Scottish rock star-turned-actress Shirley Manson told SCI FI Wire that it was kind of a fluke that she ended up playing a nefarious businesswoman in the upcoming second season of Fox's Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
"I wasn't looking to officially get into acting," the former lead singer of Garbage said in an interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego over the weekend. "It was something I always wanted to do, but I never really found anything I was interested in."
That's when friend Josh Friedman, the creator of Sarah Connor, called her up. "[He] said, 'Would you be interested in auditioning for the show?'" Manson recalled. "And I said, 'Yeah.' I didn't really think it through; it was just sort of a trigger response, because I was a big Terminator fan. And then he said, 'Well, you need to come in for audition tomorrow.' So I was in the audition process, [and] I got the part before I really understood the full implications of what I'd gotten myself involved in."
Manson turns up as Catherine Weaver, the chief executive of Cyberdine Systems, which all Terminator fans know develops the computers that eventually become Skynet. "She's the CEO of a corporation that develops certain technologies," Manson said. "And she's very self-empowered, successful, self-assured, singular. So it's a cool character to play." (She added that producers will let her keep her Scottish brogue.)
Even though Manson's Weaver finds herself on the wrong side of the war against the machines, Manson herself admitted that she identified more with Sarah Connor, as played by Linda Hamilton in James Cameron's Terminator 2: Judgment Day. "I just felt she was so intense and powerful," Manson said. "Like, I just responded to that. Because I was young and disenfranchised and I wanted to be her. I wanted to be empowered. I wanted to kick ass. I wanted to push back against the people that I felt weren't treating me right. And so I identified with her more than anything. Who doesn't want to be a Terminator, right?" Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles kicks off its second season on Sept. 8 and will air Mondays at 8 p.m. ET/PT. --Patrick Lee, News Editor
Dollhouse Reshoot Explained
Joss Whedon, creator and executive producer of the upcoming midseason Fox series Dollhouse, told SCI FI Wire that he will shoot a new first episode of the show in part because of Fox's reaction to the show's pilot.
"It definitely has to do with the network and what I presented to them," Whedon admitted in an interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego over the weekend. "It was one of those situations where we were all very enthusiastic about the world we were building, but they loved the pilot when they read it, and then they saw it and they said, 'OK, this feels a little different than we thought it was going to.' I began to suspect that they wanted something from the first episode that that episode didn't have. They [were] sort of wishy-washy about it, and I don't say this against them, because what they were trying to do was not rock my boat. So I was like, 'I think I can give them exactly what they want. It will make the show better, because everything I do in this episode will only have more resonance.'"
Dollhouse revolves around a secret organization that uses programmed humans called "Actives" or "Dolls" to fulfill the requests of their clients. When their missions are complete, the Actives have their memories erased and take on new identities for the next client--that is, until one named Echo (Eliza Dushku) starts to retain her memories.
Whedon seemed relaxed about his decision to start over. "Since we are coming into the series at the middle of the story, it's easy to take a step back," he said. "It's as easy to figure out what happens before as to what happens after--in fact, it's something I have to do all the time when a show comes in short or something like that. It's all a part of executive-producing, and I actually kind of love [it]. It's like solving a puzzle."
Whedon added that the new first episode "will be a lot more kinetic and a lot more iconic in certain ways. The second one ['Echo,' the original pilot], I'm going to reshoot some of it, but since it's the second one, I won't have to reshoot as much. It still will have all the questions and all the cool stuff that I loved and that [the network] loved, but people will have already been introduced to the world and feel more comfortable there."
Whedon confirmed that the series will go back into production on the new pilot Aug. 4. Dollhouse premieres on Fox in January 2009. --Tara Bennett
Fanning Is Coraline Fan
Dakota Fanning, who provides the voice of the lead character in the upcoming animated fantasy film Coraline, said that it's been more than two years since she first started recording her dialogue for the film, and she's still not finished yet.
"I've been working on that for quite a long time, doing Coraline and re-recording and voices changing and it being different each time," Fanning said in an interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego over the weekend, where she was promoting her upcoming film Push. "I kind of had a higher voice in the beginning, so it's been easier just to have a higher voice the whole time."
The film is currently in production in Portland, Ore., under the direction of Henry Selick. Like his previous film, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Coraline features stop-motion animation achieved through the manipulation of three-dimensional puppet models. Dakota said that she's been impressed with the painstaking detail that has gone into the project so far.
"It's so interesting to see the models," Fanning said. "For one Christmas Henry Selick gave me a Coraline model, and it's so neat, because it's like actual sets, real clothes on the model. I have these striped stockings, and they're actually knitted by a woman, and the stripes are proportionate, and it's like, it's so amazing. It takes, like, 90 days to do three seconds of film. And the patience, I don't think I even have the patience for that. But I'm so excited for it to come out. I think it'll be very interesting, and it has such a cool look."
Fanning has only seen a snippet of the unfinished film, but what she saw intrigued her. "All the things weren't finished yet when I saw it, but I wanted more," she said. "I wanted to see more. It was so cool. It is fantastic." Coraline is set for release on Feb. 9, 2009. --Cindy White
Fanning Goes Punk In Push
Dakota Fanning, who stars in the upcoming supernatural thriller Push, said that she was excited to play a character that was nothing like her in real life: a sarcastic teen punk.
"She's kind of a little punky," Fanning said of her character in an interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego last weekend. "And kind of sarcastic. And I got to have colors in my hair. It wasn't real, but it was so much fun to be so different from my true self."
Push, directed by Paul McGuigan (Lucky Number Slevin), centers on a group of mentally gifted American expatriates in Hong Kong who are in hiding from a secret government agency seeking to exploit their talents. Fanning plays Cassie, a 14-year-old clairvoyant.
"Cassie is what they call a watcher, and that means that she can see the future, but it comes in, like, flashes of seconds or minutes," Fanning said. "And whatever decision that anybody makes can change the future. So she's always kind of trying to beat her power in a way and try to get to that future first before it changes. It was really so much fun to play a true character, and I felt that's what Cassie was. It was so fun to be a part of, like, the costume and everything."
Fanning said that Cassie's attitude and strength were what made the role appealing to her.
"She's very sarcastic and very dry, and she's always like that," Fanning said. "That's just who she is. And she's kind of trying to deal with being a 14-year-old and also having this power and trying to find the balance between that and also trying to save her mom. Her mom is in danger, and she's by herself in Hong Kong. And I think it's all very tough for her, and she's trying to keep a strong face on." Push, also starring Chris Evans and Camilla Belle, is set to open on Feb. 9, 2009. --Cindy White
Watchmen Takes Manhattan
Billy Crudup, who plays the superpowered Dr. Manhattan in the upcoming graphic-novel adaptation Watchmen, told SCI FI Wire that he was guided by the comic in trying to play a nearly omnipotent being who may or may not be hanging on to his humanity.
"I think the graphic novel and the screenplay attempt to ask that question and to answer it at the same time," Crudup said in a group interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego over the weekend. "So the experience of doing it was the experience of asking that question every time: Does he have any more humanity left?"
Dr. Manhattan is a former scientist named Jon Osterman, who finds himself transformed into a giant blue humanoid who can manipulate matter, space and time with his mind. He is one of a group of superhero characters in the movie, based on Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon's seminal graphic novel, which is set in an alternate-universe 1985 New York.
Crudup said of Dr. Manhattan: "Mostly he was an entity that was distracted by what for him were a higher order of problems. Which is: How does the universe operate, or how do particles fundamentally [interact]? And he was being asked to be a dutiful man at the same time by his government, so he was trying to attend to both of those while trying to carry on a relationship, and I think ultimately he discovered, through his own journey, that he was no longer as interested in people as he was in the ... universe. ... So I think my experience of doing it was the experience of asking that question each and every day."
Fans got a glimpse of Dr. Manhattan in footage screened at Comic-Con. To play him, Crudup wore a motion-capture suit covered in lights, with dots on his face as a reference for computer animation that is to be added in post-production.
"It was a burden for about the first day, until I saw what these guys [his fellow actors] were in, and then they also had to go work out and watch what they were eating, blah di blah, blah, blah," Crudup said. "I was as happy as a clam. Basically came in and put on my pajamas, stood on my apple box, tried to figure out Dr. Manhattan, so ... " Watchmen opens March 6, 2009. --Patrick Lee, News Editor
LaBeouf Injury Upsets Transformers 2
Shia LaBeouf's hand injury--the result of a car accident that led to the actor's arrest over the weekend in Los Angeles on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol--is throwing a monkey wrench into the production schedule for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Variety reported.
LeBeouf is recovering from hand surgery and will return to the set within a month, his publicist told the trade paper.
A source at DreamWorks told the trade paper that there was no work stoppage on the follow-up to last year's hit SF movie but added that rescheduling has proven to be a logistical headache.
Scenes featuring co-star Josh Duhamel had to be moved to this week to work around LaBeouf's absence.
Despite DreamWorks' insistence that shooting was not halted, another source close to the project said at least two days of filming were lost on the big-budget sequel, the trade paper reported.
The film's director, Michael Bay, declined comment.
Watchmen Women Bonded
Carla Gugino and Malin Akerman, who play mother-and-daughter superheroes in Zack Snyder's Watchmen movie, told SCI FI Wire that they hung out offscreen to work out the dynamics of their on-screen relationship--which was especially important, since the two actors' ages are really only a few years apart.
"We probably had about three weeks to sort of just hang out together and get to know each other, and we definitely just got along right away," Akerman said in a group interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego last weekend. "Like [Gugino] said, we have a lot of similarities in our lives and in our families that sort of brought us even closer. So we could relate these characters to things that have happened in our lives and sharing those with each other so that we knew, when we were doing our scenes, where that was coming from."
Akerman plays Laurie Juspeczyk, the daughter of Gugino's 1940s superhero Sally Jupiter (aka Silk Spectre). In the alternate-history 1985 timeframe of the film's story, which is based on Alan Moore's and Dave Gibbons' graphic novel, Laurie is the twentysomething daughter of Sally, who is in her 70s, and she has taken up the mantle of the Silk Spectre at her mother's urging.
Gugino, who is not yet 40, was surprised when Snyder approached her to play the elder woman.
