Frankenstein's Boyle Is Dead

Peter Boyle, the veteran actor who played a tap-dancing monster in Young Frankenstein, has died, the Associated Press reported. He was 71. Boyle died Dec. 12 at New York Presbyterian Hospital. He had been suffering from multiple myeloma and heart disease, his publicist, Jennifer Plante, told the AP.

Boyle, who had made a career playing tough guys, broke out of that mold with Young Frankenstein, Mel Brooks' 1974 send-up of horror films. The latter movie's defining moment came when Gene Wilder, as scientist Frederick Frankenstein, introduced his creation to an upscale audience. Boyle, decked out in tails, performed a song-and-dance routine to the Irving Berlin classic "Puttin' On the Ritz."

Boyle last well-known role was as the curmudgeonly father in the hit CBS TV sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond, which ran for 10 years.

Boyle met his wife, Loraine Alterman, on the set of Young Frankenstein, when she visited as a reporter for Rolling Stone magazine and Boyle, still in monster makeup, asked her for a date, the AP reported.

Boyle won an Emmy in 1996 for his guest-starring role in "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose," an episode of The X-Files.

One of his final film roles came in 2004, when he played Old Man Wickles in Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed.

The son of a local TV personality in Philadelphia, Boyle was educated in Roman Catholic schools and spent three years in a monastery before abandoning his religious studies.

He traveled to New York to study with Uta Hagen, supporting himself for five years with various jobs, including postal worker, waiter, maitre d' and office temp. Finally, he was cast in a road company version of The Odd Couple. When the play reached Chicago he quit to study with that city's famed improvisational troupe Second City.

Upon returning to New York, he began to land roles in TV commercials, off-Broadway plays and finally films. Boyle made New York City his home. He and his wife had two daughters, Lucy and Amy.Southland Tales Is Locked

Director Richard Kelly wrote in his online blog that he has locked the final cut of his upcoming apocalyptic SF movie Southland Tales at two hours and 17 minutes. That's nearly half an hour shorter than the early cut that screened at the Cannes Film Festival, earning much derision in the process. "I am very happy with this edit, as we have done a significant amount of work to solve the Rubik's Cube narrative," Kelly (Donnie Darko) wrote on Dec. 4. "Justin Timberlake just recorded the final voice-over this past Sunday. We still have some visual-effects work to do, ... but expect a release date and a trailer soon!"

Kelly recently completed the second of three prequel graphic novels, Southland Tales—Book II: Fingerprints, and said that the third volume will go to the printer this week. "I can't believe it is almost over, ... and that we have made it to the end with our sanity intact," Kelly said. "Well, ... perhaps not completely intact."

Southland Tales, starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Sarah Michelle Gellar, is set in near-future Los Angeles on the eve of an unnamed disaster.

Kelly added that he is prepping The Box, his next SF movie, which he hopes to begin shooting in March in Virginia.Abrams: Trek XI Aims At '08

Writer/director J.J. Abrams confirmed to Variety that work is on track to release a proposed 11th Star Trek movie in 2008. Abrams, co-creator of ABC's Lost, is producing the movie for Paramount and co-writing it.

TrekMovie.com, meanwhile, reported that Abrams and Paramount have added Stratton Leopold to the growing list of executive producers for Star Trek XI.Damon: I'd Play Kirk In Trek XI

Matt Damon told SCI FI Wire that he's open to assuming the role of Capt. James T. Kirk in the proposed 11th Star Trek movie, but denied previous rumors that he is already in line for the iconic role, which was originated by William Shatner. "If the script was good, I'd do it," Damon said in an interview while promoting his latest film, The Good Shepherd. "But, yeah, I heard that [rumor]. I think J.J. Abrams or somebody said that at [a] press junket or something, and it got picked up [by the media and Star Trek fans]."

If Damon were to win the role of Kirk, he would become the first actor to play the character since Shatner played him in the original 1960s Trek and its subsequent spinoff movies.

Abrams, who co-created ABC's hit SF series Lost, is set to co-write and produce Trek XI and may direct it as well. Abrams previously directed Mission: Impossible III.

Pretty much everything surrounding Star Trek XI remains a rumor at this point. Abrams is overseeing the project, and he's confirmed that he had courtesy conversations with Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, who played Spock, but other than that, nothing official has been released yet about the film's plot, casting or other key details.

Damon is best known to genre fans for his roles in The Brothers Grimm and The Bourne Identity, as well as Oceans Eleven. —Ian SpellingDel Toro Swings To Tarzan?

Warner Brothers is in negotiations with director Guillermo del Toro to helm a new take on Edgar Rice Burroughs' classic Tarzan character for the big screen, Variety reported. Jerry Weintraub will produce the movie, and John Collee (Master and Commander: Far Side of the World, Happy Feet) is negotiating to write the screenplay. Weintraub will produce through his Jerry Weintraub Productions banner.

Del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy) grew up reading Spanish-language translations of Burroghs' books and feels that the classic themes are still compelling, the trade paper reported. Del Toro also sees that there is new ground to cover in the Tarzan mythology by turning back to the original Burroughs prose.

In the years since Burroughs first introduced the loincloth-clad character in book form in 1914, Tarzan has headlined live-action and animated films, as well as radio and TV shows.

Pan's Labyrinth opens Dec. 29. Del Toro is in preproduction on Hellboy 2.Potter Books Upheld In GA

The Georgia Board of Education voted on Dec. 14 to uphold a local school board's decision to leave Harry Potter books on library shelves, despite a mother's objections that they promoted witchcraft, the Associated Press reported.

