Variety: Indy Debuting At Cannes

Variety is now confirming a report that first aired on Fox News that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on May 18.

The long-awaited fourth installment in George Lucas and Steven Spielberg's period action-adventure franchise debuts four days before it opens worldwide on May 22.

The cast, which includes Harrison Ford, Shia LaBeouf and Cate Blanchett, have already been notified to pack their bags for the French Riviera's red carpet, even though the festival has yet to confirm its official lineup. That won't happen until April.

A studio spokesperson told SCI FI Wire that it could not confirm the reports.Iron Looks To Avengers

Jon Favreau, director of Iron Man, confirmed that his film will include winks to other Marvel superhero franchises as Marvel, now operating as its own independent film studio, builds toward a proposed Avengers film that will encompass several heroes.

"Yeah, definitely, definitely," Favreau said in an interview at WonderCon in San Francisco on Feb. 23, where he unveiled new footage from his upcoming movie, which stars Robert Downey Jr. (In a panel at WonderCon, Favreau also told fans that if Iron Man does well, he may get a shot at directing an Avengers film.)

In the interview, Favreau added: "I don't want to blow anything, and also I don't honestly know where it's all going to land. I know that there are sort of things that have been discussed and tried and talked about. I know at the end of the day on the horizon is The Avengers, and the idea is to have chapters of all of the characters that would contribute to being The Avengers. ... Hopefully, we're all going toward The Avengers."

Internet reports from such sites as Ain't It Cool News have run rumors that various Marvel characters will appear in Iron Man and the upcoming Marvel-produced The Incredible Hulk, such as Nick Fury, the general of S.H.I.E.L.D., who would lead the Avengers (and is rumored to be played by Samuel L. Jackson).

Favreau wouldn't confirm the Fury/Jackson cameo in Iron Man. "I'm not going to talk about who's in what, but for the fans, there's definitely enough to keep you leaning forward and paying attention and stuff," he said. "And your girlfriend's not going to know what you're so interested in in certain scenes. It's just going to fly by for certain people. But I think we threw enough breadcrumbs around to reward you for giving a s--t."

Favreau said that he's about to check into George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch in nearby Marin County to work on the movie's sound mix, visual effects and scoring. "But the film is essentially locked," he said. "So it's about getting [and] making sure we hold a high standard for the visuals and then just get the spectacular Skywalker sound." Ramin Djamadi, an associate of Pirates of the Caribbean composer Hans Zimmer, is scoring the movie, with guitar tracks by Rage Against the Machine member Tom Morello, Favreau added. Iron Man opens May 2. --Patrick Lee, News EditorRowling: Fan Book Exploits Potter

Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling would feel "exploited" if a fan's unofficial encyclopedic companion were published, she said in court papers, the Reuters news service reported.

Steve Vander Ark has written The Harry Potter Lexicon, a 400-page reference book based on his popular fan Web site. Rowling and Warner Brothers, which produces the Harry Potter movies, are suing RDR Books, an independent publisher that planned to publish the book last November.

"I am very frustrated that a former fan has tried to co-opt my work for financial gain," Rowling, said in a declaration filed in U.S. District Court in New York. "I believe that RDR's book constitutes a Harry Potter 'rip off' of the type I have spent years trying to prevent, and that both I, as the creator of this world, and fans of Harry Potter, would be exploited by its publication."

The lawsuit was filed in October and seeks to stop publication and requests damages for copyright and federal trademark infringement and any profits to be gained.

Rowling has said she plans to write her own definitive Harry Potter encyclopedia, which would include material that did not make it into the novels, and donate the proceeds to charity.

RDR Books has said Vander Ark, a librarian, had spoken at Harry Potter academic conferences in Great Britain, Canada and the United States and that a timeline he created was used by Warner in DVD releases of the Potter films.

The company and Vander Ark have said the book would only promote the sale of Rowling's work and that Vander Ark's Web site had been called "a great site" by Rowling herself.Transformers 2 Unfazed By Strike Prospect

The prospect of an actors' strike in late June isn't stopping Michael Bay, who plans to begin production on Transformers 2 for a June 26, 2009, release, Variety reported. DreamWorks would like to get underway with production of Transformers 2 in early June.

But Bay told the trade paper that the labor cloud has made the process harder. "If there is a strike, we shut down, but shutting down isn't that big a deal," Bay said. "You make accommodations, you make a deal with vending houses on equipment and on the stages where you are shooting. You hope for the best, but you can't be incapacitated by the possibility that there will be a strike. We've got to get this town back to work. I can't imagine anyone wants another strike; we're all tired. Hopefully clearer heads will prevail."

Bay said that the sequel is still recovering from the writer's strike, and that he's playing catch-up after getting back his trio of writers, Ehren Kruger, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci.

"They did a detailed outline before the writers' strike, and now they are in Michael Bay jail, holed up in a hotel and working feverishly," Bay said. "We're paying for a beautiful suite, and they are getting a lot of work done. Hiring three writers was unusual, but it has been a godsend in getting us to where we need to be. Somehow you find a way to get it done."

Meanwhile, several studios are setting additional plans for summer production starts, based on the assumption that the Screen Actors Guild contract talks will be resolved without the kind of work stoppage that crippled the film industry during the 100-day writers' strike, Variety reported.

Warner Brothers has already pushed forward on George Miller's Justice League to begin shooting in mid-July.

Warners revealed earlier this week that it will begin shooting Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins on May 5.

Twentieth Century Fox, for instance, has scheduled August as the start date for The Tooth Fairy, a fantasy comedy that will star Dwayne Johnson.

Sony will begin shooting its Da Vinci Code sequel, Angels & Demons, in Rome on June 5.

Sony's 2012, a $200 million Roland Emmerich-directed disaster epic, is slated for a summer 2009 release. X-Files Reunion Emotional

The producers of the upcoming X-Files sequel told SCI FI Wire that they got emotional when stars David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson showed up for an informal "table read" of the script, reuniting for the first time since the hit Fox series went off the air in 2002.

"A month before we started filming, maybe six weeks, David and Gillian came in and read the script at [director] Chris [Carter's] kitchen table, and it was emotional to hear them say those words," writer/producer Frank Spotnitz said in a group interview at WonderCon in San Francisco over the weekend.

"And then a week later, we had camera tests at Chris' house, and [Anderson's] hair was red again, and David had ... got his hair cut like Mulder again, and it was like, 'Oh, my.' It was like bringing back the dead, in a way, or like finding somebody who'd gone missing for six years. So, to me, it feels very powerful."

Carter, who created the show and co-wrote the sequel, had a similar reaction. "I actually was moved," Carter said between yawns (he flew directly to WonderCon on Saturday after wrapping an all-night shoot at 6 o'clock that morning in Vancouver, Canada).