"When Zack first said, 'I would love to talk to you about playing this character,' I thought, 'Well, this sounds amazing, but in the graphic novel, especially, there's so much more of Sally Jupiter [as an] older [woman] than there is [in her youth]," Gugino said. "We have the flashback to the rape and a couple of [other] brief moments, but [not much else]. ... So I thought, 'That's interesting. I would think he'd want a much older actress,' And, ultimately, ... in a way sort of showing the passage of time and how we come from the '40s to the '80s, he ended up adding in a lot more images of her as a young woman. ... I think you need to see Sally Jupiter shine in her own right so that you can understand why she tries to impose that on Laurie."
Gugino did wind up artificially aged for her scenes as the aged Sally. "I was in full prosthetics when we were doing this," she said. "Otherwise, it never would have worked."
Beyond their similarity in age, the two actresses said they had an emotional bond that worked to their advantage when playing mother and daughter. "It was a really natural sort of connection for us in our lives," Gugino said.
Gugino added: "There wasn't that much screen time to really establish that relationship, either, but I think any daughter [would say] that their relationship with their mother [is] complicated on some level, probably like any son and their father. ... I mean, it's just an intense, complex thing. So it was great to be able to have the chance for us to talk about all of those elements in our own lives, because it does bring things to light." Watchmen is set to open on March 6, 2009. --Patrick Lee, News Editor
Lost Surprises At Comic-Con
Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, executive producers of ABC's hit SF series Lost, made their annual panel appearance at Comic-Con International in San Diego on July 26, along with surprise guest Matthew Fox (Jack Shepard) and a few spoilers about the upcoming fifth season.
The revelations of the hour included confirmation that the characters of Jin (Daniel Dae Kim) and John Locke (Terry O'Quinn) would return to the series, despite their apparent deaths; that Vincent the dog is alive and well and will be back; that Danielle Rousseau's (Mira Furlan) story will be told; and that the show's trademark character flashbacks and flash-forwards will change yet again.
"We are steering away from the word flashback and embracing a whole new word," Lindelof said to more than 6,500 fans packing the San Diego convention center. "Once again, when season five starts, you're not going to know when and where you are. We do this fun thing every year where we let the audience figure out where they are."
Cuse continued, "There will still be flashbacks and flash-forwards on the show, but we are going to do something different this season and mix it up. There will be storytelling both on the island and off the island and in different periods of time. It's just going to be organized differently and not constrained by the rules of flashbacks and flash-forwards."
The panel also featured an elaborate skit revolving around the Dharma Initiative Recruitment project, which was promoted with a mysterious television commercial during Lost's season finale and on ABC's Web site. The interactive game culminated with a Dharma booth on the convention's exhibition floor, which "tested" prospective candidates for a new Dharma project.
Those selected as the most desirable candidates were brought on stage with Lindelof and Cuse before they were escorted to Phase II of their recruitment. In the last minutes of the panel, a "candidate" named Dan raced back onstage and shouted that he had answers for the crowd that he shot in the booth with his video camera. The footage was then screened and showed "Dan's" hand-held footage inside the Dharma booth and a brand-new cryptic video featuring Dr. Marvin Candle confessing his true name and that he and his Dharma colleagues would be "purged" but that "time was of the essence" to stop their fate. Lost returns for its fifth season in early 2009. --Tara Bennett
Mol Lives Life On Mars
Gretchen Mol has joined the cast of ABC's time-travel series Life on Mars, playing the lead female role of Annie Norris, TV Guide reported.
When Jason O'Mara's modern-day detective, Sam Tyler, is transported to 1973, Annie is a member of the Police Women's Bureau, making do with menial tasks and combating the sexism of the times, despite being the smartest person in the squad room.
Annie's battle for equality on the force will one day pave the way for Sam's contemporary love, Maya Daniels, to become a police officer herself.
In the BBC's original Life on Mars, Annie was played by Liz White.
Babylon Secrets Unveiled
Michelle Yeoh, who co-stars with Vin Diesel in Mathieu Kassovitz's upcoming futuristic thriller Babylon A.D., told SCI FI Wire that the shoot in Prague was a long, tough, loud and high-energy affair.
"It was a big shoot," Yeoh said in an interview while promoting her current project, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. "We shot in Prague for four months. It's got everything. It's got submarines, helicopters, planes, Hummers, bikes, Jet Skis. You name it, we've got it in there. Nature didn't help. We needed snow and didn't get it. So it was a rough shoot."
Babylon A.D. is based on the book Babylon Babies by French author Maurice Georges Dantec. Yeoh said that the film "has been in the head of Kassovitz" for five years and added that the finished product will be his take on the material.
"It's one of those movies whereby the interaction of the characters needed to evolve within the script while we were filming," Yeoh added. "That's never easy to accomplish, but somehow with Vin and Melanie Thierry and myself, we had an incredible chemistry sparked off by the madness of Mathieu Kassovitz."
The story is set half a century in the future. "Religion, war, everything is taken over, and people have lost humanity and hope," Yeoh said. "And there is this mercenary [Diesel], who has been hiding in the lost world in Europe, because it's war-torn and ravaged. He tries to get home to America, and he's in conflict because there's no way he could get back until someone presented him with this option: Deliver this package, and we will give you safe passage home."
The package turns out to be a young woman (Thierry), who may be pregnant with the next messiah. And she doesn't come alone; she's protected by Sister Rebecca, a nun played by Yeoh.
"These two women have been living out in the remote mountains to get away from all the chaos that's been happening," Yeoh said. "And as the three of them journey back to America, they discover that people are chasing after them. So it's a journey full of danger, hazard, and they're trying to kidnap the girl as well. Is she a weapon of destruction? The hope to our future? This is something we have to protect. We have to make sure our girl goes into the hands of the right people." Babylon A.D. opens on Aug. 29. --Ian Spelling
Li, Yeoh Clash In Mummy III
Rob Cohen, director of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, said that as a fan of Hong Kong films, it meant a lot to him to have the opportunity to stage the first on-screen fight between martial-arts stars Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh.
"It was pressure," Cohen said in a group interview while promoting the film. "A little bit of pressure. I had looked at what we could do, and the movie does not revolve around wire-fu. There is some wire work, but I didn't want Crouching Tiger. I didn't want them running up walls and flying and all of that, or House of Flying Daggers. I wanted there to be gravity, that gravity was always a factor. And even though we would stretch reality a little bit, whatever goes up must come down, as we know it."
In the film, Li plays a ruthless Chinese emperor who is cursed by Yeoh's character, a sorceress, and encased in terra-cotta clay until he is revived by a group of Chinese soldiers bent on world domination. The director said that he came up with the idea of having Li and Yeoh battle with swords in order to put the two on equal footing.
"I was thinking of what kind of fight they could have, and I came to swords, because I believe that, in a sense, it leveled the playing field between a man and a woman, because the weapon itself is partly an equalizer," Cohen said.
Cohen explained his concept for the fight as a dance that emphasizes the grace and power of both actors. "[I] really wanted it to be balletic," he said. "So I said to Jet and Michelle, 'This thing is going to be like a dance. And I'm going to shoot it a certain kind of way, where I have ability to change the time sequence.' So moments, they'll be very extended or very compressed, and it'll go between reality and fantasy, and there'll be a certain amount of wire work. ... Anyway, that was my approach: [that] it was ballet in the middle of a battle that was raging around them, this fantasy battle. And that it would highlight both actors' gracefulness, as opposed to their brutality, because it is a man versus a woman. And when you get to ballet--a pas de deux with swords, which was my concept--you kind of equal the playing field enough to say it's a battle."
One of the key moments in the fight, in which Yeoh's sword comes very close to Li's head, inspired Cohen to add an extra detail to the scene during post-production.
"After, in post, is when I realized that I had had her swing right close to Jet's head in the one moment she might have won," Cohen recalls. "And it was later that I went, 'You know what would be fun, if we digitally extended his hair, his ponytail, and she cut it.' That was like an afterthought." The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor--also starring Brendan Fraser, Maria Bello and Luke Ford--opens Aug. 1. --Cindy White
Knight Races On New Course
Gary Scott Thompson, executive producer on NBC's upcoming revamped Knight Rider series, told SCI FI Wire that he learned lessons from last spring's backdoor pilot movie as to the direction to take the fall show.
"I didn't have anything to do with the two-hour [telefilm]," Thompson said in an interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego over the weekend. "I was brought in after the movie to create the series, but what I found was that fans missed certain things--like the turbo boost and the interaction [between Mike, played by Justin Bruening, and K.I.T.T., voiced by Val Kilmer]."
A former executive producer of Las Vegas, Thompson said that he was excited to join Knight Rider and put his spin on the latest incarnation of the 1980s series, about a team of crimefighters who use a high-tech talking car to battle bad guys. Thompson's vision was to honor the past but advance the concept for the new millennium.
"I came in and wanted to revamp," Thompson said. "I went back and watched the original series, the first season, and asked, 'What's the mythology? Where are we going, and how do we create this 25 years later?' It's been all about taking the concept to the next level."
Among other things, the new show takes into account advances in cars and technology in the intervening decades. And then there are the geopolitical realities of the 21st century. "The word has changed completely," Thompson said. "We live in a world where two wars are going on, and there is terrorism. It's not as simple as it was in the early '80s, when you just go and get the drug dealer down the street. There is a much larger threat out there."
The new K.I.T.T. is a 2008 Ford Mustang GT500KR, loaded with technology reflecting the most cutting-edge science.
"I think the biggest thing was embracing technology and owning it and making it our own," Thompson said. "We realize it is an iconic show and that [David] Hasselhoff is an iconic person, but we couldn't redo the same thing over again. I don't think the other half of the audience would stand for it. And there's a whole new generation who has never seen it. [At the Knight Rider Comic-Con panel,] we were in the room when the car transformed, and the kids went crazy. I think we are doing the right thing." Knight Rider debuts Sept. 24 and will air Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT. --Tara Bennett
Firth Signs On To Dorian Gray
Colin Firth has signed on to star opposite Ben Barnes in Dorian Gray, the retelling of the Oscar Wilde supernatural classic being directed by Oliver Parker, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Based on The Picture of Dorian Gray, the story centers on Gray (Barnes), a young man who becomes the subject of a painting. As the man descends into a hedonistic lifestyle, the portrait begins to age and morph, but he doesn't.
Firth will play Lord Henry Wotton, the aristocrat who corrupts Gray with his worldview. (He is sometimes called Harry in the novel.)
Ealing Studios is behind the adaptation, which is being produced by Barnaby Thompson. At May's Festival de Cannes, Thompson said Parker plans to make a visceral, dark horror story and said the themes of stardom are as relevant as ever. The movie began shooting this week.