The board members voted without discussion to back the Gwinnett County school board's decision to deny Laura Mallory's request to remove the best-selling books.

Mallory, who has three children in elementary school, has worked for more than a year to ban the books from Gwinnett schools, claiming the popular fiction series is an attempt to indoctrinate children in witchcraft.

Gwinnett school officials have argued that the books are good tools to encourage children to read and to spark creativity and imagination. Banning all books with references to witchcraft would mean classics such as Macbeth and Cinderella would have to go, they said.

J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books have been challenged 115 times since 2000, making them the most challenged texts of the 21st century, according to the American Library Association.Reynolds: No Flash News Yet

Ryan Reynolds, who is reportedly in line to star in David Goyer's proposed Flash movie, told ComingSoon.net that nothing's happening with the film yet. "It's a $108 billion movie if they do it," Reynolds (Smokin' Aces) told the site. "I don't know how that stuff works, and I don't really get involved with it."

Goyer (Blade: Trinity, in which Reynolds co-starred) was writing, producing and would direct the film, based on the venerable DC Comics franchise, about a superhero who can run near the speed of light. Little has been said about the project since it was announced two years ago.

"I think if they do it, they're going to see it through the eyes of Wally West and its inanimate world," Reynolds said, with tongue in cheek. "I can hear people falling asleep while I'm talking about this."Jolie: I'm Interested In Sin 2

Angelina Jolie confirmed to SCI FI Wire that she was approached by Sin City directors Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller to play Ava, Dwight's (Clive Owen) "dame to die for," in the proposed sequel, Sin City 2. Jolie added that she's still open to starring in the film if everything comes together at some point in the future.

"We've talked about it," Jolie said in an interview while promoting her latest film, The Good Shepherd. "And I've read the comic, and I don't think the film is being made at this moment. So when it's actually going to be made, I'm sure we'll talk about it [again]."

Jolie (Lara Croft: Tomb Raider) said that Miller and Rodriguez first approached her about the movie when she was pregnant with her child by Brad Pitt. "So it was this idea that I'd been Clover [in The Good Shepherd] and depressed and quiet [as that character], and then I was feeling very maternal and pregnant, and it was this idea of [then playing] this sexy, violent, loud [woman]," she said. "And I suddenly thought, 'Well, maybe after I'm pregnant that'll be nice to do.' It didn't come together at that time, but we're still talking about it."

Is Jolie seriously interested? Apparently. "I have no idea when it might go and if I'd have time when it does," she said. "But I think it's a very interesting project, and I like the comic, and I love them as directors. So it's a possibility." —Ian SpellingSpielberg Does TV Time Travel

Steven Spielberg is developing as as-yet-unnamed time-travel television series for Fox, one of two projects set up at the company, Variety reported. Scott Gemmill will write the show, an hourlong drama from 20th Century Fox TV and Spielberg's DreamWorks TV company. DreamWorks TV chiefs Justin Falvey and Darryl Frank are executive-produce as well.

The time-travel drama has a romantic storyline at its core and will revolve around two young American physicists in World War II who discover a way to travel to the future. They wind up hopping between 2007 and the 1940s in order to aid the war effort, but in the process begin to upset the space-time continuum. Along the way, one of the physicists enlists a woman in 2007 to help him adjust to culture shock, and the two develop a relationship.

Gemmill spent several years on ER, which Spielberg's Amblin Television company produces. Gemmill will executive-produce with Falvey and Frank. Spielberg reserves the right to add his name as an executive producer, but won't make that decision until later.Caspian's Both Czech And Brit

In the wake of conflicting news reports, Variety clarified that The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian will indeed qualify as a British film under the U.K.'s new cultural test, though the majority of filming will take place in the Czech Republic. The sequel to Disney and Walden Media's The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe will be able to access tax credits worth 20 percent of the film's U.K. expenditures; filmmakers are planning to do most of the post-production and visual-effects work in the United Kingdom, which makes up a large chunk of the movie's budget.

Earlier reports noted that Prince Caspian will shoot in the newly upgraded Barrandov Studios in Prague.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe shot largely in New Zealand.

Under the new British system, Prince Caspian, which will be directed by New Zealander Andrew Adamson, will qualify as British largely because it is based on a British book, with British leading characters (played by British actors) and a British setting. The rules make allowance for the fact that Narnia is an imaginary place, but one infused with a British sensibility.Caspian Now Shooting In Prague?

A day after The Times of London reported that The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian would shoot in the United Kingdom, Variety reported that the sequel will shoot at Prague's Barrandov Studios. The sequel to the hit The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe will reportedly move in to the studios' new $4.7 million soundstage for six months.

The film will will also shoot at several Czech locations, the trade paper reported.

It's unclear whether the film will also shoot in the United Kingdom, as reported in The Times.

Lion shot mainly in New Zealand and in other locations around the world.

Prince Caspian, based on C.S. Lewis' Narnia books, will share the studio space with Vin Diesel's upcoming SF action movie Babylon A.D., which will film at the same time.Deader's Cain Has A Hoot

Dean Cain told SCI FI Wire that he signed on for the original SCI FI Channel movie Dead and Deader because it struck him as a "fun hoot of a project." The former star of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman plays Lt. Bobby Quinn, a U.S. Army soldier who becomes a half-zombie after he's attacked by a giant beetle while on a mission. When he awakens, Quinn teams with a cook (Guy Torry) and a doctor (Susan Ward) to contain the fully "zombified" soldiers running amok on a military base.

