinberg also hinted that certain other mutant characters may return, but as the stars of their own films rather than in another X-Men installment. "[Fox is] developing a Wolverine spinoff movie and a Magneto spinoff, and I would say they are more predisposed to making those spinoff films before they mount a fourth X-Men film," he said. "This is the crown jewel for Fox, their only and biggest homegrown franchise. ... This is their baby, and they treat it very seriously, very religiously, and they are very careful about all the decisions they make."Sony Has Another Grudge

Sony Pictures Entertainment has signed a two-picture distribution deal with Sam Raimi and Robert Tapert's Ghost House Pictures to release The Grudge 2, as well as the English-language debut film from the Pang brothers, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The two companies previously collaborated on the first Grudge film, a remake of the Japanese horror film Ju-On, and the recently released Boogeyman.

Director Takashi Shimizu, who directed Ju-On and The Grudge, will return for the English-language sequel, though star Sarah Michelle Gellar has not yet committed to the project. Her character's Japanese counterpart does not appear in the original Japanese sequel, Ju-On 2, but it has not been confirmed that the upcoming project will be based on the same story.Paul Muses On Highlander End

Adrian Paul, who played immortal swordsman Duncan MacLeod on the Highlander television series, told SCI FI Wire that working on the recently released DVD of the sixth and final season gave him a renewed appreciation for the experience of making the show. "There's a lot of distance now that I have," Paul said in an interview. "[It was] seven years ago that I stopped doing this series. And after five, six years, time does go by. And when we started doing the DVDs, you're looking at it and it was really like, 'Wow. I got to do that? Whoa.'"

Paul said he was eager to move on when the show ended in 1998, but time has given him some perspective on the role and his permanent association with it. "I always wanted it to sort of go away," he said. "It's one of those things that you look at and say, 'Okay, I've done it. I need to move on.' But it's never really going to go away. It's one of those things. And luckily so, in a sense. It's a curse and a blessing all at the same time."

Paul's increasing distance from the show was evident in the last season, which highlighted other characters in the Highlander universe with the idea of inspiring a new series. "Each year had a direction to it," he said. "The last season had a direction to the end, which was really to find how they were going to spin the series off. So the storylines were geared towards other female immortals coming in and what their story was about. If you noticed, I was kind of involved in some of them and some I really wasn't. ... It's funny, because I guess what I chose to do with Duncan MacLeod was what I was doing personally with it, which was stepping back."

For Paul, the best part of the experience was interacting with the fans, who still support him and follow his career. "I was always very, very active in making sure that there was somewhere for fans to go to get information or to vent their feelings," he said. "So the Web site was created [with] things they can get, information they can get. My fan club was set up, my [personal] Web site was set up. So, by doing that and by giving them that information, they still felt part of my career. And they kept that and they've been very good about being supportive of what I do and keeping an interest in it." More information on the series and the DVD releases is available at the show's official Web site.New Harry Potter Game Due

Electronic Arts and Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment will release a video game based on the upcoming fantasy film Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which will feature the likenesses of the actors for the first time in the franchise, the GameSpot Web site reported. The game will be available for a variety of console, hand-held and PC platforms.

Players will be able to take on the role of Harry (played by Daniel Radcliffe) and his friends, Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson), and join forces to combine their skills and power with an all-new spell-casting system. The game will also interact with vibration-enabled systems, allowing players to feel the controller shake when casting a spell. Both the game and the film, based on J.K. Rowling's fourth Potter book, will be released in November.Booksellers Honor Clarke

Susanna Clarke's popular fantasy novel Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell was among the winners of the American Booksellers Association's Book Sense awards, the Associated Press reported. The awards honor books that independent stores most enjoy recommending and selling.

The winners will be honored in June during BookExpo America, publishing's annual national convention. "We are looking forward to presenting the Book Sense Book of the Year Awards to these outstanding authors," Avin Mark Domnitz, the association's CEO, said in a statement. "These books are representative of what independent booksellers do best—recommend and hand-sell wonderful books to their customers."Sommers Collides With Worlds

Stephen Sommers, director of The Mummy and Van Helsing, will write and direct a remake of the classic 1951 SF film When Worlds Collide for Paramount, Variety reported. Sommers will also produce the film, alongside his partner, Bob Ducsay.

The original film centers on a scientific discovery that another planet is on a collision course with Earth and the race to save a handful of humans from the inevitable destruction. The trade paper reported that the project will be ambitious in scale and budget.

Worlds is the most recent project to come out of the newly formed Sommers Co., which announced last week that it will be producing a feature adaptation of the Top Cow comic series Proximity Effect for Universal, which is owned by NBC Universal, the parent company of SCIFI.com.Librarian Returning To TNT

Cable network TNT announced that it is developing a sequel to the original fantasy adventure movie The Librarian: Quest for the Spear, which earned high ratings for the channel when it aired last December. At its upfront presentation in New York on April 12, the network told advertisers and reporters that star Noah Wyle will return in the sequel, which will once again be executive-produced by Dean Devlin (Independence Day) under his Electric Entertainment banner.

