Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth film in the hugely popular franchise, is wrapped and nearly ready for its July 17, 2009, debut. It shot last winter at Leavesden Studios outside London (it was originally slated to come out in Thanksgiving 2008), and SCI FI Wire was among a handful of reporters on set to watch the filming and speak with the cast and crew.
"I think this one certainly has got a greater sense of comedy than any of the other ones have, and I suppose you could say that it's more adult humor, but you know, it's not all a light sort of romp in the park," Daniel Radcliffe (Harry) said during a break in filming last January. He added: "In this film, when it's light, it's much more comic than it has been before, but when it's dark, it's as dark if not darker than we were in, say, five or three."
We toured the movie's sets. One of the key sets we viewed is the hallway of the orphanage where Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) first meets the young Tom Riddle (Hero Fiennes Tiffin), a scene that takes place in flashback. The walls are paved with brown "tile," and Riddle's narrow cell is bare and bleak.
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We also visited a new set representing the interior of the Weasley house. It's a ramshackle farmhouse interior without a single right angle: The low ceiling, timbered walls and floors are all canted in weird ways, as if the house hasn't quite settled. But it's very cozy, with its overstuffed, ratty furniture, a grandfather clock and a big fireplace in the center of the room.
We learn that the house is central to a scene in the movie that is not in J.K. Rowling's book (spoilers ahead!): It burns, and Harry, Lupin, Tonks and Mr. Weasley narrowly escape. The scene was added to the movie only with Rowling's approval.
We also observed the filming of a scene in the Great Hall, which is filled with Hogwarts students at breakfast (big platters of sausages, racks of toast). It's the day of Ron's (Rupert Grint) big Quidditch match, and he's nervous as heck. Ron enters the hall, kitted out in full Quidditch gear.
Students call out encouragement: "Good luck, eh, Ron?" "Countin' on you, Ron!" "I've got two galleons on Gryffindor!"
The camera, on a crane, tracks Ron as he walks into the hall and down the central aisle. He encounters a towering student; they stop, do that left-right dance. Ron edges around him, then emits a big sigh. Not happy.
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Rupert Grint as Ron Weasley, Bonnie Wright as Ginny Weasley, Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter and Emma Watson as Hermione Granger (Jaap Buitendijk for Warner Brothers)
Radcliffe adds that romance blooms between Harry and Ginny Weasley, played by Bonnie Wright. "Yes, I've got everything with Ginny, which ... has been fun. It's good, fun scenes, and hopefully that'll come across on screen," he says. He adds: "It's slightly odd, though, with Bonnie, because when Katie [Leung] came in to play Cho on the fourth film, it was very much the case when she came in, we always knew she was going to be as a love interest. Whereas, of course, when I first met Bonnie, she was just another character; she was, I think, 9-10 years old when I first met her, and so it's very strange. I've sort of grown up with Bonnie, and now suddenly having to play love interest scenes is very--it's kind of odd."
SCI FI Wire will post more from its set report closer to the movie's July release. --Patrick Lee, News Editor
Jim Broadbent as Professor Horace Slughorn and Emma Watson as Hermione Granger (Jaap Buitendijk for Warner Brothers)
Wolverine Trailer Is Here
Fox has unveiled the new teaser trailer for X-Men Origins: Wolverine on MySpace.com. The movie, starring Hugh Jackman and Liev Schreiber, chronicles the beginning of Logan's journey to become the indestructible Wolverine. It opens May 1, 2009.
Kenneth Branagh confirmed to MTV.com that he'll be helming a film version of Marvel Comics' Thor.
Branagh welcomed the chance "to work on a story about one of the immortals, gods, extraordinary beings, interdimensional creatures," he told the site.
"There's science fiction and science fact and fantasy all woven into one," Branagh added. "It's based on Norse legends, which Marvel sort of raided in a brilliant way."
Branagh also dismissed early speculation about who might take on the role of the Norse god.
Watch A New Knowing Trailer!
A new trailer has gone live for Knowing, the SF thriller from director Alex Proyas (Dark City), which stars Nicolas Cage and Rose Byrne.
The story, written by Ryne Douglas Pearson and Richard Kelly (Southland Tales), centers on Cage, a professor who stumbles on terrifying predictions about the future contained in a time capsule--and sets out to prevent them from coming true. Knowing opens March 20, 2009.
Q&A: Spirit's Knockout Dames
The hero in Frank Miller's The Spirit may be dead, but he's a lucky, lucky boy.
In life, death and the afterlife, Denny Colt/the Spirit (Gabriel Macht)--the protagonist in writer/director Miller's upcoming big-screen adaptation of Will Eisner's comic book--gets all the ladies, romancing looker after looker as he protects his beloved Central City.
Among the beauties: Sand Saref (Eva Mendes), Denny's childhood love turned lethal jewel thief; Silken Floss (Scarlett Johansson), sexy young assistant to the Spirit's archrival, the Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson); Dr. Ellen Dolan (Sarah Paulson), arguably Denny's true love and the surgeon daughter of Central City's police commissioner (Dan Lauria); Plaster of Paris (Paz Vega), a murderous exotic dancer; and Lorelei Rox (Jaime King), the Angel of Death.
SCIFI Wire was on hand for a Dec. 13 press conference in New York City, where Johansson, Paulson and Mendes talked to reporters about The Spirit, which will open on Dec. 25. Following are edited excerpts of their comments.
Scarlett, how did you get involved in The Spirit?
Johansson: I'm not really a comic-book fan. That world always seemed kind of exclusive to me. So what brought me to this project was Frank. I loved Sin City--LOVED Sin City--and I loved 300, and I thought he must be a pretty interesting fellow. And so I'd gotten the script, and there really wasn't any part for me. The Silken Floss character was kind of underwritten, but I still wanted to meet Frank. So we met, and we had a really wonderful three-hour lunch meeting. We just talked about New York and just laughed and had a great time. At the end of it, I was like, "Well, I'm sad. There's nothing for me to do." He was like, "I'll think of something." And so he decided to expand this character. So I got super, super lucky. That was really it for me. I felt like being part of his vision would just be fun, a fun world to be able to play around in.
Eva, what attracted you?
Mendes: What I loved about this was that my character was created in the 1940s, so I have this real dame/broad kind of appeal to the character. She was just so over-the-top and fantastical, and she has some of the best lines in the movie, "Shut up and bleed" being one of my favorites. For me, it was just so collaborative and amazing.
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How about the costumes and the glamour end of the equation?
Mendes: It was a dream for me to get so wrapped in this character. How many times am I going to play a woman who's been married 14 times and killed almost all of her husbands and to play a jewel thief? The fun part for me was definitely putting on the glamour and wearing the clothes, but the core of this woman is pain. We can superficially look at it and say, "Oh, God, she's a diamond thief. How superficial, ... diamonds, ... yadda, yadda, yadda." But I realized that, because of her past and not having anything be stable in her life, a diamond is actually a rock, and a rock symbolizes stability, and it's so solid. Once I found that foundation, it made me realize where she was coming from, so I could go big, and I could be as ridiculous as I wanted to be, whether it was in hairstyle or in action or in wardrobe, as long as I was rooted in this major need to fill that void. So I had a fantastic time. And, again, it was from one of my favorite periods, when women were dames. They were broads. They weren't afraid to speak their minds and to throw out a curse word every
now and then. So it was fun for me, to say the least.
Paulson: My character didn't really have an over-the-top quality with the costumes or the look or anything, which I kind of liked and was also absurdly jealous of when I'd go in the makeup chair in the room, and I'd see these pictures of the continuity in Eva and Scarlett. Scarlett had these eyelashes with feathers coming off them, which was amazing. The thing I liked about the part was just that there's not a single woman in this movie who's a damsel in distress. There's not a single woman in this movie who isn't a strong woman. Frank changed my character a bit and made her a surgeon, so that I had this reason to be around the Spirit all the time, fixing him and healing him and things. And [Miller] used a blue color palette for my character. He wanted everything to be blue.
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Scarlett Johansson is Silken Floss.
Johansson: These are [Silken Floss'] humble beginnings, if you like, in a way. She's a medical-scientific mind, and I think that she's using this as a great opportunity to extend her schooling, in a way. She's working for somebody who has plethora of wealth and equipment and these grand ideas. So to actually put it to paper, all of his crazy ideas, is just a way for her to experiment. She says at the end of the film, "Who knows what she'll do?" She's moving on up. As far as all of my costumes, all of them directly correlated with Sam's costumes. They just said, "Sam looks like this." And I was like, "Oh, oh, what does my costume look like?" "Yours looks like this," and it was always a quarter of the size of Sam's costume. But I loved that, as Eva said, that fabulous golden age of Hollywood, those mid-'40s beautiful costumes. I loved my geisha costume just because ... it's a geisha costume. Why not?
You've noted that the characters have reasons for doing what they do and dressing, or undressing, the way they do. But even with the motivations, did you have to just surrender to the genre? Will Eisner liked his comic book women sexy, and Frank Miller tried to capture that. Silken Floss even talks about being eye candy ...
Johansson: The character, she knows that's what she's offering to the Octopus, and it's part of her appeal, because she's this giant brain who looks fantastic in a short skirt. So in her mind it's another way that she can lure the Spirit into their den. It's very convenient for them.
Mendes: I think the point here for me is that if I just felt like an accessory, first of all, I wouldn't have done the film, and if I would have been pressured to do it for whatever reason, I would have felt really sh--ty about myself just flaunting it without it having a foundation. But the point is that my character uses everything she has as a woman to get what she wants. So in the reveal, when I actually show my backside [to the Spirit], he's asking for it. I'm in a towel, and he says, "Hands behind your head." "Oh, really?" So she's the smart-ass who's going to get what she wants, and she got out of the arrest by using her body in that situation. So if there were no brains behind the body, I would have major qualms with it, but she's so kick-ass in every way. She's such a smart dame that, yeah, part of her sexuality, part of getting what she wants, is turning up the sex. So I had no problem with it for this film. --Ian Spelling
Exclusive: Miller On Spirit, Sin 2
Down these mean streets a man must come, and that man is Frank Miller, who took it upon himself to write and direct The Spirit, the upcoming film adaptation of Will Eisner's most famous comic book creation.
The story follows Denny Colt (Gabriel Macht), a murdered rookie cop who returns from the dead as the Spirit, a seemingly immortal masked hero on a mission to protect his beloved Manhattan-like Central City and to understand the hows and whys of his impossible existence. Along the way, he encounters a super-psychotic supervillain, the Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson), and a bevy of beautiful babes, among them Sand Saref (Eva Mendes), Ellen Dolan (Sarah Paulson), Silken Floss (Scarlett Johansson), Plaster of Paris (Paz Vega) and Lorelei Rox (Jaime King).
SCI FI Wire spoke to Miller by telephone on Dec. 13. Following are edited excerpts from that exclusive interview. The Spirit opens on Christmas Day.
Everyone's talking about the visuals of your film, but how about the screenplay? How hard or easy was it to take the comic-book saga and adapt it into a script?
Miller: It was very difficult, actually. At first I approached Will Eisner like he was Raymond Chandler, and I then realized that he was O. Henry. He wrote very short stories, and it was a matter of adapting my favorite of his short stories and then expanding on them. My favorite of his short stories was a two-parter he did [on] Sand Saref, and I based the entire move on that. Then I extended it outward to involve his villain, the Octopus, and wonderful characters like Silken Floss and the new characters that I'd created, like Morgenstern [Stana Katic]. And, of course, Commissioner Dolan [Dan Lauria] had to be all through it.
