Scott Talks Blade Refinements

Ridley Scott, director of the seminal 1982 SF movie Blade Runner, told SCI FI Wire that the upcoming 25th-anniversary "final cut" DVD is a refinement of the current director's cut, with some reshoots to correct a couple of technical errors. Most notably, Scott shot new footage of Joanna Cassidy as the replicant Zhora, in her death scene as she's running through plate glass windows, to replace the existing footage in which the stuntwoman is clearly visible. (Cassidy even used the original clear raincoat costume from the film, which she had kept.)

Scott said he made the refinements, "I think, because the film is damaged." He added that he was perfectly content to leave the movie as it was, but fans and critics kept clamoring for Scott to fix the movie. "They kept coming back to me," he said. "They kept coming to me. I didn't go on the phone, whining [on] the phone, 'Oh, let me.' I get on with life and move on, but the thing kept surfacing and coming up and bumping me in the head."

The main changes to the original theatrical release were the removal of the voice-over and the happy ending, which consisted of aerial mountain shots that were outtakes from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. But the new release will also correct the final scene, in which Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) releases a dove. In the old version of the movie, the dove flies upward into a blue sky against a metal wall; the correction fixes the scene to take place at night in the rain and removes the metal wall.

Scott also trimmed down scenes that ran long once the voice-over came out. "You suddenly have shots which are too long," he said. "So some slendering." But Deckard's (Harrison Ford) dream of a unicorn remains key. "The unicorn has been in, out, in, out, and it was always essential to me, because it's essential for the audience to understand that Deckard is a replicant," Scott said. Blade Runner: The Final Cut comes out in several editions on Dec. 18. —Patrick Lee, News EditorBlade's Scott Talks New Cut

Blade Runner director Ridley Scott spoke with SCI FI Wire about his upcoming "final cut" DVD at Comic-Con International in San Diego.
Paltrow Talks Iron Man

Gwyneth Paltrow, who co-stars with Robert Downey Jr. in Jon Favreau's upcoming Iron Man movie, told SCI FI Wire that she was glad to be working around real special effects, compared with her experience acting against virtual backgrounds in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

"It's easier, because it actually hurts your ears when the guns are shot or things blow up," Paltrow said in an interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego over the weekend. She added: "I mean, they did crazy things. ... I hope I'm not giving [things away], you know, ... but, yeah, they really blew things up, and it was like, wow. ... It's not your average day at work. It's like eight hours to set all the charges. It was, 'We're really going to blow this whole thing up?'"

Paltrow, who returns from an extended maternity leave for her first film role in more than a year, plays Virginia "Pepper" Potts, the "Girl Friday" and confidante of billionaire industrialist Tony Stark (Downey), who is secretly Iron Man.

"She's really the closest person to him," Paltrow said. "Because he's a womanizer and kind of a loose cannon, and she's sort of his center, in a way." Paltrow added: "Our relationship, for me, is at the heart of the film, and it was a very layered, real, complicated relationship."

Paltrow appeared at Comic-Con wearing a skin-tight dark pink dress and 5-inch stilletto heels. "Don't show my orthopedic surgeon my shoes," said the actress, who recently recovered from a fractured knee. "It's coming along. I got off the crutches two weeks ago, and the cane yesterday. And doing a lot of physical therapy, and I'm seriously not supposed to be in these shoes, but that's OK."

Before she broke her knee, Paltrow trained hard to get in shape for Iron Man following the birth of her son, Moses, in April 2006. "I was like post-baby ... nightmare," Paltrow said. "So I worked really, really hard. I have an amazing trainer, and you know, I worked out twice a day and did, like, dance cardio and felt like a complete nerd. And I just really worked hard, and I got in shape. And I got a stomach bug in Mexico, which really helped. And there you go, I was ready to go." Iron Man opens May 2, 2008. —Patrick Lee, News EditorDowney At The Heart Of Iron Man

Robert Downey Jr., who plays Tony Stark in Jon Favreau's upcoming Iron Man movie, told SCI FI Wire that he saw the comic-book story as the journey of a man coming to terms with himself.

"He just starts off as a guy who's desperate to save his own life, and very surprised that he was put into a position where he has to do so," Downey said in an interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego over the weekend.

In the film, which is based on the Marvel Comics series, Stark is a weapons manufacturer who is wounded in an ambush and has to have a high-tech electromagnet installed in his chest to keep him alive. Using his own inventive genius, Stark eventually crafts sophisticated armor that gives him superpowers and transforms him into the heroic Iron Man.

"I don't think it's a film about someone's conscience getting the better of them," Downey said. "I think it's a film about survival and being conflicted. I think it's a pretty apt metaphor for the 21st-century human being, you know?"

Downey appeared at Comic-Con wearing a blue striped suit that was originally tailored for his character.

"You'll notice it's my name on the inside," Downey said, opening the jacket to reveal a label that read "Robert Downey Jr." He added: "Actually, I think I probably bitched out the costume department, saying, 'Why doesn't it say Tony Stark on the inside?' [They said,] 'Well, because it was made for [you]. ... You're real, and he's not.' But I don't see it that way."

Downey Jr. performed much of the role wearing a glowing round "repulsor technology" mandala on his chest, over his heart. The symbolism was apt, he added. "It's all about the heart," he said. "You know, it's subtly laced throughout the footage you saw, but I got it. Everyday they'd be gluing an RT to my chest, and I'd be like, 'I wonder what the essence [of the film is]? Oh, yeah, there it is.' I'm the heart center. ... I've read a lot of Bodhi-tree bulls--t, and now I literally have it, like, glued to my heart." Iron Man opens May 2, 2008. —Patrick Lee, News EditorFavreau Talks Iron Man Villains

Jon Favreau, director of the upcoming Iron Man film, hinted that the villains in the first of a hoped-for film franchise will grow out of the technology that allows playboy industrialist Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) to become Iron Man in the first place.

Fans of the comics know that Iron Man's nemeses include his onetime friend, Jim Rhodes (played in the movie by Terrence Howard), who uses the Iron Man armor to turn against Stark. Another familiar villain is Stark's ruthless business rival Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges), who develops his own armored suit and becomes Iron Monger.

Favreau's casting and comments seem to confirm that both characters will figure prominently in the upcoming movie.

"I wanted everything to come out of the technology that Tony Stark developed and watch it grow out from there," Favreau said in an interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego last weekend. "And then, as you cut the movie together, and you see how it plays, and you learn the personality of the film, then go deeper and deeper."

Eventually, Favreau would like to deploy other villains from the Iron Man comic universe.

"The big villain's the Mandarin, but the Mandarin is not the type of villain where, right off the bat, you could watch them squaring off," Favreau said. "You can't stay true to the books ... without putting off the mainstream audience. ... As he's depicted in the books, I don't know that that depiction would work nowadays." (The Mandarin has been depicted as a stereotypical Asian villain, a la Fu Manchu, who fights with energy blasts that shoot out of his many rings.)

In addition, Favreau reasoned, "You can't have Sauron be the first person that Frodo meets up with. ... You have to lay enough down in the storyline so, as the story unfolds, you get there, but you also have to delve into the rogues' gallery and see." Iron Man is slated for release on May 2, 2008. —Patrick Lee, News EditorWatchmen Shot Like 300

Zack Snyder, who is directing a movie based on Alan Moore's Watchmen, told SCI FI Wire that he will shoot the film with some of the techniques developed in making 300, but will also make use of real sets for the story's alternate-universe New York City.

"We've got some sets built," Snyder said in an interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego over the weekend. "We are about to break ground on the backlot [in Vancouver, Canada]. The New York City backlot. So they laid the streets."

In other scenes, Snyder will shoot on simple stages and lay in virtual backgrounds and environments, as he did with ancient Greece in 300.

"Only for, like, Mars and Antarctica," Snyder said. "Because it's Mars. ... I mean, look, there's a sequence in the movie where you have, like, a [computer-generated] guy [Dr. Manhattan, played by Billy Crudup,] on Mars, looking at a giant glass palace that just grows out of the earth. OK, there's like something to shoot." Watchmen is slated for release on March 6, 2009. —Patrick Lee, News EditorVentimiglia Coy About Heroes

Milo Ventimiglia, who played Peter Petrelli in the first season of NBC's hit Heroes, appeared at Comic-Con International in San Diego over the weekend, raising the question: Didn't your character die in the first-season finale?

Speaking in an interview with SCI FI Wire, a newly shorn Ventimiglia remained coy when answering questions about the upcoming second season, which has already been shooting for six weeks.

"Yeah, we're already about six weeks in, five episodes in," Ventimiglia said, then added quickly: "Yeah. Some of us, some of us. ... I mean, maybe not us."

Ventimiglia was referring to co-star Zachary Quinto, who joined him in the interview and played the villainous Sylar last season, a character who was last seen stabbed in the heart, but who appeared to disappear down a sewer manhole at the episode's end.

"Not us, not us," Quinto added. "Maybe. If we don't come back to the show."

"Yeah, it's a possibility," Ventimiglia said. "It's a factor."

