Gyllenhaal Up For Captain Marvel?

The New York Daily News reported that Jake Gyllenhaal is in line to play Captain Marvel in New Line Cinema's proposed Shazam! movie, based on the DC Comics series.

The paper's Rush & Molloy column, citing anonymous sources, reported that the movie is New Line's bid for a franchise on the order of Batman and Superman. "They're ready to spend up to $200 million to get it started," one source told the columnists.

The columnists also reported that director Peter Segal and his fellow producers want to nab Gyllenhaal before Spider-Man director Sam Raimi does. With Spider-Man 3, due to open on May 4, star Tobey Maguire has said he may let someone else play the webslinger in subsequent installments.Buffy Comic Gets New Print Run

Dark Horse comics, which just released the first issue of a new Buffy the Vampire Slayer "season eight" comic, announced that it will order a second printing. Orders have exceeded the initial printing of more than 100,000 copies of the comic, from Buffy creator Joss Whedon, which picks up the story of the Sunnydale Slayer from the end of the show's seventh and final season on TV.

"Admittedly, our expectations were already gigantic, but this has surpassed even those," Dirk Wood, Dark Horse's director of marketing, said in a statement. "We couldn't be happier about how this has launched and have high hopes for upcoming issues."

The upcoming second printing will feature a full-bleed version of the Jo Chen cover, with some of the design elements removed for a cleaner look, the company said. The new version will arrive in stores with an on-sale date of March 28, a week before the release of issue number two.Potter VII To Break Records

Scholastic Corp. said on March 7 that it will release a record-breaking 12 million copies for the first U.S. printing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final book in J.K. Rowling's series, which hits stores on July 21, the Reuters news service reported.

The release will be backed by a multimillion-dollar marketing campaign and is expected to be one of the biggest publishing events in recent years.

Speculation has run high that Deathly Hallows could mark the death of the boy-wizard hero.

Harry Potter books have sold 325 million copies and have been translated into 64 languages.

The first printing of Deathly Hallows breaks a record of 10.8 million copies, set by the sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, in 2005. That book sold 6.9 million in the first 24 hours, Scholastic said.Superman Sequel Likely Pushed

The sequel to Superman Returns may be pushed now that director Bryan Singer has signed on to direct an as-yet-untitled thriller film as his next project, starting this summer.

Variety reported that United Artists heads Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner have given a green light to Singer's thriller, which reunites him with his The Usual Suspects screenwriter Chris McQuarrie.

The film will delay Warner Brothers' hope of mounting a sequel to Superman Returns in the near future. Singer's Bad Hat Harry banner has an overall deal at Warner, where he is developing several films, including that sequel.Dunst: No Spidey 4 For Now

ComingSoon.net reported that Spider-Man 3 star Kirsten Dunst told a news conference that it's time for a break from the franchise. When asked about the possibility of a fourth Spidey film, Dunst said at the ShoWest convention in Las Vegas: "Well, I think [director] Sam [Raimi] has dedicated so much of his life, like more than 10 years, to the Spider-Man franchise with so much passion and love, the man is burnt out at this time. I think he needs a long vacation to put his creativity towards something else, and then maybe we'll revisit it."

Told that Sony Pictures has ordered a fourth script and was willing to move ahead with or without Raimi, Dunst added: "Do they want to give Sam Raimi a heart attack? That's evil. Sorry, that's not happening anytime soon. I would just say no for Sam's sake so that he can have a break. We would all do it together, because Sam, Tobey [Maguire] and I are a team now, but there's no way it's going to happen very soon. I just can't imagine that. We don't have the story to tell right now." Spider-Man 3 opens May 4.Diesel's Babylon Resumes Shooting

Vin Diesel's SF adventure movie Babylon A.D. has resumed shooting in the Czech Republic after a two-week hiatus to sort out problems, Variety reported. Mathieu Kassovitz is directing the $60 million movie.

Producer Ilan Goldman told the trade paper that the difficulties were routine for any big-scale film, including uncooperative weather and problems with set construction.

After a fruitless scouting mission to Iceland, the production still needs to find a location with snow for footage that will take six to eight days to shoot, Goldman said.

Kassovitz, Diesel and co-stars Michelle Yeoh and French actress Melanie Thierry were due on March 16 in the Czech city of Ostrava, where they will spend the next week shooting scenes for the futuristic action-thriller, based on a cult novel by Maurice Dantec.

In the film, Diesel plays a mercenary hired to escort a young woman (Thierry) who has been genetically tampered with, containing a virus that could destroy the human race. Yeoh plays a nun accompanying the young girl.Iranians Decry 300 Portrayal

Zack Snyder's hit 300, about the Greco-Persian Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C., has drawn the wrath of Iranians for showing their ancestors as bloodthirsty "savages," the Agence France-Presse news service reported. (The Persian Empire evolved into what is now modern-day Iran.)

Iranian press, officials and bloggers have united in denouncing the film as another example of "psychological warfare" against Tehran by its American archenemy at a time of mounting tension over its nuclear program, the AFP reported.

A cultural advisor to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad described the film as "American psychological warfare against Iran."

The film, based on Frank Miller's graphic novel, has been a huge hit in North America and other countries, notably Greece. The AFP reported that it is highly improbable the film would ever be screened in the Islamic republic, but contraband DVDs of the latest American movies are often available on the streets as soon as they are internationally released.Transformers Fought MPAA

Shia LaBeouf, who stars in Michael Bay's upcoming Transformers movie, told SCI FI Wire that executive producer Steven Spielberg had to appeal a decision by the Motion Picture Association of America to give the film a dreaded R rating. "Spielberg fought back and got the PG-13," LaBeouf said in an interview. "It's just because of the intensity. There are not a lot of breathers. It's like whoosh!"

It's not clear if Bay, the action director known for such adrenalin-pumping movies as Armageddon and The Island, cut anything to get the lower rating. LaBeouf said that an early cut of the film earned an R rating simply because it was so suspenseful. "We went to get our MPAA rating, and this movie is for the masses, and we got an R rating because of the tension," LaBeouf said. He added: "Not because of the curse words or nudity, but for sheer intensity. It's aneurysm-inducing."

LaBeouf stars alongside Jon Voight, Anthony Anderson, Josh Duhamel and John Turturro in the movie, a live-action update of the 1980s toy, TV and comic franchise, about warring alien robots who bring their battle to Earth. (LaBeouf talked about Transformers at a screening and party at Sony last week for his upcoming animated penguin surfer movie, Surf's Up.)

LaBeouf said that Transformers' computer graphics are out of this world. "No one has ever seen animation like this," he said, adding that the technical people at the visual-effects company Industrial Light & Magic were astounded about the amount of CG they had to do. "The people at ILM said this is the most intense graphics in the history of the company," he said. "Everyone says they did some pretty magical and wild things. Just Megatron's arm has 15,000 moving pieces that all converge like [a] Rubik's Cube. And add to that Michael Bay's chase scenes? And then you have two 40-foot machines on the 405 [freeway] boxing. It's nuts! It's never been done like that. It will be fun to see what happens." Transformers opens July 4. —Mike SzymanskiLeBeouf Talks Constantine 2

Shia LaBeouf, who co-starred in the comic-inspired film Constantine, told SCI FI Wire he was surprised over reports that Warner Brothers is in talks with stars Keanu Reeves and Rachel Weisz for a follow-up, Constantine 2. Responding to reports that The Hollywood Reporter talked to Reeves, LaBeouf said, "Wow, I didn't think he would jump back on. Keanu went through a lot of s--t with that movie."