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Speaking of Eisner, is it true that you initially turned down the offer to direct the film and that you then, after a few minutes, agreed to do so because you simply didn't want anyone else to touch it?
Miller: That's exactly true. It took place within three minutes.
Why were you so reluctant initially, and what made you so quick to change your mind?
Miller: Will Eisner was my mentor, and The Spirit was so awesome a property that I at first thought I was not worthy to do it. And then I couldn't think of anybody else who was, so I decided that I was the right man for the job.
Some of the imagery is of a different era, very '20s, '30s and '40s, and much of what we see, things like cell phones and high-tech guns, is very modern. How did you choose what would be retro and what would be contemporary?
Miller: Well, what I wanted to maintain mostly was the dignity and the gentlemanly quality of the Spirit himself. I wanted to recapture some of the glory of manlihood that I feel the world has lost. I wanted to bring it back through the Spirit. Meanwhile, I wanted to keep everything looking as good as possible. So, as a cartoonist, I've learned to structure stories around things I like to draw. And in the case of The Spirit, I wanted New York to be captured in all its glory from the '20s through the current era. That meant sewer grates from the '20s and cars from the '50s and cell phones from the present.
You directed The Spirit by yourself, but are reportedly going to re-team with Robert Rodriguez for Sin City 2. What's the latest update on that?
Miller: The script is ready. Robert and I are now working on how to actually make it happen. There's many, many a slip between conception and production.
And the story is still based on "A Dame to Kill For"?
Miller: The story is based on "A Dame to Kill For." And it features several other, new stories that I have created for it. --Ian Spelling
Spirit's Jackson Channels Wile E. Coyote
Samuel L. Jackson told SCI FI Wire that he couldn't wait to wrap his tentacles around the role of the Octopus in Frank Miller's upcoming big-screen adaptation of Will Eisner's comic series The Spirit.
The genre veteran's Octopus is the gun-toting, maniacal, seemingly indestructible nemesis of the story's masked hero, the Spirit (Gabriel Macht), a rookie cop who rises from the dead determined to protect his beloved Central City and unaware of just how closely connected to the Octopus he really is.
SCI FI Wire recently sat down with Jackson in New York to discuss The Spirit. Following are edited excerpts of the exclusive interview. The Spirit opens on Christmas Day.
How closely is Miller sticking to the source material? After all, we see the Octopus rather than just his gloves.
Jackson: Well, that's the biggest difference, I think, because the Octopus was always just a pair of gloves [in the comic]. So it's an enormous honor and joy to be able to put flesh and blood to something that was just a voice balloon and a pair of gloves. Thankfully, Frank was open enough and ego-less enough to listen and kind of let us experiment and try things that work in the spirit of who Eisner was. I'd listen to him to find out who Eisner was and what his idea of this character is, and "How would he feel about seeing me do this?" or "How would he feel about seeing me dressed this way or taking the character to this place?"
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How would you described the Octopus?
Jackson: He's a megalomaniacal, crazy guy. He's brilliant, and he doesn't have a moral compass at all. And he also has to be sort of ridiculous in a very interesting way, because it's a cartoon. You've got two guys who are basically indestructible, who do Wile E. Coyote-Bugs Bunny things to each other in the middle of a gangster movie. So there have to be some sort of rules that you create that allow these characters to exist and to exist in the reality of that particular world. So we had to set those rules kind of early, and we had to follow them pretty strictly once we set them. Thankfully, Frank allowed us to do that and allowed me to create this character that runs this world in a very interesting, sick, demented way that's brilliant on one hand and cockamamie on the the other hand, at times dealing with the clones he's created. He's created these very imperfect clones, and he can't figure out why [they're imperfect].
Take us through the knock-down, drag-out fight scene between the Octopus and the Spirit.
Jackson: It's all hilarious to do. Like I said, it's like you're doing a Wile E. Coyote cartoon. You're hitting each other with toilets. I hit him with a toilet. I hit him with a wrench that's, like, 12 feet long, this huge-ass wrench. He smashes me in the head with cinder blocks. And we were in a big mud flat doing this stuff. The only thing missing is birds flying around our heads tweeting when we hit each other. But everything else is there.
And how about the guns?
Jackson: The guns get bigger and bigger. I kept saying to Frank, "I need a bigger gun. I need a bigger gun." So the guns just got bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger. So the guns got bigger and bigger until we got to the point where Frank was just wiring guns together. I actually created an urban myth at Comic-Con. I was making a joke, and now it's become part of The Spirit fact. I read it the other day, that Frank had so many guns wired together that they had to put wires on them to hold them up so I could hold them up. They were extremely heavy, but we never put wires on them.
Have you seen the finished film?
Jackson: I have seen it. I love it. I talked to people in Europe who have seen it. I guess a lot of people expect it to look like Sin City, but it doesn't. It has its own look. I think once you accept the convention of what it is, it's an amazing ride. Plus, the women are so gorgeous. The women look amazing. And the movie looks amazing. It's got its own look, its own feel. I think people are really going to like it. --Ian Spelling
Miller Mulls New Buck Rogers
Frank Miller and Odd Lot Entertainment, the creator and production company behind the upcoming comic-book adventure The Spirit, are close to teaming again on the classic sci-fi property Buck Rogers, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Odd Lot, the company run by Gigi Pritzker and Deborah Del Prete, is in negotiations to option the rights to Rogers from Nu Image/Millennium, which obtained those rights this year from the Dille Trust. Millennium is expected to get a credit on the movie but won't be involved in day-to-day production.
John Flint Dille, a friend of Miller's, operates the trust, which may have partly prompted rumors at the time of the Millennium acquisition that the comic auteur-turned-filmmaker might come aboard to direct.
But Miller was not attached at the time; he only became involved when Odd Lot entered the picture.
Miller will write and direct his own big-screen take on the comic serial; while the creator has only begun to sketch ideas, it's expected to be a darker take, with many of Miller's signature visual elements and themes, such as corruption and redemption.
It's likely to be a priority project for Miller, though he has been mulling a Sin City sequel.
One of the first pop-culture vehicles to tackle the issue of space exploration, the story of Buck Rogers began life as a comic serial in the late 1920s and early '30s and has seen numerous film and television versions over the years.
New Lost Promo Now Here!
Watch the new promo for season five of ABC's Lost, which returns Jan. 21 at 8 p.m. ET/PT.
Why We Need More Dr. Horrible
At the San Diego Comic-Con last July, writer/producer Joss Whedon raised the possiblity of a sequel to his hit Internet musical Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, which is available on DVD today. To which we say: Heck yeah!
The three-part musical/comedy/drama came together during last year's writers' strike and hit the Web with much fanfare. Centering on a wannabe supervillain played by Neil Patrick Harris, the show chonicled Dr. Horrible's efforts to woo the laundromat girl, Penny (Felicia Day); to defeat his archnemesis, Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion); and to qualify for membership in the Evil League of Evil.
By turns silly, heartwarming and heartbreaking, the webisodes practically cried out for follow-up. With a crashing economy, crippling ice storms and the unfortunate return of short-brimmed hats as a male fashion statement, the nation needs Dr. Horrible more than ever. Here's why.
Dr. Horrible is ready for a new adventure. After Penny's unfortunate encounter with the freeze ray, Dr. H goes full evil. He's got a fancy new red costume, and he's been accepted into the Evil League of Evil. Captain Hammer is in therapy, and our favorite bad guy has every reason to seek revenge. Anyone who has a Ph.D. in horribleness can think of fantastically evil ways to exact it.
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Captain Hammer could become something even crazier. Aside from the fact that Fillion is just plain pretty to look at, he pulls off smarmy superhero like nobody's business. Just imagine the weirdness that could come out of the brain of someone who saves damsels in distress by throwing them into a pile of garbage. And the questions: What special muscles has he been working on?
Penny is gone. Everyone loved Day as sweet, doomed Penny. But she was all wrong for the doc. Now that Dr. Horrible has groupies--including one played by Whedon's real-life sister-in-law-to-be--there's a great opportunity to work Dollhouse star Eliza Dushku into the mix. Of course, Penny could always come back--Whedon's brought characters back from the dead before. In fact, he's brought them all back from the dead, come to think of it ...
The Evil League of Evil. The head of the league is called Bad Horse, and he's an actual horse, accompanied by a retinue of singing cowboys. We have barely scratched the surface of crazy. Still to be heard from: Professor Normal, Fake Thomas Jefferson and Dead Bowie.
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Because the fans demand it! Do a search for Dr. Horrible fan fiction and prepare to be amazed. The Facebook fan site has 89,608 members; the series has been nominated for a People's Choice Award; and Time Magazine gave it the number 15 spot in its Top 50 Innovations of 2008. Show us it's not just a fluke.
Cruise Eyes SF Champions
The Champions, an SF movie based on a British TV series, is among three movies being developed by Valkyrie co-writer and producer Christopher McQuarrie and star Tom Cruise, Variety reported.
McQuarrie is writing and producing the United Artists project with Guillermo del Toro, writing the script with an eye toward hammering it into a Cruise vehicle.
The movie concerns a team of government agents rescued from a plane crash in the Himalayas by an advanced civilization and given superhuman abilities.
MGM brass have long felt that the project was UA's strongest chance for a big-ticket franchise vehicle that could star UA co-owner Cruise, the trade paper reported.
New Regency has set McQuarrie and Mason Alley to write Flying Tigers, based on the volunteer fighter squadron formed to help the Chinese fight the Japanese before the U.S. entered World War II.
Spyglass, meanwhile, is developing the espionage drama The Tourist, which McQuarrie is rewriting for Cruise to star in with Charlize Theron.
Trek's First Lady: An Appreciation
Majel Barrett-Roddenberry--who died on Dec. 18 at the age of 76--was more than just an actress, producer and wife of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry: She was the keeper of the Trek flame and of Gene's creative legacy long after he himself passed on in 1991.
Often referred to in fan circles as the "First Lady of Star Trek," Barrett-Roddenberry was best known for appearing in or giving voice to roles in every incarnation of Trek, from the unaired pilot for the original series straight through to J.J. Abrams' upcoming reboot Star Trek movie--the only thespian with such a Trek lineage.
More than that, though, Barrett-Roddenberry took it upon herself to further and protect the legacy of her late husband. She oversaw the operations of Lincoln Enterprises, a company that produced, sold and licensed Star Trek memorabilia. And she served as an executive producer of Gene Roddenberry's Earth: Final Conflict and Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, long-running syndicated SF series based on ideas that Gene left behind. She helped shepherd and develop Gene's notes and other writings into the successful shows, passing his vision of the universe on to future generations.
Majel frequently attended Star Trek conventions around the globe, accepted posthumous awards on her husband's behalf and acted as an ambassador for Trek with great humor and grace.
Following his mother's passing, her son, Eugene "Rod" Roddenberry Jr., issued the following statement: "My mother truly acknowledged and appreciated the fact that Star Trek fans played a vital role in keeping the Roddenberry dream alive for the past 42 years. It was her love for the fans, and their love in return, that kept her going for so long after my father passed away."
