US Weekly News Review

Dear Sarah: A Love Letter

The second season of Fox's Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles has seen its ratings drop off and is now facing a fate worse than Judgment Day: cancellation. Our lovestruck correspondent, Fred Topel, will do anything to stop that--including humiliating himself with the following missive to Sarah (and Lena Headey, the actress who plays her). Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles airs Mondays at 8 p.m. ET/PT.

Dear Lena/Sarah: This is my love letter to thee. Before you, my life was just a collection of DVDs of The Terminator and Terminator 2 (only watched T3 once, out of obligation). Heck, back in the day, I settled for VHS copies, panned and scanned out of their proper cinematic proportions. I shan't compare thee to a summer's day, but rather to the epic movie franchise you surpass every week.

You have brought back Sarah Connor, and I had no idea how much I'd missed her. Here I was thinking about the "Arnold" factor and wondering why I wasn't fulfilled with just another T-800/John Connor adventure. It's Sarah who drives the Terminator legacy. Lena Headey, you capture the strength of a mother's spirit and the burden of her responsibility.

You have given us Derek Reese (Brian Austin Green), the coolest character in the entire Terminator universe. Derek honors the memory of our fallen Kyle with his name, but he makes it clear he is not Kyle. He is a badass robot fighter from the future, but he's not taking orders from his schoolboy crush. I always knew Brian Austin Green had it in him. Brian, I supported you through Domino and Freddie. Finally you've found the outlet for your tough-guy persona. Please don't kill my Derek off. No amount of future robots will be this cool.

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Charley (Dean Winters, left) and Derek (Brian Austin Green, right) help Sarah (Lena Headey). (Michael Desmond for Fox)



You truly continue the Terminator story instead of rehashing it. That movie "trequel" redid the chase and undid the Judgment Day salvation, and the next one (Terminator Salvation) will offer a look at the future war. You took the mythology and thought of where else it could go, with the daily battles to prevent Skynet and what kind of life those heroes sacrifice to save us. You used the built-in metaphysics to catch up time. The movies couldn't even figure out John Connor's age.

You give me Terminator action, free in my home every week. You've got big robot fights, or alternatively artistic perspectives of robot carnage. It never feels like we're missing out on scope because it's on TV. Terminator 3 and 4 may have big toys, but you give them a nuance to live up to.

You also tell stories that aren't all action. You have 13 weeks (hopefully more). You don't need to shoot the works in two hours. You get to have fun with a teenage robot (Summer Glau's Cameron) and the domestic squabbling of mankind's saviors. There's time for everything.

You give me endoskeletons and future-war flashbacks. Technology has allowed you to mimic HKs (hunter-killers) with computer animation. Sure, it doesn't look real, but it looks like Terminator, so consider thy disbelief suspended.

Your dialogue sounds like The Terminator. Whether it's Cameron and Derek explaining the future backstory, or John (Thomas Dekker) and Sarah discussing the present-day plot, it sounds like James Cameron. It lets us in on the techno-fantasy world, keeps us in the loop, but never talks down or overexplains.

Please, let's go steady for seven more seasons. I offer you a promise ring to stay true to your Chronicles, no matter how many movie sequels they make. --Love, Fred Topel (willing to take Connor surname if you accept my proposal. At least we'll hyphenate.)



Eisenberg Mulls Columbia's Zombieland

Jesse Eisenberg is in final talks to join Woody Harrelson in Columbia Pictures' horror comedy Zombieland, about a mismatched pair of survivors who find friendship and redemption in a world overrun by zombies, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Eisenberg would play Flagstaff, a terrified shut-in whose cowardice makes him an expert at surviving the zombies but who is forced out of his shell to join the band of survivors, which includes Harrelson.

Eisenberg recently wrapped a lead in Miramax's '80s comedy Adventureland, in which he plays a recent college graduate who takes a nowhere job at his local amusement park.

Ruben Fleischer is directing Zombieland from a script by the writing team Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick.



Final Twilight Trailer Is Here

The final new trailer for Twilight, based on the best-seller by Stephenie Meyer, goes live Oct. 9. The trailer also debuts in theaters on Oct. 10 attached to several films.

The trailer debuted Thursday night on Entertainment Tonight and is available on MySpace.com.

