Abrams Reviving Trek

Paramount has hired Mission: Impossible III director J.J. Abrams to write, direct and produce the 11th Star Trek feature film, aiming for a 2008 release, Variety reported. Damon Lindelof, who co-created Lost with Abrams, and Bryan Burk, who produces Lost, have also been tapped to produce the yet-to-be-titled feature.

The project will be co-written by Mission: Impossible III scribes Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. It will center on the early days of original Trek characters James T. Kirk and Mr. Spock, including their first meeting at Starfleet Academy and first space mission, the trade paper reported.

The deal reflects the studio's bullishness on Mission: Impossible III, which launches worldwide next weekend, and underlines the goal of Paramount heads Brad Grey Gail Berman to re-energize the pipeline via high-profile tentpoles, while revitalizing the Paramount brand with top-tier talent such as Abrams, the trade paper reported.

The decision to relaunch Star Trek comes less than a year after UPN pulled the plug on Star Trek: Enterprise amid dismal ratings following a four-season run, and four years after Star Trek: Nemesis turned in the worst performance of the 10 films, earning just $43 million at the box office.Da Vinci Sequel Delayed

Dan Brown's follow-up novel to his global bestseller The Da Vinci Code won't be ready by the end of the year as originally expected, Reuters reported. Larry Finlay, managing director for Transworld Publishers in London, a division of Bertelsmann-owned Random House, told the news service that the publisher doesn't know when the book is coming and has taken it off the schedule for this year. "At one point we were hoping for it around October or November, but now it's looking like 2007," Finlay said.

The book, whose title and plot are as secretly guarded as the religious sects Brown writes about, remains unfinished, the news service said. In the last year, Brown has been embroiled plagiarism lawsuits and the publicity surrounding the upcoming film adaptation starring Tom Hanks. Neither Brown nor his agent in New York could immediately be reached to comment on reasons for the new book's delay.

The working title on the novel had been The Solomon Key, though it was reportedly dropped. Speculative books such as Secrets of the Widow's Son and The Solomon Key and Beyond, as well as fan Web sites, have been trying to crack the plot, which Brown himself has hinted will deal with the ancient society of Masons, the news service said.Da Vinci Ruling Upheld

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York has upheld a ruling that Dan Brown did not copy elements of another writer's work in his bestseller, The Da Vinci Code, the Reuters news service reported.

It was second legal victory for Brown this month, after a London court rejected the charges that he plagiarized another book, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh. In the New York case, author Lewis Perdue had claimed Brown's book infringed the copyright of his novels Daughter of God, which was published in 2000, and The Da Vinci Legacy, which came out in 1983.

Last August, Judge George Daniels of U.S. District Court in New York concluded: "A reasonable average lay observer would not conclude that The Da Vinci Code is substantially similar to Daughter of God."

"Any slightly similar elements are on the level of generalized or otherwise unprotectable ideas," he said, adding that copyright did not protect an idea, but only the expression of an idea.

Brown's publisher, Doubleday, said in a statement that the federal appeals court in New York had confirmed that ruling this week, the news service reported. "This rapid and unanimous verdict confirms, once again, that this claim never had any merit," Brown said in the statement.

With more than 40 million copies in print, The Da Vinci Code remains on bestseller lists three years after its publication. The movie version starring Tom Hanks and directed by Ron Howard will be released on May 19.Da Vinci Game Goes Live

Columbia Pictures and Google announced the launch of The Da Vinci Code Quest on Google, a 24-day game that began April 17, the 553rd anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci's birth. Those who successfully complete the challenges and a series of follow-up puzzles will be eligible to win prizes, including first-class vacations to New York, Paris, London and Rome, as well as Sony televisions, computers, cameras, satellite navigation systems, home theater systems and more.

New puzzles will go live daily in the United States at 1 p.m. ET, aimed at fans of Dan Brown's best-selling book The Da Vinci Code and the upcoming film, starring Tom Hanks, based on it. Columbia Pictures worked with Wei-Hwa Huang, a four-time World Puzzle Champion and Google software engineer, to devise the puzzles.

The puzzles borrow thematically from the Da Vinci Code movie and its lead character, Robert Langdon, professor of symbology at Harvard University, challenging players to use their skill and cunning to unlock various codes. Once solved, the daily puzzles will introduce a riddle to the player that will engage one of an assortment of Google products, including Google Search, Google Maps, Google SMS and Google Video.

The first 10,000 eligible challengers who complete all 24 puzzles correctly by May 11 will be contacted to run a gantlet of puzzles, using a "cryptex" replica like the one featured in the film, over the next 48 hours. The U.S. player who completes the final challenge in the least amount of time by 1 p.m. ET on May 21 wins.

The Da Vinci Code movie, directed by Ron Howard, opens May 19.Vatican Attacks Da Vinci, Judas

A Vatican official railed against The Da Vinci Code, branding the book and its upcoming film version just more examples of Jesus being sold out by a wave of what he called "pseudo-historic" art, the Reuters news service reported.

The official, preaching in Rome in the presence of Pope Benedict, also condemned the so-called Gospel of Judas, an alternative view to traditional Christian teaching, which has received wide media attention recently.

Father Raniero Cantalamessa, whose official title is "Preacher of the Papal Household," made his comments in a sermon during a "Passion of the Lord" service in St. Peter's Basilica commemorating Christ's death on Good Friday, April 14.

Cantalamessa made several scathing references to The Da Vinci Code, without specifically mentioning the name of the worldwide best-seller. He said that people today were fascinated by "every new theory according to which he [Christ] was not crucified and did not die, ... but ran off with Mary Magdalene." The book has been adapted into a movie, starring Tom Hanks, which is due to be released next month. "No one will be able to stop this wave of speculation, which will see a sharp increase with the imminent release of a certain film," Cantalamessa added.