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YouTube.com video by "SuperTrekNerd" with examples of Majel Barrett-Roddenberry's appearances and computer voices in various Trek series and movies.
Majel Barrett was already a working actress when she met Gene Roddenberry, who cast her as Number One in his original 1966 Star Trek pilot, "The Cage." NBC executives, who already detested the character of Spock (Leonard Nimoy), insisted that audiences would not accept a woman in a role of such power and compelled Roddenberry to drop Number One and give Barrett a different role.
As a result, she was cast as Nurse Christine Chapel, a minor role that Barrett-Roddenberry played in the ensuing Star Trek series and in Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home; for the movies, the character was promoted to Dr. Chapel.
Later, when Gene Roddenberry launched Star Trek: The Next Generation, Majel beamed aboard as Lwaxana Troi, the Betazoid mother of Deanna Troi, and a tough, egocentric, opinionated and argumentative woman. Lwaxana was introduced as a broad comedic figure, but over the years the recurring character gained depth and factored into increasingly dramatic storylines. Majel also appeared as Lwaxana on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
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Majel Barrett-Roddenberry as Lwaxana Troi on the set of Star Trek: The Next Generation with her husband, Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. (StarTrek.com)
But it was as the voice of the compuers on all Federation starships--most notably the U.S.S. Enterprise--for which Majel may best be remembered. She did this for the original series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and the prequel series Enterprise, as well as in most of the Trek feature films.
Just before her death, it was announced that Majel would provide the computer voice in Abrams' Star Trek, which will be released in May 2009.
The family has requested that in lieu of flowers, donations be made in Barrett-Roddenberry's name to the C.A.R.E. or Precious Paw, charities that share Barrett-Roddenberry's love for animals and dedication to animal rescue. --Ian Spelling
Chow Won't Helm Hornet
Stephen Chow has dropped out as director of The Green Hornet but will still play Kato in Columbia Pictures' latest bid to get the crime fighter to the big screen, Variety reported.
The studio and producer Neal Moritz are in the process of setting a new director to keep the picture on track to begin production by spring.
The character began on radio in the 1930s and is best known from the '60s TV version. But a big-screen translation is having a long gestation, going through many incarnations, including as a proposed George Clooney vehicle.
Chow, who directed and starred in Kung Fu Hustle and Shaolin Soccer, signed in September to direct the film and play the role originated in the TV series by Bruce Lee. He stepped out as director over creative differences.
The film was scripted by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, and Rogen is starring as the masked crime fighter.
Shanks Digs In Grand Canyon
Former Stargate SG-1 star Michael Shanks heads the cast of SCI FI's original movie The Lost Treasure of the Grand Canyon, but the actor told SCI FI Wire that he never quite made it to the Arizona landmark. Oddly enough, he pretty much ended up ... home.
In the period adventure/fantasy movie, Shanks plays Jacob Thain, an archaeolgist who joins the search for Dr. Samuel Jordon (Duncan Fraser), a fellow archaeologist who's gone missing in the Grand Canyon while searching for an ancient civilization. The rescue expedition, led by Dr. Jordon's daughter, Susan (Shannen Doherty), crosses through a wall that's protected by evil spirits, among them a winged serpent, as well as Aztec warriors with a habit of sacrificing humans. Below is an edited version of an interview with Shanks. The Lost Treasure of the Grand Canyon airs Dec. 20 at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
How did this film come about?
Shanks: This period piece was brought forward, and we were going to film it in the Grand Canyon. I thought that would be very cool. I'd only ever done one period piece in my entire career, and the prospect of going to the Grand Canyon was pretty neat. And it was a fun adventure story, from what I read, with interesting visuals, with the archaelogy and the mythology, and the wardrobe was neat. It was more about the discovery and the journey, and it was an interesting character. I was daunted by playing yet another archaeologist, but, at the same time, this character was very different in a lot of ways [from Stargate's Daniel Jackson].
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Michael Shanks is Jacob Thain, and Shannen Doherty is Susan Jordon.
He's very formal, soft-spoken and shy around Doherty's character.
Shanks: He was a bit of a throwback to the early days of playing Daniel Jackson on Stargate, but I enjoyed it, because the way it was written and the way I wrapped my head around it is that he's a very reluctant hero. And there were differences even between this character and the early Daniel Jackson. So that made it interesting.
But you actually never shot in the Grand Canyon, right?
Shanks: Right. We shot in the town that I grew up in, Kamloops, British Columbia. So all those outdoor locations were in this town that I literally spent my life in from age 12 to, I think, 19. I grew up in this town. I hadn't been back there in seven or eight years, so it was quite a strange thing to go back there to film a movie, for sure. --Ian Spelling
SCI FI Orders More Ghost
SCI FI announced that it has ordered a sixth season of Ghost Hunters, a second season of Ghost Hunters International and a six-episode first season of the recently announced Ghost Hunters: New Generation (working title). The announcements are part of a multipart deal with Craig Piligian's Pilgrim Films and Television, which produces the shows.
In addition, Pilgrim will develop an entirely new series for SCI FI, with an eye toward a 2010 premiere.
In Ghost Hunters: New Generation, a group of college students (led by seasoned investigators) will investigate haunted hotspots around the country and around the world.
New episodes of Ghost Hunters International will debut Jan. 7, 2009, and season five of Ghost Hunters will premiere in March 2009.
Rome Lives In Strength
SF author R.M. Meluch told SCI FI Wire that her latest novel, Strength and Honor, is part of her Tour of the Merrimack series, which was developed from a comment by a professor in a Roman history class: "The Roman empire never fell, and we are it."
"I know what he really meant by that, but my brain took a hard left turn and ran with it," Meluch said in an interview.
In the series, Rome did not truly fall. "It has gone underground and exists today as a secret society--not in an alternate timeline, but in this one," Meluch said. "Rome preserves its language and culture in the fields of law, medicine, science and religion in many countries of Earth, while even today secret Romans are waiting for a chance to re-establish their empire. ... When the nations of Earth begin colonizing other worlds, the Roman empire resurfaces on the U.S. colonial world of Palatine. The Tour of the Merrimack books take place a 150 [years] after the Roman war of independence from the U.S."
Strength and Honor is a swashbuckling space opera full of action, heroics, romance, drama and comedy. "I'm in this arena to entertain," Meluch said. "Underneath the surface, if you care to look deeper, there are questions of duty and obligation, tribalism, loyalty, power and corruption, chaos, destiny and free will, and, well, strength and honor."
The primary protagonist is Capt. John Farragut of the U.S. space battleship Merrimack. "He's Jack Aubrey in space," Meluch said, referring to the hero of Patrick O'Brian's Napoleonic-era naval novels (Master and Commander). "He's the anti-Picard. This is a battleship, not the good ship Enterprise. We are not here to seek out new life and drink tea. We're here to run out the guns."
Another central player is the Roman "patterner" Augustus, an altered human. "He's my signature character: obnoxious, conflicted, gifted, cursed," Meluch said. "He is the heroic enemy."
Strength and Honor is the end of the tour, Meluch said. "This means war; no one is safe," she said. "The U.S. and Palatine launch cross-invasions while the alien omnivore Hive still threatens all life. Capt. Farragut and Augustus, who have built up a grudging friendship, now have orders to kill each other. One succeeds. One serves his country. The other acts for the greater good." --John Joseph Adams
Is Lautner Out Of New Moon?
There are reports that Summit Entertainment may be recasting the role of Native American werewolf Jacob Black for the Twilight sequel New Moon, played by Taylor Lautner in the first movie.
Entertainment Weekly reported that Lautner's agent has reached out to one of the visual-effects companies that worked on Brad Pitt's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in order to show New Moon director Chris Weitz and Summit how visual effects could create a digitally bulked-up Lautner, suggesting a possible casting change was based on Lautner's physique.
Lautner himself told SCI FI Wire and other reporters last month that he was working out in anticipation of New Moon, which revolves around the relationship between Bella (Kristen Stewart) and Jacob.
"I'm trying," Lautner said when asked if he was hitting the gym.
"I'm trying not to think about it, not getting my hopes up yet," Lautner said about the sequel while promoting Twilight. "I mean, anything can happen. But, yes, the buzz behind this is unreal and just the amp coming up to the movie."
Many fans support Lautner's casting. Summit is quick to say that casting for the character has not been decided.
Button's Henson Is Pitt's Ma
Forget Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett: Taraji P. Henson fills out one of the pivotal supporting roles in director David Fincher's fantasy movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, based on the short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
She plays Queenie, the retirement-home matron who adopts the title character, a man who ages backward. Since Button is born with the appearance of an elderly man, it is the perfect home for his childhood. Queenie nurtures him as she does her usual wards.
SCI FI Wire participated in a group interview with Henson at the press junket for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button on Dec. 7 in Beverly Hills, Calif. The following Q&A features edited excerpts of that interview.
Did you read the original F. Scott Fitzgerald story?
Henson: Yeah, I did. I didn't read it until after. I didn't want to read it before, because I didn't want it to distort the beautiful story that [screenwriter] Eric [Roth] had [written]. [It's ] very different. It's loosely based.
When you first read the script, what was your reaction?
Henson: I'm never going to get this. They have some big name offered, they have an offer out to some big name, and they're just holding these auditions as a backup plan. I honestly didn't think I had a shot. I was planning a garage sale. I really was. I just remember initially getting the script, and I was like, "Wow, this is bold. This is really bold." I thought bold across the board. Bold writing, to make the mother African-American in the early 1900s. I thought that was really bold, because she didn't have to be. I thought it was a bold choice for Fincher to direct it, and bold for Brad Pitt to be in it. I consider myself to be a risk taker as an artist, and I like to make bold choices, so I was like, "Wow, I hope I got a shot." I told you I was planning a garage sale. Up until the point where I got the call, I hadn't even been called back in.
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Taraji P. Henson (center right) stars as Queenie, who takes in the very young and very old infant Benjamin in "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." (Merrick Morton for Paramount)
Once you were filming, what sort of feedback did you get to reassure you that you were delivering what they wanted?
Henson: Oh, I don't even know if I could see what they wanted. I was just hoping I was giving them what they wanted. I guess I started hearing little things, like Eric Roth was like, "Thank you so much for bringing Queenie to life." And I'm looking at him like, "Are you kidding me? Thank you for writing such a rich character." The first time that Brad and I worked together, Fincher tells me later that he was nervous. That was so calming, because he's Brad Pitt. He still gets nervous. Fincher says he comes over to him, and he's like, "I'm nervous, I really don't have anything to do in this scene." And Fincher was like, "Don't you worry. Taraji's got it." We do the scene, Fincher yells cut, Brad goes over to video village, and he's like, "Oh, my God, where did you find her? She's incredible." I'm looking at Fincher telling me this, and I see his mouth move, and I'm like, "Brad said that about me?" Then there's a scene--the only one scene I really had interaction with Cate--I go to the makeup trailer, and she grabs my hand and she says, "I love what you're doing with Queenie. It's absolutely marvelous." Of course, I'm an actress, so I took it [gracefully]. I was like, "Thank you so much." I walked out of the trailer, I was like, "Oh, my God!" That's when you know you're doing something, when the greats tell you, "Good job."
Brad Pitt's older than you. Did you ever think you'd be playing his mom?