Producers have also issued a new image from the movie, below the video window. Twilight, directed by Catherine Hardwicke, opens Nov. 21.





Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) gets to know Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) in this new image from Twilight.



Gibbons Talks Watchmen's Moore

Who won't be watching the Watchmen? Alan Moore, of course.

Moore and Dave Gibbons co-created the seminal graphic novel on which Zack Snyder has based his upcoming Watchmen film. Gibbons has been a supporter of the project, while Moore, as usual, wants nothing to do with it and has asked that his name be removed from the credits, a wish that will be granted. Sitting next to Snyder during a question-and-answer session following a screening of preview footage in New York this week, Gibbons explained Moore's position. (The footage was the same screened last week in Los Angeles.)

"It' very simple," Gibbons said. "Alan has had experiences in the past that he hasn't enjoyed, and he didn't want to have any more that he possibly might not enjoy. So, starting with V for Vendetta, and with Watchmen, he's asked not to have his name on it and not to be involved with it in any way at all. So there's nothing specific about this production that Alan is anti."

Speaking of his own interest in the Watchmen film, Gibbons said that it was fascinating to see the material translated to another medium.

"I am unique in the world sitting there watching this, because based on what I read in Alan's scripts, I kind of ran a little movie in my head as to how this would work and the moments to pick to design the whole thing," Gibbons said. "So to sit in a darkened theater and see it unfold, it's kind of easy to confuse it with being in my mind's eye, particularly because it is so precisely what I did draw."

Gibbons added, "I mean, Watchmen was conceived as a comic book, and that is Watchmen. But what ... I've seen here--and I've seen much more footage than this--is a really good movie. If it had just been a literal translation of a comic book, it wouldn't have been so good. But I think Zack has taken it by the scruff of the neck and turned it into a really good movie. So I'm thrilled with it." Watchmen opens March 6, 2009 --Ian Spelling





Exclusive: Watchmen Video Journal

SCI FI Wire is hosting the new video journal for Warner Brothers Pictures' Watchmen, coming to theaters on March 6, 2009.

The video, "Blue Monday," offers a look behind the scenes at how director Zack Snyder and his team brought the indestructible Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) to life.

Based on the seminal graphic novel, the mystery adventure is set in an alternate-universe 1985 America in which costumed superheroes are part of the fabric of everyday society.

When one of his former colleagues is murdered, the washed-up but no less determined masked vigilante Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) sets out to uncover a plot to kill and discredit all past and present superheroes.

Watchmen also stars Patrick Wilson as Nite Owl, Matthew Goode as Ozymandias, Jeffrey Dean Morgan as the Comedian and Malin Akerman as Silk Spectre.



Will America Watch Watchmen?

Director Zack Snyder unveiled nearly half an hour of footage from his upcoming epic film Watchmen earlier this month. While fans and journalists--including SCI FI Wire--raved about the preview, our writer Jeff Otto wonders: Will mainstream audiences watch the Watchmen?

Rumors began circulating two decades ago about a film adaptation of Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' comics magnum opus, which was first published by DC Comics in 1986. Moore, whose contributions to the graphic-novel medium include The Killing Joke, V for Vendetta and From Hell, had delivered the genre's first masterpiece. The deeply layered epic was filled with visuals that seemed perfectly suited to cinema. But filmmakers puzzled over how to adapt it: Such a project would be costly, and the book itself lacked major action sequences, was unevenly paced and told a story at odds with film's traditional plot structure.

Filmmakers as varied as Terry Gilliam, Paul Greengrass and Darren Aronofsky were attached at different points during Watchmen's extensive "development hell" process, but all eventually opted out to pursue other projects.

For his part, the famously prickly and anti-Hollywood Moore never saw Watchmen as a fit subject for cinematic adaptation, no matter the director.

"There are things that we did with Watchmen that could only work in a comic," the notoriously private Moore recently told Entertainment Weekly in a rare interview. He added that the book was "designed to show off things that other media can't."

But one director persisted. Zack Snyder previously delivered fan faves Dawn of the Dead and 300. He ultimately won the right to make a Watchmen movie. The question now: Has he succeeded in adapting Watchmen as a movie audiences will want to see?

Considering the first footage screened at Comic-Con International and in previews in Los Angeles and New York this month, Snyder's Watchmen movie is clearly taking its look and feel from the frames of Moore's novel.