The dark, brooding film, based on the Vertigo comic series Hellblazer, grossed about $76 million, the BoxOfficeMojo.com Web site reported. The modest success left the door open for a sequel.

But is the report just a rumor? "I don't know," LaBeouf said with a laugh in an interview at a preview for his upcoming animated film, Surf's Up. "I've not heard anything, so maybe it's not [happening]." —Mike SzymanskiBattlestar's Eick Renews Deal

Battlestar Galactica executive producer David Eick has renewed his first-look deal at NBC Universal even as he continues expanding his development roster to non-NBCU properties, Variety reported.

Eick, who this spring is shepherding the NBC reimagining of The Bionic Woman and the Fox thriller Them, has set up a pair of projects at F/X. One, a drama script, reteams him with Battlestar partner Ronald D. Moore. He's also in talks to produce a miniseries for Lifetime.

At SCI FI Channel, Eick continues working with Moore on Caprica, the potential Battlestar prequel spinoff, from writer Remi Aubuchon. He's also teamed with Matt Cirulnick to develop the SCI FI miniseries about the end of days. SCI FI recently renewed Battlestar for a fourth season. (NBC Universal owns SCIFI.COM.)NBCU Offering Wireless Shows

NBC Universal and MobiTV Inc. announced a deal to make programming available over U.S. wireless networks for the first time, including episodes of SCI FI Channel's Battlestar Galactica and NBC's Heroes.

The two companies will also offer select short-form programming from Bravo, SCI FI Channel, USA Network, Telemundo and mun2 on five new ad-supported channels to subscribers, which will debut on the MobiTV service in the second quarter.

Consumers will be able to access full episodes of select NBCU prime-time shows, starting at $1.99 for a 24-hour viewing period (subject to change). The programming will include current seasons of shows produced by NBCU Television Studios.

Several ad-supported on-demand shows will also be available at no additional charge from within the MobiTV base subscription channel package. (NBC Universal owns SCIFI.COM.)More Heroes Secrets Unveiled

Tim Kring, the creator of NBC's hit SF series Heroes, told fans that the show will eventually bring all of the main hero characters together before the season is out and offered a preview of the April 23 episode, in which many secrets are revealed about Mr. Linderman (Malcolm McDowell). At a panel for the Museum of Television and Radio's William S. Paley Festival in Hollywood on March 10, Kring unveiled a long scene from the next new episode, ".07," featuring McDowell's Linderman speaking with Adrian Pasdar's Nathan Petrelli (spoilers ahead!).

Among other things, viewers learn that Linderman has superpowers of his own, that he was once a member of a group of heroes, that the members of the group eventually used their powers for personal gain—and that he is behind the plot to blow up New York as a way to engender widespread fear, which he believes will bring the nation together in hope. Linderman also reveals a prophecy that Nathan will eventually wind up in the White House.

As for the season finale, Kring told fans that he was "still putting the final script together" but has it all mapped out. "I know everyone's fate," he said cryptically.

Greg Grunberg, who plays psychic cop Matt Parkman, said that he had already read the script for the 22nd of 23 episodes and that it "just blew me away." Who lives and who dies? "It's the nature of the show to know that we're all vulnerable," Grunberg added.

Kring and Grunberg were joined on the panel by cast members Santiago Cabrera (Isaac Mendez), Sendhil Ramamurthy (Mohinder Suresh), Jack Coleman (H.R.G.), Hayden Panettiere (Claire Bennet), Masi Oka (Hiro Nakamura), Milo Ventimiglia (Peter Petrelli), Pasdar, Ali Larter (Niki Sanders), Noah Gray-Cabey (Micah Sanders) and Leonard Roberts (D.L. Hawkins). Heroes airs Mondays at 9 p.m. ET/PT and returns with the final five episodes of the first season starting on April 23. (NBC is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.) —Patrick Lee, News EditorRobinsons Gets Lost In Space

Stephen Anderson, director of Disney's upcoming SF animated movie Meet the Robinsons, told SCI FI Wire that the 3-D movie makes a few sly references to that other science-fiction Family Robinson: the one from TV's Lost in Space.

"Oh, sure, the character of Wilbur Robinson may invoke a memory of that Robinsons in space," Anderson admitted in an interview at a sneak peek at the Disney Animation Building in Burbank, Calif. Bill Mumy's character in Lost in Space was also named Will Robinson.

Meet the Robinsons tells the story of an orphan genius named Lewis who goes off to seek his birth family and meets a stranger from the future named Wilbur Robinson, who whisks the boy off in a time machine.

The story is from William Joyce's book A Day With Wilbur Robinson, and Anderson said he talked to the author about the not-so-subtle references. "It is about any family that may be out there," Anderson said. "It also references [The] Swiss Family Robinson, too. It's an homage of his to all those things." (The 1812 Swiss Family Robinson was the inspiration for Lost in Space.)

Meet the Robinsons features the voices of Angela Bassett, Tom Selleck, Laurie Metcalf, Adam West, Ethan Sandler and Tom Kenny. The movie is expected to be the widest 3-D film release ever when it opens March 30 on more than 600 specially equipped screens. It will also play in conventional theaters. —Mike SzymanskiBlanchett Joins Indy 4

Cate Blanchett has signed on to star in the fourth installment of the Indiana Jones adventures, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Harrison Ford already has boarded the project, which will be produced by Lucasfilm and directed by Steven Spielberg.

With David Koepp's screenplay shrouded in secrecy, it is unclear what character Blanchett will play. But sources told the trade paper that the Oscar-winning actress has landed a starring role.

Shooting will begin in June in Los Angeles and at undisclosed locations around the world. Paramount Pictures will release Indy 4 around the world on May 22, 2008, with a handful of territories opening the following day.

Frank Marshall is producing, with George Lucas and Kathleen Kennedy executive-producing.Surf's Bridges, LaBeouf Connect

Jeff Bridges and Shia LaBeouf, who voice characters in the upcoming animated penguin movie Surf's Up, told SCI FI Wire that they connected well while playing a surfing mentor and his protégé.

Bridges observed that LaBeouf is about the same age as his daughters and is also about the same age that Bridges was when he got into movies. "My daughters are his age, and we naturally fell into it [when voicing the parts]," Bridges said. "When I was his age, I was starting to be a serious actor, and I can see the excitement he's going through now. He's a great improviser, and we had a lot of fun doing it."

LaBeouf, 20, said he enjoyed ad-libbing in the sound booth with Bridges and co-star Zooey Deschanel. They voice characters in the computer-animated film, which is shot in a mock-documentary style. LaBeouf voices Cody Maverick, a novice surfer who idolizes Bridges' Big Z. Similarly, LaBeouf said that he looked up to Oscar nominee Bridges. "I was too nervous to ever ask him for advice when you are supposed to be there as equals," LaBeouf admitted. "You just can't ask for advice that way. We talked about his ukulele. We talked about Montana. We talked about penguins, and we'd come up with little things we could say and throw in here and there."

Bridges added: "I related to [LaBeouf] with the way he approached the work. He does it with a lot of joy, and it's rather contagious. That's the way I like to work. It's the approach to it."