Henson: No, and my lesson is: Be very specific in what you ask for. I said I wanted to work with Brad Pitt. God, I found out, has a wicked sense of humor. "Oh, you want to work with Brad Pitt? Play his momma." The first time we worked together was when Benjamin Button comes back to the house for the first time, after he had gone off to become a man. So the first time Brad sees me, I'm in a fat suit and a wrinkled face. I'm like, "Great, the plot thickens." So the first time he sees me out of the suit, he's like, "Wow, my momma's hot."
What was your take on this adoptive mother of a baby aging backwards?
Henson: I am a mom, so once a mother, always a mother. I try to mother my friends, and they're like, "Get away from me. You're not my mother." So I already had that on board. I think unconditional love is what comes with being a mother. That's certainly something I understand. That's something Queenie understands. Even when the film opens, she's barren. She's not able to physically have her own children, so her need to nurture is intense. She is used to taking unwanted people. I mean, think about it. It's unfortunate that a lot of elders get put off in these homes and no one ever comes to visit. She's a woman who believes that every human deserves love. She feels a need to give that, and she really honestly feels that's why she's been put on this Earth. If she can't have babies, then it's her journey and her job to give as much unconditional love to humans in general as possible. It's just unfortunate that everybody that she loves is dying, so Benjamin Button represents life to her.
Did you make a backstory for Queenie and her place in post-World War I Louisiana society?
Henson: Yeah, I make backstories for all my characters, but what I loved about his writing was that, again, it could have been another cliche character. She could have come off as like a mammy role, but that's not who he wrote. I remember him even saying that's not the character that he was interested in writing, that's not the character that David Fincher was interested in directing, that's not the character I was interested in portraying. It's a stereotype. I remember when the one elder woman comes out after I just found Benjamin Button. She knocks on the door, and I open up the door. She's like, "I can't find my pearls." And I pick up the pearls, I say, "They're around your pretty white neck." I was like, "Whoa, Fincher, she wouldn't say this in this time." He said absolutely she would. He says, "She runs this household. If she falls on her pretty white ass, who's going to pick her up? They need you. Act like it. They need you." I think that helped with breaking that stereotype, because she really could have been, "Oh, lawdy!" I certainly wasn't interested in portraying that. We've seen that already. --Fred Topel
Buffy's Espenson Pens Oz Comic
Former Buffy the Vampire Slayer writer/producer Jane Espenson returns to Sunnydale with a new five-issue Dark Horse comic series centering on Oz, the rocker werewolf and onetime paramour of Willow.
"I'm doing this five-issue Oz arc," Espenson said in an exclusive interview. "I am planning on doing a lot of writing on that over the Christmas break. The next thing I'm going to do is finish this Dollhouse script; then we get into that Oz comic and really, really knock that out."
Oz, played by Seth Green in the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV show, was the subject of an earlier Dark Horse series of comics. Dark Horse has been publishing a series of Buffy comics, overseen by series creator Joss Whedon, that constitute a "season eight" continuation of the TV show's overall story arc.
As for the arc's storyline? "Oh, that is top secret, my friend, but it's super cool," Espenson said, adding: "You'll see a wolf or two. There might be a wolf."
Will Oz have a new love interest? "I don't think wolves mate for life," Espenson said slyly. "I think there could be a new mate. We'll see."
Espenson previously wrote a Buffy comic centering on the comic vampire figure of Harmony.
Seth Green played Oz the werewolf in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Set Report: Fraser's Inkheart
Based on the book by German author Cornelia Funke, Inkheart centers on a mild-mannered bookbinder with the uncanny ability to bring fictional characters to life whenever he reads aloud. The film--starring Brendan Fraser as the vocally gifted Mo Folchart--was shot at Shepperton Studios just outside of London nearly two years ago, but it's been pushed back at least twice for a variety of reasons, including an executive shuffle at New Line Cinema, the writers' strike, a complex post-production process and perhaps other reasons that haven't been disclosed. With the official release date fast approaching, however, SCI FI Wire is finally able to share the details of the set visit that took place back in January 2007.
The scene being filmed that day involved Fraser and fellow cast members Andy Sirkis, Helen Mirren, Paul Bettany and Eliza Bennett. Sirkis plays a fictional villain named Capricorn, who has been brought to life through Mo's special gift and enjoys the real world so much that he doesn't want to go back to the book whence he came. He's invested much of his time and effort in tracking down copies of the book--titled Inkheart--and destroying them one by one. In this particular scene, Capricorn has captured Mo, his daughter Meg (Bennett) and his aunt Elinor (Mirren) with the help of another fictional character, a street performer named Dustfinger (Bettany), who believes that Capricorn will force Mo to read him back into the book. Apparently, Dustfinger somehow missed the part where Capricorn is described as a ruthless and dishonorable villain.
"I'm slightly worried," Sirkis said in a group interview during a break from filming. For the part, he wears all black and sports a shaved head. He fears he may be having too much fun playing such a dark character. "I'm enjoying it too much, actually. I'm not having to dig too deep for this one. No, it is really good fun to play. [Director Iain Softley] has really nudged the way of playing it from a much, much less theatrical [standpoint]. I think my bent was to play it much more theatrically, but he's very good at bringing it in. He always wants to really give this a sense of reality, and I think he's always seen Capricorn as a very droll and dry character. And so he's kind of led me down that way. And I've just really kind of enjoyed doing it."
The scene takes place in one of the rooms of Capricorn's castle, which we did not have the opportunity to tour because of the filming going on that day. We did, however get to see the large set, which included some of the castle's exteriors. The sprawling dirt-floor set featured a wrecked chapel, stone stairways, arched doorways, alleyways and a large courtyard, where production designer John Beard had set up some photographs and artwork to show off some of the other locations in Italy and the United Kingdom. According to Beard, the use of real European locations was meant to give the film a sense of authenticity and timelessness.
Also dropping by the stage to provide a demonstration were a few animal trainers and a number of ferrets, who collectively play the role of Gwin, Dustfinger's furry familiar and best friend. Each of the ferrets has a particular talent--from perching on an actor's shoulder to fetching to following a predetermined path when called--and each had to be made up with tiny horns to match the description of the character in the book (attached with a form of spirit gum that doesn't hurt the animal).
As far as the two-legged members of the cast go, it is up to Fraser as the star of the film to ground it in an emotional reality while fantastic events are happening all around him. Coincidentally (or perhaps not), Fraser was no stranger to Inkheart before joining the project, having provided the narration for the audio-book series. Funke has even stated in interviews that she had Fraser in mind for the character of Mo when she was writing the book, a prospect that is both humbling and daunting for the actor.
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Brendan Fraser (left) stars as Mo and Paul Bettany stars as Dustfinger in New Line Cinema's Inkheart. (Murray Close for New Line Cinema)
"It is immensely flattering," he said during a roundtable interview in a dining room at Shepperton Studios. "It's something that I never anticipated. Least of all learning about it in an article that I read. She had given an interview and answered the question about what inspired the character. And novels and author writers, as far as I understand it, the way their process works sometimes--and I know in her case--she says that the novel writes itself. So this may sound a bit, to my sensibility, a bit odd, she said that she was able to work backwards. ... I think she was probably watching some films or heard something that I'd done, and it inspired her character, I guess."
Speaking of humble, we happened to catch Dame Helen on the day after she had been nominated for an Oscar for her critically acclaimed performance in The Queen (an award she would go on to win). Displaying some of that characteristic British unaffectedness, she explained that the production was a nice distraction from all the award-season hype.
"I love it," she told us. "And especially to be working on, honestly, an incredibly happy set, with great actors. So that's an inspiration. And also, it's humbling, because you remember that you're one of a huge tribe of wonderful actors. And it's distracting, which is great. It's not a heavy film. It's not full of misery. Obviously, we're all committed and hardworking, but it's not heavy in that way. So that's been fantastic."
Inkheart is set to open in the United States on Jan. 23, 2009. --Cindy White
Wood Sings About Spidey Musical!
Evan Rachel Wood was thrilled to discuss her upcoming part as Mary Jane in the Spider-Man Broadway musical in Los Angeles last week, where she was promoting The Wrestler. SCI FI Wire was on hand to get all the details on Spidey's Broadway debut.
"I'm doing Spider-Man on Broadway, starting in June," Wood told SCI FI Wire. "After I colored my hair, I went, 'Duh, Mary Jane.' I sent a photo to the director. I'm really excited. It's Julie Taymor, who did The Lion King on Broadway, and she's really kind of doing the same thing. [She] takes it to this whole other level. It's awesome! It's really spectacular. They're using new technology and wirework."
The musical will draw from multiple sources for the storyline and will even include a new villain. "It will pull some things from the films, but it's based more on the comic book and the origin of Spider-Man. There's going to be old villains and new villains. Wait until you see the villains. I wish I could tell you who the villain is. There's one [new villain] that is more of a Greek mythology kind of thing."
U2's Bono and the Edge are already hard at work on the music for the show. Wood beamed as she spoke of rehearsing with the rock legends: "It's so good. It makes me cry."
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The part of Peter Parker/Spider-Man hasn't been cast just yet, but the actress said that her Across the Universe co-star Jim Sturgess has been offered the part. "He did the workshop with me, [and] we're still trying to convince him to play Spider-Man. He's such a huge U2 fan, and there was one time he was learning a song and Bono and the Edge were playing the other parts, so they were basically being his backup singers. And I just remember taking him aside and going, 'Bono and the Edge were just your backup singers! Can you just enjoy this moment for me right now, please?'"
Everyone's favorite neighborhood webcrawler will leave the singing to his alter-ego, however, focusing on action rather than music when he dons the skintight red and blue. "Spider-Man never sings in tights, only as Peter Parker," Wood said with a laugh. "A man does not sing in spandex, so that was a big deal."
The show should surface on Broadway in late 2009 after a lengthy rehearsal process. "We start [rehearsals] in June and go up in October," Wood said. "It's going to be a year in total. I've always wanted to do it, and I'm never going to get another opportunity like that." --Jeff Otto
Shankman Helms Bob, Sinbad
Adam Shankman has signed on to helm Bob the Musical at Disney and Sinbad at Sony, Variety reported.
Bob the Musical centers on a mild-mannered man who suddenly hears the "inner song" of people's hearts after being struck on the head.
Shankman is also in final negotiations to direct and develop a take on the classic epic adventure Sinbad. The long-gestating project has attracted a number of helmers over the years, including John Singleton and Rob Cohen.
The story centers on Sinbad and his crew, who are marooned off the coast of China and embark on a quest to find the lamp of Aladdin.
Sonnenfeld To Save The World
Barry Sonnenfeld will direct and produce the SF action comedy The How-To Guide for Saving the World from BenDavid Grabinski's script, Variety reported.
The title refers to an instruction manual for saving the world, which is left behind by a secret group that protects the Earth from alien invaders after the group is wiped out.
"Unfortunately, a non-action-hero guy not unlike me, in terms of manliness, and a woman who hates him find the book and have to save the planet from an impending attack," Sonnenfeld told the trade paper.
Stormcaller: Not The Usual Rubbish
Fantasy author Tom Lloyd told SCI FI Wire that his new novel, The Stormcaller, was inspired by a "rubbish" novel ... because he thought he could do better.