"We called it a 'zomb-edy,' Cain said in an interview. "Actually, that's Guy Torry's word. It's a zombie comedy, and it's very funny, and it was a lot of fun to shoot. I'd seen a lot of the zombie films, and the guys who made the film with us were such zombie fans, and our effects guys were zombie fans. It was fun for me, because this guy, Quinn, ain't the nicest guy in the world. When I played Superman, he was the most moral, ethical character on the face of the planet. This guy is a military guy who's half-zombie. He's just kicking some ass, and he's not worried about being moral. The makeup was not the most fun in the world. I looked sick for several weeks, but it was freeing to just be this other guy."

Much of Dead and Deader is played for laughs. There are amusing cameos by such familiar genre faces as Armin Shimerman (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), John Billingsley (Star Trek: Enterprise) and Dean Haglund (The X-Files). Characters debate the merits of the original Dawn of the Dead versus the 2004 remake, and Ken Foree versus Ving Rhames. At one point, Quinn playfully tells Torry's character to quiet down by saying, "Don't make me eat you."

"There was a good bit of the humor in the script," Cain said. "You knew that when you read the tone of the script. But Guy Torry, ... the thing is you don't want to try to out-funny him. He's a [stand-up] comic. So a lot of the stuff we did was in the script, but occasionally we'd be able to come up with some off-the-cuff stuff. Susan is pretty funny, too. So we had kind of a clear right to do anything we wanted to, and if we got off track they'd bring us back." Dead and Deader debuted Dec. 16 at 9 p.m. ET/PT. —Ian Spelling Sims Creator Gets PGA Award

The Producers Guild of America will honor Will Wright, creator of The Sims, with the prestigious Vanguard Award, the first time a game designer has been so honored, the guild announced. On Jan. 20, Wright, who also created SimCity and next year's SPORE, will be honored alongside some of Hollywood's most recognized names, including producer Jerry Bruckheimer and Ron Meyer, president and chief operating officer of Universal Studios. The Vanguard Award, which recognizes outstanding achievement in new media and technology, will be presented to Wright at the 2007 Producers Guild Awards in Century City, Calif.

PGA Awards co-chairs Mark Gordon and Hawk Koch said in a statement: "Will Wright is the icon of the gaming industry and one of the great producers of entertainment content. His creations have transcended into feature films and continue to entertain a global audience. We are proud to have him be the first Vanguard recipient from the gaming universe."Swanwick Does Dragons

Multiple award-winning SF and fantasy author Michael Swanwick told SCI FI Wire that his forthcoming fantasy novel, The Dragons of Babel, was expanded from a novella he wrote for an anthology called The Dragon Quintet. "Editor Marvin Kaye hit me up for a story about dragons, and I said, 'Well, I don't have any ideas about dragons, but if I do I'll sell it to you,'" Swanwick said in an interview at Philcon in Philadelphia last month. "And I went home, ... and I immediately thought of a story about dragons. The situation was so appealing to me, and, as it developed, the character was also appealing to me: He really is a good guy [who is] trying his best, but he's young, and the world is hard enough [to] figure out when it's our world, [let alone] in faerie, where the rules are much more complicated and much more menacing."

Swanwick said that the protagonist, Will, is your basic competent, pleasant, hunting-and-fishing kind of country kid. "Always careful to leave some fish guts at the monolith for his grandmother and things like that," he said. "Then the war came, and a dragon was shot down near [Will's] village. It crawled into the village and declared itself the king. ... Essentially, the dragon changes everything. One of the things it does is use Will as his spokesman, as its captain. ... [As a result,] he becomes universally hated and reviled, and even though he kills the dragon in the end, there is still no place for him, and he has to leave to the outer world."

The novel is Swanwick's take on traditional fantasy, he said. "[The sort] where you have the secret heirs to the king, and at the end he gets restored to the throne," he said. "The problem with this is that I am not a supporter of the monarchy. As an American, I am a democrat with a small 'D,' and so I don't think the restoration of the king is a good idea. In fact, at the end [of the story], rather than being restored to the throne, [the king] is thrown out the window."

After finishing the novel, Swanwick got back to writing short fiction, he said. "It was like when a runner takes those weights off his ankles: His knees, like, float up in the air," he said. "I've got 'Urdumheim' coming out in F&SF, and I've got a story just out from Postscripts in England called 'The Bordello in Faerie.' And I'm working on a lot of other stories."

Swanwick said he also plans to travel to Moscow this fall to start researching his next novel, which will feature the "post-utopian con men" Darger and Surplus. "In their very first story, they accidentally burned London to the ground and then set off for Moscow," he said. "They keep heading toward Moscow and yet arriving in other places and having adventures there, and I figured that since Moscow is their ultimate goal, Moscow deserves a whole novel." —John Joseph AdamsGlobe Noms Slight SF&F

Science fiction and fantasy movies fared poorly in the Golden Globe nominations announced Dec. 14 by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, but SF&F TV shows did a little better.

NBC's new hit show Heroes won a nod for best television series, drama, joining returning nominee Lost, from ABC. Lost's Evangeline Lilly and Patricia Arquette, star of NBC's Medium, were nominated for best performance by an actress in a drama television series, and Heroes newcomer Masi Oka got a nomination for best performance by an actor in a supporting role in a series, miniseries or motion picture made for television.

In the film category, Guillermo del Toro's upcoming Pan's Labyrinth received a nod for best foreign-language film.