Cantalamessa also dismissed The Gospel of Judas, which claims that it was Christ himself who asked Judas to betray him. The Gospel of Judas received wide attention recently in media stories about the discovery of a 1,700-year-old copy. The so-called Gospel of Judas was already declared a heresy by the early church about two centuries after Christ died.Potter Star Hangs In U.K.

Harry Potter film star Daniel Radcliffe, 16, will become the youngest non-royal ever to have an individual portrait in England's National Portrait Gallery, the Irish Examiner newspaper reported.

Radcliffe, who has starred in all four of the Potter movies, was only 14 when he posed for artist Stuart Pearson Wright during a break from filming the movies based on J.K. Rowling's best-selling books.

"I love it," Radcliffe told the newspaper. "Until recently, I'd seen a peek of it in the catalogue, but not actually seen the real thing. It was strange seeing myself as I was two years ago, not as I am now. If you look at each individual part of my face, they look exactly like part of my face. Together it's surreal."

The picture of Radcliffe will hang alongside nine other paintings by Wright, which include portraits of ER star Parminder Nagra, Oscar-winner Jeremy Irons and Radcliffe's Potter co-star Alan Rickman.Fraser Set For Journey 3-D

Brendan Fraser will star in Journey 3-D, an update of Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth, from Walden Media and New Line, Variety reported. Fraser will portray a geologist who, with his teenage son, discovers a message hidden in an ancient artifact, leading them into a previously unseen world.

Visual-effects supervisor Eric Brevig, who won a Special Achievement Academy Award for Total Recall, will make his feature directorial debut. D.V. DeVincentis (High Fidelity) has written the script. Fraser is also set to executive-produce the film, along with visual-effects veteran Charlotte Huggins.

Journey 3-D will be shot in live action, with the otherworldly landscapes and creatures supplied by high-definition, photo-real 3-D technology. The project is the third collaboration between Walden and New Line, the trade paper reported.Cannes Lineup Announced

Richard Kelly's supernatural musical thriller Southland Tales will be among those in competition at the 59th Cannes Film Festival in May, the festival's organizers announced. The film, set in the pre-apocalyptic near future, stars Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Seann William Scott, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Mandy Moore.

Director Richard Linklater will have two films in the festival, the non-genre Fast Food Nation, which will be in competition, and the animated adaptation of Philip K. Dick's SF novel A Scanner Darkly, which will be showcased in the special non-competing category known as Un Certain Regard. Linklater is the first director to have films in competition and Un Certain Regard simultaneously at Cannes.

Also screening at the festival, but not in competition, will be the superhero sequel X-Men: The Last Stand and the computer-animated film Over the Hedge. Ron Howard's adaptation of The Da Vinci Code, based on the best-selling book by Dan Brown and starring Tom Hanks, will open the festival.

Darren Aronofsky's epic romance The Fountain, widely considered a contender for a Cannes slot, was not among the films included in the festival. According to Variety, rumor has it that the film was offered a non-competing slot, but Aronofsky and Warner Brothers, wanting competition or nothing, declined.Del Toro On Board Sea

Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy) has signed on to executive-produce The Call of the Sea, from Chilean horror director Jorge Olguin, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The film, Olguin's third feature, stars Leonor Varela (Innocent Voices) and Santiago Cabrera (Empire).

The film is based on a legend about a ghost ship that navigates the cold waters of a mysterious Chilean island in search of the souls of local fisherman. The story centers on a marine biologist (Varela) who discovers that many of the legends are related to her family's past, the trade paper reported.

Del Toro became involved in the project after reading Olguin's screenplay. The Call of the Sea will feature elements of magic and fantasy using state-of-the-art digital CGI effects, models and special-effects makeup.Manga Pulled From Libraries

Bill Postmus, chairman of the board of supervisors of San Bernadino County, Calif., has ordered the county's libraries to remove the book Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics from circulation, according to the ICv2.com Web site. In an announcement on the county's Web site, Postmus called the book "obscene," saying, "That book is absolutely inappropriate for a public library, and as soon as I was made aware of it yesterday, I ordered it to be removed immediately."

The book was brought to the attention of the county after a 16-year-old checked it out of the adult section of a Victorville library. The teen's mother "was horrified," according to a story in the local newspaper, Desert Dispatch, and wrote a letter to the library asking that the book be removed, the Web site reported. The county-wide system had 13 copies of the book in its collection.

County Library Collection Development Coordinator Nannette Bricker-Barrett said in a statement to the newspaper that it was the parents' responsibility to determine what a minor checked out of the adult section. "The library does not act as a parent," she said. "It is the library's responsibility to offer a broad spectrum of materials, not to exclude materials."

The 2004 illustrated trade paperback, written by Paul Gravett and published by Harper Design, follows the history of Japanese comics and includes, in several chapters, discussion of adult comics that depict sex and violence. Although Postmus said in his statement that the book contains "sex with animals," evidence of such has not been confirmed.

Postmus has also called for the country library "to draft a plan to protect children from inappropriate books and other materials that may currently exist in the county library system," the Web site reported.O'Bannon Has Bite

Dan O'Bannon, whose screenwriting credits include Alien, Alien vs. Predator and Total Recall, will write and direct the SF thriller They Bite, Variety reported. Former Paramount executive Brian Witten and producer Rob Gallagher are also developing the film along with O'Bannon. The project is expected to go into production this year.

While at Paramount, Witten oversaw The Longest Yard, Four Brothers and Mission: Impossible III. Gallagher heads Gallagher Literary Management and was previously executive vice-president of Gaga America, the Los Angeles-based subsidiary of Japanese distributor Gaga, the trade paper reported.Who's New Wolf Howls

LONDON—Dave Houghton, visual effects supervisor on the BBC's SF hit series Doctor Who, told SCI FI Wire that his technicians broke ground to create a computer-generated werewolf for the upcoming second-season episode "Tooth and Claw," airing this week in the United Kingdom. "Our modelers and animators have worked on films like Harry Potter," Houghton said in an interview. "So they were very well aware of what they could achieve in the time allowed, and we planned the episode accordingly. We were in talks with [executive producer] Russell T. Davies quite early on, even before the script was written, to determine how much could be done, and what we've done is very good in terms of TV or even for film. I think our werewolf is the best creature we've done for the show so far. It's fantastic."