"I first had the idea when a friend at school threw the fantasy book he was reading across the room and said 'That was rubbish, I can write a book better than that!'" Lloyd said in an interview. "Being childish, I immediately decided I could do it better than him, but I only actually started writing when I started daydreaming the first scene, a walk through an unreal, unfinished white palace. The story then developed, because I've always loved the unsubtle, squabbling gods of various mythologies, and there aren't many novels that have the gods taking too much involvement. Plus I didn't want to spend a whole book reading about the character's slow rise: I wanted to [throw] someone in at the deep end and see what they could do."
The novel follows the adventures of a "white-eye" named Isak--a sub-breed of human created by the gods to lead the tribes and armies of men. "Born into poverty with a father who resents him, Isak is an angry young man whose temper is always getting him into trouble," Lloyd said. "Unfortunately, white-eyes are bigger, faster and stronger than normal men, so when they get angry, people get hurt. Isak is a teenager who doesn't know his own strength and is just trying to find his place in the land, who doesn't want the vast power he's been handed and would trade it all in for a beer if that didn't mean people might end up dead as a result."
Chosen by the gods to be heir-elect of his people, Isak finds himself thrown into a world of politics, prophecy and violence. "And he quickly finds out that people have been planning his rise for a long time," Lloyd said. "There are empire-builders and supernatural forces at work, plus others who have a whole lot of revenge in mind. When his people are invaded by their longtime enemies, Isak is sent to lead the army against them, and that sparks off the chain of events that will turn the entire land on its head."
Book 2 in the series, The Twilight Herald, is scheduled for release in March. --John Joseph Adams
New Unborn Images!
Rogue Pictures has released some new images from its upcoming supernatural horror movie The Unborn, written and directed by David Goyer (Batman Begins).
Sometimes the soul of a dead person has been so tainted with evil that it is denied entrance to heaven. It must endlessly wander the borderlands between worlds, desperately searching for a new body to inhabit. And sometimes it actually succeeds. The Unborn opens Jan. 9, 2009.
Gary Oldman is a rabbi and Odette Yustman a girl with ghost problems in The Unborn.
Idris Elba (on floor) is an unfortunate minister in David Goyer's The Unborn.
Cam Gigandet (left) and Odette Yustman star in The Unborn.
New Final Destination, Terminator Images!
Warner Brothers released some new images from its upcoming 2009 slate of movies, including new looks at Final Destination: Death Trip 3D, Terminator Salvation and Where the Wild Things Are.
Janet (Haley Webb) realizes she is stuck inside a car wash in Final Destination: Death Trip 3D. (Jim Sheldon for Warner)
Nick (Bobby Campo, left) tries to hold onto Lori (Shantel Vansanten) in Final Destination: Death Trip 3D. (Jim Sheldon for Warner)
Christian Bale is John Connor in Terminator Salvation.
Max Records is Max in Where the Wild Things Are.
Battlestar: The Plan Secrets Teased!
Jane Espenson, who wrote the upcoming movie Battlestar Galactica: The Plan, said that the telefilm will retell the initial story of the SCI FI Channel series, but from the perspective of the Cylons, and that it will take advantage of revelations that will come in the upcoming new episodes of the show's fourth and final season.
"The events of The Plan are the events that you've seen ... in the show, from the miniseries to almost the end of season two," Espenson said in an exclusive interview. "So it's that chunk of time, but sort of seen with the Cylon perspective. So you're going to see a lot of stuff that was going on that you weren't aware of at the time: on Caprica, in the fleet. ... This was the time when the Cylons, as depicted in the original show, ... were very mysterious, enemies that would come out of the darkness and retreat. And this is ... what were they really doing all that time: what was the internal stuff. ... A lot of loose ends are tied up, a lot of questions are asked that you don't even know you have."
The movie--the second stand-alone telefilm based on the Peabody Award-winning show--deals with all the mythology's secrets. "If you had a copy now, you might feel that you could go ahead and watch it, because it's about stuff that already happened," Espenson said. "But don't do it. Of course, you don't have a copy now, because there isn't even a cut yet. ... But it's very much designed to be watched after the run of the series, because it definitely relies on stuff you don't learn until much later."
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Rekha Sharma (from left) as Tory Foster, Mary McDonnell as Laura Roslin, Edward James Olmos as Adm. William Adama, Michael Hogan as Col. Saul Tigh
The Plan stars Edward James Olmos, who also directed; Dean Stockwell as Brother Cavil; Michael Hogan as Col. Tigh; and Michael Trucco as Anders, among others.
Espenson said that Olmos was very collaborative. "He and I had a lot of very long sessions of going through the script line by line, Eddie Olmos reading the whole thing out loud, just amazing as, you know, a one-man show every night," she said. "And just like going, 'Listen to this line, wouldn't this be better like this? Wouldn't this be better like this? Are you sure that we need this in this scene?' Just incredibly insightful, just working through it with Eddie, and [we] made a ton of changes in the preproduction phase and ended up with a really tight script that we filmed sort of as they were demolishing the sets out from under us. And [we] ended up with something that I think is so much better than our highest hopes had been for what this movie could be. It really sort of caps off the show."
Battlestar Galactica: The Plan is slated to air in June 2009. Battlestar Galactica returns to SCI FI at 10 p.m. ET/PT on Jan. 16, 2009, with the remaining episodes of its fourth and final season. --Patrick Lee, News Editor
Stewart To Helm Priest
Scott Charles Stewart has signed to direct Priest, a horror western adapted from a TokyoPop comic book, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Michael De Luca and Stars Road Entertainment's Josh Donen are producing for Screen Gems; Mitchell Peck will also produce
The story is set in a world ravaged by centuries of war between man and vampire and follows a warrior priest who turns against the church to track down a murderous band of vampires who have kidnapped his niece. Cory Goodman (The Brood) wrote the screenplay.
The project almost came together a couple of years ago with Gerard Butler and Steven Strait under the direction of Andrew Douglas, but fell apart.
Stewart is a former ILM staffer who, along with Stu Maschwitz and Jonathan Rothbart, co-founded the special-effects house the Orphanage.
Watch The Trailer For Eden Log
A new trailer for the indie SF movie Eden Log has gone live on IGN.com. The movie opens in February.
Watchmen Trial Delayed
A Los Angeles federal judge has moved the trial for Watchmen back two weeks to Jan. 20, 2009, after declining to issue a ruling on whether Fox or Warner Brothers controls the rights to the project, Variety reported.
Judge Gary Allen Feess set the new trial date on Dec. 15, noting that he's required to handle a criminal matter on Jan. 6. He also refused to make a pretrial summary judgment--as requested by both sides--because, he said, the contracts between Fox and Watchmen producer Larry Gordon are so open to interpretation that a trial is required.
Warner has not backed off a release date of March 6 for Watchmen, directed by Zack Snyder and starring Patrick Wilson and Jackie Earle Haley.
Fox's suit, filed in February, contends that it retains distribution rights to the graphic novel penned by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons. It asserts that Gordon's option to acquire Fox's remaining interest in Watchmen was never exercised, thereby leaving Fox with its rights under a 1994 turnaround agreement.
Warner has denied Fox's assertions and contended Fox doesn't hold the copyright.
Alien's Weaver Tells A Tale
Sci-fi fans may have dreamed of having Alien's Ellen Ripley read them bedtime stories, but the closest they'd get would be falling asleep to the nurturing scenes between Ripley and Newt. Sigourney Weaver was not available for private readings.
This generation's kids, however, will get a special treat: Weaver provides the voice-over narration for the animated movie The Tale of Despereaux.
Weaver took part in a news conference last week in Santa Monica, Calif., to talk about the movie, based on the book by Kate DiCamillo; following is an edited excerpt of that news conference. The Tale of Despereaux, featuring the voices of Matthew Broderick and Emma Watson, opens on Christmas Day.
How did you come up with the tone of voice you use as the narrator?
Weaver: Well, gosh, I have to say that I probably used my own experience telling stories to my daughter, because I think that you have to actually draw pretty deeply into whoever your storyteller is. Of course, the storyteller, the narrator, in Kate's book is very, very strong, charming, "Come a little closer, get comfortable." I think it's one of the nicest introductions to a book ever written for families. My daughter was a little too old to actually read the story aloud to her, although we read all the Harry Potters out loud. So I tried to not put anything over. I tried to just find the person in me who wanted to take care of all these children.
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Was it hard to stay objective and not try to make it too much of a character?
Weaver: I was like a big umbrella. I was able to hold my arms around the world that all these characters lived in and be a person to bring them all together. So I was really with the readers, the experiencers of the story. I had one foot in each world, in your world and in their world. I was really more like you than one of them.
Since you're not actually a character interacting with the others in the story, did working alone in a recording studio lend itself more to your reading?
Weaver: I think I was the person they started with, because the narrator has to usher people into this world and introduce these characters. It was really exciting to be that person, which [writer/producer] Gary [Ross] described as children's eccentric aunt with a cigarette. Anyway, he did at one point bring in a couple of interns for me to talk to, because I really wanted this sense of telling this story to children, because it gets very scary sometimes. I wanted them to know that I was always with them and I would take care of them and I would get them back to the light. I'd never done the narrative before, and I found it very, very interesting. I must have come back, I don't know how many times, at least two or three times a year in the last three years as it evolved, which was fascinating.
Do you think there's something for grown-ups in there too?
Weaver: I think of this as literature, and I think that any good piece of literature will have things in it for all ages. So I don't think that they are going for this secret adult audience, but I certainly think it's a very sophisticated story with much for all of us at any age. I appreciated that, because when you do have to keep going back for three years, it's got to have some richness there for you to tap, and it certainly does. --Fred Topel
SF Series Among The Most DVR'd
Science fiction shows--including NBC's Heroes, ABC's Lost and Fox's Fringe--were among the year's top 10 most "time-shifted TV series"--the most TiVo'd, to you and me--according to the Nielsen Co., Variety reported. The new list is a ranking of the programs that saw the biggest increases in DVR use in 2008.
In a second list that ranked shows in order of the percentage increase attributable to time-shifted viewing, SCI FI Channel's Battlestar Galactica came out on top, notching a whopping 53 percent jump in households.
Other strong cable showings included SCI FI's Sanctuary (35 percent) and Eureka (34 percent).
Emo Hit Darko Drops On Blu-ray
The weird-ass emo cult time-travel/pedophile/musical-SF movie Donnie Darko debuts on Blu-ray high-definition disc on Feb. 10, 2009, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment announced.
The Blu-ray features both the theatrical cut of the movie and Richard Kelly's director's cut, which was released previously on DVD, as well as commentaries by Kelly, star Jake Gyllenhaal and others.
The Blu-ray will present the movie in widescreen format (2.35:1 aspect ratio) on a 50 GB dual-layer disc authored in BD-J with AVC (MPEG 4) compression, with English 5.1 DTS HD Master Audio, Spanish/French 2.0 Audio and English, French and Spanish subtitles.
The disc carries a suggested retail price of $34.99.
Pollution Yields A Watermind
Philip K. Dick Award-winning SF author M.M. Buckner told SCI FI Wire that her latest novel, Watermind, grew out of her interest in water in general and the Mississippi River in particular.
"For many years, I've worked with environmental organizations to help protect water," Buckner said in an interview. "I'm a scuba diver as well as a certified instructor of both whitewater and sea kayaking. Any water activity, I love it. ... Naturally, with such an interest, I was drawn to the idea of a water-based science story. When I began to read about the Mississippi River--the size of its drainage area, the tonnage of pollution it carries and the complex manmade structures built to control its flow--well, that inspired me."