Surf's Up also features the voices of Jon Heder, James Wood, Mario Cantone and Diedrich Bader. The Sony Pictures Animation release opens June 8. —Mike SzymanskiStowe Shakes Up Raines

Madeleine Stowe, who co-stars with Jeff Goldblum in NBC's drama Raines, will play a major role in the series as the therapist of the title character, starting with the second episode, Graham Yost, creator and executive producer, told SCI FI Wire. "Raines is obviously disturbed by what's going on," Yost said in an interview. "His captain basically strong-arms him into going to see a shrink. And that is a little dance that now he's doing with the shrink, who can see through him, but doesn't want to entirely confront him yet."

Goldblum plays a brilliant detective who gets a little help from his dead homicide victims when it comes to solving his investigations. Unfortunately, he may just be going insane. Hence the need for a shrink.

Yost was thrilled with the casting of Stowe (Impostor) and believes the chemistry between her and Goldblum helps develop an arc through the first seven-episode season. "It's a very antagonistic—initially antagonistic—relationship, and it sort of evolves over the course of the episodes," Yost said. "He doesn't want her there."

Yost added: "To that extent, our arc is we establish the issue in his life—his burden and his curse and his blessing, as it were, his gift—in the first episode. And then we bring in the therapist in the second episode. And, really, the arc is their relationship and how he slowly begins to reveal to another human being that this is going on with him. ... Because he has told no one. It's just a slow cracking of that shell and his ability to maybe—maybe—trust her."

Yost said that he believes having Goldblum at the center of the series makes Raines unique. "Seeing him on a weekly basis playing this really interesting and tormented and yet funny character," he said. "I mean, he's got a lot of wit, and it was fun for us to write for him. And then Jeff would come up with his own stuff that just added this little zing. Kind of indescribable. He's a unique actor, and yet he's playing something that is solidly in the pocket of the television tradition of the detective."

Raines airs its second episode on March 22 at 10 p.m. ET/PT. The following week, it moves to its regular timeslot on Fridays at 9 p.m. (NBC is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.) —Kathie HuddlestonRaines Is All Goldblum

Graham Yost, creator and executive producer of the NBC drama Raines, told SCI FI Wire the focus of the pilot stays directly on Jeff Goldblum's title character, without any subplots. "Listen, the show's called Raines," Yost (creator of NBC's short-lived Boomtown) said in an interview. "We've worked Jeff very, very hard, and he's stood up under that and shouldered the burden well. And been gracious about it and friendly and collaborative and really gets into trying to make it the best show possible. He's been great, and the rest of the cast, too."

Goldblum stars as Michael Raines, a Los Angeles homicide detective who may just be nuts: He can see and hear the murder victims in the cases he works. "The victim, in a way, becomes Raines' partner each week," Yost said.

So is Raines seeing ghosts, or is he just nuts? "In terms of the science fiction angle, these are not ghosts," Yost said. "He's not talking to the dead. He's talking to the dead as he imagines them. And yet there is something that is, to me, fantastic about it. I grew up reading nothing but science fiction, and this somehow feels like it's part of the whole tradition, in a way, in that it's oddly speculative. There's no science. It ultimately has a grounding. And yet there is something that is, because the process he's going through, ... out of the ordinary. That I find intriguing."

Yost added: "This is not something that Raines would have chosen in his life. And, as he says in the pilot, yeah, sure, he always used to have conversations with the victims. That's part of the job. That's part of his process. But, as he says, you know, before it was behind his eyes. Now it's out there in front of him. So that's very scary for him, and yet, at the same time, you know what? He's getting the job done. There's this old joke about this woman who comes to the doctor and says, 'My son thinks he's a chicken.' And he says, 'Oh, we can cure him of that.' And she says, 'Oh, God, no. We need the eggs.' [Laughs.] And so that's the thing with Raines. If you cure him, you're going to lose maybe your best detective on the force, or at least at that station. That's part of the whole thing." Raines premiered March 15 at 10 p.m. ET/PT. (NBC is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.) —Kathie HuddlestonNew Line Makes Its Escape

New Line has won the bidding war for a remake of Escape From New York, with 300 star Gerard Butler attached and Neal Moritz producing through his Original Films banner, Variety reported.

The studio closed the deal on March 15, three days after CAA began shopping the package to studios in the wake of Butler's emergence as a rising star, thanks to last weekend's smash opening of 300.

Ken Nolan (Black Hawk Down) is attached to write the script. Executive producers include Original's Ori Marmur; Ron Halpern and Frederic Sichler of Canal Plus, which held the remake rights; and John Carpenter, who directed the original 1981 Escape From New York.

Butler would portray Snake Plissken, the convict and war hero who's sent into a futuristic New York City—which has been turned into a giant maximum-security prison—to rescue the president after his plane is knocked down by terrorists. The original was set in 1998.

Kurt Russell played Plissken in the original movie and again in Carpenter's 1996 sequel, Escape From Los Angeles.Prodigal Is Dark Fairy Tale

Bram Stoker Award-winning author Gary Braunbeck, whose novel Prodigal Blues was named a finalist for this year's award, told SCI FI Wire that the book is his attempt to write a modern-day fairy-tale-type novel that evokes the darker aspects of Frank Capra's films. "For all the chuckles people get from making fun of It's a Wonderful Life or Meet John Doe, a lot of those films are extremely dark, and I wanted to write a novel that would reflect Capra's kind of darkness," Braunbeck said in an interview. "Horrific, yes, but also partly whimsical and focusing not on the pain and torture suffered by the characters but on the characters themselves and how the protagonist goes from being a frightened and resentful captive to a willing comrade."

The story is about a man traveling between Kansas and Ohio by car, who finds himself stranded at a truck stop, Braunbeck said. "[There,] he is abducted by a group of kids who are escaping from a man who's been holding them prisoner for years," he said. "Their faces have all been mutilated in one form or another by their captor, and they need someone with a 'normal' face to act as their go-between as they attempt to get themselves back home."

That someone is Mark Sieber, a guy from a blue-collar family who has always felt a little guilty that he was given the ability to achieve more than the other members of his family, Braunbeck said. "As a result, [he] has been coasting along for many years, spiritually lost but not wanting to admit to it," he said. "The 'leader' of the group who abducts him is a teenaged boy named Christopher, who has been held captive the longest of the children. Christopher is in many ways just as spiritually lost as Mark, only he's a lot angrier and a lot more dangerous; he will not hesitate to kill anyone who threatens—or appears to threaten—his mission to deliver the children back into the arms of their families. He also harbors a rather shattering secret that he's kept from not only the other children but also—through a type of self-brainwashing—from himself."

Braunbeck said that from an emotional standpoint Prodigal Blues was in many ways the single most difficult novel he's written. "I am a big believer that if you're a writer of dark fiction, then you've got to be willing to dive headfirst into the darkest aspects of not only fear, but despair, loneliness, grief and the resultant spiritual and psychological suffering that follows," he said. "If you're not willing to go to these places, then it seems to me there's no sense in even trying to write this type of fiction. I fervently believe that in order for a writer to convey genuine horror, they've got to be willing to delve much deeper within than without. The intensity of a character's internal struggles and suffering is what gives the outward horrors their power—otherwise it's just gore and shock."Surf's Bridges Channels Dude

Jeff Bridges, who voices a legendary surfer penguin in this summer's animated film Surf's Up, told SCI FI Wire that he essentially channels The Dude from The Big Lebowski. "Yeah, I guess you could say that Big Z is the Dude of the penguins," Bridges said in an interview at a preview of the movie last week.