Ruling Splits Star Wars Case
Lucasfilm Ltd. and a British prop designer both claimed victory on July 31 in a legal battle over the iconic stormtrooper uniforms from the Star Wars films, the Associated Press reported.
George Lucas' film company had sued Andrew Ainsworth, who sculpted the stormtrooper helmets for the first Star Wars movie in 1977.
British High Court judge Anthony Mann ruled that Ainsworth violated Lucasfilm's U.S. copyright by selling replica stormtrooper uniforms through his Web site to customers in the United States.
But Mann refused to enforce in Britain a $20 million judgment Lucasfilm won against Ainsworth in a California court in 2006. The judge said Ainsworth's U.S. sales, which totaled 25,000 to 30,000 pounds ($50,000 to $60,000), were not significant enough to make him susceptible to U.S. jurisdiction.
The judge also rejected a claim against Ainsworth under British law, saying English copyright over the outfits had expired. Ainsworth's lawyer, Seamus Andrew, said the ruling meant that Ainsworth was now free to sell his replicas everywhere except the United States.
Mann also rejected a counterclaim by Ainsworth that copyright rested with him.
American Carol Opens In Fall
Vivendi Entertainment has picked up North American rights to David Zucker's new supernatural comedy An American Carol and will release it in the fall, Variety reported.
The movie tracks a cynical, anti-American filmmaker who sets out on a crusade to abolish the July Fourth holiday. He is visited by three ghosts who try to show him the true meaning of America.
Directed, produced and written by Zucker, known as one of the masterminds of the Airplane! and Naked Gun franchises, the movie is also produced by Mpower's Stephen McEveety and John Shepherd.
The cast includes Kevin Farley (Monk) as the filmmaker, plus Kelsey Grammer, Leslie Nielsen, Dennis Hopper, James Woods and Jon Voight. Lewis Friedman and Myrna Sokoloff co-wrote the script. A wide opening is set for Oct. 3.
Teens Jointly Pen Havemercy
Fantasy authors Jaida Jones and Danielle Bennett--who are each just 21 years old--told SCI FI Wire that they wrote their debut novel, Havemercy, over the summer two years ago, when they were 19.
"I had to go through sensitivity training for my job at a small magazine publisher, and during the training, our trainer told a story about hazing in the firefighting community," Jones said in an interview. "I was fascinated by the idea and came back to my workstation to e-mail Danielle ... about it. 'What if there was an elite task force that got out of hand and had to be given sensitivity training?' I asked, to which Danielle replied, 'What if they flew dragons!' The rest of the book grew out of that initial concept."
Havemercy is about the hundred-year war between the country of Volstov and the neighboring Ke-Han horde. "As the two try to one-up each other in innovative warfare, Volstov creates the ultimate weapon: mechanical dragons fueled with liquid magic, forcing the Ke-Han to retaliate with their own last resort," Bennett said.
Jones said that the main difficulty in writing the book was also what made it so much fun to write: The two authors were separated physically while writing it. "[We] had to conduct the entire process over instant messages and e-mails," she said.
"We were also writing on separate coasts, in separate time zones, so while that distance was an obstacle, we learned to exploit each other's waking hours to the fullest," Jones added. "A lot of the time, Danielle would write while I was asleep, and vice versa. Danielle would write about five to 10 pages, send them off to me; I would proofread those pages, add five to 10 and send it back to her. The writing had a snowballing effect, and we'd always have a new part to look forward to in the morning or when we got back from work or school."
Jones and Bennett are currently working on a second book, which takes place immediately after the events of the first--a "spiritual sequel" that explores the Ke-Han point of view and features new characters. --John Joseph Adams
Clone Wars Genesis Revealed
Catherine Winder, producer of the upcoming animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars movie, told SCI FI Wire that the movie tells a story that fits between the events of Episodes II and III.
"It's something that [Star Wars creator] George [Lucas] has been thinking about for many, many years, and, as you know, he's a real storyteller, and he had lots of ideas and stories that he wanted to tell during this time frame between Episodes II and III," Winder said in a group interview at Comic-Con International over the weekend. "And he didn't have the time to do it before, working on all the other movies, so finally he decided that this was the time."
The Clone Wars centers on the Jedi Knights as they struggle to maintain order and restore peace. Anakin Skywalker and his Padawan learner Ahsoka Tano find themselves on a mission with far-reaching consequences, one that brings them face to face with crime lord Jabba the Hutt. But Count Dooku and his sinister agents, including the nefarious Asajj Ventress, will stop at nothing to ensure that Anakin and Ahsoka fail at their quest. Meanwhile, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda lead the massive clone army in a valiant effort to resist the forces of the Dark Side.
Lucas had at one point said he was finished making Star Wars movies. But that changed, Winder said. "He was ready to tell the stories," she said. "And it's amazing how he can just start riffing on some of these characters that you may have only seen for a brief moment in one of the live-action films. And all of the stuff that will come out from him. He just knows this inside and out."
And for fans who worry that the computer-animated film will retread familiar territory, Winder said, "it's not just about the Clone Wars as much as it's personal stories. It's dramatic, and there's comedy. ... It's all kinds of stories mixed into one, which is what Star Wars is all about. And the characters that [the writers] wanted to delve into exist at that point in the Star Wars universe and galaxy." Star Wars: The Clone Wars is slated to open Aug. 15. --Patrick Lee, News Editor
Up's Story Came First
Pete Docter, who is directing Pixar's upcoming computer-animated feature Up, told SCI FI Wire that he concentrated on the story first before considering any of the technical aspects of the film.
"We don't initially start off thinking at all about how we're going to make it," Docter (Monsters, Inc.) said in an interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego last weekend. "We just start telling a story that we find interesting. I mean, being huge animation geeks, we tend to incorporate elements that are friendly to that medium just inherently, I think. And it's only later that we start to think, 'How is this actually going to be done?' It's all about the story."
The story of Up centers on a 78-year-old balloon salesman who ties his entire surplus stock of balloons to his house and flies off to have adventures in South America. Along with him on the ride is a young Wilderness Explorer named Russell and a dog, who is being kept under wraps at the moment.
"We're not talking about that yet," Docter said, although he did confirm that the dog's shadow can be seen in the recent Pixar film Ratatouille. "In part, it's just because we're still figuring it out. I mean, at this point, now we know our film pretty well. But there's not all the stuff that we want to be able to show people because we're still working on it. And, also, just, I think it helps us kind of focus on one thing at a time."
Docter said that the story-development process has not been as easy as he once imagined it would be.
"I always had this sort of vague notion that films would spring forth fully formed out of a creator's brain," Docter said. "Like Walt [Disney] would sort of wake up and go, 'Dumbo!' And then they'd just do it, you know? Doesn't ever happen. Never. Not one of the films that we've worked on has been like that. It's always been like, 'Hey, there's kind of a cool idea.' And you play with that and you add this and this [and] throw that out. So it's a very organic, weird, messy process. And this one came basically from [co-director] Bob Peterson and myself playing around with ideas over the course of about a year, I guess, until all the elements really clicked." Up is scheduled for release on May 29, 2009. --Cindy White
Venom Spinoff Moves Ahead
Sony is moving forward with Venom, a potential Spider-Man spinoff movie based on one of the villains from the third Spidey movie, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The studio is developing the project, based on the alien nemesis who appeared in Spider-Man 3; Sony is hoping the character could serve as an antidote to the aging Spider-Man franchise in the way that Fox has used Wolverine to add longevity to its X-Men franchise.
But getting any spinoff off the ground, let alone one centered on a villain, can be tricky.
The studio had commissioned a draft of the script from Jacob Estes, a writer of the specialty film Mean Creek, released several years ago by Paramount Classics.
But the studio is reportedly considering going in a different direction from Estes' script and is seeking writers for a new draft.
Casting also is no simple matter. Topher Grace played the character in Spidey 3, but agents have been eyeing the role for their clients, as Sony is not yet convinced the actor can carry a tentpole picture.
Sony is developing a fourth Spider-Man film for 2011, but that picture would come out nine years after the original movie debuted, adding to the studio's desire to see new Marvel characters.
Raimi, Disney Get Transplants
Disney has picked up The Transplants, a superhero action-adventure pitch from writers Adam Jay Epstein and Andrew Jacobson for Sam Raimi to produce via the Stars Road Entertainment company he runs with partner Josh Donen, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The parties are keeping a tight lid on the high-concept project, though it is described as a four-quadrant ensemble superhero story with a comedic bent.
Epstein and Jacobson, best known for Not Another Teen Movie, were planning to execute their idea via a comic book, but Disney executive Kristin Burr was so keen on it that the company preemptively picked up Transplants.
Last weekend, Raimi was at Comic-Con International in San Diego, where he showed off well-received clips from his return-to-horror film Drag Me to Hell.
Transplants marks the first Disney project for Raimi, who is known more for his horror fare and Spider-Man movies, not to mention comedic sensibilities that attract the geek audience.
Bible, Heroes Inspire Kings
Michael Green, the executive producer of NBC's upcoming drama Kings, told SCI FI Wire that his previous position as a staff writer for Heroes was a big inspiration for the contemporary drama, which is loosely based on the biblical story of King David.
"I wrote this while working on Heroes and was absolutely inspired by the work we were doing there: the larger-than-life storytelling," Green said during an interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego over the weekend. "I absolutely bounced ideas off the writers there and asked for their help and advice at various points. I probably could not have written this without them being there encouraging me and giving me good ideas when I didn't have them."
Kings is a modern retelling of the David story, set in a nondescript modern metropolis reminiscent of New York. David Shepherd (Christopher Egan) is a soldier who rescues the king's son from enemy territory and causes the path to peace to finally become clear. He returns home a hero and must deal with his sudden celebrity and position of power.
"There are a lot of similarities to Heroes," Green said. "I look at Kings as a high-end family drama, where the family just happens to be a royal family. There are similarities in that there will be ongoing storylines, but Kings lends itself a bit more to stand-alone stories in the Battlestar Galactica model. There are no barriers for entry for audiences."
Green added that he enjoyed contemporizing the familiar story. "Taking these elements and thinking, 'What is Goliath in this world?'" he said. "And taking these touchstone elements that people do know from the story and bringing them to life in a new way. We are taking inspirations from the original Bible story, so it's very much a story of one king rising while another one falls. It's a way for me to tell Godfather-like stories or these operatic stories."