"Tooth and Claw" debuted on BBC1 on April 22. In it, the Doctor (David Tennant) and Rose (Billie Piper) travel back to 19th-century Scotland, where they encounter an aging Queen Victoria (Pauline Collins) en route to a local nobleman's estate, which has been taken over by a group of monks transporting a caged creature. When the werewolf emerges under a full moon, the Doctor has to uncover an ancient secret to defeat it.

"The great thing about doing a CG creature is you're obviously not mucking around with somebody on set in a costume, which takes ages, and time is something you just don't have on Doctor Who," Houghton said. "So there had to be a few ground rules. Once we got the script, our team basically animated to the script and what we thought would look good, and that really couldn't be changed. In film, a lot of noodling goes on after the fact. It gets animated, and then the producer or director comes in and changes it, so you have a lot of people giving their input, which we didn't have time to do. We had to take our cues as to what we thought was good and basically stuck to that, because we didn't have time to re-animate anything."

Houghton added: "Our werewolf was created with a new Maya [software] plug-in called Shave and a Haircut, which we used for the first time on this job, and it's worked very nicely. It all comes down to the guy who textures it, but our werewolf is very realistic. We've blown wind through it, we've thrown water on it, and it all looks rather splendid." The first season of Doctor Who is currently airing on SCI FI Channel Fridays at 9 p.m. ET/PT. —Joe NazzaroVentresca Wild For Mammoth

Vincent Ventresca, who stars in the SCI FI Channel original movie Mammoth, told SCI FI Wire that he signed on to the project for two reasons: because of the opportunity to reunite with Tim Cox, who directed him in another SCI FI original, Larva, and because of Mammoth's wild and woolly story. "Tim Cox is why I said yes," Ventresca said in an interview. "He's this guy I met a while ago, who I did Larva with. We're friends, and [with] his energy ... I knew he'd pour everything into Mammoth, and I kind of like to do that, too. So I knew there'd be a really strong commitment from the director, and that's all it really takes [to interest me]."

Ventresca, who starred in the SCI FI original series The Invisible Man, added, "And then I just thought it was sort of funny. It's a story about a big elephant going and taking over a town and trying to kill a bunch of people. Sign me up!"

Mammoth is set in a small Louisiana town where a soul-sucking alien life form inhabits a partially frozen woolly mammoth at a local natural history museum. Ventresca plays Dr. Frank Abernathy, a paleontologist who must race to save the day before the mammoth extends its rampage beyond the city's limits. Tom Skerritt (Alien) co-stars as Abernathy's father, while Summer Glau (Serenity) is Abernathy's daughter.

"I didn't know it was going to have that cast," Ventresca said. "Tim sent me the script months before, and you never know who they're going to get for these parts. Tim kept calling me and saying, 'Hey, we got Summer,' and then, 'We got Tom Skerritt.' It was like, 'Wow.' Summer is amazing. Tom Skerritt is like Van Morrison to me; I loved him. He's got this really great part."

Ventresca, who recently shot a pilot for a proposed Fox series entitled Julie Reno: Bounty Hunter, added, "When I started out, I never looked at the big parts. I always looked at the little parts and I was like, 'God, if I could just get those little parts.' Tom played a cop in Harold and Maude, which is one of my favorite movies in the world. So, it was just ... it's really cool to be a fan of the people you work with, because it's not only the excitement of being on a set, having cameras and trying to figure out these scenes, but there's this sort of ... there's this ... you have kind of crushes on them because you know their work." Mammoth premiered April 22 at 9 p.m. ET/PT. —Ian SpellingLegendary Finds Paradise Lost

Legendary Pictures is developing a live-action film version of Paradise Lost, John Milton's epic poem, with Scott Derrickson (The Exorcism of Emily Rose) attached to direct, Variety reported. Vincent Newman (A Man Apart) will produce along with Legendary.

Paradise Lost, published in 1667, tells the story of Lucifer's failed rebellion in heaven and subsequent role in Adam and Eve's fall from grace.

Legendary, backed by private investment money, is co-financing and co-producing several high-profile Warner Brothers films, including Superman Returns, Lady in the Water and 10,000 B.C., the trade paper reported. It formed a partnership with the studio last year to co-produce and co-finance at least 25 films over a five-year period. The company also has a first-look distribution deal with the studio.

Phil DiBlasi and Byron Willinger adapted Paradise Lost for the screen. Stuart Hazeldine ("Battle Chasers") will develop the project with Derrickson and take on additional writing duties. Derrickson studied theology as a college undergrad, the trade paper reported.Stargate DVD Set Due

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment will celebrate the 10th anniversary of Stargate SG-1 with the release of the show's first eight seasons in a special DVD collection due June 13.

The Stargate SG-1 DVD collection contains the complete episodes for all eight seasons, along with extra content including two featurettes, "The Directors' Series" and "Beyond the Gate." Stargate SG-1 seasons one through eight will each be available for a suggested retail price of $49.96.

Executive-produced by Robert C. Cooper and co-creator Brad Wright, the first eight seasons of Stargate SG-1 starred Richard Dean Anderson, Amanda Tapping, Christopher Judge and Michael Shanks. Now filming its 10th season with the addition of regular cast members Ben Browder, Claudia Black and Beau Bridges, Stargate SG-1 is the longest-running science-fiction series in American television history and has been nominated for more than 71 awards, including eight Emmys. Dread Gets Wasted

Perennial Bram Stoker Award nominee Charlee Jacob, whose horror novel Dread in the Beast was just nominated for another Stoker, told SCI FI Wire that the novel centers on a Goddess of Waste. "Chiefly the context here is excremental," Jacob said in an interview. "[She] is protector of those whom mankind has accounted as useless: the old, the infirm and the most unloved or lost of our children. She also punishes those who are the real throwaways: violent degenerates who believe, cult-like, that there is a special heaven/hell for them where they will rule in all their viciousness over endless numbers of helpless victims."