"It's funny, because ... we've been through so much together, and to ... come back [from] what I would call a really good vacation away from it was a really nice thing," Carter added. "And it allows us to start fresh. ... When you're doing the TV series, you are doing it--for me it was 11 and a half months a year. You take two weeks off, and then you go right back at it. It was nice to take that breather and come back at this fresh and rejuvenated."

Despite a six-year hiatus, both Spotnitz and Carter--who were both executive producers of the long-running TV series--said they had no problem writing the characters of FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully again.

"I know it was sort of startling to me how deep my connection still was to the characters after all of this time and how much it mattered to me what's become of them and what they think and what they would do," Spotnitz said. "It felt vital to me, and it felt very interesting, and it was ... really fun. It was really very enjoyable, working on the story and reconvening with them again."

The as-yet-untitled X-Files sequel film is currently in production in Vancouver with an eye to a July 25 release. --Patrick Lee, News EditorT4 Gets 2009 Date

Warner Brothers has set a May 22, 2009, release date for McG's Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins, starring Christian Bale, Variety reported.

That date, the beginning of the Memorial Day weekend, coincides with the opening of 20th Century Fox's Ben Stiller sequel Night at the Museum II: Escape From the Smithsonian.

Warner will distribute the fourth Terminator movie in North America through a deal with Halcyon Co., which owns all franchise rights to the series.

The last film in the franchise, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, debuted in 2003 and grossed $150.4 million domestically.

T4 begins two months of production in New Mexico on May 5.

The storyline is being kept under tight wraps, but the plot is the first part of a planned three-picture arc that begins after Skynet has destroyed much of humanity in a nuclear holocaust. A group of survivors led by John Connor (Bale) struggles to stop the machines. Sam Worthington (Avatar) is in talks to star as well.

Meanwhile, Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions Group has acquired international distribution rights for Terminator Salvation from Halcyon, Variety reported.Carter Offers X-Files Hints

Chris Carter, creator of The X-Files, told SCI FI Wire that the upcoming second movie will be a stand-alone story that represents the best of the series.

"This movie takes some of the most, I think, essential themes of The X-Files and incorporates them and puts them to the test," Carter said in a group interview at WonderCon in San Francisco on Feb. 23. "I think that for me, so much of The X-Files was about skepticism, but it was also about faith, and I think that plays a big part [in] this movie."

The plotline of the as-yet-unnamed sequel remains a big secret--so much so that neither Carter nor producer/writer Frank Spotnitz would confirm or deny that spy photos of a werewolf head from the set were intentionally bogus or not.

But Spotnitz, speaking alongside Carter, allowed that the sequel will be "a stand-alone, scary movie. Scary, exciting movie. But it's also very much about these characters, very personal. A romantic, I think, emotional story."

Footage from the sequel was unveiled at WonderCon and showed the character played by Billy Connolly (whom Carter would only identify as a man with really long hair) and Amanda Peet, who has been identified as an FBI special agent in charge who goes missing.

"We came up with the story about five years ago, and we liked it, and pitched it because Fox had asked us to come up with something," Carter said. Protracted negotiations and legal "entanglements" delayed the sequel's start, he added. "So when we got the call from Fox that said, 'Make this movie, it's either now or never,' we said, 'OK, let's dust off that old story.' And that's what we did. We dusted off that old story, and we saw that it needed work. So we got back to work on it."

The sequel mirrors the passage of real time since the end of Fox's The X-Files TV show. "The truth is, after all that time, Mulder and Scully were different people, and we were different people, so the 'X-File' we came up with five years ago is still the X-File in the movie, but their personal lives--the state of their relationship, all those things--have changed over time, and that was kind of interesting," Spotnitz said. "To not only think about them after all this time, but, really, us as writers and what mattered to us and what we wanted to say in this movie [has also changed]." The X-Files sequel is still in production in Vancouver, Canada, with an eye to a July 25 release. --Patrick Lee, News EditorSmart's Carell Didn't Mimic Adams

Steve Carell, who takes on the iconic character of Maxwell Smart in Get Smart, told SCI FI Wire that he tried not to do an impression of Don Adams, who created the character in the 1960s TV show on which the movie is based.

"There's no way to improve upon what he did, [so I tried to] just kind of get [the] essence [of] who that character was," Carell said in a group interview at WonderCon in San Francisco last weekend.

Carell plays the maladroit spy in Peter Segal's new film version of the story, which updates things but attempts to retain the tone of the original series, created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry. Anne Hathaway plays Agent 99, who gets partnered with Smart/Agent 86.

"I think more specifically, I believe the character on the TV show of Maxwell Smart was someone who was a very proficient spy, who could handle himself in a situation," Carell said. He added: "I never saw the character as a bumbling fool or any sort of idiot, and I think that's a very specific part of what Don Adams did that I am trying to do with this version."

Carell added that the movie tries to set things in a realistic world. "I think one of the things we talked a lot about was the tone of the movie, and when we first discussed it, I thought ... it would be interesting if we could do a true spy movie, in the vein of the Bourne movies, like--and I keep saying this, kind of a comedic Bourne Identity. To have the elements of action and plausibility and true jeopardy, things that are really at stake and characters that are potentially threatening. Terence Stamp [who plays Siegfried] is a great villain. He is truly scary while being funny at the same time. ... So that's kind of the tone we tried to capture with the movie."

Another challenge was incorporating the TV show's many iconic catch phrases and props, such as Agent 86's shoe phone. "The shoe phone. A lot of people are asking about it, because, obviously, it seemed very anachronistic, and why in the age of cell phones would he possibly be using a shoe phone?" Carell said. "But there's a very clever way the writers have infused it into the script. So I think people will be pleasantly surprised. The other elements, like the Cone of Silence, ... it's updated, but it still doesn't work. So we're trying to definitely honor the original."

Carell added: "Honestly, for me the catch phrases were the toughest part, because it's hard to say them or think of them in any other way than the way that Don Adams did them. So, again, I tried not to do an impersonation of him, but I tried to sort of let them come out of the situation and not feel like they should stick out in any way." Get Smart opens June 20. --Patrick Lee, News EditorSmart Apes Bourne?

Get Smart director Peter Segal told SCI FI Wire that the upcoming movie will combine the comedic sensibility of the classic 1960s TV show with the action of the Bourne movies.

"We thought, 'We'll do our best to bring the same sensibilities of the original comedy,' but we wanted to inject a bit of action into the mix, and we knew that was going to be the challenge: ... balancing that tone," Segal said in an interview at WonderCon in San Francisco over the weekend. "And, so far, we've been very gratified by the audiences that have seen it, because they've understood what we were trying to do, and they embraced it."