Wyle will reprise his role as unlikely hero Flynn Carsen, a librarian with 22 academic degrees charged with protecting a treasure trove of magical artifacts hidden beneath the Metropolitan Library. The new original movie is tentatively scheduled to air on TNT in the fall.Coppola Abandons SF Film

Francis Ford Coppola is putting his previously announced SF epic Megalopolis on hold indefinitely, the Dark Horizons Web site reported. According to a report on the Spanish Web site Estrenos de Cine, Coppola told reporters at the Busto Arsizio festival in Italy that the project has become too large in scale and is not moving forward. "It is a very ambitious project, perhaps too much," Coppola said. "And at this moment I believe that it [isn't going] ahead, so I have chosen to stop and to reflect."

The story deals with the negotiations among artists, businessmen and the proletariat about the shape of a futuristic world, Dark Horizons reported. Coppola has been working on the film sporadically for more than a decade, and has reportedly shot hours of second-unit footage, but the project has suffered a series of setbacks and delays, including the demise of potential distributor United Artists. At one time, Nicolas Cage (Coppola's nephew), Russell Crowe, Robert De Niro, Paul Newman, Parker Posey and Kevin Spacey have all been attached to the project.Martinez Tastes Blood and Chocolate

Olivier Martinez (Taking Lives) has signed on to star in the upcoming werewolf film Blood and Chocolate, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Based on the Curtis Klause novel about a female teenage werewolf, Blood and Chocolate was adapted for the screen by Ehren Kruger (The Ring, The Skeleton Key).

Agnes Bruckner (24, The Woods) will star as the werewolf, who must choose between her love for a human and her pack family after her relationship with a visitor threatens to expose her secret, the trade paper reported. German filmmaker Katja von Garnier will direct. Lakeshore is co-financing and co-producing the picture, which will likely be released through Sony, the trade paper reported.Schrader's Exorcist Is Revived

Paul Schrader, who was replaced as director of Exorcist: The Beginning after producers were displeased with the final cut of the film, will see his version open in theaters after all, Variety reported. Warner Brothers Pictures will handle the distribution under a previous agreement with Morgan Creek Productions.

Morgan Creek's Jim Robinson pulled the plug on Schrader's nearly finished film in September 2003 over creative differences, the trade paper reported. The studio replaced Schrader with Renny Harlin and spent another $35 million to complete the film with Stellan Skarsgård returning in the role of Father Merrin. Harlin's film, which opened last August, earned $76.9 million worldwide. Schrader's version will be released in theaters May 20.SCI FI Announces Films for '06

SCI FI Channel announced a slate of 28 new original movies premiering on Saturday nights throughout 2006, the most of any year to date. The network has been averaging more than 2 million viewers for its Saturday night movie franchise, with the March 26 premiere of Alien Apocalypse, starring Bruce Campbell, achieving a Saturday-night record of more than 2.7 million viewers. Campbell will also appear in another SCI FI original, Man with the Screaming Brain, in September.

The following projects were among those announced for 2006:

•Fire Alien, a tongue-in-cheek film about a fire-breathing alien starring William Shatner.

•Gryphon, an epic fantasy about a prince and princess from opposing sides of two warring kingdoms who must join forces to defeat a mystical gryphon conjured by an evil wizard.

•Heat Stroke, an action-adventure from Farscape executive producer David Kemper about an alien invasion which leads to massive global warming.

•Citadel, starring Corin Nemic as a member of an elite corps of American soldiers who must destroy a creature unleashed on Europe by the Nazis after D-Day.

•Black Hole Terror (working title), a thriller from director Tibor Takacs (Mansquito) about a failed experiment which threatens to swallow the entire Midwest. Kristy Swanson and Judd Nelson star.

•Squid/Tentacles (working title), a creature feature starring a giant squid which attacks the crew of a treasure-hunting expedition.

•Magma, a disaster film about a volcanic eruption, starring 24's Xander Berkley and Reiko Aylesworth along with Amy Jo Johnson (Felicity).SCI FI Reveals New Series

SCI FI Channel announced a slate of new original series for the 2006-07 season, adding projects from luminaries in film, television and literature to its roster of scripted dramas, miniseries and alternative series. The new shows will incorporate the mainstream appeal of fantasy, adventure and alternative reality.

The following scripted series are currently in development:

•An untitled project executive-produced by Academy Award-winning actor/producer Michael Douglas, based on the work of the late author Shirley Jackson (The Haunting of Hill House). Storylines and themes from Jackson's catalog of supernatural short stories will be woven into her real life experiences transitioning from urban mom to small-town matriarch.