Dread in the Beast follows one of these depraved beasts, a man named Jason Cave, Jacob said. "[Cave] has actually glimpsed into this realm he believes is the place where he's destined to reign," she said. "The book is violent, graphic, depicting the most depraved—contrasted by the honorable—in our species."

Jacob added that waste is perhaps the ultimate symbol left for darkness, evil or anything socially unacceptable. "The Goddess of Waste is, herself, typical of the dual nature of many goddess figures, representing death and birth, night and day, physical and spirit," she said. "I wanted to explore the most sinister avenues I could find. Owning an extensive library enabled me to begin researching waste as it concerns philosophy, history, anthropology, religion and psychology. The information gathered helped me create my characters, from the existentially confused superman Jason Cave to the pair of archaeologists who first discover rites to this goddess in an ancient Persian cave to the goddess herself. ... It was the strangest journey I've yet undertaken with a book, despite those readers who took it too literally."

Although Jacob has managed to stay prolific as a writer, she doesn't have the time to read that she used to because of a debilitating illness. "Two years ago I was diagnosed as fully disabled from a broad range of problems, including but not limited to a rat-sized tumor in my leg, tremors, bursitis, arthritis, sciatica, fibromyalgia, hypothyroidism, hypoandrenalism and virtually no immune system," Jacob said. "I spend most of my time in bed, up only occasionally to attend a local convention. I work in longhand, unable to yet afford a laptop. When I can sit up, I try to write my books and stories onto the computer ... or I paint as therapy for the hand tremors. I miss reading my favorites!"

Jacob also received a Stoker nomination this year for her poetry collection, Sineater. "I have always considered myself a poet first, having 600 or 700 poetry publishing credits (including reprints)," Jacob said. "But I also love the novel form, which lets me let it all hang out, to use freaking ancient vernacular. I have a taste for both the literate and graphic." This year's two nominations bring her total to 10, which she's amassed in just eight years. —John Joseph AdamsAir Breathes As Parable

British SF author Geoff Ryman, whose novel Air won the James Tiptree Jr. Award, told SCI FI Wire that he often finds himself writing about gender issues, as Tiptree did. Tiptree was the pseudonym of Alice B. Sheldon, who broke down barriers thought to exist between the subject matter of male and female writers. When it was discovered in 1977 that Tiptree was a woman, it led to widespread discussion over which aspects of writing, if any, have an intrinsic gender.

"Sheldon, of course, wrote about many things, not just gender," Ryman said in an interview. "Tiptree's ideas were just so brilliant as science fiction: the idea that we would fancy aliens and try to have sex with them [in 'And I Awoke and Found Me on the Cold Hillside' (1971)] ... or the intelligent aliens who devour their mates [in 'Love Is the Plan, the Plan Is Death' (1973)]."

Air has nothing to do with aliens, but rather centers on a woman named Chung Mae and her attempt to harness a highly experimental communications system that uses quantum technology to implant an equivalent of the Internet in everyone's mind, as well as prepare her small village for the technology's arrival. It also is a political parable that comments on how developed nations take the Third World for granted.

When writing Air, Ryman said that he realized many people sincerely worried about excluding the Third World from the Internet, a sentiment he found patronizing. This made him wonder what the Web users thought about life among the world's poor. "As the tale progressed, I realized I had a pretty good case of what all people have to live through when there is change," Ryman said. "Mae is a good example of a character who sees the need for change, is highly motivated, who fights for change, but who also almost particularly misses the way of life that is being lost. At that stage, I realized I had a story not just about the unregarded nations, but of most people in all nations."

The book clearly has resonated. In addition to the Tiptree Award, Air has won the Sunburst Award for best Canadian speculative fiction (Ryman was born in Canada) and was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award. "You always hope that the book will find success, but I think it would be foolish to target a particular award or fantasize too much about winning awards," Ryman said. Ryman's most recent project, a non-SF book about Cambodia, The King's Last Song, was published March 16. His next SF offering, a 12,000-word story called "Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter," will soon be published in the magazine Fantasy and Science Fiction. —Lee BarnathanNBC Plans 10.5 Sequel

NBC will air a sequel to the 2004 made-for-television disaster miniseries 10.5 in two parts on Sunday, May 21, and Tuesday, May 23, the network announced. In 10.5: Apocalypse, the deadly seismic activities that peaked with a 10.5 earthquake and devastated the West Coast in the first miniseries have altered the core structure of the earth, and now threaten to jeopardize North America and the Western Hemisphere, causing catastrophic events.

Reprising their roles from the original are Kim Delaney as scientist Dr. Samatha Hill; Beau Bridges as the president of the United States; and David Cubitt as Hill's ex-boyfriend and fellow scientist Dr. Jordan Fisher. They will be joined in the sequel by Dean Cain, Oliver Hudson, Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon, Carlos Bernard, Frank Langella, Carly Pope, Barbara Eve Harris, Melissa Sue Anderson and Tamara Hope.

10.5: Apocalypse is produced by Pearl Pictures in association with Jaffe/Braunstein Films. Howard Braunstein, Michael Jaffe (Elvis) and Gary Pearl (Liberty Stands Still) are executive producers. The miniseries was written, directed and co-produced by John Lafia (Child's Play, The Dead Zone).Neverwinter Winners Named

BioWare, the Edmonton, Canada,-based software company, announced 10 winners of its competition for aspiring game writers for its Neverwinter Nights fantasy role-playing game.