Complicating the matter: Footage screened at Comic-Con featured a heavily bearded Nathan Petrelli (Adrian Pasdar). Nathan, fans may recall, was also last seen flying into the air with Peter before a massive explosion erupted, appearing to kill them both in the season finale.

Earlier, artist Tim Sale suggested in a separate interview with SCI FI Wire that his artwork would appear in the second season, though the original artist, Isaac Mendez, was killed in the first season. Fans will also recall that Peter absorbed Isaac's painting abilities.

Heroes was one of the big hits of this year's Comic-Con, with 4,000 fans lining up for hours to see a panel that included creator Tim Kring and cast members Quinto, Ventimiglia, Ali Larter, Greg Grunberg and others.

The show returns for its second season on Sept. 24 and will air in the same timeslot, Mondays at 9 p.m. ET/PT. (NBC is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.) —Patrick Lee, News EditorHeroes Cast Talks To SCI FI Wire

The cast of NBC's SF hit Heroes talk with SCI FI Wire about their upcoming world tour to promote the show, with a few hints about the second season.Collins, Blackthorne Change Casts

Jessica Collins is joining the ever-expanding cast of NBC's Heroes, while Paul Blackthorne (SCI FI Channel's The Dresden Files) is joining the cast of ABC's Big Shots, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Collins (late of ABC's The Nine) will have a recurring role on Heroes, playing Sophie, a mysterious woman with powers who works at the organization that is tracking all heroes.

Blackthorne will play a sophisticated tycoon in Big Shots, which revolves around four high-powered CEOs or CEOs-to-be (Michael Vartan, Dylan McDermott, Christopher Titus, Joshua Malina) who socialize at the same exclusive golf club.

Blackthorne had the title role in SCI FI's Dresden Files. SCI FI Channel confirmed that The Dresden Files will not return for a second season. Larter Is Hot, Really, In Extinction

Ali Larter, the Heroes star who appears in the upcoming horror sequel Resident Evil: Extinction, told SCI FI Wire that the harsh filming conditions on the set in Mexico City made it easy to get into character.

"I always seem to work either in the freezing cold or the heat or the rain," Larter said in an interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego last weekend. "I'm always in some kind of crazy weather environment. And I enjoy it, because it allows me to totally stay in the present. If you're hot, you're hot. And there's no time to get caught up with the rest of it or to get tired. I mean, you're really in it. And specifically for this, I think it will definitely contribute just to how rough it would be if this would have happened and it was a post-apocalyptic world. And the heat and the thirst and the dry lips, I mean, that was us."

Extinction is the third film in the franchise, based on the popular video-game series. Larter joins the cast as Claire Redfield, part of a convoy of survivors fleeing a plague that has turned the majority of the world's population into zombies.

"It's a post-apocalyptic world, and it's really a dog-eat-dog world," Larter said. "You do what you have to do to survive. There's no bulls--t. There's no time for sentiments or kind of any fluff. It's a very rough world. So I think that's where you pick us up, and you'll see them come for us and the zombies come out."

Larter explained that much of the film's action takes place in the Nevada desert under conditions similar to those experienced by the cast and crew on set.

"There's a picture I have from when we were shooting where I'm so sweaty, my face is like a red little ball, and I'm holding the thermometer and the temperature is 128 degrees," she said. "And that is the truth. Like, we endured the most excruciating heat I've ever experienced in my life." Resident Evil: Extinction opens Sept. 21. —Cindy WhiteGaiman Praises Coraline's Selick

Neil Gaiman told SCI FI Wire that Henry Selick, who is directing the upcoming film version of Gaiman's children's novella Coraline, is perfect for the job. Selick, who has directed such stop-motion animation classics as The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach, is helming the movie, about Coraline, a young girl (voiced by Dakota Fanning), who stumbles upon a better version of her life in a parallel universe just beyond a wall in her building.

"That's beautiful," Gaiman said of Coraline while promoting the Aug. 10 release of Stardust. "It's that amazing thing where it's Henry Selick doing stop-motion. Henry is a great director."

Oddly enough, Gaiman cites Selick's little-seen Monkeybone as one of the reasons why he consented to Selick. The mostly live-action Monkeybone, about a cartoonist (Brendan Fraser) stuck in the world he created, was both a critical and a financial bust upon its release in 2001, but it's gained a cult following over the years.

"I'm one of the few people who loved Monkeybone," Gaiman said. "I think it's a mess, but I think it's a mess with more ideas in it than [most]. … Most movies only have one idea, and this one was a mess because it's got 100 ideas. But Henry is a genius when it's stop-motion. Nobody else can do that."

Gaiman added: "The lovely thing about Coraline is that it's got life. The bits that I have seen that are animated are so expressive. Dakota Fanning is great. Teri Hatcher [as the voice of both Coraline's mother and the alternate-reality mother] is great, which came as a bit of a surprise to me, because I sort of was very cynical when they said, 'Oh, we have got Teri Hatcher.' But she's great. John Hodgman, Jennifer Saunders, they're great. It's so cool. And the songs are by They Might Be Giants." Coraline will be released in 2008. —Ian SpellingStardust Made Uneasy Film Transition

Neil Gaiman, who produced the upcoming big-screen version of his fairy-tale-and-adventure novel Stardust, told SCI FI Wire that the translation from book to movie was anything but easy.

In the film, a mere mortal (Charlie Cox) and a fallen star (Claire Danes) meet and hate each other, at least until they fall in love. And their path to happiness is further complicated by the star's enemies, among them a powerful witch (Michelle Pfeiffer) and several ruthless princes (including Rupert Everett, Adam Buxton and Jason Flemyng).

"The toughest nut to crack for something like Stardust, for example, in changing it into a film ... there are a few things," Gaiman said in an interview. "There were the problems that we knew we had going in, because they were the problems that I had in 1998, 1999, when Miramax had the option on it briefly, and I got to do a treatment, and suddenly I came face to face with these things for the first time. The biggest one was if you are completely faithful to the pacing of the book, the hero won't be born for the first 15 or 20 minutes, and he's not going to meet the heroine until almost three-quarters of the way through the movie. That's a problem."

Also, Gaiman said, there are different pleasures to be had from reading a story versus experiencing it in a movie theater. He explained: "Something I did, that I took enormous joy in doing, and that I think is very pleasurable for readers or, if one can say this without sounding patronizing, the right kind of reader, is the way that when we get to the last few chapters the reader has a bird's-eye view of the action and knows more about what's going on than any of the characters down at ground level, and there comes a point toward the end of the book where characters are missing each other, things that a character has done earlier wind up dooming them later, and they go past each other, sometimes without any knowledge of quite what's happened. And we get to the final chapter, and we know just how close our hero and heroine came to not surviving the book, but they don't, which is kind of fun."

Gaiman worked with Matthew Vaughn, the film's director and co-screenwriter, and with co-screenwriter Jane Goldman and discussed what to drop, what to move and what to reimagine in order to make Stardust work as a movie.

"If you're sitting there in the audience, having sat through 85 minutes, and now everybody is missing each other, and the witch [Pfeiffer] is too old, and she's doomed herself by these actions back there, and Sextmus [Buxton] winds up trying to kill her and getting killed by her, but never knows who she is and what she's done, it would not be very satisfying in a film," Gaiman says. "So there's this point where you go, 'We need all of them in a room.'"

Gaiman added: "The biggest challenge in the whole thing [was] trying to figure out ways to make something work as a film. Sometimes it's doable, and sometimes I have no idea how you do it." Stardust opens Aug. 10. —Ian SpellingGaiman Dances With Death

Neil Gaiman told SCI FI Wire that he chose to make his directorial debut with a big-screen adaptation of his graphic novel Death: The High Cost of Living because he didn't want anyone else to "screw it up."

Gaiman's story follows Death, a Grim Reaper-like figure who happens to take the form of a personable young woman. Death was originally introduced as a character in Gaiman's Sandman comic-book series and quickly became a favorite of fans, as well as the British author/comic-book writer/graphic novelist and screenwriter.

"Death is so tonal," Gaiman said in an interview while promoting Stardust, his upcoming film based on the novel of the same name. "I'm so proud of The High Cost of Living, the graphic novel that it's based on, that I know that most of what works about Death is tone of voice and the way that it's told. If somebody made a bad Neverwhere movie, I can go, 'Well, there's the novel. It's decent.' If somebody made Death and they screwed it up, it would hurt. She's like my kid. If anyone's going to screw it up I'd rather it were me."

Gaiman went on to reveal that the project is moving along at a fairly decent clip. Guillermo del Toro will executive-produce the film, and it will likely be shot under the auspices of Picturehouse, for which del Toro directed the award-winning dark fantasy Pan's Labyrinth. "We have a budget," Gaiman said. "The biggest problem that Death has had is, because it's got Sandman characters, it all has to be somewhere under the giant Warner Brothers umbrella. So we started out at Warner Brothers, moved to New Line, went from New Line to Warner Independent Pictures, and we have now moved to Picturehouse. It's all Time Warner, but it's weird, because you're like dancing from one tentacle to the other of the corporate octopus. So I believe right now that Picturehouse is closing their version of the deal with Warner Brothers and with New Line." —Ian SpellingRodriguez, Lang Join Avatar

Michelle Rodriguez (Lost) and Stephen Lang have joined the cast of James Cameron's 3-D SF epic Avatar, Variety reported. They join Australian actor Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Wes Studi and C.C.H. Pounder in the performance-capture movie, which is in production in Los Angeles.