But that in itself may pose a problem. Can an adaptation be too faithful to its source material? It's clear that fans of the graphic novel will likely love Snyder's adaption, but will a mainstream audience unfamiliar with the book get it?

Here are 10 reasons I think mainstream audiences will ignore Watchmen.

1. It's an alternate-history Cold War period piece. Considering that a large portion of the core moviegoing audience was in diapers in 1986 and is still too young to understand the political climate of the time, will the setting really resonate? Like it or not, younger audiences rely largely on television and movies for their historical perspective, meaning that they may be familiar with Vietnam and World War II, but not with the Cold War, which might sound like something Ian Fleming dreamed up for James Bond's adventures.

On top of that, this isn't the Cold War of the history books, but rather an alternate history in which superheroes such as Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) help the United States win the Vietnam War and that makes Richard Nixon, perhaps history's most maligned president, a hero. In the book, Nixon is serving an unprecedented fifth term in office after successfully pushing for repeal of the 23rd amendment.

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Malin Akerman (left) is Silk Spectre II and Patrick Wilson is Nite Owl II in Watchmen, Zack Snyder's upcoming adaptation of the seminal graphic novel.



2. Ridiculous-looking costumes. If there's one thing director Christopher Nolan has proven with his two Batman movies, it's that audiences respond to superhero movies in as realistic a setting as possible. Aside from the ears and bat symbol, Nolan's superhero is a vigilante in a dark costume. Watchmen's Ozymandias (Matthew Goode), on the other hand, looks like a flamboyant tennis star in his cape and gold headband. Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson) is, well, an owl that looks vaguely like a gold Batman. Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) is pretty cool, but Laurie Juspeczyk's (Malin Akerman) Silk Spectre II costume looks like a reject from X-Men. And Dr. Manhattan looks kind of like a blue Mr. Clean. Did I mention he's also naked, bits and pieces flopping in the wind?

3. Old Folks. To be fair, Watchmen's first generation of crimefighters are only a part of the storyline. Still, nothing sends that desirable target demographic running for the exits quicker than old people. Senior citizens drove Cocoon, Driving Miss Daisy and The Bucket List to box-office success but are unlikely to buoy a comic-book movie.

4. Zack Snyder. Call me a cynic, but a remake of Dawn of the Dead and an adaptation of Frank Miller's 300 don't exactly qualify you as the man to adapt what is arguably the greatest work in the history of the graphic novel. Directors with stronger pedigrees passed, and I'm still a bit underwhelmed with the choice of Snyder. Don't get me wrong: His movies are good popcorn flicks. But I think Snyder has a way to go as a filmmaker before he's making movies on the level of Christopher Nolan, Peter Jackson or Sam Raimi.

5. Flashbacks and Allegories. Moore's story skips around almost constantly, which could prove quite confusing for audiences. The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) goes from rapist to Vietnam hero to modern-day murder victim. Sally Jupiter (Carla Gugino) goes from nubile pinup to nursing-home resident. Hollis Mason (Stephen McHattie), the original Nite Owl, goes from crimefighter to rambling old coot. Moore's puzzle of an altered history comes together beautifully as the story weaves itself into coherence, but it remains to be seen whether Snyder can weave the complicated tapestry as adeptly for the screen as Moore did for the printed page.

And if the constant time shifts aren't enough, Moore also interwove into Watchmen's narrative a completely separate story, the comic-within-a-comic Tales of the Black Freighter. The allegorical Freighter tells the story of a pirate who journeys home on a raft of human corpses to warn his town of an impending pirate attack. Freighter's significance is confusing enough on the page and should probably be cut from the film, but Snyder has promised that he is committed to including Tales of the Black Freighter in his Watchmen movie at some point.

6. Lack of Familiarity. While Superman, Batman, Spider-Man and the X-Men have been absorbed into the pop culture for decades, Watchmen's characters are known mainly to its core fan base. News of the impending film intrigued some non-comic aficionados to pick up a copy, as did Time's choice of the graphic novel for its list of the "100 Greatest American Novels." Still, the percentage of moviegoers possessing even a vague familiarity with Watchmen is small by comparison with those who know Peter Parker's alter ego.