Then Buckner discovered Devil's Swamp, with its long history of toxic dumping, murdered bodies, birth defects and ghosts. "Next, I found the Bonnet Carr¿ Spillway, the beautiful green strip of parkland used about once every decade to shunt Mississippi floods through Lake Pontchartrain and out to the open Gulf, into a polluted dead zone the size of New Jersey," she said. "After that, the story just sort of wrote itself."
Watermind is set along the Mississippi River in present-day Louisiana. "On the surface, the novel is a simple 'creature feature' about a liquid intelligence that emerges from technological trash flowing down the river," Buckner said. "At a deeper level, it's a story about the American melting pot, where many different elements mix together to create new forms."
Each day, the Mississippi carries over 400,000 tons of rubbish from 41 U.S. states and three Canadian provinces. "All our trash flows into the river, every kind of electronic gadget: old computers, game consoles, cell phones, watches," Buckner said. "[In the book,] all this rubbish and pollution collects in the Mississippi Delta, where it brews a mysterious new entity: an elusive liquid neural net that can rise, sink, freeze, boil and move through the water seemingly at will."
To picture the Watermind, visualize a liquid cloud of microchips, nanotubes, photovoltaic cells, artificial hormones, petrochemicals and genetically modified plant matter, Buckner said. "Picture this cloud floating in the water, refracting light so it's almost invisible," she said. "It can freeze, boil, evaporate and sublimate. It can sample and synthesize compounds from the surrounding pollution. It can also think and plan. I see the Watermind as a scary-smart young child exploring its environment and learning at light speed." --John Joseph Adams
"Happy Fringemas!" Watch The Video Here!
Miss Fox's new Fringe?
The network has posted "Happy Fringemas," a holiday-themed video that recaps the story so far, recited by John Noble (as Walter Bishop) in the same meter as "The Night Before Christmas." It's not for the faint of heart.
Fringe returns with new episodes in January.
New Trek Banner Unveiled!
Paramount released a new banner for J.J. Abrams' upcoming Star Trek movie, featuring the images of the main crew of the starship Enterprise.
The movie, starring Chris Pine as Capt. Kirk and Zachary Quinto as Spock, opens May 8, 2009.
Street Fighter's Kreuk, Klein Spill
Kristin Kreuk and Chris Klein, stars of Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, told SCI FI Wire that the film remains true to the video game on which it's based.
Kreuk plays the title character and said Chun-Li's origin story is drawn from the game.
"It's about the character Chun-Li," she said in an interview on the red carpet for the Video Game Awards in Los Angeles over the weekend. "It's her origin story from when she was a little girl. She loses both of her parents. Her father is taken away. She doesn't know that, and she goes on a revenge journey and then eventually finds a teacher, a master to help her overcome her emotional attachments to getting her revenge so that she can actually see a greater good, and then go forth and fight from there."
For his part, Klein plays Charlie Nash, a rogue Interpol agent. "[He's] an American," Klein said. "Chasing after the villain in our movie, Bison, played by Neal McDonough. Kristin's character, Chun-Li, and I discover we're after the same bad guy. So we team up a little bit, and heroic adventures ensue."
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Klein admits to being a fan of the Street Fighter game from way back. "Capcom is coming out with a new version of the game," he added. "Street Fighter version four for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, in the first part of next year. But I was Nintendo 64 Street Fighter version two, since I'm a little bit older."
Kreuk (Smallville) said she had to train hard to perform her character's martial-arts moves. "We did a bunch of stuff," she said. "A lot of wire work, a lot of kung fu and tai chi stuff. I did some sword fighting, which I don't think is in the movie. It was awesome. We couldn't fit it in timewise." Kreuk added that some crew members got sick while filming and ended up in the hospital.
Klein, similarly, trained hard. "I got to work with [an] Australian counter-terrorism unit," he said. "And we went in, and they taught me how to shoot guns. I don't have a lot of experience shooting an M-16 rifle or a 9 mm Beretta, so it was a lot of fun. And Charlie Nash's weapon of choice is a 9 mm Walther P99. So I got to have some fun with that and shoot with that. And, actually, Moon Bloodgood, who plays another Interpol agent in Bangkok, Thailand, who Charlie teams up with, ... we got to do that. We got to shoot guns and do some tactical training."
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li will be released Feb. 27, 2009. --Jenna Busch
New Lost Season Five Clip
ABC has posted a new clip from the upcoming fifth-season premiere episode of ABC's Lost, which airs Jan. 21.
Baker Dishes On Wolfman Makeup
Multiple Academy Award-winning makeup artist Rick Baker told SCI FI Wire he's not exactly sure why The Wolfman is delayed for more than half a year, but added that his work does pay homage to the original 1941 Universal Pictures Wolf Man, not Baker's other lycanthrope movie, An American Werewolf in London.
Baker--speaking in Century City, Calif., on Dec. 14, where he received the Tesla Award from the International Press Academy--said, "It was a troubled project from the start. The first director [Mark Romanek] left, and Joe [Johnston (Jumanji, Jurassic Park III)] took it over, but it looks real good. I saw how they set it in [19th]-century England, and it looks spectacular."
The film stars Benicio Del Toro as Lawrence Talbot, who inherits his family's curse: turning into a werewolf when the moon is full. Baker faced a challenge crafting the makeup that would transform Del Toro into a wolfman.
"I had a lot of trouble with that, because Benicio already looks like a werewolf, especially when he grows his facial hair out," Baker said. "I kept telling them that he wouldn't look too much different."
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But Baker managed. He used prosthetics and rubber masks to create the wolf face. Unlike the lycanthropes in An American Werewolf, though, Del Toro's Talbot doesn't undergo a complete body transformation. "In [American Werewolf], I was turning the whole body of a man and transforming him into a wolf," Baker said. "This one is different, and harkens back to the classic Wolf Man [played by Lon Chaney Jr.] I'm not sure what they are going to do about the transformation; I heard they are going to do it in CG, and I think that is a mistake."
Computer-generated technology has affected some of Baker's work. Sometimes the mix of makeup and digital technology works well, he said. "In the case of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, it was a meld of CG animation and makeup to turn Brad Pitt old, and many people say that it was the best combination of the two technologies that they've ever seen. I'm very proud of that."
The Wolfman, originally slated to open in the spring, instead will debut in November 2009. (Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.) --Mike Szymanski
Exclusive: Coraline Alphabet Card!
SCI FI Wire has obtained an exclusive image of one of 26 alphabet cards tied to Coraline, Henry Selick's upcoming stop-motion-animated movie, based on Neil Gaiman's book.
The "S" card pictured below is one of the character art cards that will be used to market the film on the Web and elsewhere.
In the movie, Coraline Jones (voiced by Dakota Fanning) is bored in her new home until she finds a secret door and discovers an alternate version of her life on the other side. On the surface, the parallel reality is eerily similar to her real life and the people in it--only much better. But when this seemingly perfect world turns dangerous, and her other parents (including her Other Mother, voiced by Teri Hatcher) try to trap her forever, Coraline must count on her resourcefulness, determination and bravery to escape this increasingly perilous world--and save her family. Coraline opens Feb. 6, 2009.
Two Cast In Tron Sequel
Olivia Wilde and Beau Garrett are the first to sign on for the sequel to Tron, called either TR2N or Tron 2.0, depending on which Hollywood trade paper is doing the reporting.
The sequel to the 1982 Disney movie is being directed by Joseph Kosinski, a commercial director.
Sean Bailey is producing along with Steven Lisberger, who co-wrote and directed the original film, and Jeff Silver.
The original centered on a programmer who is thrust into a computer and forced to fight in games he helped create.
The new movie is acting as a "next chapter," according to The Hollywood Reporter. Plot details are being guarded closely, but Wilde will play a worker in the virtual world who tries to help fight Master Control Program, the villainous intelligence protocol that was the nemesis in the original film. Garrett will play a siren in the virtual world.
The male lead has not been cast, but the studio and filmmakers are screen-testing actors as it brings on other leads and supporting players.
Tron 2.0 is eyeing a spring shoot and is shaping up as one of the studio's most anticipated projects in years. Kosinski shot reels to test technology and showcase his vision for the film; the footage screened at Comic-Con in July and was one of the most buzzed-about films coming out of the geekfest.
Jeff Bridges is expected to reprise his role from the original movie.
More On The Battlestar Webisodes
Jane Espenson, who co-wrote and produced the new 10-part series of Battlestar Galactica webisodes, "The Face of the Enemy," told SCI FI Wire that they will "inform and motivate" some of the events that take place in the upcoming final episodes of the show.
"It will motivate decisions Gaeta [Alessandro Juliani] will make in the second half of season four, in the upcoming episodes," Espenson said in an exclusive interview. "I think if you didn't see the webisodes, you would buy the decisions that Gaeta makes, but I think if you see the webisodes, you'll really buy the decisions that Gaeta makes."
The webisodes, which kicked off last week, take place inside a stranded Raptor carrying a group of passengers, including Lt. Felix Gaeta and a Number 8 Cylon (Grace Park). When passengers suddenly start dying in alarming ways, fear, panic and chaos erupt within the confines of the small ship as suspicion grows that there is a killer among them. Michael Hogan (Col. Tigh) and Brad Dryborough (Lt. Hoshi) also star.
Espenson, who is a co-executive producer of Battlestar, co-wrote the webisodes with Seamus Kevin Fahey, a staff writer. "I'm extremely proud of them," Espenson (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) said. "I really think they turned out great."
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Espenson added: "It's sort of the notion of being in close quarters with Cylons, and when bad things start happening, the suspicions and secrets and suspense of this confined space with enemies/allies, who's who. ... We learn some interesting stuff about Gaeta--we learn some backstory about Gaeta--that's, I think, very satisfying."
Espenson said writing and producing the three- to four-minute webisodes differs from putting together a full episode of Battlestar. "It's very different, because ... we needed an act break, essentially, every three pages," she said. "When we structure a television show, we're thinking constantly about the act break moments, the moment right before you go into commercial. How do you create suspense for that moment, to bring people back? And it's sort of very, very unique to television to this point. But now that webisodes exist, and they're served in these little bite-sized portions, you've got to try to structure a very different kind of story that can have those moments much more often."
The second webisode is now live on SCIFI.COM, and the rest of the episodes will be posted as follows: Dec. 17: Chapter 3; Dec. 22: Chapter 4; Dec. 24: Chapter 5; Dec. 29: Chapter 6; Dec. 31: Chapter 7; Jan. 5: Chapter 8; Jan. 7: Chapter 9; and Jan. 12: Chapter 10.
Battlestar Galactica returns to SCI FI at 10 p.m. ET/PT on Jan. 16, 2009, with the remaining episodes of its fourth and final season. --Patrick Lee, News Editor
Bruce's Campbell Has Regrets
Bruce Campbell, who directed and starred in My Name Is Bruce, told SCI FI Wire that he now regrets using his real name in the self-referential spoof.
In the film, Campell's biggest fan enlists the actor's help to fight a monster. Campbell now finds that viewers are taking his fictional persona a little too seriously.
"We probably should not have called him 'Bruce Campbell,'" Campbell said in a phone interview on Dec. 14. "It created an extra layer of distress in people's minds where they were tormented with why we went so far, if he was Bruce Campbell."