In October, the company will move to Wellington, New Zealand, close to Peter Jackson's Weta Digital, which is supervising the film's visual effects.

Lang plays a seasoned Marine Corps colonel who travels to the faraway planet Pandora to take charge of its troops. Rodriguez plays an ex-Marine pilot.

Avatar is a $190 million hybrid of live action and animation. Cameron's Lightstorm Entertainment team has researched a mix of live-action cinematography and virtual photorealistic production techniques that will feature virtual characters. Thirty-one days of live-action photography will begin on Weta soundstages in October.

Avatar, which will be filmed in a new digital 3-D format, is slated to debut on May 22, 2009. Miller Taps Macht For Spirit

Writer-director Frank Miller has tapped Gabriel Macht to star in Will Eisner's The Spirit, the Miller-scripted adaptation of the classic Eisner comic-book series.

Shooting on the movie, which is co-financed by Lionsgate and Odd Lot Entertainment, begins in October for release in 2009. Odd Lot partners Gigi Pritzker and Deborah Del Prete produce.

The Bronx-born Macht was most recently seen in The Good Shepherd.

The Spirit marks a solo directorial debut of Miller, who wrote the graphic novels Sin City and 300.

Macht will play the title character in The Spirit, a man who has faked his own death so he can battle crime from the shadows of Central City. He runs up against the Octopus, a villain who's bent on wiping out the entire city and who kills anyone unlucky enough to see his face.Daisies Gets Lost's Slot

ABC Television president Stephen McPherson told reporters that the upcoming fantasy series Pushing Daisies will debut in Lost's old timeslot because it's so quirky there isn't a lead-in show that would work for it.

"It's always challenging for new shows to find an audience, but I think its originality and the fact that it is different the way Lost was when Lost launched [make that timeslot appropriate] at 8 o'clock," McPherson said in a news conference in Beverly Hills, Calif., last month. "I think it is a show that, you know, doesn't fit neatly behind any other show."

Pushing Daisies, created by Bryan Fuller (Dead Like Me), is about a guy who brings dead people back to life and features some gruesome crimes and dead bodies. But ABC is promoting the show as a family series. (Barry Sonnenfeld directed the pilot.)

"To me, it's a family show," McPherson said. "I mean, the magical side of it, even the gore, if you will, of somebody being dead is going to be played like it is in the pilot, never in any way gratuitous and in fact humorous 99 percent of the time. So, for us, we feel like it actually is a good anchor to that night."

For his part, Fuller said he doesn't see the show as being morbid. "I don't think that you can look at death without looking at life, because it's kind of the punctuation to it," he said. "So I think there's something very magical and mystical about death, and I would say I'm much more of a magical and mystical person than a morbid person, because I love that sense of awe and spirituality of 'there's something greater out there that we don't know and we're not qualified to know and we won't know on this plane of existence.'"

Pushing Daisies stars Lee Pace, Anna Friel, Swoosie Kurtz and Kristin Chenoweth. It premieres Oct. 3 and will air Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT. —Mike SzymanskiFantasy Influenced ABC's Daisies

The new ABC show Pushing Daisies was inspired by great fantasy of the past and honors it with homages, the cast and crew told reporters.

Pushing Daisies, which movie director Barry Sonnenfeld helmed for the first 13 episodes, is about a guy (Lee Pace) who can bring people back to life with a touch. But if he touches them again, they fall back dead.

"I appreciate that some of you have described it as a bit Burton-esque, even though my name is Sonnenfeld," the director said, pointing out that the show was inspired by fellow helmer Tim Burton and the music of his longtime musical collaborator, Danny Elfman.

Series creator Bryan Fuller said that he used ideas left over from his Showtime series Dead Like Me, but also had in mind the movies Addams Family Values and Beetlejuice. "I can definitely cop to ripping off [the fanciful fantasy elements of the French film] Amelie," he added.

Dealing with whimsy and crime seems like a tough combination, but, Fuller said, "we're actually filming on the same stages that Wonder Woman filmed, oddly enough. The tone of the show is that tricky balance between sweetness and a little bit of darkness, but darkness not in a way that is too morbid or depressing. The show is a fun show."

The cast includes such Broadway stage actors as Kristin Chenoweth, Swoosie Kurtz and Ellen Greene. That seems to suggest a possible musical episode, a la Buffy the Vampire Slayer. "I'm excited about that episode," Greene gushed. "We were told actually [about the possibility] when I was auditioning."

Fuller said he wrote the pilot for Pushing Daisies as he was finishing up episode 17 of NBC's Heroes and called that time "the best experience I have ever had in 10 years of writing and producing TV." Pushing Daisies will premiere Oct. 3 and air Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT. —Mike SzymanskiAmsterdam Is Benched For Now

Fox has postponed the premiere of New Amsterdam, its upcoming series about an immortal detective in New York, though the show remains in production for a January debut, Variety reported.

Network executives said the move was made in order to improve Fox's chances in the fall, where it has struggled in recent years. The move takes a new, unproven show off the air while keeping Don't Forget the Lyrics, a mild summer hit, on the schedule.

Fox has already announced that New Amsterdam will run Fridays at 9 p.m. ET/PT come January.Universal's Future Ride To Close

The venerable Back to the Future ride at the Universal Studios theme park in Los Angeles will close down forever on Labor Day, after which time it will be revamped as a new Simpsons-themed ride scheduled to open in summer 2008.

In anticipation of the 14-year-old attraction's imminent demise, Future co-star Christopher Lloyd (Doc Brown) appeared at the theme park on Aug. 2 and told SCI FI Wire that, for him, "it's been a great ride!"

The ride has been a fixture at the theme park since 1993, hosting what park officials estimate is 61 million flights.

As part of the closure countdown, Universal is sponsoring an online contest for fans to submit 90-second video tributes to the ride and movies and a sweepstakes to win a 1981 stainless-steel DeLorean auto like the one transformed into a time machine in the movies.

Also on hand at the ceremony were the movies' special-effects supervisor, Kevin Pike, and screenwriter Bob Gale, who was nominated for an Oscar for the first Back to the Future. Gale said the time-travel movie "still resonates today with kids." (Universal Studios is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.) —Mike SzymanskiSpaceman Is Tale Of Two Men

SF&F author Brian Francis Slattery told SCI FI Wire that his novel Spaceman Blues is about two men: Manuel Rodrigo de Guzman Gonzalez, who disappears, and Wendell Apogee—his lover—who goes to find him.

"As Wendell follows the scant trail that Manuel left behind, he comes to realize that Manuel was in much more trouble than he ever thought; and as he gets involved in that trouble himself, he understands that he has to become something else to deal with it," Slattery said in an interview. "The search for Manuel takes Wendell all around and under New York City, into cockfights and carnivals and back out again, and it ends in both bangs and whimpers"

Wendell Apogee is an ordinary person whose devotion to the man he loves drives him to become something extraordinary, Slattery said. "I've always gravitated [to] stories about people learning who they are and what they're capable of," he said. "My favorite versions of those stories are in Greek and Celtic myths and present-day superhero and science fiction stories. I love the speck of hope and resilience that always seems to be built into it, no matter how bad things get."

Thinking back to the inspiration for the book, Slattery said that it began literally as the book begins: with a man who vanishes, a rush of sound and images, and another man walking home alone in falling confetti as epic parties sprawl around him.

"I suppose I also knew from the outset that I wanted to write a book that never tried to hide," Slattery said. "I wanted it to bare its emotions without being coy about it or apologizing for it, and I wanted it to move, to be about people who do things, to deploy at once the ideas that it stumbled across rather than saving them up."

From there, Slattery wrote the book sentence by sentence without thinking too much about where it was going or why, he said. "Of course, that meant that the first draft of the book was a big mess, so I went back to the beginning and focused the book more around what I knew then were its central themes: immigration, the underground economy, music and the ways in which people who understand the temporariness of everything as a daily reality live their lives," Slattery said.

Slattery said that the story isn't personal in the sense that it's about himself, but it is in the sense that it's about the parts of New York City that he loves. "Its obsessions are also mine to a certain extent, though it's hard to say how it could be otherwise," he said. "In another sense, it's about people I've met, whose lives I've seen and am in awe of, because they refuse to be victims even though their lives are so hard. And it is personal in the sense that its worldview is mine, or at least the one that I try to have, though it's easier on paper than it is in real life." —John Joseph AdamsDark Is Now The Seeker

The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising is the new name of the movie from Fox Walden based on the second of Susan Cooper's five fantasy books. The studio made the change on July 27.

Originally titled simply The Dark Is Rising, the movie is being adapted by writer John Hodge (Trainspotting) and director David L. Cunningham ("The Path to 9/11"). It opens Oct. 5.