Surf's Up is a computer-animated film that uses a mock-documentary style to tell the story of a young penguin surfer, Cody Maverick (Shia LaBeouf), who seeks the counsel of Bridges' Big Z.

Bridges said that he signed on to the Sony Pictures Animation project after the filmmakers showed him test animation of his character, which was created using Bridges' dialogue from The Big Lebowski.

Directors Ash Brannon and Chris Buck had Bridges in mind for Big Z all along. "We only thought of him doing the role," Brannon said. "He is like this in all his movies, and as we were developing the character, we knew he was the right guy, the only guy, for the part."

Bridges co-stars with Jon Heder, Zooey Deschanel and James Wood in Surf's Up, which opens June 8. —Mike SzymanskiTin Man's Deschanel Talks

Zooey Deschanel, who will star in SCI FI Channel's upcoming original miniseries Tin Man, told SCI FI Wire that it will be surprisingly dark, though it's based on L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. "It's really kind of dark," Deschanel (Bridge to Terabithia) said in an interview. "It will be fascinating to see what they do with it." Deschanel spoke at a preview of her upcoming animated film, Surf's Up, last week.

"I'm leaving in three weeks for Vancouver, where we'll shoot it, and I'm [the] Dorothy [character]," Deschanel said. She added that she is particularly excited about working with Alan Cumming, who co-stars as Glitch, and Oscar winner Richard Dreyfuss as the wizard-like Mystic Man.

Tin Man (a working title) follows Deschanel's character, who is called DG, as she enters another world, where she must discover her true identity. In a realm called the O.Z., she battles evil winged monkey-bats and attempts to fulfill her destiny in a perilous journey on the fabled Old Road, which leads to the Mystic Man. Along the way, she is joined by Glitch, a man missing half his brain; Raw, a quietly powerful wolverine-like creature longing for inner courage; and Cain, a heroic former policeman (known in the O.Z. as a Tin Man, for his tin badge), seeking vengeance for his scarred heart.

Deschanel said she and her companions are "not really the Wizard of Oz characters. It's just a hint at those characters. So it's not like I'm going to go back and watch the [1939] movie and do a Judy Garland thing or anything like that." The six-hour Tin Man is expected to air on SCI FI Channel in December. —Mike SzymanskiStargate Film Goes Arctic

MGM announced that it will shoot scenes in the Arctic, north of Alaska, for the upcoming straight-to-DVD film Stargate: Continuum, based on SCI FI Channel's original series Stargate SG-1, with the cooperation of the U.S. Navy's Applied Physics Laboratory Ice Station. Cast members Ben Browder and Amanda Tapping will travel to the facility, about 200 nautical miles north of Alaska's Prudhoe Bay, to shoot during the week of March 23-29. Martin Wood, director of more than 70 episodes of Stargate SG-1 and its spinoff series, Stargate Atlantis, is directing.

Stargate: Continuum, which is being co-financed by MGM and 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, will shoot a variety of scenes on location at the station, where temperatures drop to 50 below zero. In addition to the frigid outdoor environments, the filming will also involve the U.S. Navy submarine U.S.S. Alexandria, MGM said.

Among the dramatic scenes to be filmed at the location: the submarine as it bursts through the ice and into the arctic air.

MGM gave the green light to two direct-to-video movies based on Stargate SG-1. The first movie, Stargate: The Arc of Truth, which is also being co-financed by MGM and 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, begins production on April 15.

The second movie, Stargate: Continuum, will resume filming on May 22 after comleting the ice-station scenes.

Written and produced by Brad Wright and Robert Cooper, the new movies will also feature Christopher Judge, Claudia Black, Beau Bridges and Michael Shanks.

In Stargate: Continuum, SG-1 attends the execution of Ba'al, the last of the Goa'uld system lords, when Teal'c (Judge) and Vala (Black) inexplicably disappear into thin air. Carter (Tapping), Daniel (Shanks) and Mitchell (Browder) race back to a world where history has been changed: The Stargate program has been erased from the timeline. As they try to convince the authorities of what's happened, a fleet of Goa'uld motherships arrives in orbit, led by Ba'al; his queen, Katesh (Vala); and his first prime, Teal'c. SG-1 must find the Stargate and set things right before the world is enslaved by the Goa'uld.McMahon Is A Prisoner

Julian McMahon (Fantastic Four) told SCI FI Wire that he is now completing Prisoner, a psychological horror thriller with supernatural overtones.

"Prisoner is a pretty kind of intense movie," McMahon said. "It's about a guy who's this arrogant filmmaker who gets in prisons, and it's a very psychologically orientated imprisonment. It's a little trippy, ... and I guess that throughout the movie you wonder if he was actually really in prison or if it was his own spell that he put himself under."

The film—which is not to be confused with the proposed remake of Patrick McGoohan's 1960s British TV series—is an independent feature written and directed by both David Alford and Robert Lynne. It centers on a Hollywood director (McMahon) who is scouting locations for a prison movie and ends up being imprisoned. It's unclear whether things are really happening, or whether they are taking place in the character's mind. Or something else.

"Hopefully, he comes out of it at the end as a better man, or at least having learned something," McMahon said.

Elias Koteas (Skinwalkers) plays the jailer; Dagmara Dominczyk, Kim Raver, Rocky Carroll and Tom Guiry are also in the cast for the movie, which shot in Tennessee. "It's great fun," McMahon said. "[I] was working with Elias Koteas, and we were stuck in a prison cell for five weeks or something. It was pretty intense."

McMahon will next be seen alongside Sandra Bullock in the time-travel romance Premonition, which opened March 16. He will also reprise the role of Victor Von Doom in the upcoming Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, which opens June 15. —Mike SzymanskiPainkiller Kicks Off April 13

SCI FI Channel's new original series Painkiller Jane, starring Kristanna Loken, will debut on April 13 at 10 p.m. ET/PT, following the midseason return of Stargate SG-1 at 8 p.m. and Stargate Atlantis at 9.

Based on the comic book created by Jimmy Palmiotti and Joe Quesada, Painkiller Jane follows the adventures of Jane Vasco (Loken), a kick-ass heroine with remarkable self-healing powers. Formerly a hard-nosed DEA agent, Jane is recruited by a covert government organization tasked with capturing "Neuros," which are genetically enhanced people with superhuman powers of the mind. During the course of her first investigation with the team, she discovers that she also has extraordinary abilities, which render her impervious to permanent injury, if not pain.

Painkiller Jane is executive-produced by show runner Gil Grant (24). Loken will serve as co-executive producer. Following the debut of the show's 22 one-hour episodes on SCI FI, the series will have a domestic broadcast weekly syndication window in the fall. Starz Media will handle U.S. DVD and syndication sales, as well as distribution to key worldwide markets.Mostow Helming Surrogates

Disney has acquired rights to the SF graphic novel The Surrogates and will develop it into a thriller that Jonathan Mostow will direct, Variety reported.

Michael Ferris and John Brancato will write the script. The trio last teamed on Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.

Published by Top Shelf Comix, The Surrogates, by Robert Venditti and illustrated by Brett Weldele, is set in a futuristic world where humans live in isolation. They interact vicariously through surrogate robots.