Renee Zellweger got a nomination for best performance by an actress in a motion picture, comedy or musical, for her starring role in the upcoming fantasy-tinged biopic Miss Potter. Johnny Depp was nominatd for best performance by an actor in a motion picture, comedy or musical, for his role as Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, along with Will Ferrell for Stranger Than Fiction.

The nominees for best animated feature film included Cars, Happy Feet and Monster House. Prince's "The Song of the Heart," from Happy Feet, also was nominated for best original song, motion picture.

Clint Mansell (The Fountain) and Hans Zimmer (The Da Vinci Code) both received nominations for best original score, motion picture.

Golden Globe winners will be named in a ceremony in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Jan. 15, 2007.Lost, Galactica Get WGA Nods

ABC's hit SF series Lost got two 2007 nominations for Writers Guild of America television awards, and SCI FI Channel's Battlestar Galactica received one.

Lost received a nomination for best dramatic series, and the episode "Two for the Road," written by Elizabeth Sarnoff and Christina M. Kim, received a separate nomination for episodic drama. Lost is written by J.J. Abrams, Monica Owusu-Breen, Carlton Cuse, Leonard Dick, Drew Goddard, Javier Grillo-Marxuach, Adam Horowitz, Dawn Lambersten Kelly, Christina Kim, Edward Kitsis, Damon Lindelof, Steven Maeda, Jeff Pinkner, Matt Ragghianti, Elizabeth Sarnoff and Alison Schapker.

The two-part Battlestar Galactica episode "Occupation/Precipice," written by Ronald D. Moore, got a nod for best episodic drama.

NBC's Heroes, meanwhile, received a nomination for best new series for its writing staff, which includes Jesse Alexander, Adam Armus, Natalie Chaidez, Aron Eli Coleite, Kay Foster, Bryan Fuller, Michael J. Green, Tim Kring, Jeph Loeb and Joe Pokaski.

Among the other nominations, "The End of the Whole Mess," an episode of TNT's Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King limited series, got a nod for best episodic drama; the teleplay was by Lawrence D. Cohen, based on the short story by King.Depp Falls For Inamorata

Graham King's Initial Entertainment Group has bought the film rights to Inamorata, a paranormal-tinged book, for Johnny Depp's production company, Infinitum Nihil, Variety reported. The acquisition was one of three books that Depp's company and King will co-produce for Warner Brothers Pictures under King's deal with the studio, the trade paper reported.

Infinitum was careful to stress that Depp isn't attached to star in the projects. At the same time, any project set up at an actor's vanity company has the potential to turn into a starring vehicle.

Initial and Infinitum are in talks with Peter Medak (Romeo Is Bleeding) to helm the film version of Joseph Gangemi's Inamorata, which is to be adapted by the author.

Set in Philadelphia in the 1920s, the book revolves around a Harvard grad student who falls in love with a beautiful psychic whom he is attempting to discredit as a fraud.Hathaway Boards Passengers

Anne Hathaway will star in Passengers, a supernatural thriller being produced and financed by Mandate Pictures, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Rodrigo Garcia is directing the movie, which Columbia Pictures will release domestically.

The film centers on a grief counselor (Hathaway) who helps six plane crash survivors and develops a special connection with one of them. When the survivors begin to disappear mysteriously, she suspects a conspiracy and becomes determined to uncover the truth. Ronnie Christensen wrote the script.

Judd Payne and Matthew Rhodes of Persistent Entertainment are producing, along with Keri Selig. Mandate's Joe Drake and Nathan Kahane are executive-producing with Mockingbird Pictures' Julie Lynn. Production is set to begin early next year. Pirates 2 Tops DVD Sales

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest tallied first-week sales of 10.5 million units, making it the biggest home video debut of any new release this year, Disney reported to The Hollywood Reporter.

The sequel, which was also the top box-office earner of 2006, shot to first place on the Nielsen VideoScan First Alert sales chart for the week ending Dec. 10, and its draft pulled the original Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl back up to number nine a full three years after it was released.

On trade publication Home Media Magazine's video rental chart for the week, Dead Man's Chest also scored an easy victory, generating an estimated $12.9 million its first week out.

Dead Man's Chest is now poised to be the top-selling DVD of the year, beating another Disney title, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which was released in April and has since sold about 14 million copies.

The Pirates sequel also will likely become the top live-action DVD ever. That honor currently belongs to the original Pirates, which sold 9.9 million DVDs its first week out (and another 1.1 million VHS cassettes) and went on to sell more than 18 million units, discs and cassettes combined.'Genius' Saunders Pushes Boundaries

Multiple award-winning author George Saunders, who was recently awarded a $500,000 MacArthur Fellowship by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, told SCI FI Wire that his work is sometimes labeled science fiction or fantasy, but that he doesn't believe in genre boundaries. "If a work is deliberately staying within those boundaries, even if it wants to go out of them, then the writer is just being purposefully conventional—which is kind of boring," Saunders said in an interview. "I think the writer's job is to try to hone in on truth or beauty or whatever and go wherever that leads. Period."

Saunders added: "In my case, I'm always trying to do a certain kind of moral work and so sometimes find it useful to color outside the lines, so to speak. And, also, given the world we live in, I can't really find any useful definition of 'realistic' versus 'sci-fi.' Take a guy from 1920 and drop him into our world, and it's all sci-fi. So my feeling is, if there's a boundary separating approaches A and B, we should try and realize that the thing that includes both polarities is probably the more daring option than choosing either A or B."