Staff members chose five winners who wrote modules (short side quests that divert from the overall story arc but do not distract), and fans chose five. The grand prize was a potential job on the BioWare staff, and BioWare community manager Jay Watamaniuk told SCI FI Wire that at least one writer is being contacted about a job.

"As it turned out, only a precious few entrants were able to grasp the qualities we were looking for in potential BioWare storytellers," director of design Kevin Barrett said in a post on the company's official Web site. "Make no mistake, there were plenty of great stories to be found in the contest entries. However, the earmark of a good BioWare writer is the ability to empower and excite the player to delve into what ultimately becomes his own story."

The competition began last November. Entrants were given eight weeks to create a believable and entertaining quest, craft dialogue and create a setting, as well as work with the Neverwinter Nights tool set. By the time the competition ended in January, the company had received more than 300 entries.

The competition was a novel way to find new writers. "BioWare ... is always looking for talented writers," Watamaniuk said. "The contest was simply a clever way to get people thinking about a career as a writer and give them as much help as possible to make that dream come true." BioWare is planning a second writing competition. —Carol PinchefskyLost Fans Party For Kids

Fans of ABC's hit series Lost will host a party to benefit series co-creator J.J. Abrams' favorite charity on May 20 in Los Angeles. The second annual "Destination: LA" party will raise money for the Children's Defense Fund, which advocates on behalf of children in education, health care and other areas.

Fans can bid on autographed scripts and memorabilia from the show and mingle with special guests. Last year's event was attended by Abrams, producer/writers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse and cast members Daniel Dae Kim and William Mapother, among others.Vai's Music Highlights Halo 2

Renowned guitar player Steve Vai told SCI FI Wire that his signature guitar sound will make an appearance on the upcoming second soundtrack CD to the hit video game Halo 2. Halo 2: Original Soundtrack Volume Two will feature nearly 70 minutes of award-winning music from the Xbox title in a new, never-before-heard arrangement that corresponds with the chapters of the game and stands as a musical representation of the story. "It's always a hoot to apply a screaming guitar to a high-action visual," Vai said in an interview.

Halo 2: Original Soundtrack Volume Two came together through the combined work of Bungie Studios audio director Martin O'Donnell and his writing partner, Michael Salvatori, the composers behind Halo 2: Original Soundtrack Volume One and Halo: Combat Evolved Original Soundtrack. The album is produced by veteran music producer Nile Rodgers.

O'Donnell and Rodgers decided early on to present the music of Halo 2 in two separate volumes. Because volume one shipped before the release of the game, it featured only music that was finished and mixed, plus some "inspired by" music. Volume two contains the rest of the music from the game. The rearrangement presents the music in a linear fashion that is very different from the often random and repetitive order in which most gamers hear the music during gameplay.

"It makes you sweat when you play," Vai said of the soundtrack. "Nile Rogers is a friend of mine, and he invited me to take part in the project. I never played the [original Halo], but I really dug the spooky music. All of my work on the game was taken from one session I did with Nile and Marty. They broke out their tweezers and extracted my guitar parts for a plethora of sonic adventures related to this soundtrack, and perhaps future ones."

Vai wouldn't say whether he has been approached with a licensing agreement or contract for a third Halo soundtrack, but allowed that "Halo 3 is shrouded in so much secrecy and mystique that right now there are only faint whispers regarding it." Halo 2: Original Soundtrack Volume Two will ship on April 25. —Casey LynchAlias Up For Download

Disney-ABC Television Group has announced that Alias, the popular action-adventure series starring Jennifer Garner as a CIA operative, is now available for purchase on Apple's iTunes music store. In anticipation of the show's return from hiatus, ABC has released individual episodes from the current fifth season, as well as the previous season, for $1.99 each. Fans can also purchase the entire fourth season as a whole for $34.99.

The Emmy Award-winning spy drama returned to ABC's prime-time schedule with a two-hour special event on April 19, beginning at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT. It will air in its regular time period thereafter on Wednesdays at 8, until the series finale in May. The return event includes the birth of Sydney's baby and the reappearance of Michael Vaughn (Michael Vartan). New episodes of the current season, leading up to the dramatic series finale, will be available on iTunes the day after they air on ABC.

Alias joins other Disney-ABC Television Group programming—including Lost and Desperate Housewives—currently available for purchase on the iTunes music store. Keepers Examines Abuse

Stoker Award-winning author Gary Braunbeck, whose horror novel Keepers was just nominated for a Bram Stoker Award, told SCI FI Wire that the book is the second in a thematic trilogy about the effects of abuse and neglect. "The first novel, In Silent Graves, dealt with the abuse and neglect of children," Braunbeck said in an interview. "Keepers deals with abuse and neglect of animals and the elderly, and what happens when the true nature behind the reasons for this abuse are revealed. The third novel [to be released by Leisure in July of 2007], Mr. Hands, deals with the effect abuse and neglect has on surviving family members, and what happens when the rage and grief and the desire for revenge becomes the only thing that gives them a reason to go on living. Yeah, I know, chuckle-fest light-romantic comedies they aren't."

Keepers was a story that had been brewing in Braunbeck's mind for more than a decade, he said. "I once had to help a friend of mine run a heartbreaking errand: taking three of her beloved pets to a no-kill shelter," he said. "The actual shelter is pretty much the same way I describe it in the book, including the locked steel door that said 'Sanctioned Personnel Only.' I remember seeing that door as we're depositing the animals into the drop-off cages, and I wondered about why they used the word 'Sanctioned' instead of 'Authorized.' Then someone stepped out from behind the door, saw us there, had this look of utter panic cross their face, and went back inside, slamming and locking the door. I always wondered what it was they didn't want us to see. Then I began to notice how much the way animals at no-kill shelters are treated like elderly patients in nursing homes, and somewhere in there I began thinking about how sometimes people come to resemble their pets when they've been together long enough. All of this swirled around in the back of my brain for years, until one day a unifying element made itself known, and the novel fell into place fairly quickly once all the right connections were made."