The "Campbell" of My Name Is Bruce is a divorced egotist who carries around headshots to distribute to fans while he answers their questions about Ellen and Serving Sara. The point was simply to offer such a character redemption in a setting that would please die-hard fans of Campbell, who is well loved for his roles in genre films such as Evil Dead and Army of Darkness.
"Hopefully, if you strip the 'Bruce Campbell' aspect out of it, it would hopefully function as your basic premise: Loser actor hired because he's thought of as something else and turns out to be his worst nightmare come true," the real Campbell said. "So it's still a hero's journey. The movie hero has to learn how to be a real hero or attempt thereof."
My Name Is Bruce screenwriter Mark Verheiden took inspiration from a similar story about old Hollywood star Alan Ladd.
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"Really, it's based on a comic that Mark Verheiden read years ago," Campbell said. "There was an old '40s comic book called The Adventures of Alan Ladd, where he was kidnapped by some people, because he was in a couple of swashbuckling movies, to help them fight pirates. So he thought, 'Let's do a strange demented spin on top of that.' That's the initial kernel of the idea."
My Name Is Bruce also features Quan Di, a monster worthy of Campbell's B-movie filmography. Campbell claimed the legend was authentic with a perfect tongue-in-cheek deadpan. "It was organic to Chinese lore," he said. "In Chinese lore, Quan Di is the protector of the dead and bean curd, because he was a former bean-curd seller before he became a deity. So he's had a soft spot for bean curd."
It's amazing none of Campbell's previous movies included a face-off with the god of bean curd. "Perhaps they never had the depth that this one has," he said.
My Name Is Bruce opens exclusively at the Nuart Theater in Los Angeles on Dec. 19. --Fred Topel
Despereaux Actors Were Animated
Dustin Hoffman, who voiced a rat named Roscuro in the animated film The Tale of Despereaux, told a group of reporters that his recording sessions involved physical activity. Normally, voice actors are isolated in a sound booth to ensure clean takes. Not so in the case of this film.
"The director, when I was working, we not only sat at the table trying to interact, but he had us moving around, and he had a guy with a boom following us around," Hoffman said in a press conference last week in Santa Monica, Calif. "I thought, 'If this film doesn't turn out good, I'm going to kill him.'"
Matthew Broderick, who provides the voice of Despereaux the mouse, also got physical with his recording. This was a striking difference from his previous voice work on films such as The Lion King and Bee Movie.
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"I remember moving around, too, which I had never done before," Broderick said during the same press conference. "Even when we recorded, we were in a big room with boom mics, so it was very natural-feeling. You see sketches of your character, you read it, and then you have to trust the people who tell you what their plans are, and then you record a little, and then they animate a little, and then together you get more of a feeling for what they mean. As you see more and as they hear you more, they might adjust things, and the character grows into what it's going to be over a couple of years, usually. It's sort of fun for the actor. I find I have to really try to listen to what the creators want and then also try to bring as much humanity as I can."
The Tale of Despereaux was only Hoffman's second animated film; he had a more traditional experience voicing Kung Fu Panda. "This was different," Hoffman said. "Kung Fu Panda was similar to what you guys are saying: the man in the glass booth. This is much more interactive."
In the story of talking mice and rats, the actors simply played characters as they would in any of their live-action dramas. "I just really loved the story, and I didn't particularly think of him as a mouse," Broderick said. "I figured once they did the drawings it would be clear it was a mouse. I thought of him as a boy trying to turn into a man. I tried to take it sort of seriously and think of it like my own life. ... I didn't think too much about mouseness."
The Oscar-winning Hoffman concurred. "All of us work the same way in one sense, no matter where our training is," Hoffman said. "That is that we involve ourselves, because that's all you have. Whatever you're getting from the character is a part of us. Otherwise we can't do it." The Tale of Despereaux opens Dec. 19. --Fred Topel
Baker Honored By IPA
Makeup master Rick Baker was honored by the International Press Academy over the weekend in Los Angeles, and TV's True Blood and the movies Ghost Town, The Dark Knight, Iron Man and WALL*E all took home trophies.
John Landis, who worked with Baker on An American Werewolf in London, presented Baker the Tesla Award for recognition of visionary achievement in filmmaking technology. Landis first hired Baker in 1971 for Schlock, and Baker's work in An American Werewolf in London won the makeup artist the first of six Academy Awards.
WALL*E won the award for best animated/mixed media film.
Ricky Gervais won best actor in a motion picture, comedy or musical, for Ghost Town, in which he played a dentist who can suddenly see spirits.
The award for best editing went to Dan Lebental for Iron Man. He told SCI FI Wire that he's already prepping for the sequel. "I'm going out right now to call [director] Jon Favreau, and he'll be pretty excited about it," Lebental said. "We're going to do a lot more incredible things with Iron Man 2. We're all pretty jazzed about it." Iron Man won also for best DVD extras.
Best sound editing and mixing went to Richard King for The Dark Knight. Best original song went to "Another Way to Die" from Quantum of Solace.
In the TV categories, best supporting actor went to Nelsan Ellis in True Blood. Anna Paquin won best TV actress in a drama.
In the DVD categories, Wargames, the 25th Anniversary Edition won best youth DVD.
The International Press Academy is made up of more than 150 domestic and foreign entertainment journalists who work for TV, radio, interactive, print and Internet outlets worldwide. This is their 13th awards show. --Mike Szymanski
New Moon Release Date!
E! Online reported that New Moon--the sequel to Twilight--will get a Nov. 20, 2009, release date.
Chris Weitz (The Golden Compass) was previously announced as the director of the sequel, which is also based on a book by Stephenie Meyer. Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson are expected to return as Bella Swan and Edward Cullen.
New Witch Mountain Onesheet!
Disney released this new onesheet for its upcoming remake/reboot movie Race to Witch Mountain, based on the classic SF family movie Escape to Witch Mountain.
The new film stars Dwayne Johnson, AnnaSophia Robb and Alexander Ludwig and opens March 13, 2009.
Iron, Knight Make AFI Top 10
The Dark Knight and Iron Man, two of the summer's comic-book-inspired hits, secured spots on the list of the American Film Institute's 10 outstanding movies of 2008.
The AFI's other top picks included The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and WALL*E.
The top 10 TV shows of the year included ABC's Lost.
The AFI will honor the creative ensembles behind the films and series at an awards luncheon on Jan. 9.
Carlyle To Star In Stargate Universe
Award-winning Scottish actor Robert Carlyle (The Full Monty) has been cast in the leading role of Dr. David Rush on SCI FI Channel's new original series Stargate Universe, the latest adventure in the Stargate franchise produced by MGM television.
Production will begin in Vancouver, Canada, in February 2009, with an eye to a summer 2009 premiere. Additional casting is currently underway.
Described as edgier and younger in tone than the two previous series, Universe follows a band of soldiers, scientists and civilians who must fend for themselves as they are forced through a Stargate when their hidden base comes under attack.
The desperate survivors emerge aboard an Ancient ship missing in the far reaches of space. As they fight to survive, Dr. Rush (Carlyle) works to unlock the mysteries of the ship and return the group home, but evidence of his ulterior motives soon arises.
Brad Wright and Robert Cooper--co-creators of Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis, who both currently serve as executive producers on Atlantis--will serve as executive producers and writers on the new series.
Stargate Universe will debut as a two-hour movie event on SCI FI and will be distributed by MGM Worldwide Television Distribution.
Espenson: Dollhouse Is Just Fine
Writer/producer Jane Espenson (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) defended Joss Whedon's upcoming Fox SF series Dollhouse--on which she is a consulting producer--against negative buzz and rumors, saying that it's shaping up just fine, thank you.
"It's really good," Espenson said in an exclusive interview with SCI FI Wire. "I think it could very well appeal to not just Whedonites, but a much broader audience. I think it's extremely good, and the concept just blows me away: It's fantastic, this notion of people who have been erased and are now imprintable with whatever you want them to be. ... It's sci-fi of the most human kind. It's sci-fi about people, as opposed to, you know, phenomena. And I really love that."
Espenson also downplayed reports of production interruptions, a bad timeslot and network meddling, calling them "overblown."
"We are now rolling along glitch-free," Espenson said. "I think people are very confident now that everyone is on the same page with what the show is, how amazing it can be, and I think that a lot of this has been overblown. I mean, very, very often on Buffy we were sort of, 'Oh, we don't quite have that script ready.' That's sort of just how TV goes. It's just when it happens at the beginning like this that it gets a lot of attention, and I think that people were concerned that the Firefly scenario would play out again. But, you know, I think that we're very confident of what the show is, and yeah, it's moving along so smoothly now."
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Espenson said that she is currently writing a first draft of her first solo script for Dollhouse, the 11th episode of the first 13 ordered by Fox.
How is Whedon holding up? "He seems happy and comfortable and delightfully amusing as always," Espenson said. "You can't get through a few minutes with him without laughing."
Espenson said that viewers will be pleasantly surprised by star Eliza Dushku's performance in the series. "I think people are going to be really, really impressed with Eliza's performance," she said. "In fact, this cast all the way through. We have this incredibly versatile cast that's just perfect for this kind of show, where people are playing, ... as they're being imprinted with different personalities, they're playing different characters. And so part of the genuine fun and joy of the show is just watching, 'Oh, my God, look at who they are now.'" Dollhouse debuts Feb. 13, 2009, at 9 p.m. ET/PT. --Patrick Lee, News Editor
Dollhouse's Dushku Reveals Roles
Eliza Dushku revealed a few of the personas her character will take on in Fox's upcoming SF drama Dollhouse, including one in which she'll do a bit of singing.
"I had to sing a few episodes ago, yeah," Dushku said on the red carpet for the Video Game Awards on Dec. 14. "And I had to lay down a track, so we'll see how it turns out [laughs]. We'll see if a musical is a good idea after that episode airs."
The last time I spoke to Dushku, she said that she'd love to be in a Joss Whedon musical, a la Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.
In her Dollhouse ep, she said she sang "a cappella." "I was auditioning to be a backup singer for a big pop star in one episode," she said. "So it was like a gospel song I did."
Dushku's character, Echo, is a person whose mind is wiped and programmed with different personas by a top-secret underground agency, which then sends her on various missions.
Dushku said her favorite persona so far was a killer. "I like the assassin chick that I just did," she said. "She has a lot of layers. Hyper-intelligent, and I also got to beat up a big 6-foot, 5-inch stunt guy."
What was the hardest? "A serious, professional woman with an up-do," Dushku said. "That's hard for me. Joss is like, 'I know you by now. Your comfort zone lies in your hair. I can throw you off a building or hit you with a car or make you fight seven guys, but you get uncomfortable if I put your hair in an up-do.' That's kind of insane and kind of hilarious."
Dollhouse premieres on Feb. 13 and will air Fridays at 9 p.m. ET/PT. --Jenna Busch
LaBeouf Intrigued By Caruso's Y
Director D.J. Caruso told SCI FI Wire that his Eagle Eye star Shia LaBeouf is interested in starring in Caruso's proposed film version of Y: The Last Man, playing the hapless slacker Yorick, the last man on Earth.
"Shia and I talk all the time, and when I feel it's right, I'll show him the script," Caruso said in an interview. "He's definitely interested."