Saunders said that his stories sometimes veer into the realm of the fantastic when he feels that they need some extra physical element to mirror the deeper meanings they're trying to explore. "An old woman feels she hasn't lived enough, then she dies; you could have someone say that—or you could bring her back from the grave and let her say it," he said. "Or, in 'CommComm': You could have a guy say he misses his dead parents—or they could live in his house with him. To me the second versions are just more active and lively. The same reality is being represented—longing for more life, missing a loved one—but there's maybe more urgency in the second versions."

"CommComm," which won a World Fantasy Award this year, was inspired by Saunders' former employment at an environmental engineering company, he said. "One of our projects was to survey closing military installations for possible environmental hazards," Saunders said. "It was creepy and kind of cool to see these huge, 1960s-era bases almost totally deserted, often taking the surrounding towns with them. ... Also, I had a troubling conversation with an old and dear friend who was born again and was making (or at least it seemed so to me) some startling statements about the righteousness of the Iraq war, per St. Augustine."

The MacArthur Fellowship, which is also known as the MacArthur "genius grant," is given annually to a number of U. S. residents who demonstrate exceptional achievements in their field. According to the foundation's Web site, recipients are given a "no-strings-attached" grant of $500,000, not as a reward for past works, but to enable them to "exercise their own creative instincts for the benefit of human society." Past recipients of the fellowship include SF/fantasy authors Octavia E. Butler and Jonathan Lethem. —John Joseph AdamsArmor Revives Galahad Myth

Laurence Dunmore is set to direct Mortal Armor: The Legend of Galahad, a coming-of-age take on Sir Galahad's quest for the Holy Grail, Variety reported.

Seven Arts Pictures is financing the film, with production slated to begin next summer in the United Kingdom. Gale Anne Hurd produces. Joel Gross wrote the script.

Dunmore most recently directed Johnny Depp's The Libertine. Armor is a co-production of Hurd's Valhalla Motion Pictures and Peter Hoffman's Seven Arts.Universal Says Tag

Universal Pictures has hired Carey Malloy to adapt Tag, a supernatural horror comic book published by Boom! Studios, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Marc Platt is producing the adaptation along with Ross Richie and Andrew Cosby via their Boom Entertainment Inc. banner.

The story in Tag is set in motion when an average Joe strolls down the street after a fight with his girlfriend and a random stranger tags him, handing off an ancient pagan curse. He begins to die, seeing his body decompose every day before his eyes. Cursed, he must either surrender or find the next victim to tag.

The comic book was written by comics veteran Keith Giffen and drawn by Kody Chamberlain.

Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.Cuarón Praises Del Toro's Pan

Alfonso Cuarón, who produced the upcoming fantasy film Pan's Labyrinth for his friend and colleague Guillermo del Toro, told SCI FI Wire that he's not surprised by the universal critical acclaim the film has been receiving. Written and directed by del Toro, Pan's Labyrinth tells the story of Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), a young girl whose fantasy world allows her to cope with the harsh realities of post-civil-war Spain.

"It's such a great, great, great film," Cuarón said in an interview while promoting his own upcoming film, the SF drama Children of Men. "Probably the most beautiful moment that I have ever had in my film life has been to witness the, I think it was, 22 or 24 minutes of standing ovation [Pan's Labyrinth received] at Cannes. It was the longest standing ovation since 1968, and to see Guillermo just swimming in that ocean of applause and to see how he went from laughing to crying to dancing and to trying to strip his clothes and get naked was amazing."

Del Toro has said in interviews that Cuarón, director of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, made major contributions by visiting the Pan's Labyrinth set a few times during the shoot and later by joining him in the editing room several times and making scene sequencing suggestions during the post-production phase. Cuarón downplayed his own involvement, but in doing so shared a remarkable story about del Toro's passion for the project.

"At the end, everything is Guillermo in this film, and it's so obvious," he said. "It's such a Guillermo film. My contribution, I think it goes way, way back to when we were doing this [Mexican] TV series, some sort of Twilight Zone [-like] show [called Hora Marcada]. We had the chance of doing this show that was different short stories. One day he told me, 'I have this story I really want to do one day, but at this point I think you would do it better service than me.' It was a story about ogres, and in a way it was the same story as Pan's Labyrinth. He wrote the screenplay, and I directed that one, and he played the ogre. Instead of the Pan there was an ogre."

Cuarón recalled that a couple of years ago he and del Toro sat down for dinner at Cuarón's home, and del Toro told him, in full detail, his story for Pan's Labyrinth. "What you saw in the film is exactly what he told me at dinner, and he said, 'Let's do it together,'" Cuarón said. "I said, 'OK, let's do it together.' And then we decided we were officially in preproduction. 'We don't have a screenplay, but we're in preproduction.' So we decided we were going to put our money just to start preproduction, and it was one of those things where we said, 'We don't care. We're going to keep on spending our money until this happens.' For me it was a no-brainer. Come on, it's a Guillermo del Toro film, and it's a brilliant concept."

Cuarón added: "I was doing Children of Men when he was doing Pan's Labyrinth, so, yeah, I'd see dailies. And what can I tell you? I saw dailies and said, 'This is absolutely brilliant.' And then, yes, I saw one of his cuts [and made suggestions], but other people were bigger influences in the editing process. But in a more deeper way, [Cuarón's contribution] was how we love to stick our forks in each other's salads." Pan's Labyrinth opens on Dec. 29. —Ian SpellingTorchwood Gets Second Season

The BBC reported that it has ordered a second season of Torchwood, the hit Doctor Who spinoff series, which will air on BBC Two in the United Kingdom. The series is produced by BBC Wales; the first season, starring John Barrowman as immortal time traveler Captain Jack Harkness, has broken ratings records on BBC Three.