But Green said the series is not literal in that he plays with the iconic story and that it veers into what he calls "soft sci-fi." "I'm not afraid of sci-fi, and I love it," he said. "We didn't want to do this as a space opera. We wanted it to be a familiar world, but at the same time we are inventing a world. We had a lot of fun inventing what this world is going to look like. We are taking New York and impressing our own aesthetic and own iconography. We got to have a lot of fun with that. I remember talking to David Eick about this when he was doing Battlestar, and he said they were always asking themselves the question 'What do doorknobs looks like?' We decided that we wanted to have things look like they could fit in our worlds, but you're not sure what city it is."
Green said that part of the SF element has to do with the idea of "magic, faith, happenstance, luck, God." "I look at it as the hand of faith guiding the heroes," he said. "I'm curious to see how people perceive that. The ongoing discussions when people see it are 'Is that magic? Did something just happen beyond physics? Is it something special or luck?' I won't answer that and will let people interpret that." Kings is set for a midseason start in early 2009. --Tara Bennett
Spaced DVD Commentaries Updated
Simon Pegg and Jessica Hynes, co-creators of the cult British television series Spaced, said that they and director Edgar Wright recorded new commentaries for every episode of the series for the new American DVD release.
"There's 14 new commentaries on top of the original 14," Wright said in a joint interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego over the weekend. "So 28 commentaries in total. And we did commentaries with some of our various geeky celebrity fans. Basically, it was sort of like a geek nexus of me, Simon, Jess, Quentin Tarantino, Matt Stone, Kevin Smith, Patton Oswalt [and] Bill Hader."
The 1999 show--ostensibly about twentysomething slackers living together in London--features homages to dozens of science fiction, fantasy, horror and action films. Pegg said that commenting on the show alongside the artists that influenced them made for some surreal moments during the recording sessions.
"A lot of it was nice, because they were people that had inspired us in the first place, particularly in the instance of Quentin and Kevin Smith," Pegg said. "To do commentary on the scene with the Pulp Fiction reference we do in episode one, [season] two, and having Quentin in the commentary booth was quite bizarre. It was a moment of circularity that I think anyone rarely experiences. And it was great. I mean, Kevin Smith just wanted to talk about other things, didn't he?"
Hynes added that Smith's commentary often turned to off-topic subjects such as breastfeeding, but she said the detours made for an interesting conversation.
"We chatted about lots of different things," Hynes said. "That's the thing about doing a DVD commentary, because actually sometimes when you go off completely tangentially, it becomes a lot more interesting, because you get the kind of strange ramblings. And, actually, sometimes when you get too literal, it can be boring." Spaced is now available on DVD in the United States. --Cindy White
Myers Writing Powers 4?
Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood blog reported that Mike Myers has started writing a fourth Austin Powers movie, which will be an homage to his father.
An anonymous source told the blog that the fourth installment will deal with father-son issues based on Myers' own life. The film will reportedly focus on Austin's archvillain Dr. Evil and his son, Scott (Seth Green). Myers is writing the script with Baby Mama's Mike McCullers, who collaborated with Myers on Austin Powers 2: The Spy Who Shagged Me and Austin Powers 3: Goldmember.
There's no deal in place yet, but New Line is panting after a fourth installment, even though Myers' The Love Guru bombed for Paramount.
Punisher Posters Auctioned
Lionsgate, which will release Punisher: War Zone, is auctioning off five posters signed by star Ray Stevenson at Comic-Con International last weekend to benefit charity.
Proceeds will go to the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. Winning bidders will receive studio-certified posters signed by a member of the cast, along with a signed letter verifying their authenticity. The auction will end Aug. 4.
The five auctions will take place on eBay here, here, here, here and here.
Trek's Pine Talks Kirk
Chris Pine, who takes on the iconic role of James T. Kirk in J.J. Abrams' upcoming Star Trek reboot movie, revealed to SCI FI Wire a bit of his character's arc--and added that he has a bit of a familial connection to the original Kirk, William Shatner.
"I think people will be surprised" with Abrams' film, Pine said in an interview on July 29 in Beverly Hills, Calif., while promoting the film Bottle Shock. "I think what J.J. has created--and what we've been a part of--is really the birth of these characters. ... Not only their individual journeys and how they all meet, [but also] the forging of those relationships and how it carries on to the five-year mission."
Pine added that Abrams and writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci "infuse these characters with as much humanity as possible, so not only are you getting the big effects you would expect from a blockbuster, but also something of a character movie, which I think is difficult to do, and I think we've done extremely well."
Pine also praised co-star Zachary Quinto, who plays Spock. "People will be blown away," Pine said. "Zach is great. Between him and Karl Urban and the rest of the cast, ... they've really captured who these characters are."
Pine added that he got Shatner's blessing before taking the role. "I wrote him a letter in the beginning of the process and introduced myself, and said hello, just to make a connection, because I didn't know him at all," Pine said. "And he was very nice, and he was very gracious and sent me a letter back, and that's the only contact we've had. ... Except my father--in the first week I got the Star Trek project--did a Priceline commercial with William Shatner, so there was multi-generational contact with Mr. Shatner."
Star Trek is slated to open May 8, 2009. --Patrick Lee and Staci Layne Wilson
Witch's Gugino Chases UFOs
Andy Fickman, the director of Race to Witch Mountain, told SCI FI Wire that he was a fan of the short-lived SF TV series Threshold, which in part spurred him to cast that show's star, Carla Gugino, in the role of a crusading UFO specialist.
"I loved it," Fickman said in an interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego over the weekend. "Because I'm a UFO buff, for me, [I like] finding shows that show sort of the UFO experience with some intelligence. ... That was a show that was sort of designed in that nature. Like, here's a great what-if: ... Who would be the people you would put together and how would they deal with [an alien invasion]? ... The DVD was sitting on my desk when Carla came [in to meet], and I really got excited by the notion that they were treating it like science." Fickman added that he was born in Roswell, N.M.
Not surprisingly, in Race, Gugino (Sin City) plays an astrophysicist who has become discredited because of her belief in UFOs. In the film, which is a reboot of the Disney Witch Mountain films of the 1970s, Gugino's character finds herself caught up in a race with two mysterious children (AnnaSophia Robb and Alexander Ludwig) and a Las Vegas cab driver (Dwayne Johnson) who are being pursued by government agents and a possible extraterrestrial.
"They find me, and [Johnson] brings these kids in and says, 'They're aliens!'" Gugino said in the interview. "And immediately, of course, I think, 'You're bulls--tting me.' ... And then I realize that it's true, at which point it's the most exciting thing that's ever happened to me in my entire life. And after being somewhat sort of hysterical, I finally become a part of the team, and we head off to try to race to Witch Mountain. ... We find out that both our planet and the planet they're from are in dire, dire straits, and it's kind of up to us to save the day."
So does Gugino's character share much with Molly Caffrey, the earnest head of the anti-alien government organization in Threshold? "Andy was actually a fan of the show, and when I first read this, I was like, 'Oh, God, I don't know if this is going to be too similar to this character I played,'" she said. "Because, for me, I always want to play something new, you know?"
As it turns out, Gugino's Witch Mountain researcher is different enough, Gugino said. "Tonally, this movie's very different," she said. "There are the adventure elements, and there's the great sort of mystery and those elements, but there's a lot more comedy in this. And, ultimately, as we started to flesh her out and find her more, ... she's much goofier [than Molly]. This character is a total kook, and she's just much more like a kid in a candy store, whereas Molly was much more type A. ... But they could be sisters."
Race to Witch Mountain is slated to open March 13, 2009. --Patrick Lee, News Editor
Unborn Has Religious Roots
David S. Goyer, who wrote and directed the upcoming supernatural horror film The Unborn, told SCI FI Wire that the film has its roots in various religious mythologies and one creepy medical fact.
"It's funny, it sounds like a joke: There's actually a rabbi and an Episcopal priest involved," Goyer said in an interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego over the weekend. He added: "It's pre-religion, and it dates back before Judaism, before Christianity. ... I started researching spirits and exorcisms. It all comes from the same thing. I was even researching kind of Muslim mythology, and all those religions came out of the same basis. And so the whole idea with this is it goes back much, much earlier. So we're talking, like, 5,000 years. Almost, like, pre-language."
The Unborn, an original story from Goyer (who gets a story credit for The Dark Knight), stars Odette Yustman, Gary Oldman and Cam Gigandet in a tale about a wndering spirit, sort of like the Jewish dybbuk, that is looking to be reborn in the fetus of a young woman.
"I was reading about support groups of people that had grown up as only children that had discovered that they actually had unborn twins," Goyer said. "That they were in the womb with a twin, and then something happened, and the twin died during pregnancy. So there's a series of support groups around the country for people who have found this out after the fact. ... I thought it was creepy. And, in some instances also, a situation will happen where, you know, one of these twins will die in the womb, and because if they try to get rid of the dead one it would put at risk the living one, ... the mother has to carry the dead one to term. And so the living one and the dead one are in the womb together for, like, four or five months. And that actually happens, and I just thought that is a crazy starting point for a horror film."
The Unborn is slated for release in 2009. --Patrick Lee, News Editor
Kung Fu Sequel Coming
Mark Osborne, co-director of Kung Fu Panda, told SCI FI Wire that he's confident a sequel will be in the works soon.
"I think once a film makes $200 million, I guess it's a pretty good sign that there'll be more of them," Osborne said in an interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego over the weekend. "And I think it's something the studio [DreamWorks Animation] is pretty excited about, and [chief executive] Jeffrey Katzenberg in particular is really excited about ... the franchise potential of Kung Fu Panda. So yeah, I think, I'm sure there'll be many stories to tell, and it'll go on."
Osborne, who directed the film with John Stevenson, added that he hasn't had talks yet about any future storylines. "At this point, I don't know exactly what the plans are," he said. "I think there's stuff in the works, but I'm taking a little vacation, and then I'm actually going back to a project I've been developing for a while."
That would be The Great Ascension Machine, a mix of stop-motion animation and computer animation that has a bit of a steampunk anime in it, Osborne said. "I've been really excited about a lot of stop-motion that's been happening lately," he said. "And it seems like they're trying to push the boundaries, and I think that there's potential to use the best parts of stop-motion and to use the best parts of CG in a way to really take stop-motion to the next level." --Patrick Lee, News Editor
Comic-Con Battlestar Panel Posts
Kevin Smith moderated the hourlong panel for SCI FI Channel's original series Battlestar Galactica on July 26 at Comic-Con International in San Diego. The panel featured stars Tricia Helfer, James Callis, Michael Trucco and Katee Sackhoff and executive producers Ronald D. Moore and David Eick. The entire panel has been posted on SCI FI Wire.