The film stars comic actor Steve Carell as Maxwell Smart/Agent 86 and Anne Hathaway as Agent 99. But the film also features usually serious dramatic actors such as Terence Stamp (as the villainous Siegfried) and Alan Arkin (as the Chief of CONTROL).

"It's a tightrope," Segal (The Longest Yard) said. He added that the film is comedic, but grounded in reality. "I actually had a conversation with [TV series co-creator] Mel [Brooks] about this, also: Keep your bad guys bad," Segal said. "Sets don't need to be funny. Costumes don't need to be funny. You can have a realistic environment, realistic stakes, and it actually makes the comedy work better."

Get Smart opens June 20. --Patrick Lee, News EditorSmart Spinoff Heads To DVD

Get Smart director Peter Segal told SCI FI Wire that a spinoff movie will head straight to DVD around the time of the movie's June release, featuring the secondary characters of Bruce (Heroes' Masi Oka) and Lloyd (Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip's Nate Torrence). The spinoff is titled Get Smart's Bruce and Lloyd Out of Control.

"Warner Brothers really responded to those two characters, but it's also a new idea that Warner Brothers is trying to do, and we are sort of the maiden voyage of that," Segal said in a group interview at WonderCon in San Francisco last weekend. "Two movies, one coming out in the theater and one on DVD, within a short span of time. But, yeah, it's very flattering that they responded to these characters, and Masi and Nate are great in the movie, and they're very funny in the other movie, too."

The spinoff, which extends the adventures of the two characters, who appear briefly in the theatrical movie, is designed to drop within two weeks of Get Smart's June 20 opening in theaters. Segal didn't direct the spinoff, which was shot simultaneously with the feature film, nor does star Steve Carell appear in it. --Patrick Lee, News EditorSmart's 99 Honors Feldon

Anne Hathaway, who plays 99 in Peter Segal's upcoming Get Smart movie, told SCI FI Wire that she's mindful of the legacy of the original 99, Barbara Feldon, who created the character in the classic 1960s TV series on which the film is based.

"Barbara Feldon left such an indelible impression on fans of the show, it was impossible not to love her, she was just perfect," Hathaway said in a group interview at WonderCon in San Francisco over the weekend. "And a part of me was like, don't mess with perfection. But at the same time, her 99 lived in a totally different world than my 99 lived in, and I feel that the independence that my Agent 99 enjoys was in part created by her character, because I feel like she was an amazing role model for women."

In the Emmy-winning '60s TV series, created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, Feldon's agent was the sleek, smart straightwoman to Don Adams' bumbling spy, an odd coupling given the times.

To Hathaway, Feldon showed "that you could be incredibly smart, very sexy, without ... trying too hard: elegant, sophisticated. I thought that she was ... clearly a woman that led with her mind and was very impressive."

As part of her own homage to Feldon, Hathaway said she came up with a particular hairstyle. "The bobbed haircut, yes, that was my idea," she said.

Get Smart, which stars Steve Carell as Maxwell Smart, CONTROL Agent 86, opens June 20. --Patrick Lee, News EditorShutter's Lee Discovers Tokyo

James Kyson Lee plays a Japanese salaryman in NBC's Heroes, but he told SCI FI Wire that he made his first real trip to Tokyo to shoot the upcoming horror movie Shutter.

"Believe it or not, it was actually my first time in Japan, which was a real highlight for me," Lee said in an interview at WonderCon in San Francisco last weekend. "Because my dad actually spent some time there in Tokyo. So it was weird, because I arrived there, and there was a sense of familiarity, even though it was a foreign country."

Though Lee plays Tokyo native Ando in Heroes, he was actually born in South Korea and raised in New York.

Lee again plays a Japanese man in Shutter, a ghost story based on a Thai film, about specters that begin appearing in photographs. "I play a character named Ritsuo, who's a young managing editor at a place called Ghost Magazine," Lee said. "And their specialty is spirit photography. So when [co-stars] Rachael [Taylor] and [Joshua Jackson's] characters start experiencing all of this weird stuff in the photos, they start to come to me to find out what the origin is, and I start to explain it to them, the significance of spirit photography."

It's a real phenomenon, Lee said. "I found out that it's been around since the 1800s," he said. Lee even found a real-life counterpart to his fictional magazine in Tokyo. "I called ahead to the production company in Japan, and I said, 'Hey, is there any sort of working Ghost Magazine type of offices in Tokyo that maybe I can go?' ... We actually found one."

Lee added that he found a real-life editor who had his own close encounter with the spooky: A medium "read" him and told him his apartment had once housed a murder victim.

"As he was telling me these stories, I feel like the script started coming alive in front of my eyes," Lee said, with a slight shudder. Shutter opens March 21. --Patrick Lee, News EditorHighmore Flies To Astro Boy

Freddie Highmore has been signed for the title role in IMAGI Studios' computer-animated Astro Boy movie, the studio announced.

Highmore (The Spiderwick Chronicles), 16, will voice the character, based on Osamu Tezuka's manga and 1960s TV series.

Here's how IMAGI describes the movie: Set in futuristic Metro City, Astro Boy is about a young robot with incredible powers created by a brilliant scientist to replace the son he has lost. Unable to fulfill the grieving father's expectations, Astro Boy embarks on a journey in search of acceptance, experiencing betrayal and a netherworld of robot gladiators before he returns to save Metro City and reconcile with the man who rejected him. Astro Boy will be released worldwide in 2009.Glover's Scream Is Delayed

Crispin Glover told SCI FI Wire that the genre-bending horror film The I Scream Man is delayed because of financial and legal wrangling.

But the actor said that he's still willing to do it. "When they are ready to go and still want me, I will do it," Glover (Beowulf) said in an interview.

In the horror movie, Glover plays a shy, spooky man who owns an ice cream truck, wears surgical masks and goes on an inexplicable murder spree in a small town.

Following a script by J.T. Mollner, who will also direct, the film's cast also includes Haylie Duff, Judd Nelson, George Romero, Fred Ward, Dee Wallace and Michael Madsen, who replaced Tom Sizemore.

Glover's character has the same psychic intensity as Michael Myers in the Halloween movies, and the script promises some gruesome and unique kills.

"We were supposed to go into production, and I would like to go into production soon, but I don't have the details yet of when that will happen," Glover said. "I read the script, and it is good." Mollner said that he wants to mix a lot of elements but avoid genre cliches. The film is expected to come out sometime in 2009. --Mike SzymanskiPrefect Combines Crime, SF

SF author Alastair Reynolds, whose novel The Prefect is a finalist for this year's British Science Fiction Association Award, told SCI FI Wire that the book combines the tropes of SF and crime fiction.

"As an avid reader of crime novels and a fan of TV shows such as 24, I liked the idea of doing a kind of police procedural story," Reynolds said in an interview. "Along the way I couldn't avoid straying into areas related to security and civil liberty--big issues right now."