The Dark Is Rising, which won the Newbery Honor in 1974, mixes Arthurian and other English folklore themes in its time-hopping narrative about young Will Stanton, who discovers that he is the Seeker and one of the last remaining "Old Ones," guardians and warriors of the Light.

In the movie, Will (Alexander Ludwig) is befriended by the mischievous Merriman Lyon (played by Deadwood star Ian McShane) and the ethereal Miss Greythorne (Six Feet Under's Frances Conroy). Will must gather the six Signs, or mystical medallions, in order to combat the Dark. But Will faces a potent adversary, called simply the Black Rider (Christopher Eccleston), a malevolent figure on a massive horse, whose goal is to stop Will and seduce him to the Dark.Cain Flies To Smallville

Dean Cain, who played the Man of Steel in ABC's Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, has booked a guest shot on The CW's Smallville, Variety reported. Cain will play Dr. Curtis Knox, a villainous killer.

Cain's appearance is scheduled to air as the fourth episode of the show's seventh season, which kicks off Sept. 27.

Cain follows in the footsteps of another former Superman: The late Christopher Reeve guested on the show during its second and third seasons, playing Dr. Virgil Swan. Shrek 4 Gets 2010 Release

DreamWorks Animation and Paramount will release the fourth installment in the lucrative Shrek franchise on May 10, 2010, Variety reported.

Warner Brothers, meanwhile, has set its release of filmmaker Zack Snyder's Watchmen for March 6, 2009. Snyder's follow-up to 300 begins shooting this fall.

In an earnings call earlier this week, DreamWorks Animation chief Jeffrey Katzenberg announced there will be a fifth Shrek as well.

Shrek the Third has grossed more than $320 million at the domestic box office and nearly $400 million overseas since premiering this summer.Imperioli Joins Jackson's Bones

Emmy winner and current nominee Michael Imperioli (HBO's The Sopranos) has joined the all-star cast of Peter Jackson's adaptation of The Lovely Bones for DreamWorks, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Imperioli joins Rachel Weisz, Ryan Gosling, Susan Sarandon, Stanley Tucci and newcomer Saoirse Ronan in the big-screen version of Alice Sebold's best-seller.

The story centers on a young girl who is murdered but continues to observe her family on Earth after her death. She witnesses the effect of her demise on her loved ones, while her killer skillfully covers his tracks and prepares to murder again.

Imperioli will play Len Fenerman, the detective in charge of investigating the girl's death.

Jackson is directing the movie, whose script was written by Jackson, Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh.Lopez To Helm Time-Travel Film

Chilean filmmaker Nicolas Lopez will write and direct an untitled SF project, a comedy thriller about a young woman who is sent to the past to prevent World War III, Variety reported. It's one of the projects from Salma Hayek and partner Jose Tamez's new MGM-based production company Ventanazul, the trade paper reported.

The company is tapping hot young talent from Mexico, Chile and the U.S. for its first three projects.

The comedic fantasy Bones Family will be co-written and directed by Mexican brothers Gabriel and Rodolfo Rivapalacio, creators of Una pelicula de huevos, the second-highest-grossing movie of all time in Mexico, after The Crime of Father Amaro. Bones Family centers on a father who tries to unite his dysfunctional family by taking them on a trip to Las Vegas.Tripper Mixes Satire And Slasher

Actor-turned-director David Arquette told SCI FI Wire that his upcoming feature-film-helming debut, The Tripper, is a political satire wrapped up in a slasher movie. "It's about a group of drugged-out hippies that go to an outdoor music festival and get stalked and attacked by a killer who's obsessed with Ronald Reagan," Arquette said in an interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego on July 27.

Arquette's wife (and former Friends star) Courtney Cox Arquette plays Cynthia in the film. David said that he enjoyed the opportunity to tell his wife what to do. "She plays a hippie in the film, and all the hippies in the film die really badly," he said. "So it was fun."

Fans of David Arquette's onscreen work in Scream will be happy to hear that he doesn't just work behind the camera. "I play a character named Muff, who's like a marijuana farmer and sort of logger."

The Tripper, which had a limited 50-theater release, will be available on DVD on Oct. 30. —Gordon HolmesStevenson Headlining New Punisher

Lionsgate is overhauling The Punisher, setting an October start date for a new franchise that will feature Rome star Ray Stevenson, Variety reported. (Stevenson's casting was first reported by Latino Review.)

Director Lexi Alexander, the German-born former world kickboxing champ who directed Hooligans, will helm the film, which will aim for an R rating, the trade paper reported.

Nick Santora, Kurt Sutter, Matt Holloway and Art Marcum wrote the script. Gale Anne Hurd and Marvel Studios' Kevin Feige are producing with Avi Arad. MHF Zweite Academy Film is financing.

The new project will mark the third screen incarnation for The Punisher, which originated as a comic book about Frank Castle, a Marine-turned-vigilante who is driven by a desire to avenge the murder of his family after they witness a gangland killing.

The property was turned into a 1989 film that starred Dolph Lundgren and then into a 2004 film that starred Thomas Jane.Crank Team Cranks Up Hex

ShockTillYouDrop.com reported that Brian Taylor (Crank) will co-write and direct Jonah Hex, the Warner Brothers supernatural western based on the DC Comics title, with his Crank partner Mark Neveldine.

"The movie is going to straddle a fine line of supernatural stuff," Taylor told the site. He added: "It's going to be dark and dirty. Fly-covered, nasty ... lots of amputees."

Before Neveldine and Taylor do Hex, they will first do Game, a movie with 300 star Gerard Butler, which is an SF thriller a la Rollerball. Filming begins this November, the site reported.Invincible Tackles Literary Superheroes

Best-selling author Austin Grossman told SCI FI Wire that his novel Soon I Will Be Invincible shows the familiar characters and situations of superhero comics, but from the inside, recasting the stock figures as real people.

"Doctor Impossible, evil mastermind, a classic supervillain in midcareer, waits in jail after his 12th attempt to take over the world," Grossman said in an interview. "He's lost his island fortress; his ex-girlfriend's decided to date a superhero. He's starting to wonder if the smartest man in the world has done the smartest thing he could with his life."

Fatale is a cyborg, the product of a traffic accident and a corporate experiment, Grossman said. "What does a woman in her mid-20s do, with amnesia, armor plate, a fusion reactor and an intrinsic targeting computer?" he said. "She tries working for the government, and when she's fired, she tries to be a superhero, whatever that is. Then she gets her big break, drafted onto a world-famous superteam, the Champions, and starts to see superhero life from the inside."

The plot kicks into motion when Doctor Impossible's nemesis, CoreFire, disappears, Grossman said. "He was supposed to be the perfect superhero, and he's missing, and now both sides are trying to figure out what happened," he said. "And of course, Doctor Impossible will escape from prison and is still trying to take over the world, and somebody has to stop him."

The book started as an experiment to see what a supervillain would be like if you wrote him into a mainstream "literary" short story and watched him function in that world, Grossman said. "It grew from a private joke to a pastime in between classes in graduate school," he said. "The character of Fatale emerged second—I've always been fascinated by cyborgs, and I wanted to write about the internal dynamics of a superhero team. Only very late in the process did I admit to myself I was writing an actual novel about superheroes."

Transposing superheroes into literary fiction was fun but not simple, Grossman said. "My main worry was just convincing people I was doing something serious and heartfelt, and not just a one-off joke," he said. "I love the way writing superheroes in prose let me tell different sides of the superpowered experience—what it feels like to inhabit a body with superpowers, what heroes and villains really think about during a fight."

Parts of the process were quite difficult, Grossman said. "The tropes of superhero life were developed for a graphical format, after all, and describing a satisfying superhero fight was harder than I'd thought—evoking that complicated and viscerally kinetic action in prose took a lot of care," he said. "Not to mention trying to remember where everyone is standing."

Grossman put his body on the line in the interest of verisimilitude, he said. "Before I wrote the big set-piece fight between Doctor Impossible and the Champions, ... I had my friend (and reader/editor) punch me in the jaw four or five times, just so I'd know what it felt like," Grossman said. "Anything for my readers!" —John Joseph AdamsCaspian Goes Bigger, Darker

Mark Johnson, producer of the upcoming The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, told SCI FI Wire that the sequel will be darker and bigger than its predecessor, the hit Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

"This is a little bit darker, [and] it's a little bit more adult," Johnson said in an interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego over the weekend. "You know, it involves some tricky stuff, some things that Caspian discovers about himself and about his uncle. And so it is, ... sort of by definition, a little bit darker."

The follow-up to Lion, based on C.S. Lewis' book, finds the Pevensie children returning to Narnia, only to discover that a thousand years have passed and that the villainous King Miraz now rules the land. They set out to aid the exiled Prince Caspian and overthrow the king, with Aslan's help. Lion director Andrew Adamson returns to helm the sequel, which filmed largely in Prague last year.

"I think Andrew wanted to test himself," Johnson said. "I think he did a somewhat traditional telling of the last one, and he wanted to explore a little bit more, and so he used the fact that it was a little bit darker as a jumping-off place."