Mostow will develop the project while he continues to write Sub-Mariner, an adaptation of the Marvel Comics character for Universal. (Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.)Warner Gets The Giver

Warner Brothers has acquired screen rights to Lois Lowry's Newbery Award-winning SF novel The Giver, Variety reported. Red Wagon partners Douglas Wick and Lucy Fisher will produce.

The novel has been under continuous option since its publication to great fanfare in 1994, but never made it to a production start.

Screen rights reverted back to Lowry on March 1; Warner had a preemptive offer on the table by March 10 and struck a deal that evening, once Lowry was tracked down on vacation in Florida.

The story follows a 12-year-old boy living in a futuristic, emotionally suppressed utopian society. He's selected to bear his community's emotional history; as he's loaded up with long-discarded feelings like fear and pleasure, the youth realizes that living a pain-free life comes at a high cost.Seeker Finds Lost Things

John W. Campbell Memorial Award-winning author Jack McDevitt, whose novel Seeker was recently named a finalist for the Nebula Award, told SCI FI Wire that the book is about an interstellar antiquarian. "Alex [Benedict] makes his living tracking down antiques and arranging to make them available to buyers," McDevitt said in an interview. "He is especially interested in those that have a specific historical connection, like the 9,000-year-old cup that is not only from a very early starship, but from a celebrated one. He's assisted by Chase Kolpath, an attractive and talented young woman who pilots his company's interstellar [ship], the Belle Marie, and also serves as a kind of [Dr.] Watson."

When Benedict acquires that 9,000-year-old cup, he suspects that someone has discovered a long-lost ship known as the Seeker, McDevitt said. "In the early years of starflight, thousands of people fled deteriorating conditions on Earth for a better place," he said. "They traveled in the Breverhaven and the Seeker. Their intention: They were going to a world they called Margolia, [which was] 'so far away that not even God' could find them. Neither the ships nor any of the refugees were ever heard from again. And Margolia became an interstellar-age [legend, like] Atlantis."

McDevitt added: "Alex's second adventure, Polaris, was inspired by [the 'ghost ship'] the Mary Celeste. Following up with a narrative that took Atlantis to the stars seemed like a natural thing to do."

Part of what draws McDevitt to legends like that of Atlantis and the Mary Celeste is that he has always been intrigued by things that get lost, he said. "Maybe it started with Richard Halliburton's Book of Marvels, which an aunt gave me when I was about 8 or 9," he said. "I loved it. And I was annoyed that a lot of the really intriguing stuff, the Hanging Gardens, the Colossus of Rhodes, the Lighthouse at Alexandria, no longer existed. The stuff got lost. In an earlier novel, Chindi, I worked extensively with that theme. And I think it shows up to a degree in all my novels. In Seeker, an entire world has gotten lost."

McDevitt's short story "Henry James, This One's for You" is also currently a Nebula finalist. "[In that story,] a small publisher receives a 'War and Peace for our time' over the transom, written by a young man who seems desperately unlike Hemingway or Wouk," McDevitt said. "And [he] promises another masterpiece or two, as the publisher sees fit."

Odyssey, the fifth in McDevitt's Academy series, and Outbound, a collection of short fiction and essays, were published late last year. The next Academy novel, Cauldron, is due out in November, and the next book featuring Alex Benedict, The Devil's Eye, should be out in 2008. —John Joseph AdamsBiggs Headlines CBS' Hell

CBS has picked up I'm in Hell, a half-hour supernatural-themed single-camera sitcom pilot, which will mark the prime-time series debut of Jason Biggs (American Pie), Variety reported. Aron Abrams and Greg Thompson wrote the CBS Paramount project and will executive-produce.

Biggs will play Nick, a Wall Street maven who's killed in a Blackberry-related car accident. Since hell's overcrowded, he's assigned to "hell on Earth," a new life devoid of all the trappings of his previous existence and in which Murphy's Law is always just around the corner. Biggs and Peter Kiernan will serve as producers.Godzilla Sequels Due On DVD

Classic Media, which recently released a restored version of the original Godzilla film, will release the sequels Godzilla Raids Again and Mothra vs. Godzilla on DVD on April 3.

As with the Godzilla release, each new title will include both the original Japanese version of the movie and its Americanized version. The new Godzilla DVDs will be available in retail outlets and online.

Godzilla Raids Again is the first sequel to the original movie, which was rushed to theaters six months after the release of the first film in 1955. The heavily re-edited U.S. version was released a few years later, in 1959, and features the voice of Star Trek's George Takei. Two new monsters emerged: the first similar to the original Godzilla, who was killed by the oxygen destroyer in the first film, and also named Godzilla, and the second a spiny dinosaur called Anguirus. The massive battle begins on Iwato Island, tumbles into the ocean and resurfaces on Osaka, threatening to level the city under the monsters' feet. Special bonus features include an Art of Suit Acting featurette.

Mothra vs. Godzilla was released in the United States as Godzilla vs. The Thing. It is the fourth installment in the Godzilla series and is considered by many fans to be one of the best in the series. The movie was released in Japan and the United States in 1964. When a giant egg washes up on the shores of Tokyo after a typhoon, greedy businessmen seize the opportunity to exhibit the item at an amusement park for profit. The shobijin, fairies from Infant Island, come to plead for the egg's return to its rightful owner, Mothra, but the men refuse the request. Soon Godzilla awakens and begins a trek across Tokyo, heading straight for Mothra's egg.Ratatouille Previewed

Director Brad Bird unveiled a 12-minute presentation of his upcoming Pixar animated film Ratatouille at ShoWest and announced that Peter O'Toole would voice a character, Variety reported.

Ratatouille stars the voice of Patton Oswalt as a rat in Paris who dreams of being a chef. It opens June 29.

The clip got a great reception, as did a short trailer for the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie, At World's End, which is being released on May 25.Spanky Strikes Devil's Deal

Shoreline Entertainment has launched development of Spanky, acquiring film rights to British author Christopher Fowler's tale of demonic possession, Variety reported.

Shoreline chief executive officer Morris Ruskin will produce, and Dan Turner, who directed Experiment, will helm Spanky. Ray Gower, who wrote and directed Dark Corners for Shoreline, is penning the script.

Spanky tells the story of a 23-year-old man who meets his own personal demon. He makes a deal that results in a better job and life, but it's uncertain what price he'll pay since he's unsure whether the demon is real.Talisman Series Mulled For TNT

Turner Broadcasting System executives told advertisers that The Talisman, a limited series from Steven Spielberg and DreamWorks Television that will air on TNT in 2008, could become a series in 2009, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The announcement was made March 6 at New York's Museum of Modern Art. It was part of a presentation on TBS, TNT, Court TV, Turner's broadband site Super Deluxe and Turner Sports.

Spielberg will executive-produce a six-hour miniseries based on Stephen King and Peter Straub's best-selling supernatural thriller The Talisman for the summer of 2008, with DreamWorks Television producing. Spielberg, who produced Into the West for TNT, will be joined by his longtime partner Kathleen Kennedy as executive producer, along with Ehren Kruger (Skeleton Key, The Ring), who will adapt the King/Straub novel. Darryl Frank, who heads up DreamWorks Television, will be co-executive producer, along with Justin Falvey.