Braunbeck's influences are all over the map because he refuses to read in only one genre. But if Keepers has a single overriding influence, it's Rod Serling, he said. "No, not everything he wrote was brilliant (who among us can lay claim to that, anyway?), but when he was firing on all eight cylinders, no one could touch him," Braunbeck said. "Look at the work he did in live TV in the '50s: Patterns, Requiem for a Heavyweight, The Rack, The Strike, The Velvet Alley. [Few] could stand alongside Serling for their stunning ability to give the common man an unforced eloquence of speech in order to define himself in his own eyes and those of the world around him."

Braunbeck received two other Stoker nominations this year, in the long- and short-fiction categories. —John Joseph AdamsSarah Remake Gets Cast

Jennifer Tilly, Morgan Fairchild, Mika Boorem and Summer Glau have been cast in ABC Family's remake of the 1978 made-for-television horror movie The Initiation of Sarah, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Sarah centers on a sorority girl (Boorem) with mysterious powers who unwittingly becomes the focus of a century-old battle between good and evil. Glau (Serenity) will play Sarah's naive and put-upon twin sister, the trade paper reported.

Fairchild, who played a sorority sister the first time around, will play the girls' mother. Tilly will portray Sarah's mentor and the school's resident enchantress, Dr. Hunter, a role originally played by Shelley Winters. Also joining the cast are Joanna Garcia (Reba) and Tessa Thompson (Veronica Mars).

Production is set to begin May 1 in Shreveport, La. The movie is slated to air during ABC Family's eighth annual "13 Nights of Halloween," a Halloween-themed programming event airing each night from October 19-31.WB Turns On Larklight

Warner Brothers has pre-emptively acquired the film rights to British author Philip Reeve's fantasy-adventure Larklight, Variety reported. The project has been set up with Warner-based producer Denise Di Novi. Alison Greenspan is also on board as a producer.

Larklight is the first in a Victorian-era space-adventure trilogy in which a brother and sister team with a band of renegade space pirates to save the world from destruction at the hands of a madman. "It's an utterly original mix of the fantastical and historical," Di Novi told the trade paper.

Bloomsbury is publishing Larklight this fall. Reeve's other books include Mortal Engines, Darkling Plain, Predator's Gold, Infernal Devices and the Buster Bayliss series for younger readers. New Line All About Me

New Line has snapped up the supernatural comedy Me, Me, Me, to be produced by Shawn Levy (Pink Panther, Night at the Museum) and Tom McNulty through their production company, 21 Laps Entertainment. Levy may also direct the film, written by Johnny Rosenthal.

The story centers on the world's most obnoxious narcissist, who wishes people could be more like him, and then enters a living hell when his dream becomes a reality. Rosenthal developed the project with 21 Laps president McNulty, who originated the concept, the trade paper reported.

"We all know people who think the world revolves around them," Levy told the trade paper. "The idea of literalizing that wish, and all the unexpected consequences attached to it, feels like rich comic ground."

Levy and McNulty set up 21 Laps last fall with a first-look deal at Fox. The company's producing credits include Cheaper by the Dozen 2 and Night at the Museum.Rough Times Due For Starbuck

VANCOUVER, Canada—Katee Sackhoff, who plays fighter jock Kara "Starbuck" Thrace on SCI FI Channel's original series Battlestar Galactica, told SCI FI Wire that her character is in for a rough time—and a new haircut—in the show's upcoming third season. Speaking in an interview on the set here of her new film, White Noise 2: The Light, Sackhoff said: "I just lost a huge battle with the producers as to my hair and what length it should and should not be." (Sackhoff's blond hair was streaked with bright red for her role in the supernatural horror sequel film White Noise 2.) "So it's going to be gone. Shorter than it was in the miniseries."

Sackhoff said to look for a big change in the fifth episode of the upcoming third season, after four episodes that promise to test the already-battered Starbuck to her limits. "She goes through a lot of turmoil in the first four episodes," she said. "More than we've ever seen [from] her. The depths of despair she finds herself in are pretty deep at the end of episode four. And she kind of re-establishes her commitment to the military in episode five, which is the haircut."

Also look for a new love interest for Starbuck in the new season, though Sackhoff remained coy about whether the new relationship will survive those first four episodes. "There is another man that comes into her life," Sackhoff said. "And it's a very unlikely man. Everyone is going to be so livid over it."

Sackhoff is doing a string of movies when she's not shooting Galactica, which just began production on the new season. She said that the workload helps her. "There's three overlap days coming up where I'm doing days on Battlestar and nights on White Noise," she said. "I'm thinking that I might get, like, two hours of sleep a night. But that's OK, because the scenes are very intense. I called my agent, and I was like, 'I'm going to win an Emmy!' I'm going to be so good those days, they're all going to be saying, 'Hey, this girl can act.'" Battlestar Galactica returns with new episodes in October. White Noise 2 is in production, with an eye to a 2007 release. —John SullivanSuperman Game Features Stars

The cast of Superman Returns will take part in the upcoming companion video game, Variety reported. Stars Brandon Routh (Superman/Clark Kent), Kate Bosworth (Lois Lane), Kevin Spacey (Lex Luthor), Parker Posey (Kitty Kowalski) and Sam Huntington (Jimmy Olsen) all will have roles in the game, from Electronic Arts and Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment. The companies will release the game this summer.

Routh is doing voice work and providing likeness rights for Superman, the main playable character in the game. The other actors are only doing voice-overs.

The game will draw on the movie and the Superman comics to create an "open world" game similar in structure to Grand Theft Auto and The Godfather, though undoubtedly less graphic, the trade paper reported.

Superman Returns, from director Bryan Singer, opens June 30.Zellweger Is On The Case

Renee Zellweger will star in the horror thriller film Case 39 for Paramount Pictures, Variety reported. The film begins shooting July 31 in Vancouver, Canada, with the studio still zeroing in on a director.