Doctor Who creator Russell T. Davies also created Torchwood (an anagram of Doctor Who), which is set in Cardiff, Wales, and centers on an extra-governmental team of investigators who use alien technology to solve crimes, both alien and human.

Filming for the second season (called a "series" in Britain) is due to start in Cardiff next spring, and the programs will air later in 2007 in the U.K.Heroes' Fuller Pushes Daisies

Bryan Fuller, co-executive producer of NBC's Heroes, has won a pilot commitment from ABC for Pushing Daisies, a romance-tinged procedural about a man who can touch dead people and bring them back to life, Variety reported. Fuller will write the pilot , which will be produced by American Beauty producers Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen. Jinks and Cohen will executive-produce via the Jinks/Cohen Co. and Warner Brothers Television.

Fuller and Jinks/Cohen are also developing Alice, an interpretation of Alice in Wonderland that Fuller wrote on spec.

Fuller created the Showtime series Dead Like Me and Fox's Wonderfalls. NBC is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.Colony Wraps War Series

SF author John Scalzi, who won this year's John W. Campbell Award for best new writer, told SCI FI Wire that his next novel, The Last Colony, is going to be the last book—for now—in his Old Man's War series. "I decided that three books is sort of the natural arc of this particular story, and so there may be at some point in the future other books in the series, but if there are, they will likely to be with substantially different characters and a substantially different milieu," Scalzi said in an interview at Philcon in Philadelphia last month.

Scalzi said that Old Man's War focused on the regular military, and The Ghost Brigades revolved around the Special Forces, but The Last Colony is more about the colonists themselves. "It's time to actually move away from the military per se and to look at what's going on in the colonies," he said. "In Old Man's War the hero is John Perry, and in both [it and The Ghost Brigades] Jane Sagan was a major character. In The Last Colony the two characters are ... now together on a colony world, and then they are recruited by the Colonial Union to head up a new colony on another planet. What they discover ... is that ... the affairs of the colony itself are superseded by what you would call an interplanetary chess match between the human government—the Colonial Union—and the rest of the alien universe. ... It answers a lot of questions: What type of government is the Colonial Union? What is the goal of the Colonial Union? Are all the alien races truly hostile to humanity, or are there some that there's some compromise that can be reached?"

Though John Perry and Jane Sagan are the protagonists of the novel, they were originally going to be background characters, Scalzi said. "In The Ghost Brigades, I had a new main character, ... and I was thinking again of having a situation where I yet again have a new character, [with] John and Jane as the colony leaders," he said. "I started writing that, and I got four chapters in and I realized I really hated the character. [So] I sent Patrick Nielsen Hayden—my editor—a note that said, 'I have this ... main character, and I can't stand him. I've taken him to a well on my property and pushed him down it. You'll never see him. I need another two months.' And Patrick, bless his soul, gave it to me, and then I started again."

Scalzi added: "I listened a little bit to the fans of the series. They really did want to hear more about John and Jane, and I realized that ... so did I." —John Joseph AdamsNightmare Detective Picked Up

Nightmare Detective, the latest supernatural thriller from Japan, has been picked up by the Weinstein Co. for distribution in North America, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

In a deal first set in motion at November's American Film Market, Arclight Films subsidiary Easternlight Films has announced that it has sold the rights to Nightmare Detective for an undisclosed fee after the movie screened at the Pusan and Rome film festivals.

Written and directed by Shinya Tsukamoto and starring Ryuhei Matsuda, Masanobu Ando and singer Hitomi, the movie is the tale of a female detective investigating a pair of suicides mysteriously connected by the fact that both victims dialed zero on their mobile phones just seconds before they died.

The detective tracks down a man with the power to enter people's dreams, a device that enables Tsukamoto to put his idiosyncratic filming styles to good use.TNT Mulls Saving Grace

TNT is in negotiations to pick up the supernatural drama pilot Grace to series, sources told The Hollywood Reporter. Oscar winner Holly Hunter stars in the show, playing a jaded Oklahoma City police detective who is visited by an irascible angel and offered an opportunity to redeem her life.

The Fox 21-produced Grace is said to be considered a strong self-starter, a candidate to air in the 10 p.m. hour with no series lead-in, similar to the way FX schedules its original dramas in the Tuesday 10 p.m. slot.

Grace co-stars Laura San Giacomo, Leon Rippy and Bokeem Woodbine and was written by Nancy Miller, who is executive-producing with Gary Randall.Found Among New SF Crop

Scott Peters, creator of USA Network's The 4400, is developing Found, a reincarnation drama for ABC, which is part of a new raft of SF series in the works for various networks, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

ABC is also developing Jumper and The 36th Man; all three series are from Touchstone TV.

CBS, meanwhile, is developing a supernatural drama from Joan of Arcadia creator Barbara Hall, about exorcists who investigate weird phenomena.

As previously reported, NBC is developing a time-travel drama and is remaking The Bionic Woman, from Battlestar Galactica executive producer David Eick.

The networks seem undaunted by the failure of last season's crop of SF shows, including CBS' Threshold and ABC's Invasion. Two of this season's breakout hits are SF-themed: NBC's Heroes and CBS' Jericho.

NBC and USA Network are both owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.Fox Orders Immortal Cop Show

The Fox TV network has ordered a pilot tentatively titled New Amsterdam, about a New York homicide detective who is secretly centuries old, Variety reported.