The Prefect is a thriller about the Glitter Band, a halo of 10,000 space habitats orbiting a planet in another solar system in the early decades of the 25th century.

"A handful of habitats drop offline unexpectedly, severed from the instantaneous mass-democracy system which binds the rest of the Band," Reynolds said. "As the Prefects investigate--they're the effective police force, although there are only a thousand of them--the crisis escalates until it threatens the entire society. The story then becomes a race against time to save the Glitter Band from at least one, and possibly two, hostile artificial intelligences."

The universe in which The Prefect is set runs on hard SF principles, but it's not a book full of equations. "The science isn't foregrounded; of all my books, this may be the one where I never had to do even the most basic calculation, beyond keeping tabs on the body count!" Reynolds said. "The characters are mainly security operatives, so they're not overly interested in how things work, just what they can do for them."

Reynolds has just finished writing House of Suns, a stand-alone novel set 6 million years from now, at a time when humans have crossed and recrossed the galaxy many times. "It's about a group of starfaring clones, 'the shatterlings,' who face sudden and vicious persecution by an unknown enemy," Reynolds said. "It's got robots, weird post-humans, galaxy-spanning travel and lots of different environments. It's probably my wildest, most space-operatic book to date." --John Joseph AdamsTaylor: Shutter Respects Original

Rachael Taylor, who co-stars in the upcoming horror remake Shutter, told SCI FI Wire that the film respects the original Thai movie on which it is based.

"I think it's respectful of the Thai film," the Australian actress (Transformers) said in a group interview at WonderCon in San Francisco last weekend. "I am a big fan. It's why I wanted to do this movie, in a lot of ways, because I adored the original film."

At the same time, Taylor said she acknowledges that it's difficult to adapt another film for a different audience. "Hollywood's remade Asian horror movies to varying [degrees of] success," she said. "But I felt that this ... had a significantly different-enough perspective that it was worth remaking."

Among the changes: The original film was told from the point of view of the central male character, while the remake focuses more on her character, a photographer who has a tragic accident on Mount Fuji, then begins to discover spectral images in her photographs.

"This film has a much more driven kind of thrust to it," Taylor added. "It's really more her story, about her figuring out what's really going on around her. So it's kind of a more pro-active tale, I guess, but at the same time, ... the vibe of it [is] the same, and the aesthetic's the same, too, which is great, because the original film was beautiful."

Shutter, which also stars Joshua Jackson and James Kyson Lee, opens March 21. --Patrick Lee, News Editor10,000 Stars Got Shaggy

Camilla Belle, one of the stars of Roland Emmerich's historical fantasy 10,000 B.C., told SCI FI Wire that it took time to achieve the shaggy, primitive look she sports in the movie.

"We had about a month of prep time before we even started shooting, and ... [it took] the whole process to come up with our look and the makeup artists working with us," Belle (When a Stranger Calls) said in a group interview at WonderCon in San Francisco over the weekend. She added: "How we looked evolved. ... We had the wigs, and shaving our entire heads, and [achieving] the length we wanted and our fake tanning sessions that were really enjoyable--we had to do about once a week. Plus the dirt and the placement of the dirt. So it was a really long process."

Belle plays Evolet, a member of a hunter-gatherer tribe in an ancient world, who is kidnapped for slavery by a more advanced civilization. Her paramour, D'Leh (Steven Strait), sets out to rescue her, crossing the mammoth- and saber-toothed-cat-infested wilderness.

Strait, who sports dreadlocks and little else, said that his preparation involved mainly subsisting on a strict diet. "The physical aspect of it was pretty extensive [in the] beginning," Strait said. "I think I lost about 40 pounds in a month and a half."

Belle added: "Yeah, we all saw him shrink in front of our eyes."

Strait added that he had to get in shape to play the lean hunter. "You have to try at least to look as if you're living in the wild, [that] you're hunting for your food," he said. "You have to look believable running with mammoths and things. They're obviously not there on the day, but you know, for that to look like it's actually happening. ... The hunting sequences and the fighting sequences, those are pretty physically demanding things to do. I mean, those are days of sprinting, days and days and days of sprinting 400 yards with a truck in front of you. So I had to get to a place to do that."

Belle had other considerations, mainly wardrobe. The filmmakers had to walk a line between PG-13-friendly and historically accurate. "I definitely couldn't be bare-chested walking around," she said with a smile. "Accurate, yes. But you know, it's a movie." 10,000 B.C. opens March 7. --Patrick Lee, News Editor10,000 B.C. Shares Stargate Vibe

Roland Emmerich, director of the upcoming fantasy adventure epic 10,000 B.C., told SCI FI Wire that the movie reflects his continuing fascination with ancient cultures, particularly that of Egypt.

It's an interest that gave rise to one of his first historical fantasies, the 1994 franchise-starting Stargate, with which 10,000 B.C. shares more than a few similarities.

"I'm fascinated with Egypt and the origins of Egypt," Emmerich said in a group interview at WonderCon in San Francisco over the weekend. He added: "Normal science has it that [the pyramids] were built [in] 2,500 B.C. But there's so much evidence they were built even earlier. And it just fascinates me that these enormous buildings were even built before the Egyptians. That's just, like, a cool story."

That premise--posited by such books as Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock-- is that an unknown, advanced civilization predated the most ancient known cultures and resulted in the construction of the pyramids and other monuments. "It's another theory why these buildings are there," Emmerich said. "In Stargate, it was alien influence, and this time it's just a lost civilization."

Warner Brothers describes 10,000 B.C. as "a sweeping odyssey into a mythical age of prophecies and gods, when spirits rule the land and mighty mammoths shake the earth. In a remote mountain tribe, the young hunter, D'Leh (Steven Strait), has found his heart's passion--the beautiful Evolet (Camilla Belle). When a band of mysterious warlords raid his village and kidnap Evolet, D'Leh is forced to lead a small group of hunters to pursue the warlords to the end of the world to save her. Driven by destiny, the unlikely band of warriors must battle saber-tooth tigers and prehistoric predators. ... At their heroic journey's end, they uncover a lost civilization. Their ultimate fate lies in an empire beyond imagination, where great pyramids reach into the skies. Here they will take their stand against a powerful god who has brutally enslaved their people." 10,000 B.C. opens March 7. --Patrick Lee, News EditorDVD Reveals Beowulf Techniques

Crispin Glover, who voiced Grendel in Robert Zemeckis' animated Beowulf, told SCI FI Wire that audiences can explore the film's groundbreaking performance-capture animation techniques on the DVD edition of the film.