Smallville's Arrow On Point
Justin Hartley, who plays Oliver Queen (aka Green Arrow) on The CW's Smallville, told SCI FI Wire he's thrilled to be a regular cast member for the show's upcoming eighth season and offered a few spoilers about his relationship with Clark (Tom Welling).
"I was excited," Hartley said about his permanent status during an interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego over the weekend. "I had actually just shot a pilot with [fellow regular] Cassidy [Freeman], and they didn't pick it up. I think it was a day or two later that I got the call from Smallville. We talked a lot, and I love playing the character. I have a lot of faith in the writers that they will write great stuff for me."
Queen first appeared in the sixth season as a love interest for Lois Lane (Erica Durance). As a master archer who uses his powers for good, Queen also served to spur Clark Kent toward his own destiny of helping humanity. Hartley said that dynamic will continue to evolve this season.
"Clark and Oliver are buddies and friends in the premiere," Hartley revealed. "It's actually why Oliver is coming to back: to look for Clark. But Oliver gets broken down a little bit. He starts to look at all the things he sacrificed to do what he does, and he starts to wonder if it was worth it. It's kind of cool, and I think everybody does that. But once you start to question something and your heart is not in it, then it becomes really dangerous to keep doing it, because you are vulnerable and susceptible. It's like the football players that say if you're not going to play 100 percent, you are going to get hurt. Oliver starts to question if it's worth it anymore, and Clark starts to embrace his 'destiny' a little bit more. It's interesting, because the guy that's worn the suit is going the other way, and the guy who has never worn the suit is going that way."
Hartley said audiences will also get to see more of Queen's origin story. "We're going to go back into the Smallville mythology and explore how Oliver became the Green Arrow, why he is the Green Arrow and how he became so good at archery," he said. Smallville's eighth season kicks off Sept. 18. --Tara Bennett
Del Toro Producing Dark Remake
Guillermo del Toro and Miramax will produce a remake of the horror-thriller movie Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, with comic-book artist-writer Troy Nixey making his feature-film directorial debut, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
ABC's 1973 cult classic TV movie, written by Nigel McKeand, will be adapted by del Toro with Matthew Robbins, his writing partner on the 1997 horror film Mimic, the trade paper reported.
Dark centers on a young girl who is sent to live with her father and his new girlfriend and who discovers sinister creatures living underneath the stairs.
The film is in its early stages; research and development of the monsters haven't begun yet. Moviegoers can expect an upscale creature feature along the lines of del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth, with an emphasis on distinctive characters in keeping with the Miramax slate.
Warner Launches Marvin The Martian
Warner Brothers is launching development of a Marvin the Martian movie at Alcon Entertainment, which will blend live action with computer animation, Variety reported. Alcon principals Broderick Johnson and Andrew Kosove will produce, along with Steve Crystal.
Marvin was created by Chuck Jones and made his first appearance in a Looney Tunes cartoon in 1948. The character was often intent on blowing up the Earth, only to be foiled by Bugs Bunny.
The film was pitched as a Christmas story, with Marvin coming to Earth to destroy Christmas but being prevented from doing so when he's trapped in a gift box.
Spaced Ready For U.S.
Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright, two of the creative forces behind the cult British television series Spaced, said that they think the show has a crossover appeal for American audiences because it features so many recognizable pop-culture references.
"There's something, I think, sort of charming about the fact that three characters in north London are acting out these moments from big American films," director Wright said in a group interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego over the weekend. "And there's definitely something about Spaced that has that aspirational quality, because it's almost like the characters can only articulate their lives through the media they consume. And so Tim and Daisy's lives are played out in a succession of video-game and comic-book and TV and music and film references, because that's the only way that they can communicate."
Spaced stars Pegg and his co-creator, Jessica Hynes, as twentysomething slackers Tim and Daisy, who pose as a couple in order to rent an apartment in London. Though the series premiered in the U.K. in 1999, it was just released on DVD in the United States for the first time on July 22.
"As British people, we grew up with American culture," Pegg said in the same interview. "Now it's slightly more even-handed. You're getting a lot more of our stuff than you used to. But we brought in so much American product because our TV industry wasn't big enough to support itself entirely. And also, people are interested in it."
Since the series finished airing its second and final season, Pegg and Wright have become better known for their referential films Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. They said it has been an odd experience becoming part of the pop-culture landscape that the series once parodied.
"It's like the snake eating itself," Pegg said. "In fact, when we started making references to Spaced in Shaun of the Dead, that was the most crystal moment of self-indulgence ever. It's kind of weird, I suppose. Although, it's funny. In Spaced, there's a line when Tim says about every odd-numbered Star Trek movie being s--t, which is kind of a huge irony considering I'm now in Star Trek XI [playing Scotty]. So it's funny how those things come back to haunt you. Obviously the rule doesn't apply anymore." --Cindy White
Quinn Is Over The Rainbow
Eureka co-star Ed Quinn told SCI FI Wire that he's completed work on the independent film The Rainbow Tribe, which he described as a family film with SF overtones.
"The Rainbow Tribe is a great little summer-camp movie," Quinn said in an interview while promoting the upcoming third season of SCI FI Channel's Eureka. "It's got Grayson Russell from Talladega Nights and David James Elliott. It's a sweet little movie. It's doing the festivals right now, and it's getting some really, really good response. I basically went to summer camp last summer and shot it."
Elliott stars as a terminally ill man who hopes to recapture some of his youth by returning to camp as a counselor. Over several weeks, he forges a bond with a number of the kids and enjoys a few humorous adventures.
"I play sort of the Yoda of the piece," Quinn said. "And there is kind of a fantasy element to it. It's the aurora borealis, and it deals with that camp mythology, what we thought was real when we were kids. Was it real? That feeling of invincibility we had, was it just youth or was there something to it, some gravity to that? It's a sweet little movie. I know they're really looking to get it a theatrical release. And there's even talk of doing a sequel before this one gets released, because the kids are growing up fast." --Ian Spelling
Court Blends SF, Victoriana
Science-fantasy author Stephen Hunt told SCI FI Wire that his novel, The Court of the Air, is a reaction to the "elf and halfling"-style medieval fantasy books that he grew up reading.
"I wanted to do something different, so I came up with a cunning plan to write a fantasy novel set in an early Victorian-style society," Hunt said in an interview. "Secondly, I wanted to blend science fiction elements into a fantasy novel, ... hence the nano-technological steammen race, steam-driven transaction engines (computers), airship cities and other-dimensional foes."
The novel follows the trials and tribulations of Molly Templar--a young poorhouse girl working in the capital city of the Kingdom of Jackals--and Oliver Brooks, an orphan kept under virtual house arrest on the Jackelian state's register of potential mutants in the far north of the country.
"Oliver is framed for a murder he didn't commit, while Molly realizes she is being hunted by assassins, and they both have to go on the run and work out who is trying to kill them--and why," Hunt said. "They are soon mixed up in a deadly conspiracy that involves agents of the Court of the Air, a mysterious organization that operates out of a high-altitude airship city and acts as judge, jury and executioner when it comes to dealing with threats against the kingdom."
Hunt had to do "heaps" of research, he said. "British parliamentary practices, airship building and flying, Victorian history, period criminal argot--I thought it would never stop," he said. "But then I never cease to be amazed by the gems you can turn up, like London's early 19th-century plans for a working 'atmospheric,' an airless vacuum-based subway system with high-velocity transport capsules. That went straight into my book!"
The Jackelian world is set in the very far future, when the physics behind electricity have evolved. "Electrical current has become erratic and hard to tame at the useful levels where engines can be driven reliably," Hunt said. "Hence the reliance on steam power, high-tension clockwork, nano-technological systems and, in the south, a rather vicious form of genetic engineering."
Two other novels in the Jackelian universe--The Kingdom Beyond the Waves and The Rise of the Iron Moon--have already been written, and Hunt is currently working on the as-yet-untitled book four. --John Joseph Adams
Warner Aiming At Super Max?
Writer/director David S. Goyer told SCI FI Wire that Warner Brothers likes his draft for Super Max, a proposed film centering on the DC Comics superhero Green Arrow, and that they seem prepared to move ahead with the movie.
"The studio really likes the script," Goyer said in an interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego over the weekend, where he was promoting his upcoming horror film The Unborn. "Green Arrow seems to be one of the characters in the wake of this phenomenal summer ... book-ended by Iron Man and The Dark Knight [for which Goyer received a story credit]. I know that [for] Warner Brothers, Green Arrow is one of the characters that they're really interested in [and] seem to be interested in moving forward with next."
Super Max centers on Green Arrow, who finds himself framed, stripped of his identity and imprisoned in a high-security penitentiary for supervillains, with whom he must team up to clear his name and escape.
"It started out as a supervillain-escape idea, and the idea was, well, we can either go Marvel or DC," Goyer said of the genesis of the idea. "And I talked to both of them, and I kind of said, 'Well, who can you give me?' Because I needed a superhero that I can bounce off of. And I don't know. For my money it was, if we went Marvel, it would be Captain America. If we went DC, maybe Green Arrow. And Green Arrow seemed like the best fit."
Goyer added that Warner seems all the more eager to move forward with a movie based on the second-tier comic hero in the wake of Iron Man, which is also based on a second-tier hero (unlike Spider-Man or The Incredible Hulk).
"Green Arrow is, you know, probably on the same level as Iron Man," Goyer said. "And, yeah, I mean when a movie like Iron Man does $300 million, and DC, Warner Brothers, realizes, 'Wow, we've got 20 of these kinds of characters.' I don't know, it's an interesting twist, though, because Super Max didn't start out as a Green Arrow project." --Patrick Lee, News Editor
Howard Talks Terminator
Bryce Dallas Howard, who takes over the role of Kate in the upcoming Terminator Salvation, told reporters that her character is the physician wife of the future leader of the resistance against Skynet and the machines.
Howard's character--which was played in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines by Claire Danes--is now the adult wife of John Connor, played by The Dark Knight's Christian Bale.
Speaking in a news conference at Comic-Con International in San Diego over the weekend, Howard added that the Terminator reboot film is set in a post-nuclear world that we can easily imagine, sadly.