The Talisman, which was published in 1984, marked the first collaboration between King and Straub. It tells the story of Jack Sawyer, a boy who goes on a quest through this world and through a parallel world known as "The Territories" on a mission to obtain a mysterious talisman that will save his dying mother's life and that of her "twinner," the Queen of the Territories.Star Chamber Relaunches

Star Chamber: The Harbinger Saga, the online collectible-card game, relaunched at the New York Comic Con last month with the release of a new expansion pack called Maelstrom, Sony Online Entertainment director of development Scott Martins told SCI FI Wire.

The game is about a galaxy inhabited by 10 races who are all vying for power, Martins said in an interview at the convention. "Each one of those races has its own special abilities and its own cultural makeup and tech makeup," he said. "So [for instance,] the androids have really massive ships, and the Kej have great shields, [and] the humans are great at politics and culture."

The new Maelstrom expansion is the final chapter of the "Harbinger Saga" storyline, Martins added.

Star Chamber is a combination of a trading-card game and what's known as a "4X game" (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate), Martins said. "It's not just necessarily about playing my cards against your cards," he said. "We have a map, and there are a lot of strategic decisions to make as to how you deploy your ships and which planets you are trying to conquer and what the rewards for conquering those planets are."

Players win the game by achieving one of three victory conditions, Martins said. "[In a] military [victory,] you conquer the other player's homeworld by building up a large fleet, or for a cultural [victory], you [can] conquer artifact planets—planets that have been long-abandoned by the ancients—[and thereby] generate culture and destiny [points], and the person who generates 30 more destiny [points] on any given turn than his opponent wins. But one of the best parts of [the game] is the political victory. [There's] voting every six turns; whatever citizens and personae you have at the Star Chamber get to participate in a vote. It's really like a poker match, because you secretly allocate your votes between one of three categories, and you're trying to anticipate what the other guy is going to do and kind of where to minimize and maximize your losses and gains." —John Joseph AdamsUniversal To Remake The Host

Bong Joon-ho, director of the Korean-language monster movie The Host, told SCI FI Wire that Universal Studios will remake the film for American audiences and that he hopes they do the original film justice. The studio has purchased the rights to The Host, which centers on a dysfunctional family that must overcome its differences to save its daughter, who's been grabbed by a creature that an unresponsive government declares is the host of an unidentified virus. The film, which was a huge hit in Korea and Asia, opened March 9 in limited release in North America and made $314,488 on 71 screens, a healthy per-screen average of $4,429, the BoxOfficeMojo.com Web site reported.

"Maybe three or four years down the line, if The Host [remake] comes out, and there's a cool director who takes it on and makes it a real great film, then I'd be very happy," Bong said in an interview, through a translator. "On the other hand, if it's just crap, I think I'd be happy, too, because then people would be like, 'Oh, yeah, Bong's original was really good.' So, for me, it's a win-win situation. But Universal has a tradition of doing horror and creature films, so I anticipate that they will do a great film."

Bong has said that his next film will be a Korean production of a more intimate, non-genre nature, but the film after that likely will be a big-screen adaptation of the French SF comic book La Transperceneige by Jacques Lob and Jean-Marc Rochette. The story follows the last remnants of mankind, who, following a second ice age, live aboard a train.

"It's about the struggles and fights that go on even in such a critical state," Bong said. "There's the tension. There's the fighting, and that appeals to me also. Outside, it's like ice, but inside it's bubbling over, all these human emotions and whatnot. The contrast there is interesting. I want to keep the tension going. And I think everyone feels the charm of a train." The Host is now playing. (Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.) —Ian SpellingButler Snakes Into New York

Gerard Butler, star of the current hit 300, is at the center of a package that Creative Artists Agency began shopping on March 12: a remake of John Carpenter's 1981 SF action movie Escape From New York, Variety reported.

Neal Moritz is attached to produce, with Black Hawk Down writer Ken Nolan penning the screenplay. A deal is expected to be made this week.

Butler would play Snake Plissken, the one-eyed convict originated by Kurt Russell, who's charged with heading into the inescapable maximum-security prison formerly known as Manhattan to liberate the U.S. president.

Russell reprised the role in the 1996 sequel Escape From L.A. DreamWorks To Release 3-D Toons

DreamWorks Animation plans to release all its films in 3-D, starting in 2009, Variety reported. A new digital 3-D exhibition process, enabled largely by the technology company Real D, has been gaining significant interest in Hollywood recently, the trade paper reported.

Fox will release the James Cameron-helmed Avatar in 3-D in 2009, and Disney will put Meet the Robinsons on about 600 digital 3-D screens this month.

The DWA summer 2009 release Monsters vs. Aliens starts production this spring and will be made with 3-D in mind from the outset. The studio will produce two versions, with a standard version for nondigital screens, DVD and TV. By waiting until 2009, the studio will also benefit from a significantly higher availability of 3-D-enabled digital screens.Devilish Is Faust In School

Maureen Johnson—whose novel Devilish was named a finalist for the Andre Norton Award for best young-adult SF/fantasy novel of the year—told SCI FI Wire that the book is the result of her dropping a Faust story on top of a Catholic school.

"Luckily, I have never been involved in a compact with demons, but the setting of the story is very much based on my own high-school experience," Johnson said in an interview.

Johnson said that she attended a "fairly old-fashioned" Catholic school run by a Polish order that had survived World War II. "Our school was housed in an old mansion, and when you walked through the front door, the first thing you saw was a very large oil painting of a row of nuns being [mowed] down by Nazis with machine guns and falling into a mass grave," Johnson said. "This is the very first thing I remember seeing when I arrived for my interview on a winter night when I was 13. I had never even spoken to a nun before, and that was my greeting. I almost fainted. That painting really said a lot, scary as it was. I got the real impression that there was a battle between good and evil going on. One of the sisters, a woman who seemed impossibly old to me, had lost all of her toes during some period of Nazi internment. I used that directly in the book, in the person of Sister Charles."

In Devilish, protagonist Jane Jarvis is a very short, quite brilliant girl with spikes and a bad bleach job that tends to go green whenever she switches products, Johnson said. "Jane is very aware of the fact that she's much smarter than the people around her, which proves to be both a help and a hindrance," she said. "Her intelligence and her pride are the two things the demon [at her school] hopes to exploit. ... She hates all red foods (no food should be the color of blood, in her opinion), is obsessed with her ex-boyfriend and is very annoyed by the freshman boy who seems to be stalking her."

Johnson's new book, coming out in June, is called Girl at Sea, she said. "It's the story of Clio Ford, named after the muse of history, who, along with her father, made a hugely successful board game when she was 11," Johnson said. "Now, at 17, her family is broken up, her father is constantly off doing strange projects, and the money is gone. Against her will, Clio is forced to go off with her father to Italy, where she ends up literally at sea: on a search for evidence pointing toward the existence of Atlantis. Her bedmate (literally) is a buxom Swedish-English girl, the tech guy is an impossible Yale student, and her father is behaving like a deranged CIA wannabe. It features the three big Ps: pyramids, pizza and pirates. Also, there are jellyfish." —John Joseph AdamsMarvel Makes Changes

Marvel Studio has tapped David Maisel as studio chairman, with Kevin Feige becoming the top creative executive as president and chief operating officer Michael Helfant departs, Variety reported.