Johnson added that expectations are high because of the first film's success. "The assumption is that you have to be bigger," he said. He added: "It's got to be as good, certainly. You don't want to make a movie that's not as satisfying. But I think bigger is probably wrong. I don't know if the audience expects the effects to be more of them or more complicated. But it's like anything else, you still have to make a good movie."

Johnson and the Caspian crew unveiled a clip of the upcoming movie at Comic-Con over the weekend. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian opens May 16, 2008. —Patrick Lee, News Editor30's Hartnett Liked Graphic Novel

Josh Hartnett, who stars in the upcoming horror film 30 Days of Night, told SCI FI Wire that he's never been a fan of comic books, but that he was impressed with Steve Niles' graphic novel on which the film is based.

"I'm going to get shot for saying this, but I've never really read a lot of comic books," Hartnett said in an interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego, Calif., over the weekend. "But I flipped through this one and saw that the visuals were astounding, and I thought with the combination of [director David Slade] and those original visuals it was going to be a spectacular-looking film."

Hartnett stars in the film as Eben Olemaun, the sheriff of Barrow, Alaska, who struggles to save the town when a horde of vicious vampires attack during the dead of winter. Melissa George, Ben Foster and Danny Huston also star.

Hartnett added that the script adaptation retained much of what he liked about the source material. "I also thought there was room for a good character in there," he said. "The script as written was great. I mean, it had all the elements of a really interesting, thoughtful film about what it would be like to be stuck in a situation where you have no escape, and you're being hunted. And the idea of being hunted, not being able to just go out and kick some ass, I thought was different from most of your average action films or suspense films or horror films."

Besides the comic, the other big draw for Hartnett was the people involved. "We got an amazing cast," he said. "David pulled together an incredible cast, Ben and Danny Huston and Melissa. It just seemed like the right thing to do." 30 Days of Night opens Oct. 19. —Cindy White Battlestar's Sackhoff Talks Starbuck

Katee Sackhoff, who plays fighter jock Starbuck in SCI FI Channel's original series Battlestar Galactica, told SCI FI Wire that the upcoming fourth season won't answer the mystery of her return anytime soon.

"I believe that it will be a mystery all along," Sackhoff said in a telephone interview from the show's Vancouver, Canada, set. "I think it's going to be up to the audience who and what she is. And I think that they'll allow the audience to make their own judgments. Because I still don't know."

Executive producer David Eick, meanwhile, confirmed to SCI FI Wire that the mystery will eventually be answered. "Sure, sure," Eick said in an interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego over the weekend. "Just not right now [laughs]."

In the third-season finale, Starbuck appeared at the end, flying in a Viper alongside Apollo (Jamie Bamber) and revealing that she had been to Earth.

"The way that it has been presented to me, and the way that I'm playing it, is that Kara Thrace is a woman on a mission now," Sackhoff said. "And she's not going to let anything stand in her way. She is acting very human. I don't know what that means."

Sackhoff said as of last week that the show is currently shooting the fourth season's seventh episode. She offered this spoiler about the installment: "My character is dealing with a little bit of mutiny on her hands. And she is ... siding with some unlikely allies to accomplish her goals."

Sackhoff will be dividing her time in Vancouver between Battlestar and NBC's Bionic Woman, in which she has a recurring role and which shoots at the same studio lot as Battlestar.

"It's really nice," Sackhoff said. "It's exciting, especially since this is our last year. It's a tremendous opportunity to be able to have a beginning, a middle and an end to a show. And to be able to end it on your terms and not have the rug pulled out from underneath you." Battlestar Galactica's fourth and final season kicks off in November with a special two-hour event entitled "Razor." The show's additional 20 episodes will return in early 2008. —Patrick Lee, News EditorExtinction Is Last Evil?

Paul W.S. Anderson, the producer and screenwriter of Resident Evil: Extinction, told SCI FI Wire that his original intention was to create a trilogy based on the popular Capcom video games and that the upcoming sequel may be the last.

"I was always hoping we can make a trilogy of films, but what a filmmaker hopes and what it turns out to be are quite often very different," Anderson said in an interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego on July 28.

"The first movie was deliberately planned as a prequel to the series of video games," Anderson said. "I always thought it would be great to be a trilogy: the prequel, the movie that was set during the body of the game world and then the movie set after the game world, where eventually the resolution of the Resident Evil game world inevitably will be that these outbreaks will eventually not be controlled and the world will be destroyed."

Resident Evil: Extinction takes place in a post-apocalyptic world in which zombies survive in the sun, chasing survivors such as Alice (Milla Jovovich) and the ragtag group of humans trying to cross the Nevada desert to Alaska.

When asked whether there will be more sequels, Anderson laughed. "Wanting to avoid legal action from you, I should invoke Sean Connery at this point and say, 'Never say never again,'" Anderson said.

Anderson added: "But this movie brings to an end a lot of character story arcs, and a lot of characters die in this film, so it very much brings the trilogy to a close. Would we make another film in the future? I don't know. But, certainly, what I set out to make at the start, a trilogy that told a specific story, that's done. We always intended to make a trilogy, and we made one." Resident Evil: Extinction opens Sept. 21. —Tara DiLullo BennettConnor's Headey Does It Her Way

Lena Headey, who plays the title role in Fox's midseason series The Sarah Connor Chronicles, told SCI FI Wire that she appreciated the performance of Linda Hamilton in the first two Terminator films, but that she will have her own personal take on the character.

"Obviously Linda Hamilton is held in great fondness, and quite rightly, but I am my own woman," Headey said in an interview. "So I am doing what I feel is instinctively right for the role. And, also, this is a TV show, so it goes even further, emotionally. We have to. And we have more time. So I'm giving a nod to Linda out of respect, but I'm going to make Sarah my own."

The show, which may be retitled Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, picks up the story sometime after the events in Terminator 2: Judgment Day and follows the character and her son, John Connor (Thomas Dekker), as they run from a series of terminators sent from the future to hunt them down.

British actress Headey (300) said that the episodic format will allow the audience to learn more about her character than it did from the big-screen versions. "Because you're going to spend an hour with her every week, we will get to know her better," she said. "I think the sort of brilliance of how it begins is how reluctant she is to even be a mother in the first place. And she obviously has love for her son, but it begins right there. She's like, 'What am I actually doing?' And on top of that, I have to save him, because he has to save mankind, so it's a different situation."

Although Sarah evolved into a strong, confident woman in the films, Headey sees another side to her that she'd like to explore. "Ultimately, I think her vulnerability, which is vast, will be in the series, but you don't see it at first," she said. "She has a bigger job at hand. It's all in front for her, I think. She can't even slow down for a minute and take a look at herself, otherwise I think she'd probably break." The Sarah Connor Chronicles will premiere on Fox in early 2008. —Cindy WhiteClarke's Mickey May Return To Who?

Noel Clarke, who played Mickey Smith on the first two seasons of the BBC's Doctor Who, hinted to SCI FI Wire that he may be returning to the show in the upcoming fourth season, even though his character was left stranded in an alternate dimension.

Besides acting in Doctor Who, Clarke also wrote an episode of the first season of Torchwood, a spinoff series starring John Barrowman. When asked whether he would be writing any more scripts, he was coy about his availability. "I'm not doing the second [season] of Torchwood," he said. "Because I'm doing things that I can't talk about."

Clarke's character was the on-and-off boyfriend of the Doctor's companion, Rose Tyler, played by Billie Piper. But when Piper left the series at the end of the second season, her character was sent to a parallel universe, along with Mickey and her parents, Jackie and Pete (played by Camille Coduri and Shaun Dingwall).

"I think over the two seasons, people really grew to like Jackie and Mickey and Pete," Clarke said. "And consequently, as Rose departed, they departed with her. I think it's great [that they're missed]."

As for how the writers would explain Mickey's possible return, Clarke offered a vague explanation. "It's a parallel universe, baby," he said. "The only thing I could say is that it's sci-fi, right? And in sci-fi, there's no real rules, is there?"

The first season of Torchwood premieres on BBC America on Sept. 9 and will air Wednesdays at 9 p.m. Meanwhile, the third season of Doctor Who is currently airing on the SCI FI Channel Fridays at 9 p.m. ET/PT. —Cindy White Cavemen Veers From TV Ads

The creators of the upcoming ABC sitcom Cavemen said that the idea may have started with the popular Geico TV commercials, but that the show will take things in a different direction.

"Geico owned the characters, and then ABC procured the rights to the characters," producer and writer Joe Lawson said in an interview at the recent Television Critics Association press tour in Beverly Hills, Calif.

The show deals with the lives of modern-day Cro-Magnons who try to fit into 21st-century American society. "I think there was some sort of glitch during the ice age, and these guys made it through," Lawson said.

Will Speck and Josh Gordon created the Geico commercials, featuring a caveman at the airport and another in a psychiatrist's office. Speck said it's not clear if the commercials will continue running. "I think there's a suspended period, but ABC is dealing with that," he said.

The show won't use storylines suggested by the commercials. As for the actors in the ads, only two of the three will appear in the series, Speck said.