"In the imagining of a post-apocalyptic world, you do have, unfortunately, a lot of references that we can go to today," Howard (Spider-Man 3) said. "War-torn countries and Third World countries where people don't have access to ... basic clean food and water and necessities and medical provisions. And that's something to kind of examine, I think, for us, to say, 'OK, yes, we're making a picture about totally devastating circumstances, but the fact that it does reflect things that are going on currently in this privileged world that we're living in--where there hasn't been an apocalypse and robots haven't taken over the world--I mean, I think that's something definitely for us to re-investigate and to continue to make choices for our own future."
In Terminator Salvation, Howard's Kate and Bale's John are part of a resistance against the robots, who are engaged in a program to exterminate humanity, while also rounding some of them up for a nefarious purpose.
"For my character, because she is a physician, you really are trying to just do the best that you can given circumstances, and, I mean, I assume she's just finding books, and she's just talking to as many people who have survived at the hospital to learn techniques so she can continue to save lives," Howard said. "So that's been a really fascinating journey for me, personally." Terminator Salvation opens May 22, 2009. --Patrick Lee, News Editor
25/8 Was Personal For Craven
Wes Craven, who wrote and directed the upcoming supernatural horror film 25/8, told reporters that the idea for the film came to him in the shower--but that it carries particular resonance for him personally.
"It's what I call my shower thoughts," Craven (Nightmare on Elm Street) said in a group interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego over the weekend. "Occasionally I'll just have an idea. I'm completely, like, shampoo in my eyes and everything, and you just have to jump out of the shower and write it down."
The movie is set in the sleepy town of Riverton, where legend tells of a serial killer who swore he would return to murder the seven children born the night he died. Sixteen years later, people are disappearing again. Has the psychopath been reincarnated as one of the seven teens, or did he survive the night he was left for dead? Only one of the kids knows the answer: Adam "Bug" Heller (Max Thierot), who was supposed to die on the bloody night his father went insane.
Craven added that he felt a particular identity with Bug because he also lost his father at an early age.
"When I got this idea, I couldn't think of another film that was like this, and it just was very personal to me in some ways," Craven said. "My father died when I was, I think, 4, so it's just enough to have some vague memories of him, but not enough to have a sense of who he was and what he thought of me. So a film about a son trying to figure out who his father was and what influence he had on him is very personal. ... My father wasn't a serial killer, but, you know, that kind of thing is, I think, just very, it felt like I know this kid, you know?"
25/8 is slated for release later this year or early next. --Patrick Lee, News Editor
Smallville Winks At Past
Darren Swimmer and Todd Slavkin, executive producers of The CW's Smallville, told SCI FI Wire that one of the new villains in the upcoming eighth season, Tess Mercer (Cassidy Freeman), is a brand-new character crafted in the writers' room.
"She is a nod to both Ms. Teschmacher [Valerie Perrine, from Superman: The Movie] with Tess, and then her last name, Mercer, is a nod to Mercy from the comic books," Swimmer said in during an interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego over the weekend. "But she is neither Teschmacher nor Mercy. We are taking a little bit of both, but the storyline and who she is and where she came from and where she is going is completely created by the [producers]."
While little is known about Mercer, the producers revealed that she is Lex Luthor's handpicked successor to LuthorCorp. She matches her mentor's ambition and drive, so that will translate to her becoming a formidable opponent to Clark Kent.
"This is a girl you don't mess with," Slavkin added. "Cassidy Freeman is great. She is a young actress, and we love that you haven't seen her face everywhere. She is very fresh. Before we came down to [Comic-Con] we saw a first assemblage of the premiere, and we are so ecstatic with her. She's remarkable."
Swimmer added, "She hit the stage day one and nailed it. As you can imagine, not that she's becoming the new Lex Luthor, but now that Michael [Rosenbaum] is not on the show, we were wondering if we could get somebody with the layers that he brings to that character, and we think Cassidy really does that. We're excited." Smallville's eighth season kicks off Sept. 18. --Tara Bennett
Feldman Bares All In Lost Boys 2
Corey Feldman, who appears in the upcoming DVD sequel Lost Boys: The Tribe, told SCI FI Wire that he reveals "a little more of the emotional backdrop of what goes on inside Edgar Frog's mind" as he revisits his famous role from 1987's original The Lost Boys.
"You've got a guy that's been over the trenches, that's been in the battles, and now this is his way of life," Feldman said in an interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego over the weekend.
Part of that new adult way of life includes a sex scene between Feldman as Frog and a male vampire during the course of the film. Originally reluctant to tackle the scene, Feldman credits director P.J. Pesce for "being adventurous in the idea." He added: "I think we pull it off. It just gives a little more inside of what he's thinking, what makes him tick."
Lost Boys: The Tribe is the sequel to the hit '80s teen vampire movie. Tribe focuses primarily on a new set of characters, with Tad Hilgenbrink and Autumn Reeser starring as newcomers to the vampire-infested town of Luna Bay. Angus Sutherland--brother of original Lost Boys star Kiefer Sutherland--takes on the role of the new head vampire, who has a love affair with Reeser's character.
Pesce's goal was to recapture the essence of what made the original film so popular, while providing viewers with a fresh story. "The thing that was so special about the first movie was the tone ... an open-eyed look at what if a family member was actually a vampire," Pesce said in a separate interview. "Well, it's such an absurd idea that it has to be approached with humor. Our number-one mandate that I gave to myself and to them was, 'What would you really do?' ... This has got to be truthful. Humor grows out of that, and that sense of absurdist ... realization that [one of] your family is a member of the undead."
Feldman added: "It's really its own movie. ... It stands alone. But it also certainly pays homage to the other movie."
Fans looking for familiar faces from the original film won't be disappointed. "There's lots of ... character tie-ins that we did," Feldman said. "Obviously, having Angus Sutherland playing the bad vampire is a nice nod to his brother doing the original. We have Corey [Haim] and Jamison [Newlander] there as cameos."
Lost Boys: The Tribe is available from Warner Brothers Entertainment on DVD and Blu-ray on July 29. --Nephele Tempest
Shaye, Lynne Eye Foundation Film
New Line founders Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne have signed on to produce an adaptation of Isaac Asimov's SF classic Foundation, which they will produce through their Unique Features company for Warner Brothers, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Warner recently picked up Foundation, which had been in development at Fox. Vince Gerardis, who had been attached as a producer in the Fox incarnation, will remain on board as a producer for the Warner project with Shaye and Lynne.
Foundation is based on Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, which centers on a society that has figured out how to predict the future based on a method called psychohistory and sets up a foundation devoted to scientific research to protect itself and ensure its survival.
The politically inflected work, which features such characters as the prophetic Hari Seldon and a villain called the Mule, spans hundreds of years, essentially tracking the rise and fall of civilizations. Each book contains a new set of characters, which has in the past prompted some development executives to say they consider it a difficult work to adapt for the screen.
Shaye and Lynne's goal is to adapt the first book for now, and, if it's successful, potentially to follow the New Line Lord of the Rings template by developing adaptations down the road of the second and third books.
Gears 2 Goes Back To Arcade
Epic Games design director Cliff Bleszinski called the new five-player "Horde" mode of Gears of War 2 a "Geometry Wars meets Smash TV arcade-y thing."
Speaking in an interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego over the weekend, Bleszinski added that the Horde mode--which drew cheers a few weeks ago at the Electronic Entertainment Expo--offers gamers a quick-fix, arcade-style mode to get their Gears fix on with friends.
"It's great, because the score counts up at the end of the round. [It] kind of hearkens back to those old-school, quarter-munching days."
Marcus Phoenix, the hero of the first Gears title, is playable in the Horde mode, as is a new character only playable in co-op, Dominic Santiago.
Santiago's story is an integral part of the Gears 2 storyline. "It's Marcus Phoenix's story, but it's also about his buddy, Dominic Santiago, and his search for his wife. Right there from the beginning, Dom has the lead on his missing wife, and that's an important plot point for the entire story."
The first Gears of War was a tremendous success, which means a larger budget to make Gears 2 even bigger and better, Bleszinski said. "When we shipped the first game, the reviews were great, the sales were great, [but] as creatives we always knew we could do a little better," he said. "The character lighting in the first one bugged me a little bit because we didn't have that kind of movie rim lighting that we have in the sequel. We have, like, 400 tweaks to make [it play] as well as players expect."
Bleszinski added that the game is more epic this time around. "Just larger scale," he said. "That's not only with seeing the battles with hundreds of locusts, it's also narrative-wise. Other guys in other parts of the world are tuning in and letting you know what's going on. You have more of a sense of the war."
The success of Gears 2 will determine if Gears 3 comes to fruition, but it's not a lock by any means. "We always have ideas," Bleszinski said, adding: "We're not confirming any of it. I never came out and said this was a trilogy. Somebody put words in our mouth at one point. We'll see. [If] Gears 2 comes out and everybody hates it, then there won't be a third. But I hope people like it." Gears of War 2 arrives on Nov. 7. --Jeff Otto
Quinn Returns To Eureka
Ed Quinn, co-star of SCI FI Channel's original series Eureka, told SCI FI Wire that he's excited about the upcoming third season and added that he's been particularly pleased by the show's colorblindness.
Quinn plays Dr. Nathan Stark, head researcher at Global Dynamics and a character initially introduced as a not-to-be-trusted villain. Stark has mellowed, and as season three begins, he's hoping to re-marry his estranged wife Allison (Salli Richardson-Whitfield). The fact that Stark is a Caucasian and Allison is African-American has never been addressed.
"You want television, sometimes, to represent the way things should be," Quinn said in an interview. "I love the fact that there's never even a mention of it, that it's so seamless. It doesn't really strike anyone as odd or like it needs to be addressed. It's completely and totally natural, which is exactly what it should be. Life should imitate art in this sense, and I have always been really proud of the network and the writers for always leaving it alone and letting it be exactly what it is and letting it live the way it does."
Season three of Eureka will run 21 episodes and be split in two parts, with the first of eight episodes premiering on July 29, followed by 13 episodes set to run in 2009. Quinn revealed that the year will start with "Bad to the Drone," in which a military target drone goes AWOL just as a Department of Defense numbers cruncher (Frances Fisher) arrives in Eureka.
"Season three is moving forward in kind of the same tone from season two," Quinn said. "The opening episode is a massive, massive special-effects episode. We normally shoot an episode in seven days. We were supposed to shoot this one in seven days, and it ended up taking at least nine. It's going to be a lot of fun, with a couple of new characters coming into town and a couple of really, really big story arc reveals."