Maisel, who had been vice chairman, continues to occupy the office of the chief executive for Marvel Entertainment with Isaac Perlmutter and John Turitzin.

Feige continues as production president and will more directly supervise creative aspects of Marvel's TV, home-video and video-game efforts. Feige also is a producer on the upcoming releases Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk.

The moves mark the official end of an era for former chief Avi Arad, who had stayed on as a creative adviser after he left last spring. He is now a full-fledged producer and was not named in the company's release.

The studio goes into production this week on Iron Man, the Jon Favreau-directed superhero movie that's set for release in 2008. Hulk is also set for a 2008 release.More Futurama In The Future

The Simpsons creator Matt Groening told IFmagazine.com that Fox will produce four direct-to-DVD movies of his Futurama show, with the first, Futurama: Bender's Big Score, due for release in December. The films will then be carved up into 16 episodes of the SF animated series, to begin appearing on Comedy Central starting in 2008, the site reported.

"We're doing four DVD movies, around 90 minutes [each], and then we're going to reconfigure those, and they'll be episodes on Comedy Central," Groening told the site. "The impolite way of saying it is we're chopping them up, and the polite way is to say we're reconfiguring, and we're going to add narration and more stuff. We're going to be doing some fun extras on the DVD show. There's going to be Everybody Loves Hypno-Toad, a whole show of it. The DVDs are going to be self-contained packages, but the episodes will also work, we hope. That's the goal."Host Is Creature Satire, Drama

Bong Joon-ho, director of the Korean-language monster movie The Host, told SCI FI Wire that the film is also a social satire and is very much anchored by an element of family drama. In The Host, a dysfunctional family must overcome its differences to save its daughter, who's been grabbed by a creature that an unresponsive government declares is the host of an unidentified virus.

"Everything in the world, you want to find a balance, but I think you need a central point or a focal point," Bong (Memories of a Murder) said in an interview through an interpreter. "For this, of all those elements, my central focus was the family. So first you have a creature that appears, and then you have a family that's fighting against the creature. The protagonist is the family, and you could say the creature is the bad guy, the antagonist."

As the family fights the creature, the family's country, system and society all turn their backs on them. "So now you wonder, 'OK, why won't anyone help this weak family?'" Bong said. "Then, to flip that even more on its head, you think, 'Well, has the country, the state, the society, the system ever helped the weak person?' It's a universal question, not just in Korea. And with that you introduce all the political satire, social satire. But the thing that connects everything, I think, is definitely the family." The Host is now playing in limited release. —Ian SpellingPremonition De-Glams McMahon

The makers of the time-bending thriller film Premonition told SCI FI Wire that it was a challenge transforming Australian hunk Julian McMahon—best known as ultra-suave Dr. Christian Troy on F/X's Nip/Tuck—into an ordinary guy. "It was funny for me to see them take Julian McMahon and put him in off-the-rack Wal-Mart shirts and stuff," screenwriter Bill Kelly said in an interview. "I wanted him to be an ordinary person, a car salesman."

In Premonition, McMahon—who also played wealthy playboy Victor Von Doom in Fantastic Four—plays a suburban father whose wife, played by Sandra Bullock, has premonitions of his death in a horrific car accident.

Bullock said that McMahon had to be ordinary, but sexy. "They could have been prom queen and king," she said of the characters. "They were the sparkle in everyone's eye, and here they are. ... He is a workhorse. He takes his craft very seriously, and I felt very comfortable with him. ... And he is really tall; he made me look tiny. I love that."

McMahon said that he had trouble at first with the idea. "It was about making him an ordinary guy," he said. "I thought that the car-salesman thing was weird, but you also have to remember that we tried to do this kind of small-town thing. We tried to make everything as sort of normal as possible, and everything was sort of mainstream, and that was just a part of it. I always felt that it was weird, though, and not only that, but the choice of his car. Did you see his car? It was like, 'Couldn't he get a better car?' But, look, it was all kind of a part of trying to, I guess, normalize things in a very kind of bizarre circumstance, and that's the movie." Premonition opened March 16. —Mike SzymanskiPremonition's Bullock Not Genre

Sandra Bullock, who stars in the paranormal thriller film Premonition, told SCI FI Wire that she doesn't want to be boxed into a genre, even though she's recently completed a string of similarly themed movies. "I've only done two movies about [time travel]," Bullock responded somewhat defensively when asked. "Well, I have done one movie about time travel [The Lake House], I have done one movie about days being out of order [Premonition], and I have done one movie about magic [Practical Magic]. I hate generalizations. I hate it when it gets looped together, because to me they are very specific and different. I want the people who made those films not to be lumped together [and] their uniqueness to be taken away."

Personally, Bullock is open to believing many things that might strike others as science fiction or paranormal. In Premonition, Bullock plays a wife who foresees the death of her husband in an automobile accident, then lives her week out of order. She said that she's open to the idea of clairvoyance.

"I do think that there is something to human nature, if you want to call it intuitiveness, a gut instinct, people who know things that have happened," Bullock said. "No one has proof that I know of that a higher power exists, and yet a major portion of the world believes in it and relies on it in faith and trusts in what that is. Where is the science to that? But yet you have incredible belief in that, so when someone says to me, 'I have a bad feeling that something is going to happen,' and then it [does], I don't know how to explain it. It can't be explained by science, but I believe in that happening. I think there is something bigger than we understand, but I don't think it is supported and nurtured in people. I think people think you are crazy, and unless it can be proven by science it is not valid."

Premonition, which also stars Julian McMahon, Nia Long and Kate Nelligan, opened March 16. —Mike SzymanskiPremonition Made Bullock Nuts

Sandra Bullock, who stars in the paranormal thriller Premonition, told SCI FI Wire that the movie was shot out of order, and its complex timeline drove her crazy. "I was miserable," Bullock said. "I had such a hard time. I really had a hard time with it. I think that anyone who would have done that, when you stay at that level for three months, you are bound to bring it home."

In Premonition, Bullock plays a housewife who lives a week out of order, knowing that her husband is going to die in a car accident. "I am sure that I drummed up some of my own stress and drama," she said.

Bullock said that she trusted director Mennan Yapo, but still felt stressed. "I will make myself sick on film just because you want everything to be right," she said. "I have had different hard times, but never anything like this, because this you put yourself in a state. Your love has died, and your life is out of order. You don't know what has happened. That kind of grieving, I think anyone would just sort of want to go to therapy afterwards. But that basically was therapy," Bullock added with a laugh.

Bullock herself recently married. "I have played lots of wives and moms before this," she said. "Being married doesn't change or hasn't changed how I would have approached it. Thinking for three months, now being married, what if my husband was killed? It put me in a bad place. It put me in a really bad place. Sometimes, all couples will tell you, 'I want to kill him! I want to kill him!' But I would never want that to actually happen."

Bullock said that the intensity of the experience actually helped her performance. "I actually take great pleasure in saying I thought I was going to lose it," she said. "I went to the director and said, 'I am having a hard time. I don't know what to do.' And the smile on his face when he heard, he goes, 'No, this is exactly where you need to be.' I was like, 'No, it's not!' [But] I understood completely the method to his madness."

Premonition also stars Julian McMahon, Nia Long and Kate Nelligan. It opened nationwide on March 16. —Mike SzymanskiValletta Bites Into Twilight

Amber Valletta will star in CBS' supernatural drama pilot Twilight, about a private investigator (Alex O'Laughlin) who is a vampire, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Twilight comes from Warner Brothers Television and Silver Pictures.