"Unfortunately, two of them weren't available, and one of them is actually coming onto the series as a character named Maurice, who is Jeff Phillips," Speck said. "John Lehr, who was one of the cavemen who's very popular, is on a show called 10 Items or Less, which is a big focus in his life right now. And Ben Weber had a conflict as well, who was the other caveman. John Lehr and Jeff Phillips were actually in this pilot episode as well."

As for the show's theme, Speck said: "We all believe in this show as sort of a fish-out-of-water experience or what it feels like to want to belong to something and feel misunderstood."

Gordon said that a depiction like The Flintstones, for example, would be "deeply, deeply offensive" to the cavemen. Cavemen will debut Oct. 2 and air Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT. —Mike SzymanskiLawrence Helming Snow

Francis Lawrence (Constantine) will direct Snow and the Seven, Walt Disney Pictures' live-action East-meets-West take on the Snow White fairy tale, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Scott Rudin and Andrew Gunn are producing.

The story, a fantasy adventure, centers on a British girl being raised in 19th-century Hong Kong. When she realizes her destiny is to conquer an evil force, she must prepare to fight by being trained by seven Shaolin monks.

The long-gestating project was originally written by Josh Harmon and Scott Elder. The current draft is by Scott Moore and Jon Lucas. The studio said the title of the project is only a working title and will change.

The studio is eyeing a start in 2008, with China being the likely location of the shoot.Kings Mixes Medea And Merlin

Multiple-award-winning fantasy author Robert Holdstock, whose latest novel, The Broken Kings, is the third entry in his Merlin Codex series, told SCI FI Wire that the plot of the book is quite complex.

"Jason's legendary [sentient] ship Argo has come back in search of Merlin to confess (through her guardian spirit) a great, guilty secret," Holdstock said in an interview. "The secret must come out now because the Otherworld that borders the kingdom ruled over by [High King] Urtha is under the influence of a much older and very dangerous entity."

The passageways between the living and dead world are hostels—places of feasting and challenge—and these inns are rising everywhere, but they are corrupt, Holdstock said. "When the border is finally breached, Jason, Merlin and Urtha himself must sail to Shaper's Island in the Mediterranean Sea," he said.

Shaper's Island is a place of mazes, labyrinths and twists and turns of time, Holdstock said. "[There,] Argo's secret can be revealed and the invasion from the Otherworld reversed," he said. "Or can it? At the heart of the problem is the wedding gift that Jason gave Medea when they were lovers. And as the Greeks found out at Troy, no gift is given without consequences."

Holdstock said the series was inspired in part by a performance he saw of Medea, the tragic play by the Greek writer Euripides. "In the legend, Medea—in a fury at Jason, her husband—kills his two sons by her," he said. "On the stage, the two bloody corpses of the boys were placed in a glass coffin. While the action stormed around them, they could be seen to be giggling and chatting below their bloodstained shrouds."

It then occurred to Holdstock that perhaps Medea's murderous act had been an illusion, breaking Jason's heart but keeping her sons alive and hidden from him, he said. "But where to hide them? In the future!" Holdstock said. "The future would be beyond Jason's grasp, but Medea—semi-immortal—would catch up with her beloved boys in due course. Alas, she reckons without Merlin and his friendship with Jason and his ability to resurrect the dead man 700 years later."

Holdstock has always become attached to the characters in his novels, he said. "I feel Merlin is very much a reflection of my own self when I was his age," Holdstock said. "I understand what makes him afraid; I understand his reluctance to contemplate the future. I identify with his compassion. And, as a child, I could never tie my laces!" —John Joseph AdamsChewbacca Head Part Of Auction

An original Star Wars Chewbacca head is among the Hollywood memorabilia being auctioned off by Profiles in History, Aug. 2-3, on eBay. The head is expected to fetch between $80,000 and $100,000, the auction house said.

Among the 1,000 items up for sale are Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber from Star Wars: Episode II—Attack of the Clones ($40,000-$60,000), Ewan McGregor's Obi-Wan Kenobi lightsaber from Star Wars: Episode 1—The Phantom Menace ($25,000-$35,000), the Grail tablet from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade ($30,000-$40,000), the Statue of Liberty head from Planet of the Apes ($30,000-$40,000) and the original Johnny-Five robot from Short Circuit and Short Circuit 2 ($100,000-$150,000).

Bidding begins at noon both days, and bids can be placed either in person; via mail, phone or fax; or on eBay Live Auctions.30 Makes Vampires Scary Again

David Slade, who directed the upcoming horror film based on the graphic novel 30 Days of Night, told reporters that he wanted to make vampires scary again.

"They don't say a little Rimbaud poem and then take your arm," Slade said in a news conference at Comic-Con International in San Diego over the weekend. "No, they just jump and rip off and eat and feed, because one of the things I didn't want to do was rely on the supernatural, because supernatural isn't scary."

Steve Niles, who wrote the original graphic novel and worked on the screenplay for the film, said in the same news conference that Slade merely picked up on the main concept that he and illustrator Ben Templesmith had for the book.

"That was something when Ben and I were doing the comic," he said. "I think we were both really aware that vampires aren't scary anymore. They hang out with you, teenage girls date them on TV, they're not scary. We've made them too human. We had to strip away all that, and the idea of a creature that looks very much like us that looks at us like cattle, like food, and that is it. And that was something me and Ben really wanted to do—actual, frightening vampires again."

Josh Hartnett stars in the film as a sheriff of Barrow, Alaska, a small town so far north that the sun does not rise for 30 days straight during the winter. The conditions make it the perfect hunting ground for a group of vicious vampires, who use the romantic myths created by Hollywood and authors such as Anne Rice to their advantage.

In adapting the comic to film, Slade attempted to keep it as real as possible, while staying true to Templesmith's wildly imaginative images.

"Ben created a fantastic template, with the shark-like teeth, the black, dead eyes, and it was up to us to figure out how to do that and make it real and convincing," Slade said. "To make this a horror film, and a very scary one—which I believe we've succeeded in doing—you can't go into the realms of fantasy. So this was the biggest schism, because of course, Ben's illustrations were so fantastic, and we wanted to hang on to that. ... Such rich source material, but yet my ambition was to make a truly terrifying film. And of course, those are the two things that had to meet, the fantastic fantasy, beautifully drawn thing, and the gritty, real, terrifying thing." 30 Days of Night opens Oct. 19. —Cindy White Eick: Them Is Done For Fox

Producer/writer David Eick (NBC's Bionic Woman) told SCI FI Wire he has completed the pilot for the Fox SF series Them and is hoping for a midseason pickup. "We shot the pilot," Eick said in an interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego over the weekend. "We're picking up some new material for a possible midseason launch."

Them, which Eick is developing with director Jonathan Mostow and writer John McNamara, is based on Michael Oeming and Daniel Berman's graphic novel Six.

"That's about a sleeper cell in Los Angeles that's, of course, made up of aliens," Eick (SCI FI's Battlestar Galactica) said. "But aliens for whom human emotion is a deadly virus, and if they get too close to it they'll basically go crazy. And so it's a fascinating sort of look at the human condition and what makes a human being a human being. And how some of these aliens deeply long for and yearn for the things that make us human. So it's a very uplifting idea, but it's also a very violent show." —Patrick Lee, News EditorFanboys Eyes Christmas Opening?

Dan Fogler, one of the stars of Kyle Newman's upcoming Star Wars-themed Fanboys movie, told SCI FI Wire that the movie was bumped to a Jan. 18, 2008, release date from its previous August berth to accommodate additional shooting, but that the movie might be moved up to Christmas.

"I think that was about just getting [George] Lucas on board, and then getting him excited about it, and I think it got pushed back because they wanted to add more cool stuff to it," Fogler said in an interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego over the weekend. Fogler, who was promoting his upcoming sports comedy Balls of Fury, referred to Star Wars creator Lucas, who has agreed to lend visual effects and other help to Fanboys.

Fogler plays one of four guys who drive cross-country to Lucas' Skywalker Ranch in the 1990s to fulfill a friend's dying wish to see an advance screening of Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace.

Even that Jan. 18 date may slip, Fogler added. "It's always a race to see when is the best time to put this thing out there," he said. "They said it was going to be January 18th; I think now they're going to try to get it to Christmas. I'll know when I'm there, that's basically it. But I think it was because they do want to do some reshoots and put some cooler effects in it."

The filmmakers had hoped to open the movie in 2007, the 30th anniversary year of the original Star Wars movie. "Yeah," Fogler said. "But, like any artistic adventure, it ain't ready 'til it's ready. So I think they really wanted to, but it's a race. I think they're going to try and get it after Christmas." The movie also stars Sam Huntington, Jay Baruchel, Chris Marquette and Kristen Bell. —Patrick Lee, News EditorWall*E Is Pixar's First SF

Andrew Stanton, director of Disney/Pixar's upcoming computer-animated SF movie Wall*E, told SCI FI Wire that the movie marks the hit-making studio's first foray into science fiction.