Quinn added, "So it's a great big episode, and then we'll start moving forward into the main part of the season. And there are some huge developments by about episode four, episode five, that I think the audience will be pretty blown away by." "Bad to the Drone" premieres on July 29 at 9 p.m. ET/PT. --Ian Spelling
Plague War Aims High
SF author Jeff Carlson told SCI FI Wire that his new novel, Plague War, is meant to be a thrill ride packed with big ideas, action and real people facing incredible challenges.
"While I was building this world, I got to speak with evolutionary biologists at Cornell and Rutgers, a Special Forces major, an Air Force colonel, a mechanical engineer, an M.D. and a young lady in politics," Carlson said in an interview. "Yes, politics. But it's scary, like everything else in the book!"
Plague War is a stand-alone sequel to Carlson's first novel, Plague Year, in which the world was devastated by the accidental release of a cancer-treating nanotech prototype that devours all warm-blooded life except at elevations above 10,000 feet.
Plague War begins just after top nanotech researcher Ruth Goldman has devised an anti-nano vaccine, which will allow people to walk below 10,000 feet again. "Along with a small band of rebels, Ruth hopes to share the vaccine freely, but the fractured U.S. government intends to keep this technology for themselves, controlling the only gateway down from the mountains," Carlson said. "Unfortunately, our enemies overseas also become aware of the vaccine. Colorado is hit with a massive nuclear strike, which heralds the full-scale air invasion of the West Coast as the Russians and the Chinese take California."
The biggest hurdle in writing Plague War was to be sure that it worked as a stand-alone volume. "Plague Year [tells] the story of what happened to the planet and the not-so-lucky survivors in the mountains before Plague War begins," Carlson said. "That was a lot of ground to cover. I mean, Year saw 5 billion people dead, thousands of animal species extinct and nonstop conflict, betrayals, romance and adventure. Somehow the high points needed to be addressed in this new book without bogging down."
Excerpts of both novels, along with several free short stories, are available on Carlson's Web site. "[There's also] a book trailer that'll make your head explode," he said. "I'm lucky enough to have a friend who's a professional cinematographer, and we shot a short film called 4 Minutes Above 10,000 Feet that we're billing as Alive meets The Blair Witch Project meets the new Andromeda Strain." --John Joseph Adams
Xingu Reaps Reaper
Trudie Styler's Xingu Films has acquired film rights to American Reaper, the upcoming graphic novel created by Pat Mills and Clint Langley under their Repeat Offenders banner, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The story is set in a future where identity theft leads to victims having their minds erased and replaced by those of the elderly rich seeking a second youth or by criminals and terrorists with more sinister motives. A team of special agents, known as Reapers, are formed to track down and terminate those responsible.
No cast or director is attached, but Francis said the targeted budget will be $50 million-plus.
Mills, who will write the screen adaptation, has helped to create a string of hit graphic novels, including Judge Dredd and Marshal Law.
Docter Makes It Up In Up
Pete Docter, who is directing Pixar's upcoming computer-animated adventure film Up, told SCI FI Wire that the main challenge of the film has been creating a stylistic reality that is also believable.
"We're not just making things up unless we need to for the story," Docter said in an interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego on July 26. "There are a couple things, for sure, that are not based in any sort of real life. But, hopefully, we'll find ways to piggyback on real things so that you find them believable in the film."
Up centers on a 78-year-old balloon salesman named Carl, who embarks on an adventure after tying his entire stock of balloons to his house and flying off to South America. Although the film's setting is the present day and most of the characters are human, the filmmakers are not attempting to make it look photorealistic.
"We have our main character, who is caricatured to such a degree that I think if you actually measure, his head is, like, 3 feet wide, and he's 5 feet tall and he's got limbs that are weird proportions," Docter said. "[Yet] he looks totally believable. You accept him as a real old man on the screen. But he's very caricatured. And so how does the cloth then behave on such a caricatured body? How do things--like even the scale of the balloons--what size is right? So it's been a lot of things like that, almost more artistic challenges than technical ones."
One element of the film that has not had to be enhanced is the landscape of the Venezuelan mountain range where Carl eventually lands. Docter said that it presented a whole different set of issues because it already looks so exotic.
"It is a tricky one, specifically, because it's such a weird, fantastic place that people are not familiar with already that you could photograph it, and half the audience would go, 'I don't believe that that really exists.' So we're straddling this line of, 'OK, we want to caricature it and make it [a] cartoon, and yet find enough believability so that people feel like it's not an alien planet or something.' It's still Earth. And we're still finding that. It's part of the fun." Up is scheduled for release on May 29, 2009. --Cindy White
Evans Pushes In Push
Chris Evans, who stars in the upcoming supernatural thriller Push, said that he plays a telekinetic ex-patriot on the run from a clandestine government agency out to exploit those with special mental abilities.
"I play Nick Gant," Evans said in an interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego over the weekend. "He's a mover, which is essentially, he's telekinetic. Nick's father was telekinetic. Nick's father was actually killed by the division when Nick was 8. Nick's father was phenomenally powerful, and the division felt he was uncontrollable, so they killed him, actually, in front of Nick. As a result, Nick has no one else, no mother, no siblings. He kind of has turned his back on his power, on people. He chooses to not let anyone in because it's too painful. He's gone to Hong Kong to hide, to escape, and pretty much live a lonesome life."
Evans is no stranger to playing a character with superpowers. He is perhaps best known for his role as Johnny Storm, aka the Human Torch, in the two Fantastic Four films. He said that his previous experience in those films helped when making Push.
"[It was] pretty similar," Evans said. "You've got to tap into a kind of fantastical world that doesn't exist. You have to kind of [think], 'How would somebody move something with their mind?' And you've got to take your own take on it. But who hasn't had practice doing that? We were all little kids. I can remember trying to move my pencil in math class. So you've just got to tap into your inner child and be willing to be a little silly and believe it. If you don't believe it, no one else will."
Where Nick differs from Johnny, however, is the extent to which he is able to control his power. While Johnny was keen to develop and hone his fire abilities, Nick is more cautious with his telekinesis.
"The best thing is, in the movie you get to see him kind of mature in his ability," Evans said of his character in Push. "He kind of stops using his power. I think it kind of brings up brutal memories. I think the only time he uses his power is he gambles a lot, a dice game, where he kind of manipulates the dice. Other than that, I think he kind of is pretty clumsy with it. So throughout the film, you see his kind of growth in that field. And that was great, because you get to work out how you would move a table. Do you do it with your eyes? Your hands? It doesn't always work out, doesn't go as far as you want it to, so it kind of lent itself to my own experience." Push is set to open on Feb. 9, 2009. --Cindy White
Goyer Unwraps Invisible Man
David S. Goyer, the writer/director who came up with the story for The Dark Knight, told SCI FI Wire that he's writing a new film adaptation of H.G. Wells' classic 1897 SF novella The Invisible Man for Universal Pictures, which will pick up the story where Wells left off.
"It sort of starts kind of, like, about two months after the events of the H.G. Wells book finish," Goyer (director of Blade III) said in an interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego on July 27. "And the H.G. Wells book kind of ends with, you know, the original invisible man, Griffin, [who] has these three notebooks that all of his secrets are in, and at the end of the H.G. Wells story, you establish that they're still in existence. But ... nobody knows where they are. And my story begins with those three notebooks falling into the hands of someone else, and it takes off from there."
Goyer said he envisions a period movie, taking place around the turn of the 20th century, a few months before Queen Victoria dies. "It's more sprawling, because it's ... big," he said. "It's got elements of horror, but it's sort of a big, epic adventure movie. Part of it takes place in England; part of it takes place in Persia; part of it takes place in Siberia. ... And I added a couple, I think, wrinkles to the notion of invisibility that nobody's managed to do before. So it kind of takes it to an extreme level."
Goyer added that the film will have a Rudyard Kipling steampunk vibe. "Yeah, yeah, ... definitely," he said. "I mean, I've been reading a lot of Kipling, a lot of steampunk, ... trying not to go in the sort of movie-League of Extraordinary Gentlemen place [laughs]. But ... there are a lot of real historical figures that are woven in among it. ... And I think I've come up with some pretty cool things in it that I know haven't been on film before, so we'll see."
Goyer added that Universal has "high hopes for the film." Goyer's next film, the independent horror movie The Unborn, opens later this year. (Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.) --Patrick Lee, News Editor
Salvation's Yelchin Consulted Terminator
Anton Yelchin, who plays a youthful version of Kyle Reese in the upcoming Terminator Salvation, told reporters that he based his character in part on Michael Biehn's original in the first Terminator film.
"You're really lucky when you have a) a script to work with and then b) a whole other movie to base your character off of and research, you know?" Yelchin said in a news conference at Comic-Con International in San Diego over the weekend. "And the great thing about Michael Biehn's performance is it's very layered, and you get a very complex character in T1, so it makes it even more interesting for me to come and look at that complex character and say, 'How did he get there?'"
Biehn's Reese is the hardened resistance soldier sent from the future to protect Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), mother of the future leader of the resistance, from a relentless cyborg Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) in James Cameron's 1984 original film.
Yelchin's Reese is a youth living in the wilds of the post-nuclear-holocaust world of 2018, trying to survive while eluding the machines of Skynet. Yelchin (Star Trek) looked to touchstones in Biehn's character to inform his own performance, he said.
"Every little thing to me in that film said to me, 'OK, that's a part of this guy,'" Yelchin said. "There's the Kyle Reese that's obsessed with the Sarah Connor picture. Why is he so obsessed, you know? ... He doesn't talk about her like a sexual object; he talks about her like this woman that he's so in love with. ... I looked at that and said, 'God, this guy grew up and never had any relationships with girls. What does that say about him, you know?' Look at how angry he is here, what does that say? There's just so much, there's just such a vast wealth of info to go through."
Yelchin's Reese eventually encounters a character named Marcus (Sam Worthington) and falls in with human resistance fighters led by John Connor (Christian Bale). Terminator Salvation is slated to open May 22, 2009. --Patrick Lee, News Editor
Battlestar Jam-Packs Episodes
The second half of the fourth and final season of SCI FI Channel's original series Battlestar Galactica promises fans a number of extra-long, jam-packed episodes as it works toward the climactic finale, executive producer David Eick told fans at Comic-Con International in San Diego on July 26.