Ray Wright wrote the script, which centers around a social worker who saves an abused 10-year-old girl from her parents. She discovers, however, that the parents are not the real problem.

Zellweger is wrapping up the title role in Miss Potter for helmer Chris Noonan and the Weinstein Co.Ghost Guy Gets CBS Deal

Ghost Whisperer co-executive producer James Van Praagh, who is also a self-styled psychic, has sealed a one-year deal (with an option for a second) with CBS Paramount Network TV to develop a wide variety of projects, including scripted and reality series, as well as TV movies, Variety reported.

The deal, which starts in June, also keeps Van Praagh on as a special correspondent for CBS Paramount's syndicated series Entertainment Tonight and The Insider.

CBS Paramount Network TV president David Stapf told the trade paper that he was looking to tap into Van Praagh's "unique vision."

Van Praagh said he plans to develop programming "which not only entertains, but matches the public's ever-growing demand for exploring other perceptions of reality."Museum Collects Horrors

Stoker Award-winning author Gary Braunbeck, who received three Stoker Award nominations this year for his horror fiction, told SCI FI Wire that one of the nominated works, In the Midnight Museum, ended up being the most intensely personal piece of fiction that he's ever written.

"[It] came about from my fascination with stories about people who find themselves able to enter the world of a specific painting," Braunbeck said in an interview. "I wanted to deal with the psychological turmoil of the central character before he enters the painting and how he comes to quickly accept the otherworldly forces that are guiding him to do so. It also gave me a chance to finally bring to fruition several themes that I've been dealing with in my work for the last decade."

Braunbeck's short story "We Now Pause for Station Identification" also received a nomination. "[It] was inspired by a throwaway line from Brian Keene's zombie novel, The Rising, wherein one of the central characters is listening to the radio and hears a DJ who's been trapped in the booth for three days finally crack up on the air and blow his brains out," Braunbeck said. "As soon as I began writing it, I knew that I didn't want to deal with the traditional flesh-eating, brainless, shambling zombies that permeate the genre, so I began thinking about what a zombie represents to those who encounter them. You suddenly see a loved one five years in the grave up and walking around again. What's your emotional reaction? Does it bring up all the regret about your relationship with that person that you thought you'd buried? And what, precisely, is the controlling force behind the dead crawling out their graves?"

Braunbeck added: "I tend to not deal with traditional horror tropes unless I think I can show them from a fresh angle, and in the case of 'Station Identification,' what I wound up with is a morality play about atonement and rebirth. I'm exceptionally proud of that story and honored that it was awarded with a nomination."

Braunbeck considers himself a horror writer, but he wishes there weren't such a dividing line between the genres. "The horror community can learn a lot from the science fiction community; the science fiction community could take a few cues from the work being done in the horror field; fantasy and dark fantasy seem to me the perfect middle ground for the two to meet," he said. "I guess [what] I'm saying [is] that I wish all of us would think less in terms of satisfying the expectation of genre readers and concentrate more on telling the stories we want to tell. Read [Theodore Sturgeon's] The Dreaming Jewels. Re-read it. Give it to everyone you know so they can read it. Over 30 years ago, Sturgeon was able to recognize and illustrate where all genres were heading. I wish to hell we'd continued to follow his signposts."

Braunbeck's novel, Keepers, also received a Stoker nomination this year. —John Joseph AdamsInvasion Back With A Bang

Tyler Labine, who plays Dave on ABC's Invasion, told SCI FI Wire that his alien-invasion theorist character will be vindicated when the series returned from its hiatus on April 19 and promised that many questions will be answered on the way to the season-ending cliffhanger. "There's some different sides of Dave coming out here," Labine said in an interview. "Let me just say this: I can only be pushed so far. And I think I finally snap. It's in a very positive way, but I finally take some initiative and grow a bit stronger of a backbone. Let me just say some familial things push me to the edge."

Labine added: "I have a lot of things coming up with Deputy Sirk, the one-armed deputy, and he's very strongly involved in my vindication."

Labine's Dave, who was considered a bit of a conspiracy nut in the beginning of the series, quickly set forth his own theory about the changes in many of the local residents after Hurricane Eve hit the town of Homestead, Fla. Those changes involved so-called "extraterrestrial biological entities," or EBEs.

The series is headed for "the cliffhanger to end all cliffhangers," Labine said. "We are steamrolling towards the pinnacle of the show. The episodes we've shot have been so unbelievably well planned throughout the whole season. There's stuff coming up that I didn't even remember that we shot. And it's being tied in so cleverly. ... It was like things that you felt were insignificant or out of place early on, they weren't. They're being tied in all over the place, and we are shooting the finale right now. It's got a really, really huge cliffhanger shocker at the end."

Labine confirmed that it all has to do with another hurricane that's headed back toward Homestead. The new hurricane is "going to be like Eve, only we know what's coming this time, so we expect the s--t is going to hit the fan with this hurricane, and people are preparing for that. We can see hybrids preparing for it. We can see humans preparing for it. And we are preparing in two very different ways."

While there's no word from ABC regarding a possible second season for Invasion, Labine is hopeful. Despite the cliffhanger, he promises a lot of "burning questions" will be answered. The writers have "had to incorporate that into the writing of the last few episodes with just the possibility that, if this is the end, you don't want to leave people just, like, more frustrated than entertained." ABC will announce whether or not Invasion will be picked up in mid-May. —Kathie HuddlestonFehr, Guillory Back In Resident 3

Oded Fehr will reprise his role in the third installment of the Resident Evil franchise, starring alongside Milla Jovovich, Variety reported. Germany's Constantin Film and Impact Pictures are producing.

Resident Evil: Extinction, adapted from the video-game franchise, revolves around the continuing battle against the evil Umbrella Corp. and its zombies by Alice (Jovovich) and her allies.