In a behind-the-scenes featurette, Glover is shown strapped into a flying rig, with his face and body covered in dots to be used as reference for the computer animation. "We are working on a green screen with the motion-capture camera, and 240 cameras are aimed at you at once, and they blend in the best shots," Glover said in an interview. "But it's like everyone has a close-up in every scene."

Elsewhere on the DVD, co-writer Neil Gaiman explains how the early renderings of the monster Grendel had more blisters on his face. But after Glover gave his performance, the art department changed the character to allow Glover's expressive forehead to be visible, and Grendel was redesigned to resemble Glover more, as a way to capture more of his performance.

"I did see the initial renderings of the character, and I was told that the character would be reworked in order to assure that the nuances of my performance would be seen," Glover said. "It wasn't until I saw the scene rendered about a month before the film was released that I saw they did have the ability to get into the nuances of the performance, and I was very happy with it. It was something I was quite pleased with and am happy to be in the film itself."

Glover said that such performances should be eligible for acting awards, but that many people think performance-capture actors merely record a voice. "People don't know what the extent of a performance like that is," he said. "I was with the other actors and was delighted to work with people like Anthony Hopkins and Angelina Jolie and Ray Winstone, and that should be appreciated more and be eligible for an Academy Award, if people think it's deserving."

Each of Grendel's jumps--his pouncing on soldiers and his ripping off of their heads--was choreographed and scripted, as was the Anglo-Saxon language he speaks. "It was definitely a learning experience for me," he said. Beowulf is now available on DVD. --Mike SzymanskiCBS Picks Up Mythological

CBS picked up Mythological X, a drama pilot about a woman who discovers via a psychic that she has already dated the man she was destined to marry and embarks on a mission to find him, Variety reported.

Diane Ruggiero (Veronica Mars) will executive-produce with Jonathan Levin.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain have joined the staff of Joss Whedon's Fox SF pilot Dollhouse, the trade paper reported.

Fain and Craft were most recently executive producers of ABC's Women's Murder Club. TVBarn.com reported that 20th Century Fox Television was still hammering out the duo's exact titles on Dollhouse.Heroes CD, Videos Due

A unit of NBC will release the first original soundtrack and music videos for its hit drama series Heroes next month, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The NBC Universal Television, DVD, Music and Consumer Products Group has set a March 18 release for the album, which will feature exclusive new singles from artists including Wilco ("Glad It's Over"), Panic! at the Disco ("Nine in the Afternoon"), Imogen Heap ("Not Now But Soon") and Brighton Port Authority featuring Iggy Pop ("He's Frank"), as well as classic tracks from Bob Dylan ("Man in the Long Black Coat") and David Bowie ("Heroes," as one might have guessed).

It also will include the Heroes theme and three other songs by former Prince collaborators Wendy and Lisa, as well as Jesus and Mary Chain's first new studio recording in a decade ("All Things Must Pass").

Heroes executive producer/director Allan Arkush, meanwhile, has crafted five music-video montage podcasts--featuring Heroes footage set to select tracks from the album--that will be exclusively available for free download on the Zune Marketplace online store and for streaming at MSN. Nada Surf's "Weightless" will be the first available, starting Feb. 29.

The soundtrack, being released through NBC Records, will be available in CD format at Best Buy stores and digitally at Zune and other digital service providers. It is executive-produced by music industry veteran Errol Kolosine in collaboration with Heroes creator/executive producer Tim Kring and Arkush.

Heroes, which wrapped its second "volume" in December, returns for a third season in the fall. (NBC and its affiliated companies are owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.)Renegade Concludes Soldier Trilogy

Best-selling fantasy author Robin Hobb told SCI FI Wire that her latest novel, Renegade's Magic, concludes her Soldier Son trilogy.

One of the inspirations for the trilogy was a portrait Hobb came across while on a book tour in London, Hobb said in an interview. "Over the fireplace in the lobby, there was a portrait [showing] a rather handsome, very portly man in a military uniform," she said. "I found it to be a very engaging image. I asked at the hotel desk for more information about the man in the portrait, but the staff on duty at that time couldn't tell me anything about him. That left my imagination free to run wild."

Another piece of the story came to Hobb when she was visiting France and happened to drive by a cemetery. "It had a very serious wall around it, with wrought-iron spikes on the top of it," she said. "As we passed it, I wondered if the wall was to keep something out. Or to keep something in?"

For Hobb, the challenge of writing any fantasy book is to research the mundane parts of it. "My feeling for fantasy is that I want the fantastic parts to be truly amazing," Hobb said. "But I want the 'real' parts, the descriptions in the book that connect the fantasy world to our own world, to be as accurate as possible. I think it makes it easier for the reader to step across the threshold and into my fantasy world if the parts of the story that match our world are as accurate as I can make them."

For the Soldier Son trilogy, Hobb wanted to learn about the cavalry and its military role in Europe and the United States. "I also like to do as much of my research from primary sources as I can," Hobb said. "Primary sources such as old journals are much more likely to have sensory details that can help me bring the reader more fully into the story."

Hobb's current work in progress is a return to the world of her Liveship Traders trilogy, which takes place chronologically after the events of Fool's Fate. --John Joseph AdamsHeroes Gears Up Soon

James Kyson Lee, who plays Ando in NBC's Heroes, told SCI FI Wire that the show will probably return to produce new episodes as early as June for next fall now that the writers' strike is over.

"Or possibly May, if they want to speed it up," Lee said in a group interview at WonderCon in San Francisco over the weekend, where Lee was promoting his upcoming horror movie Shutter. "And I think NBC is going to do another big push again, right after the Olympics, and we'll premiere season three in September."

The upcoming third "volume" in the Heroes saga will be called "Villains." "I know they're very excited about it," Lee said. "They had a lot of great ideas that they wanted to incorporate, and obviously our second season got cut short because of the strike, so now they're really happy that they're going to be able to play with some stuff."

The "Villains" theme "opens up a whole new world," Lee said. "Are they going to bring a whole new set of characters that are going to face off with us and whatnot?"

The truncated second season left a lot of loose ends, Lee said. "[The] assassination of Nathan [Adrian Pasdar] and Nicky/Jessica [Ali Larter]," he said. "Is she alive or dead?'"

But for Lee personally, he's eager to work again with Masi Oka, who plays fan favorite Hiro Nakamura. "I know people are excited that Ando and Hiro are back together after their little stint away [in] different timelines," Lee said. "I think more adventures and mayhem ensue for us."

Lee will next be seen in Shutter, a remake of a Thai supernatural horror film, which opens March 21. Heroes returns in the fall. (NBC is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.) --Patrick Lee, News EditorGlover Goes Long In 9

Quirky character actor Crispin Glover told SCI FI Wire that he's looking forward to the expansion of Shane Acker's Oscar-nominated animated short 9 into a feature-length production. Glover voices a creature who steals souls in the feature movie, which is set in a post-apocalyptic world.