In a subsequent interview, Eick told SCI FI Wire that producers have been "able to convince the network to let us air ... long episodes--[to] take single episodes and make them double episodes, ... [and to take] double episodes and make them quadruple episodes."
Eick added: "Our episodes are always ... long, and we're constantly getting into the editing room with 10, 15, sometimes 20 minutes of material that you can't get into an episode." With just a half-season remaining, Eick said, "the story has become so critical in order to realize the arc of the series that we can't just cut stuff out and save it for later or push it 'til next year, the stuff we're used to doing. It's all got to be there."
Eick and the cast members refused to divulge any details about the final episodes, other than to express excitement over the upcoming storylines and to praise the finale, written by executive producer Ronald D. Moore, which they have just finished shooting.
"There are so many great episodes in between, but ... the script of the finale, it's poetry, ... it really is," Michael Trucco (Samuel T. Anders) said.
Jamie Bamber (Lee "Apollo" Adama) said that the final season, "like all good endings, ... sort of ties [into] the beginning. ... It's like a great piece of music where all the strains and all the melodies that you've had so far come and are referred to in the end. And there is a new beginning as well. ... The same for Lee. It's an ending and a beginning, and it's sublime."
As for bringing the series to a close, Eick said, "We were trying to do something different with science fiction, ... with the space opera; we were trying to kind of blow the wheels off the sort of Star Trek aesthetic, and I think on that front we feel very accomplished. ... It's definitely gratifying to feel like we captured some part of the public's imagination and that the show overcame its title and overcame, in some respects, its genre to get the respect it's gotten." Battlestar Galactica returns with new episodes in early 2009. --Nephele Tempest
Press Previews Mirrors
Mirrors director Alex Aja and stars Amy Smart and Kiefer Sutherland presented footage of their gruesome new horror movie to reporters at Comic-Con International in San Diego over the weekend, including a shockingly graphic scene involving Smart's character. (Spoilers ahead!)
Smart herself laughed nervously while rewatching the scene, in which an evil force inhabits a mirror and inflicts horrific harm. A nude Smart steps into a bathtub while her mirror image sticks her hands into her mouth and starts to pull her jaws apart. In the tub, Smart's jaw is ripped clean off, leaving her screeching in pain as she thrashes in the blood and water.
The memorable scene has already resulted in the film's tagline, "Jaw-Dropping."
Asked whether it bothered her to watch the scene, Smart said she could handle it. "It's fun to see it all put together, because obviously there are some special effects," she said.
"It was really fun to go through the process of having this prosthetic jaw made," Smart added. "It took hours to put on and to look just right so that you could buy it, and then have [digital] special effects overlaid onto my face of the jaw ripping off."
For his part, Sutherland said that he is a horror fan and is always interested in the right material. Among his favorites: The Amityville Horror, The Shining and the obscure cult film The Car. "Growing up, there wasn't a genre of film [besides horror] that could give you a stronger visceral reaction watching it," Sutherland said in a group interview. "As an actor, that's something that will draw you to a genre--if you can actually affect an audience that powerfully."
Sutherland plays a disgraced cop who takes a job as a night watchman in the hulk of a burned-out department store in the center of New York. Things begin to go wrong as apparitions appear in the store's many mirrored walls.
"This idea of being able to meld these two genres--a drama of a man really trying to put his world back together combined with this horrific circumstance--I found an unbelievably exciting opportunity," Sutherland said.
If Smart gets her jaw ripped off, what does Sutherland's character have to endure? "Nothing quite that expressive," Sutherland said with a laugh. "Each character has his own thing that Alex has devised for them to go through physically."
After watching scenes with burning corpses and throats being slit, reporters asked Aja (High Tension) whether he struggled to land an R rating. "I was really surprised [that we didn't]," the French director said. "Looking back, I understand that the supernatural element is very important for the [Motion Picture Association of America, which hands out the ratings]. I think it's completely wrong, and I think they're way off, but according to them, it's less graphic." Mirrors opens Aug. 15. --Jeff Otto
Evans: Four Is Done
Chris Evans--who played Johnny Storm, aka the Human Torch, in the comic-book film Fantastic Four and its sequel--said that he doesn't think there will be a third installment in the franchise, based on the Marvel comics series.
"Oh, I think we're done," Evans said in a group interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego over the weekend, where he was promoting his upcoming film, Push. "I'm pretty sure we're done. I mean, I can't say for sure--you never know--but I would imagine given the fact after the first film, I think the week after the first film opened, they were writing the next script and talking to us about it and very much involving us. And we were up and running six months later. The second one came out, and I haven't heard a word, and it's been almost a year now. I would imagine Fantastic Four is done."
Evans went on to speculate that the natural progression of the series would be to follow the character of the Silver Surfer, who appeared in the second Fantastic Four film, Rise of the Silver Surfer.
"I think what they're going to do, they're probably going to take the Silver Surfer franchise and run with that," he said. "There's so much history to that character, and it's such a cool character, and it's CGI, so you don't have to pay an actor. So it makes sense, dollars-wise."
If Evans is proven wrong, however, and the studio does move forward with another Fantastic Four film, he said that he is under contract and would come back to play Johnny once again. "So they can get me if they want me," he said. --Cindy White
New 13th Teased At Comic-Con
The producers of the upcoming reboot of Friday the 13th brought an all-new teaser trailer to Comic-Con International in San Diego on July 27, introduced the cast--Jared Padalecki, Amanda Righetti and Derek Mears--and offered a few spoilers for the film, which they said would take the best parts of the original first four films and re-create them with reality and intensity.
Among the revelations (spoilers ahead!): The film will feature an appearance by Jason's mom, Pamela; viewers will see how he obtains his trademark hockey mask; and the movie will wrap up with a definitive ending, not a cliffhanger for a future installment.
"Well, when we went into making this movie there was really no concept of making one that comes after it," producer Brad Fuller told an audience in the San Diego Convention Center. "Without giving too much away, the ending, to me, at least feels very finite, and if the audience loves the film, we'll wrack our brains and try to figure out a way to bring him back if we're lucky enough to be in that position, ... but this movie stands on its own."
Fuller added that he and partner Andrew Form were also "terrified" remaking such an iconic franchise. "We were terrified," he said. "We still are terrified. ... Whenever you take on something that big, you open yourself to all kinds of scrutiny, which we get every day."
The teaser trailer opens with a young couple walking through dark woods on the edge of a large lake. They come upon an abandoned summer camp: Camp Crystal Lake. While exploring through a derelict house, they discover a boy's room, with a bed marked "Jason"--and discover a severed head in a wall. The boy is attacked through the floor with a machete, which penetrates his hand; the girl screams and tries to grab the boy as he is pulled through the rotted floorboards. As she cries "Oh, God!" a huge shape emerges from the floor.
A succession of quick cuts reveals a hockey mask, a body hitting a windshield, a body impaled, a girl in a lake and Jason grabbing a guy through a window and pulling him through. The trailer ends with a full shot of hockey-masked Jason running, machete raised to strike a girl lying on the ground.
Friday the 13th is slated to open Feb. 13, 2009. --Patrick Lee, News Editor
Knight Soars, X-Files Tanks
The Dark Knight continued to obliterate box-office records, crossing the $300 million mark in just 10 days and topping the July 27 weekend box office rankings, the Associated Press reported.
The epic Batman saga grossed $75.6 million in its second weekend in theaters, pushing its domestic total to $314,245,000, Warner Brothers told the AP.
That surpasses the record set in 2006 by Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, which took 16 days to make $300 million.
Warner expects that Dark Knight could reach $400 million in about 18 days, which would beat the record Shrek 2 set in 2004 when it made that much money in 43 days.
The weekend's other big release, The X-Files: I Want to Believe, made an estimated $10.2 million to place fourth in its opening weekend.
Will Smith's superhero movie Hancock made $8.2 million over the weekend to raise its domestic total above the $200 million mark.
BRIEFLY NOTED
Walt Disney Pictures has moved the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time back nearly a year to May 28, 2010, from its original June 19, 2009, release date, which would have been a week before Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen opens, ComingSoon.net reported; the new date is a week after Shrek Goes Fourth is scheduled and a week before Marvel Studios' Thor.
Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling will publish The Tales of Beedle the Bard, a book of wizarding fairy tales, on Dec. 4 and donate an expected $8 million in proceeds to her charity for vulnerable children, the Reuters news service reported.
A seven-disc set of all Matrix movies will be released in the high-definition Blu-ray format on Oct. 14, featuring all three feature films, hours of special features, the Animatrix nine-part anime film and more than 35 hours of additional features; the set carries a suggested retail price of $129.95.
All five Planet of the Apes films will be released in high definition in a "40 Year Evolution" Blu-ray collection on Nov. 4 in North America, with new exclusive HD content and an unrated version of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes; the set carries a suggested retail price of $159.98.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has been selected as the feature for Great Britian's Royal Film Performance, a prestigious charity event to be held Nov. 17 in London, Variety reported; the screening, to be attended by members of the royal family as yet unnamed, will be the sequel's European premiere.
A new teaser trailer for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has gone live and is linked through SCI FI Wire's Trailers page.
Alicia Keys and Jack White (of the White Stripes) will sing the theme song for the next James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace--the first duet theme in the series' 22-film history, Dark Horizons reported.
Shia LaBeouf was not to blame for an early-morning car wreck in Los Angeles that overturned his truck, in which he was riding with Isabel Lucas, the 23-year-old Australian who plays a supporting role in LaBeouf's sequel film Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the Associated Press reported.
Harriet Burns, the first woman ever hired by Walt Disney Imagineering in a creative rather than an office capacity, died July 25 in Santa Barbara, Calif., at the age of 79, Variety reported; Burns helped design and build prototypes for Disneyland attractions such as the Enchanted Tiki Room, the Carousel of Progress, Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion.
Relativity Media has acquired film rights to David Anthony Durham's epic fantasy novel Acacia: The War With the Mein, with Andrew Grant adapting the first installment of a planned trilogy, Variety reported; the story kicks off after King Akaran is assassinated and the kingdom of Acacia is overthrown by the warlike Mein tribe.
George Lucas spoke with London's Sunday Times about his life, work and the prospects of a fifth Indiana Jones movie.
Family Guy show runner/executive producer David A. Goodman has been hired to adapt the Blatant Comics zombie title Last Blood into a feature-film screenplay, according to The Hollywood Reporter; created by Bobby Crosby and Chris Crosby, the comic follows the human survivors of a zombie massacre who find themselves protected by a band of vampires who need their blood to survive.