•Heroes Anonymous, a live-action series based the comic book created by Scott Gimpel and Bill Morrison which follows a group of 20-something aspiring superheroes who form a support group to help them discover their own identity while carving out their secret identity. The series will be executive-produced by Lawrence Bender (Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction), Kevin Brown (Legend of Earthsea, Roswell) and Karl Schaefer (The Dead Zone). Gimpel and Morrison will write the pilot.

•Those Who Walk in Darkness, a drama based on John Ridley's (Three Kings, Third Watch) best-selling novel of the same name about an expert team of S.W.A.T. police whose primary mission is to hunt down and capture people who genetically possess super powers. John Ridley will write and executive-produce in association with NBC Universal Television Studio.

•Urban Arcana, an action series inspired by the Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast role-playing game which follows an undercover detective who must protect the human population from the influx of chameleon-like, mythological creatures from a parallel world. Aron Coleite (Crossing Jordan) will write, with Gary A. Randall and Rockne O'Bannon (The Triangle, Farscape) executive-producing in association with Fox Television Studios.

•Tomorrow's Child, a series centered around a young girl who was horribly burned in an accident and saved by a special skin of extraterrestrial origin, which gives her powers beyond human comprehension. She travels the country pursued by the government while looking for the origin of her powers and seeking out others like her. Produced by NBC Universal Television Studio and Gary Foster's Horseshoe Bay Productions (Daredevil, Elektra).

•Time Tunnel, an updated interpretation of the classic 1960s television series created by Irwin Allen. The new series centers on a female scientist and a government agent who find themselves trapped in time when an experimental time travel project is sabotaged. Produced with Fox Television Studios and Kevin Burns and Jon Jashni of Synthesis Entertainment. Allen's wife, Shelia Allen, will produce. Written by John Turman (The Hulk).

•3:52, from distinguished television writer/producer John Tinker (Judging Amy, The Practice), takes place in the wake of the sudden disappearance of 2 billion people from the face of the Earth. The series, named for the time of the vanishing, will be told from the point of view of a small Maryland town.

The network also announced the following alternative series:

•Barbarian Chronicles, a half-hour animated ensemble comedy from Brendon Small, creator of the offbeat strip series Home Movies. David Letterman's Worldwide Pants will produce along with Small.

•Seriously Baffling Mysteries, a half-hour mockumentary hosted by Jonathan Frankle, which goes in search of the paranormal on a shoestring budget. In each episode, production chaos and behind-the-scenes dysfunction interrupt Frankle's attempt at supernatural investigative reporting.Spy-Hunter Rewrite Ordered

Stuart Beattie will rewrite Spy-Hunter, a video-game film adaptation that will star Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, with John Woo directing for Universal Pictures, Variety reported. Beattie received story credit on Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Universal licensed the game from Midway, the trade paper reported.

Spy-Hunter is being eyed as a potential 2006 summer tentpole if production can get underway this year. Previously drafts of the Spy script were written by writing teams Michael Brandt and Derek Haas, as well as Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, the trade paper reported.

Producers on the project include Woo, his producing partner Terence Chang, Chuck Gordon and Adrian Askarieh. Neal Moritz and Marty Adelstein are executive-producing.Diesel Iced In xXx Sequel

Lee Tamahori, director of the upcoming sequel film xXx: State of the Union, told SCI FI Wire that he had a hand in getting Ice Cube to take over the starring role from Vin Diesel, who headlined the first installment of the SF-tinged action franchise. "I was undecided as to whether I would do it or not," the New Zealand-born Tamahori said in an interview. "I had just made another of those big, giant movies [Die Another Day], and I didn't know if I wanted to go straightaway into another one."

Tamahori said that a script for xXx: State of the Union was already written, tailored to Diesel's character, extreme athlete Xander Cage. But, the director said, "If I had Vin in the picture, I would have had to do extreme sports again, and I did not want to do a retread."

That is when "the ground shifted rapidly," Tamahori said, and he was offered "a hook" that made him change his mind. "The studio cinched the deal by telling me that I did not have to do the movie with Vin," he said. "They said that the initial idea for the xXx franchise, as conceived by the first film's director, Rob Cohen, was to not have the same lead actor each time out. That immediately made it more interesting for me, because it would allow me, as a director, to go someplace else."