"I have finished with all of my work on it, but I don't know what exactly is happening with that," Glover said in an interview. "The work I did on that was very different from Beowulf, because in that one I did go on and do my voice and didn't have a chance to interact with other actors."

Glover voiced the monster Grendel in Robert Zemeckis' Beowulf, which dropped on DVD on Feb. 26.

The animated 9 short is available online. Glover said the movie version will change things dramatically. The short "was a silent film," he said. "There was no dialogue in the short, 10-and-a-half-minute film. So this post-apocalyptic nightmare is what the director's vision is all about, and my job was to just get across what he wanted me to do. You've got to interpret the character and rebirth it his way, and when it's edited, it may be completely different from what you put forth as an actor. I'm glad we're working with the director who did the original short."

Written by Monster House screenwriter Pamela Pettler, 9 features the voices of Jennifer Connelly, John C. Reilly, Christopher Plummer, Martin Landau and Elijah Wood.

9 is expected to be released later in the year. --Mike SzymanskiJustice Is Back On Track

Warner Brothers is pushing ahead with Justice League, eyeing a 2009 release, now that the writers' strike is over, Variety reported.

Warners tried to get Justice League, based on the DC Comics franchise, into production earlier, but put it on indefinite hold in January, allowing the cast options to expire. At the time, the studio said it didn't want to move ahead until the writers had another shot at the script.

Writers Kieran and Michele Mulroney are busy polishing up the script, which is expected back at the studio in several weeks, and the cast have been advised to keep training for their superhero roles. Director George Miller is in preproduction in Australia, though it's unclear whether the movie will still be produced there or move to Canada.

Adam Brody, cast as the Flash, is the biggest star in the superhero lineup. Rapper Common nabbed the Green Lantern role; other roles went to lesser-known actors such as Armie Hammer Jr. (Batman) and Megan Gale (Wonder Woman).Mostow Developing Megas

Jonathan Mostow will partner with Virgin Comics to develop a feature from The Megas, an alternate-universe graphic novel just published by Virgin based on a Mostow idea, Variety reported.

The graphic novel, scripted by John Harrison and drawn by Peter Rubin, presupposes an America that has a ruling class called the Megas, for whom there is a special set of laws. A detective who believes in the monarchy rethinks his position after investigating a crime that reveals ugly truths about the elite society.

It's unclear whether Mostow will write the script or direct the feature adaptation; he and Virgin Comics chief creative officer Gotham Chopra and chief executive officer Sharad Devarajan will begin shopping the project shortly.Johnson Bites Into Fairy

Dwayne Johnson will star as the title character in The Tooth Fairy, a 20th Century Fox fantasy comedy that's coming together for an August start, Variety reported. Michael Lembeck (The Santa Clause) will direct.

Johnson will play an ordinary man who's brought in to try to save the tooth fairy kingdom.

The Tooth Fairy was written by the team of Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel and the team of Joshua Sternin and Jeffrey Ventimilia.

Johnson is currently starring in Disney's Witch Mountain, and he will be seen starring this summer opposite Steve Carell in the Warner Brothers comedy Get Smart.Hitman Gun Expert Got Game

Decorated U.S. Army veteran and gun expert Ron Blecker told SCI FI Wire that he had to study and play the game of Hitman before he could figure out how to make the film version's copious firefights look believable.

"When I first met with them, I had never heard of the game before, and I wasn't into video games at the time," Blecker, who worked as a tactical consultant on the movie, said in an interview. "One of the producers asked me about a guy blasting away with guns in two hands, and I kind of chuckled and asked, 'How do you reload it?' Then they showed me the box of the game, and I realized that it was pretty important for the character to have two guns shooting at the same time. That's what the fans are looking for."

Learning to play the Hitman game helped Blecker equip star Timothy Olyphant, who plays the title role. "I thought that Tim did an amazing job in the role," Blecker said. "He handled the role brilliantly as the lone gunman with his own style and razzle-dazzle."

In the nine years that Blecker has been a consultant for movies, he said his biggest pet peeve is that shooters in a gun battle never seem to have to reload. "I keep having to remind the directors that they have to stop to reload sometimes, or it will look ridiculous," he said. "The other thing is that people will say they know how to shoot a rifle because they shot out at ... granddaddy's farm or something, and then put their eye right up to the scope. ... They could cut their eye easily that way. But they learn."

Hitman, which also stars Dougray Scott and Robert Knepper, drops on DVD on March 3 in a new unrated edition. --Mike SzymanskiValkyria Aims For PS3

Sega announced that Valkyria Chronicles, an alternate-universe role-playing game, will debut exclusively for the PlayStation 3 in the fall.

Valkyria Chronicles combines strategy elements with real-time action sequences.

The game, developed by Sega Game Studios Japan, is set in a fictitious continent reminiscent of 1930s Europe, which has been divided into two alliances: the Empire and the Federation. The Empire has set its sights on invading a small neutral country called Gallia, which is situated in the middle of the two great empires.

The game follows a hero named Welkin and his fellow soldiers of the Federation's Seventh Platoon as they fight against the Empire, which is intent on unifying the continent under its power. The Federation discovers that the Empire possesses a secret weapon, known as the "Valkyria," an ancient race with special powers thought to exist only in legends.Juno's Cody Talks Body

Diablo Cody, who just won the Oscar for best original screenplay for Juno, told reporters that her next project will be the satirical horror movie Jennifer's Body. Speaking backstage at the Academy Awards in Hollywood on Feb. 24, Cody said that she's a big fan of the genre.

"I love horror movies," Cody said, adding: "I wrote a horror movie, and we're going to go shoot it in two weeks, so we'll be back on set. I'm excited, yeah."

Jennifer's Body is described as a horror/dark comedy in the vein of Heathers, with elements of Cody's favorite scare film of all time, Rosemary's Baby.

In her Juno script, Cody reflected her own passion for horror movie directors such as Dario Argento (Suspiria) and Herschell Gordon Lewis (Wizard of Gore) when her 16-year-old heroine, played by Ellen Page, talks about it with co-star Jason Bateman.

Cody said that Jennifer's Body deals with teens and cannibalism. Megan Fox (Transformers) stars.

The movie was delayed by the recently settled writers' strike, and Cody said she is eager to get it started again. The timing seems right as Cody comes off dual wins at the Oscars and the Independent Spirit Awards.

"I've always been a writer, and I've always been a storyteller," Cody said. "Anybody I grew up with can attest to that. But I never thought about screenwriting. It's not something people do. You grow up in the suburbs in the Midwest, you don't know any screenwriters, so it just doesn't seem like a realistic career possibility. And it wasn't until somebody who was in this world found me and said, 'Hey, you should come out here and do this. You could do this,' that I realized it was something that I could try." --Mike SzymanskiShazam Delayed, Not Dead

Director Peter Segal told SCI FI Wire that the recently settled writers' strike delayed his proposed Shazam! movie, but that it's still in active development.