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Jeffrey Dean Morgan is the Comedian and Carla Gugino is the original Silk Spectre in Watchmen. (Clay Enos for Warner Brothers)



7. Lack of Star Power. The casting of the accomplished actors Wilson, Akerman, Crudup, Gugino, Morgan and Haley excited comic and film geeks alike. But not one of these esteemed thespians has much box-office drawing power. For a movie already struggling to appeal to non-fans, that may be one obstacle too many on a growing list.

8. Length. Snyder announced last week that he is aiming for a film that runs two hours and 43 minutes. If the trailer's dazzling visuals succeed in sparking the interest of the mainstream to give Watchmen a chance, its running time may be enough to dampen that curiosity.

9. A Lot of Exposition. Unlike most comic movies, Watchmen isn't simply the setup for a ton of sequels. Moore's original novel comprises 12 densely packed issues, with enough subtext to rival J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy. But Peter Jackson had three movies in which to adapt Lord of the Rings. Snyder has only a single film to re-create Moore's entire epic.

With a massive cast of characters nobody's ever heard of, the film could take as much as a third of its running time setting up origin stories before viewers have even the faintest clue what's going on.

10. The Ending. If there is a weak element in Moore's almost flawless epic, it is the ending. It was a letdown when it came out, and it seems even cheesier 20-plus years later. Snyder has revealed that he's changing the ending. Now, when you take into account the fact that Moore is not involved in the project in any form, do we really believe Snyder and screenwriters David Hayter and Alex Tse have the chops to deliver the fitting end that Moore couldn't?

Watchmen opens March 6, 2009. --Jeff Otto



Q&A: An Ember Fish Story

During the making of the upcoming fantasy film City of Ember, the sets were mostly real ... and so were the sardines.

Those were two of the best anecdotes to come out of an entertaining Oct. 3 press conference in New York with stars Bill Murray, Saoirse Ronan and Tim Robbins. Gil Kenan directed the big-screen adaptation of Jeanne DuPrau's best-selling youth novel.

Ronan stars in the film as Lina, a girl who teams with her friend Doon (Harry Treadaway) to save their underground city, whose 200-year-old generator is about to flicker off for good. Murray plays Ember's seemingly unconcerned mayor, and Robbins is Doon's tinkerer father.

City of Ember opens nationwide on Oct. 10. Following is an edited version of portions of the Ronan-Murray-Robbins press conference.

The city of Ember itself was built practically for this film. In this era of computer imagery and green screens, what was it like to be immersed in a real world like that?

Ronan: We didn't actually have a lot of green-screen scenes. It was an amazing set that [production designer] Martin Laing had designed. And it was in Belfast. It was in the Titanic quarters: It was actually where the Titanic was built and painted. Or was it where it was painted? No, it wasn't. It was just where it was built. But, so, it was huge. And the whole city ... was actually like a little mini-city. So there wasn't that much green screen at all. ... We didn't really have to imagine what the city would look like.

Murray: Yeah, well, when you walk in and there's a street and an underground city that's 55 or 60 feet high with tunnels underneath it, and there's decaying doors and windows and bricks built as a street and concrete and plaster that's made its walls, real doors that open, real glass and beautiful design work, too, the emblems of the city built into the street and into the fountains in the street, fountains that work, ... it's not so hard to say, "I'm living in a crumbling society" when you walk in for work and there it is. It was so simple. And the costumes as well, ... the best costumes I've ever worn. The most beautiful I've ever seen in any film, by far.

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Mayor Cole (Bill Murray) reacts to a blackout in the Fox Walden fantasy movie City of Ember.



The mayor seems to be eating every other time we see him, and it's mostly him chowing down on sardines from cans. Did you have to suck down all that food?

Murray: Yeah.

Did you enjoy it?

Murray: I'm not really a sardine guy. I'm more of a, ... I do like caviar. I do. And I like eggplant. And I can eat copious amounts of caviar and a fair amount of eggplant. This was the most sardines I've ever eaten in my entire life. And I associate sardines with being these little things. These were ...

Ronan: They were...

Murray: These were...

Ronan: ... pretty big.

Murray: ... serious sardines, this big.

Robbins: You don't get a stunt eater?

Murray: I got no stunt pay whatsoever. It was a lot. It was a lot of sardines, more than I've ever had. But it was, ... it got kind of funny.

Ronan: And it was out of the can. Wasn't it?