A substantial rewrite of the script eliminated Diesel's character altogether and bumped a secondary character, Darius Stone, to the lead role. Stone is a man recruited to stop a covert takeover of the United States government. Tamahori, long an advocate of dramatic action pictures and a fan of such '70s thrillers as Three Days of the Condor and All the President's Men, felt that the rewrite made the sequel a smarter movie. "This is definitely a much more intelligent movie," he said. "It's not brainless, and it's not another Bond movie. This is a homegrown story with a lot of '70s dark, thriller, paranoid concepts in it. And, no, I'm not worried about it being too smart for its target audience. Teenage audiences are not stupid. I think they'll get it." xXx: State of the Union opens April 29.Final 3 Is A Real Coaster

Glen Morgan—who with partner James Wong is returning to the Final Destination franchise by writing and producing the upcoming third installment—showed SCI FI Wire a glimpse of the sequel's opening disaster, which takes place on a roller coaster and will be shot in a way that hasn't been seen before. "It's not necessarily groundbreaking, but it hasn't been done before, you know, in this way," Morgan said in an interview during a break in filming on the sequel's Vancouver, B.C., set on April 13. (Production started this month and will run through June.)

Like the previous two films, the movie begins with the main character—in this case, high school senior Wendy, played by newcomer Mary Elizabeth Winstead—experiencing a horrific disaster in which she and her friends all die—then realizing it's only a premonition of death. In the first film the disaster was a plane crash. In the second, a multi-vehicle pileup on a freeway. In Final Destination 3, it's a disaster on a roller coaster, Morgan said. It all fits, he added.

"I don't know if we ever successfully pull it off, but Jim and I like to have themes," Morgan said. "And this one, for the Wendy character, is about loss of control. ... You got a roller coaster, [and] psychologists will tell you that's why people hate 'em. Why you're afraid of them. Or why you're afraid to fly. Because you have no control. And for me, ... when I'm going up any roller coaster, I just say, 'I want out.' But I'm not getting out. That's just torture. ... It's unbearable. I'm nervous talking about it. ... If you look at death, that's [the same thing]. ... All of a sudden. I feel that if it wants us, [it's going to get us]. I think that's why the franchise kind of works."

SCI FI Wire viewed a "pre-visualization" of the sequence, or animated storyboard, which takes place on a fictional roller coaster with a 200-foot drop, corkscrews and a high loop. The speeding coaster loses hydraulic pressure, causing restraining harnesses to relax and wheels to fall off. As the coaster accelerates into its various turns and whirls, high school students fly out, fall, get run over and wind up hanging upside down by their fingers. Some die gruesome deaths.

To shoot the scene, the filmmakers will use a combination of an actual roller coaster (at Vancouver's Pacific National Exposition amusement park), computer-generated extensions, wire stunts, computer animation and actual actors in simulated cars shot against a green screen. "It's complicated," Morgan said. "We're going to have two weeks of green screen on hydraulic things, and CGI."

Added producer Craig Perry: "Actors being hung upside down, being yanked out of cars, cars falling, flipping. It's good times." Final Destination 3, which Wong will direct, is slated for a 2006 release.Briefly Noted

Lucy Liu will star in Rise, a vampire movie written and to be directed by Sebastian Gutierrez, in which she plays a reporter who wakes up in a morgue and discovers she's no longer among the living, Variety reported.

The April 17 TV Guide pays tribute to Star Trek: Enterprise with four different covers and coverage of the canceled UPN series' last episodes.

The April 13 premiere of NBC's supernatural series Revelations gave the network its highest ratings in the 9 p.m. hour in six months, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The network is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.

TrekWeb has posted video interviews with the cast and crew of UPN's canceled Star Trek: Enterprise from the red carpet of the April 13 wrap party in Hollywood, Calif.

Miracles, the short-lived ABC series starring Skeet Ulrich as a paranormal investigator for the Catholic church, will be released on DVD with seven never-before-seen episodes April 19.

A newly released image of the Hell Cycle from the upcoming Marvel Comics adaptation Ghost Rider has been posted in the photo gallery.

Universal has moved up the release date of George Romero's upcoming zombie film Land of the Dead to June 24. Its previous Oct. 21 spot will now be occupied by the video-game adaptation Doom.

New Line has picked up the comedy script Jeff the Demon—about two high school losers who summon a demon to solve their problems—from screenwriters Tom Scharpling and Joe Ventura, Variety reported.

Alfre Woodard is joining the cast of ABC's hit Desperate Housewives, Variety reported. Woodard will guest star in the show's season finale, as a deeply religious woman who moves to Wisteria Lane with her son, before returning as a regular this fall.

Brad Anderson (The Machinist) is in negotiations to direct a remake of George A. Romero's 1973 horror film The Crazies, Variety reported. Romero will serve as an executive producer on the new version.

The Sy Fy Portal Web site is asking fans of SCI FI Channel's original series Battlestar Galactica to donate money to pay for an advertisement in the May 31 edition of The Hollywood Reporter seeking Emmy nominations for the show, which ended its first season this month.

A new Web site has gone live for Paramount's upcoming SF movie Aeon Flux, starring Charlize Theron and based on the MTV animated series, which opens in September.