"I think it'll still happen," Segal (Get Smart) said in a group interview at WonderCon in San Francisco over the weekend. "Though timing is going to be a key issue now, because ... normally we'd be working on a script while we're in post-production [on Get Smart], so that hopefully when we're done with post-production, we're ready to go into preproduction [on the next project]. But now we're sort of out of sync, so, unfortunately, I'll have to spend more time with my family." (That last comment was a joke.)

But Segal said he didn't want to rush the script for the movie, based on the venerable DC Comics Captain Marvel franchise. Segal also confirmed that the movie's tentative title is now Billy Batson and the Legend of Shazam.

"You don't really want to rush something like Shazam," Segal said. "I mean, it's going to be a huge movie. I mean, huge in scope and in price. And so you want to make sure you have a solid script and really pay attention to the casting and all the preproduction that goes into that. So, you know, I think when it's right, it'll be made."

Segal's upcoming Get Smart, based on the hit 1960s satirical spy series, opens June 20. --Patrick Lee, News EditorDimension Unlocks Hill's Key

Dimension Films has acquired screen rights to Locke & Key, a supernatural graphic novel by Joe Hill, which will be developed as a potential franchise, Variety reported.

Hill, son of author Stephen King, made his first screen sale with his debut novel, Heart-Shaped Box, which Warner Brothers is developing.

Dimension bought film and TV rights to Locke & Key from IDW Publishing and will develop the property as a feature. John Davis is producing.

The story revolves around a trio of children who become the caretakers of Keyhouse, a mansion in New England that is full of secrets and magic. The kids discover doors that take them to different places, give them powers and even alter gender and skin color. Behind one door is a dangerously violent creature.

IDW released the first issue of Locke & Key on Feb. 20 and will release the second volume on March 5. The plan is to do three six-issue installments, or a total of 18 comics.Moore, Rhys Meyers Seek Shelter

Jonathan Rhys Meyers is joining Julianne Moore in Shelter, a supernatural horror thriller being produced by Nala Films, Variety reported.

Based on a script by Michael Cooney (Identity), Shelter will be directed by the Swedish duo Mans Marlind and Bjorn Stein (Storm). It starts shooting in late March in Pittsburgh.

The storyline is being kept under wraps. The project is financed through Nala Investments, parent of Nala Films. Jericho's Time Is Near

Carol Barbee, executive producer of CBS' post-apocalyptic drama Jericho, told SCI FI Wire that this week is make-or-break time for the resurrected show--though she will try to find a new home for it if CBS goes ahead and cancels it after its current seven-episode second season runs its course.

"I think this next airing will probably tell the tale," Barbee said in an interview at WonderCon in San Francisco on Feb. 24, referring to the upcoming Feb. 26 episode, "Jennings & Rall." "Our numbers have been OK, [but] not great. Our [demographic] has been very good; they've been very happy with that. But we'll see. ... If we trend up this week, I think we'll look pretty good. If we don't trend up, or if we stay the same, I think we'll have to wait and see what they want to do with us. I mean, they're going to air all seven; it's just a matter of how they feel about producing more."

Barbee denied that CBS has told her the show is ending, notwithstanding speculation that the network has already designated the seventh episode the "series finale." (Just to be sure, of course, Barbee said producers have prepared two endings: one to wrap the series up and one with a bit of a cliffhanger that would propel the narrative into a third season.)

Just in case CBS does pull the trigger on Jericho, Barbee said she's already begun looking for a new home on cable television. "There were other people who were interested in us to begin with, and now, I think, with the whole nuts [fan] campaign, and also with the amazing reviews that we've gotten for these seven episodes, I feel like we have made this franchise more valuable to a cable network who would want to take us on as a niche market," Barbee said. (The "nuts campaign" was a successful lobbying effort by Jericho fans, who mailed tons of peanuts to persuade CBS to bring the show back after the network canceled it after the first season.)

"So I think it's very possible," Barbee added. "We obviously have a relationship now with SCI FI Channel, because they're running our previous episodes. So I think that's a natural place to start looking. But I think that ... there are other people who would be interested in the show if it doesn't continue on CBS." (SCI FI Channel hasn't said whether it would consider picking up Jericho or not at this point.)

New episodes of Jericho air on CBS Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET/PT. Reruns of the first season air on SCI FI Mondays at 10 p.m. --Patrick Lee, News EditorRatatouille's Bird Wins Again

Brad Bird, who won his second Oscar for best animated feature for Ratatouille at the Academy Awards in Hollywood on Feb. 24, told reporters that the win was every bit as tasty as his first.

"It's no less sweet," he said backstage at the Kodak Theatre. "Every time you make a movie, you're just hoping to get it out on time and hope that it makes sense and that people like it, and all of this other stuff is always surprising and shocking and wonderful."

Bird previously won in the animated feature-film category in 2004 for The Incredibles. On Sunday, he ascended to the podium to collect his statuette and quipped, "I think I'm going to throw up."

Ratatouille won one of five awards for which it was nominated. Bird said he hoped that someday animated films would again be included in the best-picture category. "You know, if you ask me, was Snow White one of the five best movies of 1937, I would say yeah, and they should have been up for one of the real Oscars rather than the one with the seven little men," Bird said. "But that said, this is all a total honor, and I hope one day that another animated film does again, like Beauty and the Beast was, get nominated as the best picture. But it's all good. Come on, it's the Oscars!"

Bird also talked about his next project, 1906, a live-action movie about the great San Francisco earthquake. "It's just a really great mix of unusual things at that moment in time," he said, adding: "You had horses and cars existing simultaneously with electric lights and gas lights, and there's political intrigue, and it was just a very volatile mix of great things. And then you throw an earthquake in there: Come on, that goes good with popcorn." --Mike SzymanskiCompass F/X Wins Oscar

The winners of the visual-effects Oscar for The Golden Compass were surprised that they beat out their competition: Transformers and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.

Backstage at the Academy Awards on Feb. 24, Compass' Bill Westenhofer, visual-effects supervisor for F/X house Rhythm & Hues, said, "I am surprised, but I'm extremely happy as well. This was an amazing year. There were three huge films. ... There was a lot of spectacle in the other films, and there's an awful lot of delicate intimacy and character performance in this film."

Senior visual-effects supervisor Mike Fink said the film's success was due to the performances. "The problems are the same problems anybody has acting in a scene, performing a scene," he said. "So it's the small moments that count, and actors are well known for doing less, being more. And that's what we are striving for with Golden Compass."