Murray: Yeah. I think most sardines are out of cans. But ...

Ronan: I know. But just having to eat out of a can for the whole day. I'm just saying ...

Murray: Thanks for sticking up for me. --Ian Spelling



Lina Mayfleet (Saoirse Ronan) and Doon Harrow (Harry Treadaway) enter the generating room in City of Ember.



Murray Badgers Fox's Anderson

Bill Murray is voicing a badger in Wes Anderson's upcoming animated film version of Roald Dahl's children's story The Fantastic Mr. Fox ... or at least he's trying to.

Speaking in an Oct. 3 press conference in New York to promote City of Ember, Murray provided a glimpse into the highly anticipated film, which is written and directed by Anderson.

The story follows Mr. Fox (voiced by George Clooney), who feeds his wife (Cate Blanchett) and children by routinely snatching food from one of three farmers: Boggis, Bunce and Bean. After blowing off Fox's tail in a near-miss, the exasperated farmers set out to put an end to Mr. Fox's poaching ways once and for all. But their efforts cause hardships for other digging animals, among them Badger.

"I'll be playing the badger," Murray said. "Unfortunately, I worked really, really hard, very hard, on a Wisconsin accent, because I thought that would be an appropriate badger voice. And I did the first couple of scenes [with that voice] ... " (Fans of the University of Wisconsin football team know that they're called the Badgers.)

But Anderson--who previously directed Murray in Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou--apparently didn't love what he heard from Murray.

"But I did this Wisconsin badger voice that I thought was so funny," Murray said. "I did the first couple of scenes, and then he goes, 'Nah, I don't think so. I was thinking kind of a sad little road badger.' Who here has seen a badger walking down a road? Anybody? Yeah. That's what I said. But these are these new directors. You've just got to give them their, ... you know, let them hang themselves."

Murray confessed his unfamiliarity with the animation process being used to realize The Fantastic Mr. Fox. Anderson is reportedly employing several forms of animation, including the same stop-motion technique that he (and Henry Selick) used for the animated sequences in the otherwise live-action Life Aquatic.

"I have no idea," Murray whispered. "I don't know what it is. I don't know. I've seen some pictures of it, but I think it's old-fashioned, because it's taking them a very long time. But ... they're very excited." The Fantastic Mr. Fox will be released on Nov. 6, 2009. --Ian Spelling



Ember Cast Not In The Dark

Bill Murrary, Saoirse Ronan and Tim Robbins, who star in the upcoming fantasy film City of Ember, told reporters that they didn't do much in the way of research while preparing for the big-screen take on Jeanne DuPrau's popular novel.

In the film, people have been living in the underground city of Ember for 200 years. But food supplies are running low, and the generator that powers the city is breaking down. When it stops completely, Ember will be plunged into absolute darkness. The mayor (Murray) doesn't seem to care, but youngsters Lina (Ronan) and Doon (Harry Treadaway) do, and they race the clock to find a way out of Ember with an assist from Doon's father (Robbins).

Murray, Ronan and Robbins met the media for an Oct. 3 press conference in New York last week. Each actor had a unique answer to the question. Following is an edited version of their responses. City of Ember opens Oct. 10.

How much research did you do for the movie?

Tim Robbins: I dug a hole, and I went inside of it. A very deep hole. A very deep hole. And then I covered myself. And, yeah, I had a little light. And then I waited till the light was extinguished, and then I had it all right there. No, that was ... [to Ronan] ... you go ahead. I went for the humor. You go ahead.

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Doon Harrow (Harry Treadaway, left) and Lina Mayfleet (Saoirse Ronan) face darkness in City of Ember.



Saoirse Ronan: I mean, I don't know. It's kind of one of those characters; I don't think you can really research somebody who is buried underground, who lives underground. And, obviously, nobody here would have experienced that. So I think it was one of those characters where you just have to do it in the moment. And as long as I had [director] Gil [Kenan] there, I was fine, you know? And he was, like, my research guide, if that makes sense.

Bill Murray: I did a little research. I found that the book was a book that kids in America read in school now. They read it in middle school. And when I told my sons I was going to be in ... [or] might be in the City of Ember, they said, "Oh! You're going to be the mayor?" And I hadn't even read the script or the movie yet. And I thought, "They already know what's being spoken about, and I don't." So when I read it, I read it from their point of view.