The sequel is slated to begin shooting in Mexico in May from a screenplay by Paul W.S. Anderson, who runs Impact with producing partner Jeremy Bolt. Russell Mulcahy is directing a cast that also includes Mike Epps, Iain Glen and Sienna Guillory, reprising the role of Jill Valentine.Universal Goes On Hunt

Universal Pictures has pre-emptively acquired Lucas Sussman's supernatural film pitch The Hunt for Darren Aronofsky and Eric Watson to produce through their Universal-based Protozoa Pictures production company, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

SekretAgent Productions' Dooma Wendschuh and Corey May also are set to produce.

The supernatural adventure centers on the world's greatest hunter, who sets out to capture the ultimate beast: the devil himself.

The Hunt will mark Protozoa's first film set up at Universal after Aronofsky signed a first-look production deal with the studio in February. Protozoa is no stranger to the horror genre, having produced the spooky underwater drama Below for Dimension Films. The company also has an adaptation of Theodore Roszak's apocalyptic fantasy novel Flicker set up at 20th Century Fox.

Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.War Surf Wins PKD Award

M.M. Buckner's SF novel War Surf won the Philip K. Dick Award for 2005, recognizing distinguished science fiction originally published in paperback, organizers announced. The announcement came at Norwescon 29 in Seattle.

A special citation went to Natural History by Justina Robson.

The Philip K. Dick Award, named for the prolific SF writer, is presented annually for work published in the United States. The award is sponsored by the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society. The 2005 judges were Charles Coleman Finlay, Kay Kenyon, Robert A. Metzger, Lyda Morehouse and Graham J. Murphy (chair). The 2006 judges are Geary Gravel, Anne Harris, Christine Mains (chair), Kristine Smith and Mark W. Tiedemann.Wixon Finishes Dickson's Last Book

David W. Wixon, the longtime assistant to multiple award-winning SF author Gordon R. Dickson, told SCI FI Wire that he recently completed the late Dickson's novel Antagonist and turned it in to Tor Books. "The book is actually the next step in the series that Gordy called the Childe Cycle and which some people refer to as the Dorsai series (a misnomer)," Wixon said in an interview. "Gordy had signed a contract with Tor for the book some time before he died, but, of course, he never finished it. Eventually, [Tor publisher] Tom Doherty and [Tor senior editor] Patrick Nielsen Hayden agreed to let me finish it."

Wixon said he was the natural candidate for the job because he had been working with Dickson for nearly 25 years. "I was there handling things in his office while he wrote all those years; I read his drafts and sometimes discussed them with him. .... All in all, I'd say that I had read every book he wrote during that quarter-century at least six times by the time they were put into print," Wixon said.

The entire story of the Childe Cycle is huge and wide-ranging, Wixon said. "Gordy intended it to be large," he said. "He had in mind a story that started in the Renaissance and ran for a thousand years, and he really planned on doing three historical novels in the Renaissance years and more in the 19th and 20th centuries, as it were, prequels to the future end of the Cycle. Those, alas, most likely will never be written. The story Gordy wanted to tell was of an new human evolution: the evolution of a racial sense of ... 'responsibility.' And that story was to be shown through the life of Donal Graeme, a Dorsai mercenary soldier who was a sort of mutant, in that he saw the way to become the first Responsible Man. Donal's insights gave him powers that led him to bend time and live three lifetimes—and, in the process, he ran into problems he had not expected: First, in his own flaws, and second, in the existence of another mutant, Bleys Ahrens."

The new novel, Antagonist, advances the story of Bleys Ahrens, Wixon said. "[Ahrens] himself has no idea what his opponent really is and doesn't fully understand the struggle he's involved in," he said. "And ... for the best of motives and with the greatest of abilities [he] is committed to a course that might destroy the human race."

It took Wixon about two years to write the book, much of which was devoted to poring exhaustively through the previous books in the Cycle, Wixon said. "I've got hundreds of pages of notes taken during that process, notes that reflect how little even I had understood of the depth of the Cycle and how much I had to try to keep in mind while continuing it." Wixon added: "Antagonist is not, by the way, intended to be the end of the Cycle. That will require two more books, I think." —John Joseph AdamsCruise, Holmes Have Baby Girl

Ten months after her whirlwind engagement to Mission: Impossible III star Tom Cruise, actress Katie Holmes gave birth on April 18 to the couple's first child, a girl they named Suri, their spokesman told the Reuters news service.

Mother and daughter—who weighed in at 7 pounds, 7 ounces and measured 20 inches at birth—were both "doing well," Cruise's publicist, Paul Bloch, said in a statement. The name Suri has its origins in Hebrew, meaning "princess," and Persian, meaning "red rose," the statement said.

The birth of Cruise's first biological child came in the midst of a promotional campaign for Mission: Impossible III, which is due in theaters on May 26.BRIEFLY NOTED

Comedy Central has acquired the broadcast-premiere rights to Scary Movie 4, as part of a six-picture deal with the Weinstein Company. The deal also includes the rights to the unreleased sequel Sin City II for Comedy Central sibling Spike TV, Variety reported.

Spike TV has locked in the drama pilot Amped, about a mysterious epidemic that hits Los Angeles, from X-Files producers Frank Spotnitz and Vince Gilligan and screenwriter James DeMonaco (Assault on Precinct 13), Variety reported.

Four new clips from Ron Howard's upcoming The Da Vinci Code have been linked through SCI FI Wire's Trailers page.

During a promotional event in Shanghai, China, Kung Fu Hustle director Stephen Chow said he would postpone a sequel and would next helm an as-yet-untitled SF movie that will feature kids and in which Chow will play an astronaut who falls in love with a girl in space, the MonkeyPeaches Web site reported.

TV horror host and sometime film star Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, aka Cassandra Peterson, is looking for a possible heir to her throne and is hoping to find one via a new reality TV series being shopped to broadcast and cable networks, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

New Line has launched a teaser Web site for its upcoming Blade TV show, which premieres on Spike in June.