When accepting the award, Fink said, "We just brought a small quote from Walt Disney, who said, 'It's kind of fun to do the impossible.'" The Oscar also went to Ben Morris, visual effects supervisor with F/X shop Framestore-CFC, and special-effects supervisor Trevor Wood. --Mike SzymanskiFeast Scribes Redo Hellraiser

Variety confirmed a report that first appeared on ShockTillYouDrop that Feast writers Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan are writing a remake of Clive Barker's Hellraiser for Dimension Films.

French filmmakers Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo (Inside) are planning a spring start for the redo of the 1987 film, and the writers will do a page-one rewrite from the set of Midnight Man, which they also wrote and Dunstan is directing.

The original movie introduced the now-iconic Cenobite torturer Pinhead and followed a man and wife who were caught up in machinations of the man's brother, a Cenobite torture victim, to rejuvenate his skinless body from the carcasses of fresh victims.Nebula Finalists Announced

Finalists have been announced for this year's Nebula Awards, which recognize superior achievement in science fiction and fantasy writing. The award is presented annually by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Winners will be announced at the 2008 Nebula Awards Weekend, April 25-27, in Austin, Texas. A complete list of nominees follows.

Novel: Ragamuffin by Tobias Buckell, The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon, The Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman, The New Moon's Arms by Nalo Hopkinson, Odyssey by Jack McDevitt

Novella: "Awakening" by Judith Berman, "The Helper and His Hero" by Matthew Hughes, "Fountain of Age" by Nancy Kress, "Stars Seen Through Stone" by Lucius Shepard, "Kiosk" by Bruce Sterling, "Memorare" by Gene Wolfe

Novelette: "The Children's Crusade" by Robin Wayne Bailey; "Child, Maiden, Woman, Crone" by Terry Bramlett; "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" by Ted Chiang; "The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change" by Kij Johnson; "Safeguard" by Nancy Kress; "Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter" by Geoff Ryman; "The Fiddler of Bayou Teche" by Delia Sherman

Short Story: "Unique Chicken Goes in Reverse" by Andy Duncan, "Always" by Karen Joy Fowler, "Titanium Mike Saves the Day" by David D. Levine, "The Story of Love" by Vera Nazarian, "Captive Girl" by Jennifer Pelland, "Pride" by Mary Turzillo

Script: Children of Men by Alfonso Cuaron, Timothy J. Sexton, David Arata, Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby; Pan's Labyrinth by Guillermo del Toro; Dr. Who, "Blink," by Steven Moffat; The Prestige by Christopher Nolan and Jonathan Nolan; V for Vendetta by Larry Wachowski and Andy Wachowski; Star Trek: New Voyages, "World Enough and Time," by Marc Scott Zicree and Michael Reaves

The SFWA also announced finalists for the Andre Norton Award, which recognizes superior achievement in science fiction and fantasy writing for young adults. The finalists are Vintage: A Ghost Story by Steve Berman, Into the Wild by Sarah Beth Durst, The Shadow Speaker by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, The True Meaning of Smek Day by Adam Rex, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling, Flora Segunda by Ysabeau S. Wilce and The Lion Hunter by Elizabeth Wein. --John Joseph AdamsSignal's Bowen Goes To Devil

A.J. Bowen, star of the independent SF movie The Signal, told SCI FI Wire that he's about to begin shooting The House of the Devil, a horror movie directed by Ti West (Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever).

"We're filming in March in Connecticut, and it's a movie that is inspired by all those satanic films from the 1980s with all the paranoia," Bowen said. "It's about a house where an unsavory group of Satanists live. Part of it takes place at Yale, some of it in a house in the middle of nowhere where we can do a lot more and really push people through the wringer."

Bowen said he plays the part of Grady, and West wants him to keep his trademark scruffy beard. "I'm not being typecast at all," Bowen said with a smirk. "Ti's a friend of mine, and I look forward to this movie. It's very different."

The cast includes Greta Gerwig and Jocelin Donahue. "I know that a lot of actors talk down about this kind of genre work," Bowen added. "They want to escape it or move on from it, but not me. I always intend to make films within the horror genre." --Mike SzymanskiBRIEFLY NOTED

The third-season DVD set of SCI FI Channel's original series Battlestar Galactica drops on March 25 from Universal Studios Home Entertainment, with more than 15 hours of special features and an extended version of the episode "Unfinished Business."

A full trailer has gone live for Iron Man and has been linked through SCI FI Wire's Trailers page.

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America have announced that Elric of Melniboné author Michael Moorcock has been named the recipient of the 2008 Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award, which recognizes excellence in a lifetime of contributions to the science fiction and fantasy field. The award will be presented at the SFWA Nebula Awards Weekend, April 25-27, in Austin, Texas.

Bloody-Disgusting.com reported that Saw II-IV director Darren Lynn Bousman will helm an episode of NBC's upcoming horror anthology series Fear Itself.

A new trailer has gone live for Roland Emmerich's upcoming prehistoric epic film 10,000 B.C. and has been linked through SCI FI Wire's Trailers page.

Ain't It Cool News has posted a letter from James Cameron in New Zealand, updating the progress on his upcoming 3-D SF epic Avatar.

The Los Angeles Times has posted a feature about George Lucas' sprawling Skywalker Ranch.

British actor Toby Stephens (Die Another Day) was cast as the lead in Fox's modern-day Jekyll and Hyde drama Inseparable, though the project has not yet been picked up to pilot, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

USA Today has posted the first image from and a story about Richard Kelly's upcoming SF movie The Box.

EmpireOnline has posted new images from The Incredible Hulk, X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Iron Man.

Bear McCreary, who composes music for SCI FI Channel's original series Battlestar Galactica, will perform live on April 13 at Los Angeles' Roxy nightclub, and cast members will act as emcees.

Actor Ben Chapman, the 6-foot-5 ex-Marine who played the title character in 1954's cult SF movie Creature From the Black Lagoon, died last week of congestive heart failure in Honolulu, the Los Angeles Times reported; he was 79.

DreamWorks Animation is pushing back the release date of How to Train Your Dragon to March 2010 from November 2009, Variety reported.

Magnolia Pictures' new genre arm, Magnet, has picked up North American rights to Let the Right One In, a romantic horror movie based on a novel by Swedish author John Ajvide Lindqvist, about a boy who befriends a girl who may be a vampire, Variety reported.

Emmy-nominated writer Richard Baer, who wrote for such TV shows as Bewitched and The Munsters, died Feb. 22 in Santa Monica, Calif., after suffering a heart attack in January, Variety reported; he was 79.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that George Miller's delayed Justice League movie may move production to Canada from the original Australia.

Stage, screen and TV actor Robert DoQui, perhaps best known as Sgt. Warren Reed in three Robocop films, died Feb. 9 in Los Angeles, Variety reported; he was 74.