Valletta will play the P.I.'s immortal love, a vampire who turned him after biting him on their wedding night.

O'Laughlin and Shannon Lucio were cast in the pilot last week. Lucio will play an ambitious TV reporter who becomes close with the vampire.

In other pilot news, ABC's time-travel drama pilot Life on Mars, based on the BBC series, has been pushed back because of difficulties casting the lead. The David E. Kelley Productions and 20th TV drama is now being targeted for midseason.Impact Wraps Axis Trilogy

Australian alternate-history author John Birmingham told SCI FI Wire that his latest novel, Final Impact, concludes his Axis of Time trilogy. " [Final Impact] attempts to tie up the million threads of shredded history that got torn apart when an unstable wormhole sucked a [United Nations] carrier battle group from our near future back into 1942," Birmingham said in an interview.

When the ships arrive in 1942, they inadvertently prevent the battle of Midway from ever happening, Birmingham said. "[As a result,] Hitler and Stalin learned their eventual fates and began to move mountains, quite literally, and murder millions to avoid what was coming," he said. "In the West, eight decades of social and technological development got crammed into a couple of years. Some people got rich, some fell in love, some died who would have lived. In Final Impact all of these threads are drawn together over a couple of weeks, commencing with the invasion of Western Europe in May 1944, an alternate D-Day spearheaded by helicopter-borne cav troopers, and ending with the world looking a much uglier place than it had in the original 1945."

Birmingham said that the beating heart of the series is Adm. Kolhammer. "[He's] the fleet commander who gets tipped out of his own timeline and has to make amends for 'ruining' the history of the world in which he and his fleet arrive," he said. "Since it looks like the Nazis and imperial Japan might actually win the war for a short time after he messes everything up, there's quite a few amends to make. ... He's a warrior, a very conservative breed. A man of rather rigid morals, which is unusual in public life these days. In the context of our time he'd probably be considered a rather shell-backed conservative. But because he's been stranded 80 years in the past, to the contemporaries ... of the 1940s, he often looks like a dangerous liberal. A radical, in fact, because [of] his views on racial and sexual equality."

The series began as a happy accident, Birmingham said. "A couple of years ago I was working on a nonfiction history project," he said. "Towards the end of it I was getting pretty tired and was looking for a distraction. One day, instead of doing my allotted research, I picked up a copy of Matt Reilly's Ice Station and the Jack Dann anthology Dreaming Down Under. They were both enormous fun, and ... I [got] some ideas for my own piece of speculative fiction. ... I started to think about doing some sort of alternate-history/techno-thriller crossover, because I'm also [a] big fan of that genre. I guess that's where the idea for [the first book in the series,] Weapons of Choice, really firmed up. Although originally, the task force was transported back to an alternate 1946, where the Axis had already won. My editor, Steve Saffel, convinced me to change that to a real 1942, and looking back, he was right." —John Joseph AdamsBRIEFLY NOTED

TMZ.com reported a rumor that Transformers director Michael Bay will produce and possibly helm a movie based on Whitley Strieber's upcoming novel 2012: The War for Souls for Warner Brothers, about the year that is supposedly one of either great transformation or apocalypse.

IESB.net reported that Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes) would remake Piranha, and Variety confirmed it.

Spider-Man 3 will be released in an IMAX version throughout the world on the same day it opens in conventional theaters, May 4.

The United Kingdom's Sky One is asking viewers to vote for their favorite Stargate SG-1 episodes and enter a contest to win an autographed SG-1 script and a complete set of DVDs at the network's Web site; the winning episodes will air March 31-April 1.

Yancy Butler, who starred in the cable TV show Witchblade, has been charged with driving under the influence after crashing her Saab 900 into a wire guardrail in Connecticut, the Associated Press reported. Butler, 36, was also charged with failure to drive in the established lane.

SCI FI Wire's Photo Gallery page features a new look at the U.S. Postal Service's Star Wars promotion.

The JustJared Web site reported that High School Musical star Zac Efron is in talks to star in the lead role of the Wachowski brothers' live-action adaptation of the animated Speed Racer cartoon series.

Warner Independent Pictures will remake the German comedy Night of the Living Dorks, and has set Chris Bishop to write the script, about three not-so-cool school friends who decide to try an old voodoo ritual, die in a car crash and find themselves reborn as zombies.

F/X has bought the cable rights to Night at the Museum, along with three other 20th Century Fox theatricals, for a total license fee of about $30 million, Variety reported.

New Line Cinema has acquired the pitch The Black Path, with newcomer Henry Jones to pen the script, about the search for the Incan treasure of Atahualpa, which has never been found but is believed to be cursed, Variety reported.

IGN.com has posted an account of the Transformers footage screened to theater owners at ShoWest in Las Vegas.

Carol Burnett, Seth Rogen, Will Arnett, Isla Fisher, Dan Fogler, Amy Poehler, Dane Cook, Jaime Pressly and Jonah Hill will voice roles in the upcoming animated film Horton Hears a Who, starring Jim Carrey and Steve Carell and based on the Dr. Seuss book, Variety reported.

Strangers With Candy director Paul Dinello has signed on to helm the Fox pilot Me & Lee?, a half-hour single-camera comedy, about a guy with chronic back pain who gets more than he bargained for when he undergoes "bionic" back surgery in a secret basement lab run by Lee Majors, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The IMAX version of the hit 300 drew a record $3.6 million at 62 IMAX theaters in its opening weekend, the company reported.

Warner Brothers has moved the release date for its upcoming supernatural thriller film The Reaping up by one day, to April 5 from the original April 6.

Hellboy star Ron Perlman told Newsarama that the producers are pushing him to play the role of the Comedian in Watchmen, the proposed film version of Alan Moore's graphic novel, which Larry Gordon and Lloyd Levin are producing and Zack Snyder is directing.

Jamey Sheridan has joined CBS' supernatural drama pilot Babylon Fields, about a Long Island town where the dead come to life; Sheridan will play a zombie, a former bullying man and a wife-beater, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Luke Wilson, Amanda Peet, Dennis Quaid, Justin Long and Chris Evans have signed to provide voices for Snoot Entertainment's upcoming computer-animated SF film Terra, about the interplanetary conflict between the inhabitants of a peaceful world and the human warriors who want to colonize it, Variety reported.

IGN.com reported that an original cast recording of the off-Broadway Evil Dead: The Musical, based on Sam Raimi's cult horror movie, will drop on April 24.

A Finnish member of parliament is aiming for re-election by campaigning with a translation of his Web site into Star Trek's Klingon; Jyrki Kasvi calls himself an ardent Trekkie, the Reuters news service reported.

Harry Potter will appear on a special set of 10 stamps created by the French postal service and Warner Brothers Consumer Products, Variety reported.

Stargate: The Ark of Truth, the first ot two straight-to-DVD films based in the universe of SCI FI Channel's Stargate SG-1, begins filming April 17 in Vancouver, Canada; it follows SG-1 as the team searches for an ancient weapon that could help them defeat the Ori. A second film, Stargate Continuum, starts up in June, the SneakPeek.tv blog reported.

Warner Brothers announced that its upcoming live-action film version of Speed Racer will open on May 9, 2008, two weeks earlier than previously slated.