Allan Loeb and Christian Taylor (ABC's Miracles) will write and executive-produce the pilot. Steven Pearl also is an executive producer. Regency TV is producing with Scarlet Fire Films, the trade paper reported.Sword's Point Is Women

World Fantasy Award-winning author Ellen Kushner told SCI FI Wire that her latest novel, The Privilege of the Sword, was prompted by her desire to write about women—both in her Swordspoint milieu and in a traditional society. "I'm taking up where Swordspoint left off, not in terms of plot but in terms of sociology, and things I didn't deal with in Swordspoint—like gender—are very much dealt with in this book," Kushner said in an interview at a New York Review of Science Fiction reading in New York last week. "But people who have never heard of Swordspoint can come at it as a book about gender that's relevant even if you are not living in the Regency period. I think a lot of the issues that are in this book are still with us today in a slightly different form."

The novel is narrated by Katherine, a 15-year-old girl who is the niece of Alec from Swordspoint, Kushner said. "She just has to be an ordinary, normal girl in this society, which is kind of a renaissance/Regency society," she said. "You know the game with girls in that [sort of] society—you have to grow up, wear beautiful dresses, go to balls and attract a rich husband. That's what she figures she will do with her life. Instead, her crazy uncle puts her into boys' clothes and insists that she learn how to use a sword, and she does. And as ... the wonderful cover copy ... [states]: 'Even he doesn't realize what it's going to mean to give a girl that kind of power.'"

Kushner said that she had to do a lot of research about sword fighting, because Katherine starts off as a girl who has never held a sword but becomes someone who can hold her own in a fight. "I could not have done that without the help of the writer Mary Gentle," she said. "Her stuff tends to be very historically accurate, and she's very big on sword fighting because she's trained with a man in England who has recreated 17th-century historical sword fighting. ... In about a day, he gave me a lot of the lessons that are in the book and gave me a sense of what a sword is like and how you care for it: a real sword as opposed to a stage sword. It was invaluable."

Next up for Kushner, in fall 2007, is a children's book called The Golden Dreydl, which will be illustrated by Ilene Winn-Lederer. "It's based on a show that I perform . . . with the klezmer band Shirim," Kushner said. "Somebody asked me if I could turn it into a book. I thought that would be really easy, ... [but] I ended up really rewriting it and putting in a lot more characterization and a lot more details. I'm not C.S. Lewis—and it's not written at that level—but I'm kind of trying to do a Jewish Narnia." —John Joseph AdamsWeinsteins Acquire Gentlemen

The Weinstein Co. and its Weinstein Books division are embarking on a multimedia adventure, acquiring two titles in a new children's fantasy book series, a film option on the novels and a rolling option for all print prequels and sequels, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The adventures begin with Alex and the Ironic Gentleman, first-time author Adrienne Kress' chronicle of plucky 10-year-old orphan Alex Morningside's quest to free her schoolteacher from the clutches of evil pirates. The magical mission takes her aboard the Ironic Gentleman, a pirate ship where her teacher is held prisoner, the trade paper reported.

Gentleman will be published in fall 2007, with the unwritten and untitled sequel tentatively scheduled for the following fall. Raimi Producing New Shadow

Spider-Man helmer Sam Raimi will produce a new film version of the classic radio serial The Shadow for Columbia Pictures, which acquired the screen rights, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Raimi and Josh Donen will produce the movie, based on the 1930s serial, through their Buckaroo Entertainment banner; Michael Uslan will also be producing through his Comic Book Movies, LLC/Branded Entertainment. Columbia has set Siavash Farahani (Max Payne) to write the screenplay.

The Shadow debuted in 1931 on a CBS radio show, which aimed to boost the magazine circulation of sponsor Street & Smith. The character was actually the moniker for the announcer, but listeners began demanding stories based on the name.

Walter B. Gibson created the character, writing the adventures of a crimefighter who skulked in shadows wearing a hat and cape and who had the power to cloud men's minds.

Previous Shadow films include several in the 1930s and '40s, a Columbia cliffhanger serial starring Victor Jory and a couple of TV series in the early days of television. The most recent incarnation was a big-budget 1994 feature from Universal starring Alec Baldwin and directed by Russell Mulcahy; that movie didn't fare well at the box office, quashing a hoped-for franchise.

A Shadow movie has long been a dream project for Raimi, and the crimefighter's influence can be seen in Raimi's 1990 movie, Darkman. Raimi is not attached to direct at this time. Raimi's next film, Spider-Man 3, opens in May, and it's unclear where that franchise will go after that.New Alien Games Hatching

Sega has signed a deal with 20th Century Fox Licensing and Merchandising for a series of games based on the Alien movies, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The publisher is developing multiple next-generation and PC video games set in the Alien universe, including a first-person shooter and a role-playing game, with the first product to ship in 2008, the trade paper reported.

Sega is reportedly in talks with actors from the films, including Sigourney Weaver and Lance Henriksen, to reprise their movie roles by providing their likenesses and voice roles for the games.

There have been about a dozen Alien video games, from the Atari 2600 game that came out in 1982 to Glu Mobile's cell-phone game Aliens: Unleashed from 2003.

Fox is keeping the Alien vs. Predator franchise, which has a second film in production, apart from this game deal. The AVP franchise had a best-selling PC video game franchise from Vivendi Games released before the first movie premiered in August 2004.Firefly Flies Into Gaming

As expected, Fox has licensed Joss Whedon's SF western series Firefly to video-game technology developer Multiverse, which will turn the series into a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, Variety reported.