I tried to think of what they made of what this guy was, what this mayor was [in] the book and the script. And I think to the degree that a mayor can be a father figure who can disappoint you--you know, I'm a father figure, and I've probably disappointed on occasion-- ... I just thought, when you're most disappointed is when you talk the talk and you don't live up to it. And that's pretty much what [the mayor] did. So I felt like, as long as I was really, really successful in talking the talk, that the disappointment would be there, ... just like a gasp. --Ian Spelling



Marvel To Shoot Four Films In L.A.

Marvel Studios has signed a long-term lease with Raleigh Studios to film its four upcoming superhero movies at Raleigh's Manhattan Beach, Calif., complex, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The films to be shot in Southern California are Iron Man 2, Thor, The First Avenger: Captain America and The Avengers.

As part of the agreement, Marvel will move its Beverly Hills, Calif.,-based executive and production offices to Raleigh's facility in Manhattan Beach.

The deal is a boon for Los Angeles' and California's beleaguered film industry, which has been battling runaway production for the better part of this decade, the trade paper reported.



Ronan Sees Hope In Dark Bones

Saoirse Ronan, who stars as the doomed Susie Salmon in Peter Jackson's upcoming adaptation of Alice Sebold's novel The Lovely Bones, told reporters that the film's events are heartbreaking, but that it's ultimately a hopeful story.

In the drama, Susie Salmon is a young girl who's raped and murdered by a serial killer (Stanley Tucci). Following her death, Susie looks on from heaven as her parents (Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz) and her sister (Rose McIver) grieve and as her killer sets his sights on a next victim.

"Well, in a lot of interviews that I've done recently, obviously, I've been asked about The Lovely Bones and how it's going and everything," the 14-year-old Irish actress told reporters in New York on Oct. 3 while promoting her current film, the fantasy City of Ember. "And, you know, a lot of people assume that it's going to be this--probably like [they think of City of Ember] as well--that it's actually going to be a dark, depressing movie. And it really, really isn't."

Ronan (Atonement) added, "I mean, obviously the topic isn't the most ... the brightest topic. I'm killed, yeah. But it's so ... it's so beautiful. And the way Peter [Jackson] and Fran [Walsh] and Philippa [Boyens] have written it, they've just gotten it perfect, I think. And they really know what they're going to do with it. It's completely different, as every film is, really. But it was great to come from [City of Ember] and go on and do that."

The Lovely Bones will be released in the fall of 2009. City of Ember opens on Oct. 10. --Ian Spelling



Murray Open To Ghostbusters 3

Somewhere, Ray Parker Jr. is smiling.

Bill Murray told reporters that he's open to reprising his Ghostbusters role of Dr. Peter Venkman in a proposed third movie.

"The third one could happen," Murray said in a news conference in New York on Oct. 3.

Murray--who voiced Venkman in the upcoming Ghostbusters: The Video Game--added that he's aware that Columbia Pictures just last month tapped Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky (NBC's The Office) to write a second sequel.

"There's two fellows from The Office that are writing a script, but I've yet to see it," Murray said while promoting his upcoming family fantasy movie, City of Ember. "And I'm more involved with, you know, trying to get the dessert we ordered at lunch than I am with the new Ghostbusters sequel. But it's possible. It's a great idea that they hired these two guys to do it, because I think it'll be a ... it could be a fresh look at it. And it could be funny."

The original Ghostbusters was released in 1984 and is widely considered a comedy classic. The first sequel, Ghostbusters II, opened in 1989 and wasn't nearly as successful financially or critically. Murray recalled his disappointment with Ghostbusters II.

"We did a sequel, and it was sort of rather unsatisfying for me, because the first one to me was the goods," Murray said. "It was the real thing. And the sequel, you know, was ... it was a few years later. There was an idea pitched. And it was like, well, they got us all together in a room. We just laughed for a couple of hours. And then they said, 'What if we did another one? Here's an idea.'"

Murray added, "So they had this idea, but it didn't turn out to be the idea when I arrived on the set. They'd written a whole different movie than the one [initially discussed]. And the special-effects guys got it and got their hands on it. And it was just not the same movie. There were a few great scenes in it, but it wasn't the same movie. So there's never been an interest in a third Ghostbusters, because the second one was kind of disappointing ... for me, anyway." (NBC is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.) --Ian Spelling



Wire Expands With EXTRA

SCI FI Wire has expanded its offering of news and features with a new category: Wire EXTRA.