"It came from lunch with [Pixar executives] John Lasseter and Pete Docter [and] Joe Ranft, and we were spitting out a lot of ideas the summer before Toy Story came out," Stanton (Finding Nemo) recalled. Someone came up with a question: What if mankind left Earth, and somebody forgot to turn the last robot off? That sparked Stanton's imagination.

"It's just such a lonely scenario," Stanton said in an interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego. He added: "That always just stayed around for me, for almost a decade. I just couldn't stop thinking about this little guy and what made him get into that situation and what made him get out of that situation. It's just such a lonely, Robinson Crusoe type of scenario for a little robot."

In the future world of Wall*E, the Earth is covered in trash from overconsumption. The human race decides to take a five-year cruise around the solar system, while robots such as Wall*E are left behind to clean up the mess. But the humans never return, and 700 years pass before Wall*E learns the reason the human race never came back: They have turned into couch potatoes who have grown accustomed to solar cruises on which robots tend to their every need.

"I never felt that I'd been in the sci-fi genre [before]," Stanton said. "In a non-mocking way, you know? Taking it seriously. Respecting the worlds and the characters and just truly believing they exist out there." Wall*E is currently scheduled for a June, 27, 2008, release date. —Patrick Lee, News EditorGet Smart Respects Original

Peter Segal, who directed the upcoming theatrical adaptation of the 1960s TV series Get Smart, told SCI FI Wire that he is aware that some fans have been skeptical about turning the show into a film, but as a fan himself, he wanted to honor the original as much as possible.

"I understand," Segal said in an interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego last weekend. "I am one of those people that adored this as a TV show, and you don't want filmmakers to come in there and screw it up. So we really paid close attention to the tone and tried to look at every detail possible to make this as close to the series as we could."

Segal was offered the film a few times before he finally accepted the directing job. The deciding factor, he said, was the casting of Steve Carell (NBC's The Office) in the role of Maxwell Smart, originated by Don Adams on the small screen. In an early conversation about the film, Segal warned Carell that he might experience some fan backlash, but the actor reassured him that it was nothing new for him.

"I said, 'You know, there are going to be a lot of people that hate us for attempting to do a movie version of Get Smart,'" Segal recalled. "He said, 'Pete, I just experienced that with The Office. People hated that we were trying to do a version of that great British series. And then when we came out, and we showed just a level of respect for the source material and made our own and it was good, we won friends.' And so he inspired me."

Despite the filmmakers' desire to be faithful to the show, there were a few elements that needed to be updated. But Segal pointed out that one of the main inspirations for the show—the James Bond series—is still going strong.

"A lot of humor came from the Cold-War-era political satire," Segal said. "So we made sure that we kept our finger on the pulse of what was going on globally and incorporated that into our humor. ... [Series creators Mel Brooks and Buck Henry] said that Maxwell Smart was the child of [Inspector Clouseau] and James Bond. ... And you look at Casino Royale, the great thing about that is, 'Oh, wow, they're going back to his roots. They're not just doing another one.' And it was fascinating. And so I think as long as you find ways to keep it fresh and don't just do the same old thing ... ." Get Smart opens June 20, 2008. —Cindy WhiteMagic Heads For U.K.'s Sky One

RHI Entertainment, the Mob Film Co. and Sky One have teamed for The Colour of Magic, a miniseries based on Terry Pratchett's fantasy novel to star Sean Astin, Tim Curry, Christopher Lee and David Jason, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The live-action/computer-animated project, a follow-up to the trio's successful adaptation of Pratchett's Hogfather as a miniseries last year, was written by Vadim Jean (Hogfather), who also is directing.

Beyond its 2008 premiere on Sky One, RHI is looking to distribute Magic as a theatrical movie in some territories.

RHI recently set up Hogfather for a U.S. debut on Ion Television as part of the RHI Movie Weekend franchise. There is no U.S. outlet yet for Magic.

Magic is the first novel in Pratchett's series of novels set in Discworld, a flat world balanced on the backs of four elephants. It follows Discworld's first-ever tourist, Twoflower (Astin); the inept wizard Rincewind (Jason); and their scheming nemesis Trymon (Curry). Lee will voice Death, a prominent character in the novels.

Production on the multimillion-dollar production recently started at U.K.'s Pinewood Studios.Unblemished Looks At Failed Species

British Fantasy Award-winning author Conrad Williams, whose novel The Unblemished is a finalist for this year's International Horror Guild Award, told SCI FI Wire that the book is about a failed species, a subgroup of Homo sapiens with unpleasant characteristics, who were driven from London during the Great Fire. "They are sparked back to life when a 'map reader' inadvertently shows them how to regain power," Williams said in an interview.

The primary protagonist is Bo Mulvey, a photographer, Williams said. "[He] is sucked into this hellish train of events when he unwittingly becomes the eyes and ears, ... the 'map reader,' for this blood-hungry breed," he said. "I liked the idea of having a hero who is gradually eroded, becoming the awful thing that he is helping to flourish."

The idea for the book came from a number of different sources, Williams said. One inspiration was the U.S. television series The Invaders. "[It] really affected me when I saw it as a kid," he said. "The idea of monsters getting close to us through mimicry is near the top of my scare list."

Two of Williams's own short stories also helped spark the novel, he said. "One was 'Bloodlines,' a story I wrote for an anthology in the late 1990s about Dracula," Williams said. "One of the characters in that was Gyorsi Salavaria, an incarcerated serial killer who is convinced Dracula has returned and is going to kill him. I loved that character so much I always wanted to find something meatier for him to appear in."

The other story was "Outfangthief," a story Williams wrote under the pseudonym Gala Blau, he said. "This was another vampire story, but the villain was a character called Malcolm Manser, who has a taste for having sex with amputees," Williams said.

Williams also owes a debt to creepy ambiance; he was living in a crumbling French farmhouse when he wrote the book, he said. "In every room there were ancient cobwebs, pale, desiccated insects spinning in them," Williams said. "I had all kinds of inspiration from that house."

London could be considered a main character in the book, Williams said. "I spent around 13 years in London," he said. "I love the place and loathe it, too. The novel's spikes of paranoia are straight out of how I felt while I lived in, worked in and traveled around it."

There is a coldness, or at best indifference, in the population with regard to neighbors in London, Williams said. "I lived in a flat for five years and never saw the guy who lived next door, let alone said good morning to him," he said. "I stood on train platforms next to people I saw every morning, and we never swapped a word."

Williams said one of the most effective sequences in the book is when Bo travels on the subway and suddenly realizes that everyone else in the train is a monster. "Anyone who has traveled in the tube will, hopefully, feel a prickle of truth in that passage," he said. —John Joseph Adams30 Days Grabbed Raimi's Eye

Sam Raimi, who produced the upcoming adaptation of the graphic novel 30 Days of Night under his Ghost House Pictures banner, told reporters that the simplicity of the concept and the complexity of the execution attracted him to the project.

"It started with Ben Templesmith's and Steve Niles' great graphic book," Raimi said in a press conference at Comic-Con International in San Diego, Calif., over the weekend.

The story is set in the town of Barrow, Alaska, which does not see the sun for 30 days straight during the winter. Taking advantage of the constant darkness and inhospitable climate, a group of vampires turns the town into a hunting ground, but comes up against resistance from the locals, including sheriff Eben Olemaun (Josh Hartnett) and his wife, Stella (Melissa George).

"It's so obvious once a great writer comes up with something like that," Raimi said. "But to take it and make it take place in Barrow, Alaska, maybe the northernmost American city, where night falls for such a long period of time, and have vampires come to this place, with characters I really cared about, Eben and Stella. It's cut off and it's iced over. Just a combination of all those things, for me, made it something that I wanted to see in a picture."

Raimi said that he was just as impressed by Templesmith's art as he was by Niles' story. "The visuals that Templesmith provided for me were strikingly original, and terrifying, and I love the original take on the vampires that he illustrated," he said. "Also, just the sense of the use of the long shot—I don't know if they're called that in comic books. But the way he showed cold and ice and the frozen-over look of the environment was shockingly gripping in the visuals." 30 Days of Night opens Oct. 19. —Cindy WhiteEvil's Jovovich Sees Double

Milla Jovovich, who stars in the upcoming sequel film Resident Evil: Extinction, told SCI FI Wire that she not only reprises her character Alice, but also plays a cloned version of her.

"It was really interesting," Jovovich said in an interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego, Calif., on July 28. "I mean, definitely, I played it very different from how I play Alice today. It was kind of much more who Alice was in the first movie, I think. It was just a bit more innocent and a bit more of a child, in a way. I mean, she's just kind of born. So she doesn't really understand and know everything that Alice knows about herself."

Jovovich said that there is more than one clone of Alice in the film and described a pit where the deceased ones have been disposed of. "I just thought it really gave the movie such an interesting feeling," she said. "It was crazy. Like, I've never actually really died before, so to have died multiple times is really crazy. And then we filmed all of the clones in the pit and having to [get into position] like 'What do you think? Does this look weird enough?'"