LaBeouf just finished the sequel film Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and doesn't have anything on his schedule at the moment. "I think Shia is going to take a little break, relax and take some time off," Caruso said. "I would like him to do it if our schedules work out."
Caruso is currently completing a script for Y: The Last Man--based on Brian K. Vaughn and Pia Guerra's acclaimed graphic novel series--with Carl Ellsworth, who also wrote Caruso's Disturbia (which also starred LaBeouf).
The story follows Yorick after the sudden death of every male mammal on Earth. Caruso and Ellsworth turned in a script to Warner Brothers executives, got some good notes and are working on a bang-up third act that still sticks to the original stories very closely, he said.
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"We came up with some really cool things that would enhance act three and be close to what is happening in the series of books," Caruso said. "It was a groundbreaking idea. I know [the rewriting] is taking longer than I thought, but it's a really great project, and it's important that you focus on the story and get it right."
Caruso added that Y: The Last Man is envisioned as the first of three films. "It's definitely a three-parter," he said. "Trying to fit in the whole story in one is too much."
The graphic novel features a menagerie of compelling female characters, including Yorick's conflicted sister, Hero; the kick-ass government Agent 355, who is his bodyguard; and 355's sinister fellow agent, 711. The movie will include all of them, but not as they appear in the books.
"Yorick's sister, Hero, is in the script at this point, but she is not as much of a character as she was in the first draft," Caruso said. "Right now, she's sprinkled throughout, but she's not a major, major character."
Caruso added: "The 711 character is in it, and she's insane. She does teach [Yorick] a life lesson or two in a very interesting way. It's a comedic, yet horrifying, scene. She's very cool."
As for rumors that singer-turned-actress Alicia Keys is up for the key role of Agent 355? "It's too early to talk about who we're going to cast, and it's nice that the fanboys and fans are talking about it, but we haven't talked to her about it yet," Caruso said. "If we don't get Alicia Keys, though, I'm sure I'll make a pretty good choice." --Mike Szymanski
Fifth Terminator Develops
A fifth Terminator movie is being developed by Halcyon Co., with Terminator Salvation director McG, the company's executives Derek Anderson and Victor Kubicek announced at the Dubai International Film Festival, Variety reported.
McG was in Dubai for the announcement, despite his well-known fear of flying.
No decision has been made as to where to film the next Terminator, although the Middle East was mentioned as a locale.
Salvation, the fourth Terminator film, was envisioned as the start of a new trilogy of films; Christian Bale signed on in the role of John Connor for all three movies. The fifth movie is tentatively slated for a 2011 release.
Warner Brothers is handling the domestic release of Terminator Salvation, with Sony handling the majority of the rest of the world, with the exception of the Middle East, where the film is being handled by Dubai-based Gulf Film.
No decision has been made yet on whether the fifth Terminator will be once again split by Warner and Sony. Terminator Salvation opens May 22, 2009.
Potter's Watson Talks Despereaux
Emma Watson--Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter movies--was very prepared not to talk about them. But she did want to tout her newest non-Potter project, this week's animated The Tale of Despereaux, in which she voices Princess Pea.
In the movie, based on the book by Kate DiCamillo, Watson plays a princess in the Land of Dor, who has been sequestered in her room by her father, the king, after the queen dies from eating rat-infested soup.
The king has also banned both rodents and soup. A mouse named Despereaux (voiced by Matthew Broderick), meanwhile, is exiled from mouseworld for not learning to cower. He teams up with Roscuro (Dustin Hoffman), the rat who accidentally killed the queen, to restore the kingdom.
At a press conference for Despereaux on Dec. 4 in Santa Monica, Calif., Watson sidestepped Potter inquiries to talk about the animated movie. The following Q&A is an edited version of that news conference. Despereaux opens Dec. 19.
What do you think this magical fairy tale has in common with your other one, the Harry Potter series?
Watson: Well, the Land of Dor feels quite magical, so I guess it has that in common with Harry Potter. Also, The Tale of Despereaux is based on a book [by Kate DiCamillo], so it has that in common. Apart from that, I think they're very different stories, and they have very different messages. Despereaux has such a strong character and identity of its own, so there are mainly differences. It was also so fun for me to work in a completely different medium, doing an animated feature. I'd never done that before, and it was a lot of fun. I'm massively proud of it.
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What did you like about Princess Pea? What did you relate to about her?
Watson: Well, she's basically quite a generic princess. You know, she's very beautiful, and she lives in the Land of Dor, and everything's great. But then she loses her mother, and what makes it worse is not only losing her mother, she also loses her father, because he goes into this state of grieving. He just kind of locks himself away from his people and his responsibilities, and also from his role as a father. So she's pretty lonely, and she's pretty isolated, and she's literally locked up in this tower. She can't really be part of the real world. Anyway, I thought it was interesting, and I felt very sad for her. I thought that the conversations that she had with Despereaux were really charming, and I just really fell in love. I really fell in love with the script and the book, more than the character.
Where are you guys in Harry Potter land right now?
Watson: We begin filming the seventh one [Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows] in February, and the sixth one [Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince] will be released in July next year. We're a long way off a film being released or a film being made, so, to be honest, I don't have a huge amount to talk about.
Was it hard to make sure Princess Pea didn't sound like Hermione?
Watson: I don't think so. I guess I have paranoid moments where I will hear something in my voice, or I'll go, "Gosh, do I sound like Hermione then?" I definitely have an awareness of it, because I've been playing her for so long. She is so distinctive, and she is so much a part of me. So, yes, I definitely have an awareness of it. But Pea was more gentle. I instantly felt a different person, a different character, playing her. I definitely had a sense that it worked out OK. I was worried about it, but it worked out OK, I think.
What sort of messages would you like fans to take away from this movie?
Watson: There are so many good ones. I've watched a lot of animated films. I love animated films, so I feel like I can speak with a bit of knowledge. It felt really different to anything that I've ever seen before, because it felt like it wasn't patronizing to children. The messages that are in the film feel really profound and philosophical, and I loved the ending about forgiveness. I thought that was incredible. This kind of chain reaction happens where the king was hurt, so he hurt his daughter, and Pea was hurting, so she hurt the servant girl and then hurt Roscuro. The whole thing just kind of took off, and just by one person saying "sorry" and really meaning it, then everything could be restored. My other favorite message was that every girl is a princess, and I thought that was such a beautiful message. I think it works on lots and lots of different levels. I don't think it's just a children's film. I think anyone could go and see it and get something from it. --Fred Topel
Eagle Eye Blu-Ray Is Packed
Eagle Eye director D.J. Caruso told SCI FI Wire that the upcoming DVD/Blu-ray release includes an alternate ending, deleted scenes, a gag reel and a photo gallery.
There's also an interview and discussion between Caruso and his mentor, director John Badham, who helmed Short Circuit, Blue Thunder and WarGames. "WarGames was a particular influence for Eagle Eye, because it's interesting to see how times have changed," Caruso explained. "Back then [1983], you had to explain what a password was in the movie for it to make sense, and today my 2-year-old knows what that is."
Also on the Blu-ray is an interactive "Shall We Play a Game?" feature, as well as a featurette called "Is My Cell Phone Spying on Me?"
The DVD also includes a behind-the-scenes featurette called "Asymmetrical Warfare: The Making of Eagle Eye," as well as a look at the actual government locations in "Eagle Eye on Location: Washington, D.C."
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Shia La Beouf and Michelle Monaghan star in Eagle Eye.
Other secrets revealed in interviews with cast and crew include how the technology was ripped from the headlines and some of the spy techniques, which clearly exist. Caruso enjoys talking about how he hit on Julianne Moore to voice the sinister computerized "Big Brother." "We really wanted either Julianne Moore or Meryl Streep for the voice," he said. "Those were our only two choices. At one point we thought Meryl would be too recognizable, and Julianne's is alluring and sexy and at the same time has a bit of danger to it. It was cool to use her."
Overall, Caruso said that he is impressed with Blu-ray's capabilities and quality, "Blu-ray is absolutely better, the picture quality is better and the sound is as close to the sound you can get in the theater," he said.
Most of the extras on the two-disc special edition are identical on both the Blu-ray and regular DVD release for Eagle Eye, but the quality is higher on Blu-ray. "It's a noticeable difference, especially with the sound," the director said.
The Eagle Eye DVD includes insights and bloopers from actors Shia LaBoeuf, Billy Bob Thornton, Rosario Dawson, Michael Chiklis and Michelle Monaghan and also reveals some of their fears of and speculation about technology.
Since he released the movie, Caruso said, "I have been getting suspicious clicks and periodic weird calls on my cell phone, and I'm convinced that I'm being monitored. I have gone into the Department of Defense, CIA, FBI headquarters, and although I've done a movie that portrays them in a good light, I have a feeling they know what I'm doing and who I'm talking to." Eagle Eye drops on DVD and Blu-ray on Dec. 28. --Mike Szymanski
BRIEFLY NOTED
IESB.net reports a rumor that James Cameron may be taking a renewed interest in helming a remake of the 1956 classic SF movie Forbidden Planet, which has gained momentum in recent weeks with a script by Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski.
TheOneRing.net is quoting The Hobbit director Guillermo del Toro as denying a rumor, reported by WENN, that the film will be delayed to 2012; the movie was slated to begin production sometime next year.
Latino Review passed along rumors that Tim Robbins is going to play Howard Stark, father of Tony, in Iron Man 2, in an important flashback sequence that is going to set up the Avengers and Captain America films; also, that Hawkeye and Black Widow are definitely in the sequel in non-cameo roles.
Collider.com talked to Warner Brothers president Alan Horn, who offered a few details about an upcoming sequel to The Dark Knight: "We've been talking to [director] Chris Nolan, and what we have to do is get him in the right place and have him tell us what he thinks the notion might be for a great story, but Chris did a great job, and we'd love to have him come back and do another one." Asked what the next Warner superhero movie might be, he added: "I think Green Lantern is probably the best guess, but I can't promise it at this moment."
United Artists has attached Breach writer-director Billy Ray to adapt and direct a film version of the horror fantasy novel Conjure Wife, by Fritz Leiber Jr., about a New England college professor who discovers that his good fortune is the result of his wife's secret, magical interference, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The Dark Knight, the top grosser of the year, sold more than13.5 million discs across all retail channels worldwide in its first week, as well as more than 1.7 million Blu-ray discs, making it the undisputed Blu-ray top seller, Variety reported.
C.H.U.D.com has a report about the first 22 minutes of Zack Snyder's Watchmen movie, which screened in Austin.
An Australian production company on announced it had secured the rights to The Phantom Legacy, a follow-up to the 1996 film The Phantom, which starred Billy Zane as the masked hero who fights evil from his jungle headquarters, the Associated Press reported.
A second season of the British fantasy TV drama Merlin--bought by NBC in the United States--has been green-lighted, Variety reported; the show is funded by Shine, the BBC and FremantleMedia Enterprises.
The official take for The Day the Earth Stood Still, this weekend's number-one movie, was revised down slightly on Dec. 15, to $30.5 million.
Kristin Kreuk told SCI FI Wire that her exit from The CW's Smallville will please fans: "Lana's final story line is really interesting, where they've gone with that. Her arc and what she's going to do, I think the fans will really like. It closes up her love story with Clark. ... It keeps her in a hero role, and I think it will send her off in a good way."