Multiverse will hire a developer to make the game. It hopes to get input from series creator Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), as well as likeness rights and voice work from some of the actors who were in the show.

The company is building technology that lets developers build a variety of different online worlds that interconnect through one portal. It's hoping that Firefly, which has a devout cult fan base, will not only be successful on its own but will also draw attention to other properties using the same technology.

Multiverse was introduced to Fox executives by its board members James Cameron and Jon Landau. The game is expected to launch in 2008.'Diary' Is Scalzi's Next

SF author John Scalzi, who won this year's John W. Campbell Award for best new writer, told SCI FI Wire that his next book, "The Sagan Diary," isn't a novel, but a novelette set in the Old Man's War milieu. It will be published in February as a limited-edition hardcover chapbook. "Chronologically, it takes place between The Ghost Brigades and The Last Colony," Scalzi said in an interview at Philcon in Philadelphia last month. "The conceit is that [the protagonist, Jane Sagan,] is basically writing journal entries to herself more or less on her BrainPal, so what I'm trying to write is something that is not exactly stream of consciousness—because that's unreadable—but [something that] is reflective of what would go on in her brain processes. ... In some ways, it's the most difficult thing I've had to write so far, because it's stylistically so different than everything else that I've written."

"The Sagan Diary" chapbook will include five or six illustrations, along with cover art, by award-winning artist Bob Eggleton, Scalzi said. "Also, we're doing something that's kind of fun: People who buy the deluxe edition [get to appear] in the book as members of Company C," he said. "Jane Sagan's very first military action is the retrieval of a regular [Colonial Defense Forces] battalion—Company C—and so it's going to be in memoriam to the members of Company C who didn't survive."

Scalzi added: "We found that this is a really fun way to get people involved with the story. Because it's a specialty object—it's going to be only 100 pages, only 15,000 words—it's not a full-fledged book; if you are going to do a [book like that], you want to make it something that's really going to be a collector's item and is going to be fun for [people] to have. They can show their friends and go 'Look, I'm dead in the future!'"

Scalzi said that the book may never have come about if he had not done a charity auction on his Web site, in which he promised to write a short story for anyone who bid $5,000 or more. "With the auction, ... I said kind of jokingly [that] at $5,000 I would write the bidder a short story, because at $5,000 you absolutely deserve it," he said. "This caught the attention of Bill Schafer, the editor and publisher of Subterranean Press. ... As it happens, he wanted me to write him a short story in the Old Man's universe, ... and I had been putting him off because I had other things that I needed to do. ... He said, 'I want a story and I want it from the point of view of Jane Sagan,' and thus 'The Sagan Diary' was born." —John Joseph AdamsBRIEFLY NOTED

Entertainment Weekly has posted images from Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino's genre film Grindhouse.

Renee Maltz of Bel-Air, Calif., who was caught using a camcorder to record Mission: Impossible III at the Arclight Theater in Hollywood, pleaded guilty on Dec. 14 to a federal charge of copyright infringement and faces up to a year in jail, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The teaser trailer for the upcoming animated sequel Shrek the Third has been posted on Moviefone.com.

Yahoo! Movies has posted the first official image from Michael Bay's upcoming Transformers movie, featuring a glimpse of Scorponok, one of the Decepticons.

New trailers have gone live for TMNT and 300 and have been linked through SCI FI Wire's Trailers page.

TrekMovie.com reported that a new animated take on Star Trek has been pitched to CBS, taking the form of short Webcasts a la Cartoon Networks' Clone Wars series; the network hasn't given the idea a green light yet.

Three production stills from the upcoming fantasy film The Waterhorse have gone live at TheOneRing.net.

Producer Joel Silver talked with Empire Online about the Wachowski brothers' upcoming take on Speed Racer.

Nickelodeon has green-lighted Mighty B, an animated show from Saturday Night Live star Amy Poehler, about an ambitious, merit-badge-collecting "Honeybee" scout voiced by Poehler, Variety reported.

Superhero Hype! reported that FX will air clips from the upcoming Spider-Man 3 during the Jan. 2 showing of Spider-Man 2.

Dante Tomaselli confirmed to Moviehole.net that he wants Lindsay Lohan to star in his upcoming SF movie The Ocean, an apocalyptic horror film.

NBC's new hit superhero series Heroes and SCI FI Channel's Battlestar Galactica made the 2006 AFI Awards list of the 10 best TV programs of the year.

Donald M. Dohler, a newspaperman and independent science fiction and grade-B horror film producer, died of melanoma Dec. 2 at his Baltimore-area home, the Baltimore Sun reported.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Spider-Man 3 star Tobey Maguire talks a bit about the black goo that transforms Spidey into Venom; the movie opens in May.

Happy Feet was chosen as the best animated movie of 2006 by both New York and Los Angeles film critics associations, wire services reported.

Happy Feet and Casino Royale, which had been the top two movies for three straight weekends, slipped to third and fourth place respectively during the Dec. 8 weekend, the Associated Press reported; Happy Feet took in $12.7 million, raising its total to $137.7 million, and Casino Royale grossed $8.8 million, lifting its total to $128.9 million.

Cast and crew of the short-lived SF series Firefly, including star Nathan Fillion, showed up unannounced in Burbank, Calif., over the weekend to hang out with fans who were left stranded when a planned convention celebrating the series was canceled at the last minute by organizers. Fillion was joined by cast members Adam Baldwin and Mark Sheppard, fans told SCI FI Wire.