EXTRA will be the home for Wire's fun stuff: top 10 lists, opinion columns about hot SF&F entertainment, exclusive streaming video, blog posts from on set, images from behind the scenes.

Wire EXTRA will also be the place to find expanded coverage of news about your favorite shows and movies, games, fandom, anything related to science fiction, fantasy and the supernatural.

Like it? Hate it? Want to see something specific? Let us know!



ABC Develops New V

ABC is developing a new adaptation of V, the 1980s miniseries about alien lizards visiting Earth, Variety reported.

The miniseries spawned a second mini and a TV spinoff, written by The 4400 co-creator and executive producer Scott Peters.

Warner Brothers TV, which was behind the original miniseries, is once again producing the project, which was sold as a spec script to ABC.

Peters is set to executive-produce, along with HDFilms principal Jace Hall.

Hall, the former head of Warner Brothers' video-game division, who has worked on titles including F.E.A.R., will help expand V into other platforms, including gaming.

The original V was an allegory of the Holocaust and Nazi Germany. Peters said he won't duplicate that concept, except that the new V will still focus on what happens when the masses have blind faith in their leaders.

The new V will center on Erica Evans, a Homeland Security agent with an aimless son who's got problems. When the aliens arrive, her son gloms on to them, causing tension within the family. As in the original V, several storylines will unfold simultaneously.

As in the '80s version, the show will open with an enormous army of spaceships hovering over the world's major cities.

Original V writer-producer-director Kenneth Johnson recently attempted to revive V as V: The Second Generation but is not involved in the Peters version.



Unborn Trailer Now Live

A new trailer has gone live for David Goyer's upcoming supernatural thriller film The Unborn. MTV.com also hosts an interview with writer/director David Goyer, and the film's official Web site has gone live.

Producers have also released several new images from the film, below the trailer window.

In the movie, Casey Beldon (Odette Yustman) hates her mother for leaving her as a child. But when inexplicable things start to happen, Casey begins to understand why she left. Plagued by merciless dreams and a tortured ghost that haunts her waking hours, she must turn to the only spiritual advisor, Sendak (Gary Oldman), who can make it stop. The Unborn, which also stars Meagan Good, Cam Gigandet and James Remar, with Jane Alexander and Idris Elba, opens Jan. 9, 2009.













Quarantine Got Heavy

Jay Hernandez and Columbus Short, two of the cast members of the upcoming horror movie Quarantine, joked that they represent half of a rabid "Village People"--a fireman and a cop--who find themselves trapped in a building full of zombie-like residents infected with a mutant form of the disease.

The actors laugh now, but the movie is all scowls and scares and required some heavy lifting--literally--the duo said in interviews in Santa Monica, Calif., on Oct. 6. "There's a lot of blood," Short said. "It's meant to be scary, and it is."

Quarantine centers on TV news reporter Angela Vidal (Jennifer Carpenter) and her cameraman, Scott (Steve Harris), who are assigned to do a puff piece on local firefighters. When they accompany a crew on a call to a Los Angeles apartment building, they find themselves trapped with firefighters (Hernandez, Johnathon Schaech) and an assortment of policemen and residents (Short, Greg Germann, Dania Ramirez and Rade Serbedzija) as they deal with an outbreak of a mutant strain of rabies that's been concocted by a twisted being who defies description.

Eventually, everyone--even a lowly rat--becomes crazed with the illness. In one scene, Hernandez stomps the rodent into a bloody splat. "And that's not cool," Short scolded.

"Don't forget the sledgehammer to the skull," Hernandez added with glee. "And the fireman's ax."

Hernandez said his costar, Heroes' Ramirez, may "look skinny and frail, but she is strong." Ramirez plays one of the rabid inhabitants. "She tossed me," Hernandez said. "There's blood all over the floor on set, so I'm slipping in that and trying to pick her up and slam her against the wall. And then I've got to punch her. It's pretty intense. I mean, by the end of that scene, I'm not acting like I'm tired. I am tired!" Quarantine opens Oct. 10. --Staci Layne Wilson



Brolin Mulls Warner's Hex

Josh Brolin (W) is in talks to star in Jonah Hex, Warner Brothers' adaptation of the DC Comics property, Variety reported.