In the third installment of the film franchise based on the popular video-game series Resident Evil, the world's population has been turned into zombies by the Umbrella Corp.'s experimental T-virus. As a handful of human survivors make their way to Alaska, Alice becomes their protector, but her presence could also put them in danger.

Jovovich has expressed her disappointment in the past with the second film, but said that she was much happier with the way this one turned out. "I just think everything about this film is so much tighter and more together," she said. "The script is so much better and the ideas are much more precise. And we've got these really great storylines going, and it's just interesting, and you've got a few different worlds within one movie." Resident Evil: Extinction opens Sept. 21. —Cindy WhiteRogen: Hornet Is No Joke

Seth Rogen, who will co-write and star in the film adaptation of the 1960s TV series The Green Hornet, told reporters that although he is known for comedy, the film will be more of a straight-up action movie.

"We're not doing like a goofy reimagining of The Green Hornet or anything," Rogen said in a press conference while promoting his current film, Superbad, at Comic-Con International in San Diego over the weekend. "He's not getting bitten by a radioactive hornet or anything like that."

Rogen is developing the film with his writing partner Evan Goldberg, who co-wrote Superbad and the upcoming action film Pineapple Express with him. He said that as fans of the original TV series, they don't want to deviate too far from the source material.

"It's something that I've always been a fan of and Evan's really into," he said. "We're trying to keep it as true to the 1966 TV series as possible. We want it to be an adventure-action movie, somewhere in the world of Lethal Weapon and Indiana Jones, I guess you would say. I mean, totally, that's kind of what we're striving for. We just want it to be fun and kick-ass."

Rogen said that the experience of making Pineapple Express was what convinced him and Goldberg that they could do justice to The Green Hornet.

"The people who've seen it really think the action is kick-ass, which is kind of one of the reasons we thought we could even maybe make the movie like The Green Hornet, because we saw that it actually works," he said. "And tonally you can kind of keep it real and have good action and good emotions and humor, and it all can kind of work together in this."

Superbad opens Aug. 17, while Pineapple Express is due out next summer. —Cindy WhiteGreenwalt Departs Moonlight

David Greenwalt has left his position as executive producer of CBS' upcoming vampire-detective series Moonlight, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Greenwalt, who was previously an executive producer of the CW's vampire-detective series Angel, cited health concerns as the reason for his departure.

Moonlight stars Alex O'Loughlin as a 90-year-old vampire who struggles with his immortality. Since joining the series in May, Greenwalt has overseen a retooling of the original network presentation and the hiring of new cast members, including Sophia Myles, Shannyn Sossamon and Jason Dohring.

A replacement for Greenwalt is expected to be named shortly, but speculation has fallen on Rob Thomas, who previously worked with Moonlight executive producer Joel Silver on The CW's Veronica Mars. The timing of Thomas' exit from ABC's mid-season comedy Miss Guided just last week has further fueled the rumor.Pilo Sends In The Clowns

Aurealis Award-winning author Will Elliott, whose novel The Pilo Family Circus is a finalist for this year's International Horror Guild Award, told SCI FI Wire that the book is about a man named Jamie who runs afoul of some clowns and dark supernatural forces.

"One night, driving home after work at 3 a.m., [Jamie] almost runs over a man in a clown suit," Elliott said in an interview. "Then the next night he sees two more clowns. Suddenly these clowns start following him around, appearing at his job, trashing his house, appearing in his dreams. It turns out they want him to pass some kind of audition to join their circus, which is located in a netherworld between our world and hell."

This circus, Jamie discovers, is responsible for perpetuating humankind's greatest tragedies, and the clowns lure people in and steal their souls, Elliott said. "Once he's down there, they bring out Jamie's clown personality via supernatural means, and his alter ego, 'JJ the clown,' periodically possesses his body," he said. "The two of them soon end up at war with each other. Jamie has to survive the age-old conflicts within the circus, and somehow outwit JJ, to reclaim his place in the real world."

Elliott doesn't make a habit of basing characters on real people, but Jamie is based on a close friend of his, he said. "At the time I wrote the book, I was worried that this friend was going close to nasty, binging alcoholism—[Jamie's] clown alter ego is actually a parody of my friend when he's blind drunk," Elliott said. "A nice guy sober, but he used to turn into a harmless kind of piss-nasty drunk, the kind who'd insult a bouncer and then honestly not know why the bouncer was mad at him."

Elliott wanted a setting he could fill with strange, freakish characters, he said. "[I wanted them to be] sometimes absurd, sometimes morbid and disturbing, so much so there's no choice but to laugh at them—or be utterly horrified, I guess," Elliott said. "Then throw a real person in their midst and see what happens."

A circus was just one possible setting of the kind Elliott was seeking, he said. "I drew a few sketches of clowns, freaks, acrobats and so on, found voices to match the drawings, taped them up on my wall, and we were in business," Elliott said. "The drawings helped me keep track of the characters and subplots."

Elliott's next book is Nightfall, which mixes elements of comedy, fairy tales, realism and surreal fantasy with dark horror sequences, he said. "I've taken a lot of creative risks in writing it and attempting to make these different ingredients meld into one coherent story," he said. "Time will tell if the risks paid off or not." —John Joseph AdamsBRIEFLY NOTED

IESB.net reported a rumor that Spider-Man director Sam Raimi is being courted to helm the remake of Clash of the Titans.

Rogue Pictures has optioned Jeremy Passmore's thriller SF spec script Summer's End for Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes to produce, Variety reported; the movie revolves around a group of teens in a small Oregon town who survive a deadly virus that wipes out the adult population and who must fight for their lives when the military attempts to quarantine the area.

Producer Samuel Hadida has secured the rights to the supernatural World War II video game Return to Castle Wolfenstein, with Roger Avary attached to write and direct the adaptation of the ID Software property, Variety reported.

Iron Man director Jon Favreau has posted his personal video diary of the Comic-Con unveiling of the "Mark I" suit on YouTube.com.

Chip Johannessen has been tapped as executive producer/show runner on CBS' upcoming vampire drama Moonlight, replacing David Greenwalt, who left the series last week for personal and health reasons, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Universal has acquired the pitch The Lost Adventures of Stone Perlmutter Jr., with Peter Huyck and Alex Gregory to pen the script as a star vehicle for Jack Black, Variety reported; the film is conceived as a faux documentary chronicling the disastrous journey of a self-styled Indiana Jones-like adventurer.

IESB.net has posted video of the "Masters of the Web" panel from last week's Comic-Con International, moderated by producer Tom DeSanto and featuring Garth Franklin (Darkhorizons.com), Robert Sanchez (IESB.net), Berge Garabedian (Joblo.com), Patrick Lee (SCI FI Wire), Ed Douglas (Comingsoon.net/Superherohype.com), Brad Miska (Bloody-Disgusting.com), Steven "Frosty" Weintraub (Collider.com), Devin Faraci (CHUD.com), Paul Christensen (Movieweb.com), Kellvin Chavez (Latinoreview.com) and Eric Moro (IGN.com).

MTV.com reported that Australian actress Abbie Cornish will be one of the "Bond girls" in the upcoming 22nd 007 movie.

Collider.com reported a rumor that George Miller (Happy Feet) is considering directing Warner Brothers' live-action comic-book movie Justice League of America, which would feature Superman, Batman, the Flash, Wonder Woman and the Green Lantern.

Cinema Blend reported a rumor that Orlando Bloom may be in talks to join the cast of Angels and Demons, the sequel to the hit Da Vinci Code, and would join a returning Tom Hanks and Gisele Bundchen.

A poster at the alternate-reality-game site Unifiction reported that lawyers who represent filmmaker J.J. Abrams have registered the word "overnight," leading C.H.U.D. to speculate that it might be the name of Abrams' upcoming monster movie, which is now code-named Cloverfield.

Katey Sagal, Wallace Shawn, Gilbert Gottfried and Chevy Chase are starring with Christopher Lloyd in the live-action fairy tale movie Jack and the Beanstalk, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Guy Walks Into a Bar has acquired the movie rights to the video game Painkiller, which centers on a character stranded between heaven and hell who's forced to become a pawn in the battle between good and evil, Variety reported.

Disney has picked up feature rights to the graphic novel Pet Robots, written and created by Scott Christian Sava, Variety reported.

Spider-Man director Sam Raimi told Empire Online that he's leaving the door open to doing a fourth film: "I want to help contribute to the production. I don't know if I'll just be a producer on it, but if I can work with the writer in such a way so that directing would be right for me, I don't know. We've had our first meeting on Spider-Man 4, and we're looking for the writer."

New trailers for 30 Days of Night and Resident Evil: Extinction, which debuted at Comic-Con, have been posted on the official Web sites.

Ain't It Cool News reported that Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon still plans a Ripper movie, centering on Buffy's Watcher, Rupert Giles (Anthony Stewart Head), on the BBC in 2008.

In conjunction with Dark Horse, eBay and Auction Cause, an auction of five spots at a Comic-Con dinner with Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon, plus other items, raised $61,716 to benefit Equality Now.

Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth took home three awards during the 22nd annual Imagen Awards in Los Angeles on July 29, honoring Latino achievement in the entertainment industry, according to The Hollywood Reporter.