Crank writer-directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor wrote the script and will direct.

The report confirms a rumor first posted on Hollywood Elsewhere.

Hex, whose face is partly disfigured, is a gunslinger and bounty hunter. The series was hatched by DC in the early 1970s.



Enemy Viral Short Now Live

NBC has posted a Web short tied to its upcoming spy drama My Own Worst Enemy, which can be viewed on NBC.com and below. The video appears to be a rabbit hole to an alternate-reality game.

The network has also set up a viral Web site that is part of the show's mythology.

My Own Worst Enemy, starring Christian Slater, premieres on Oct. 13 at 10 p.m. ET/PT. (NBC is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.)





Europeans Sold On Meteor

RHI Entertainment has sold several European broadcasters on its SF miniseries Meteor, Variety reported.

Germany's Tele Muenchen, Italy's Mediaset and Spain's Antena 3 TV have acquired the four-hour action-adventure, which chronicles the race to stop a giant meteor from making final impact with Earth.

The cast includes Christopher Lloyd, Marla Sokoloff, Jason Alexander and Stacy Keach.

Meteor shot over the summer in Los Angeles and central California. RHI will unveil it, together with another event miniseries, Dragons of Black Roc, at the Mipcom mart in Cannes, which kicks off Oct. 13.



Hulk DVD's New Scene--And Cameo?

The upcoming DVD and Blu-ray release of The Incredible Hulk will feature an alternate opening sequence that required new visual-effects work, VF/X supervisor Kurt Williams told a group of journalists on Oct. 8. But will it include a cameo by another famous Marvel superhero?

"It takes place on an arctic shell," Williams said in a group interview at the visual-effects house Rhythm & Hues in Marina del Rey, Calif. "Banner [Edward Norton] is desperate. He's on the run, which is in keeping with some of the original themes from not only the comic books but the TV series. We wanted to put him in a stark place where basically he was at the end of the world. At that point, he wanted to try and end his life. The frustration comes when he can't even end his life, because he Hulks out instead."

The alternate opening sequence is a DVD/Blu-ray bonus feature, which will give fans another glimpse of their favorite green monster. Williams said the sequence required more F/X work than simply the Hulk.

"We shot up in Bella Coola, north of Vancouver, just a little bit," Williams said. "We actually went up on the glacier with Edward and shot the majority of the scene there. The rest of it was an environment that we created from photos and other materials that we received from up there. So not only do we have a partial Hulk-out to deal with out there, we also had the entire environment, including falling snow."

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The conditions in northern Canada were little better than the actual Arctic, so Williams and his digital wizards had to compensate for elements Mother Nature would not allow them to shoot in camera.

"It was a very inhospitable place to shoot," Williams said. "Oftentimes there'd be a storm coming in, and we would all have to jump into the helicopters and evacuate. That really caused us to create this environment. [We created a] cloud. We had to put the sun in a particular spot, because we couldn't shoot at the right time."

As for the rumors that Captain America had a cameo in the alternate opening sequence, Williams remained mum. "I can neither confirm nor deny that," he said. The Incredible Hulk DVD and Blu-ray drop on Oct. 21. --Fred Topel



Quarantine Star Gets Physical

Jennifer Carpenter, star of the upcoming SF horror film Quarantine, told SCI FI Wire that she did a lot of running and screaming--even more than in her earlier horror film, The Exorcism of Emily Rose.

"When I did the physical stuff in The Exorcism Emily Rose, it was actually easier than Quarantine," she said in an interview in Santa Monica, Calif., on Oct. 6.

At least in Exorcism, Carpenter could prepare and build up to the satanically induced contortions in a more traditional manner, she said.

For Quarantine, she performed lots of flat-out running and nonstop screaming for several minutes at a stretch as the cameras rolled and director John Erick Dowdle kept saying, "More! More!"

Not only was Quarantine physically challenging, it was also emotionally draining as well, Carpenter added. "What I went through in my mind doesn't compare even to Dexter," Carpenter's Showtime series, she said with a laugh.

In Quarantine, Carpenter plays TV news reporter Angela Vidal. When Angela and her cameraman, Scott (Steve Harris), are assigned to do a puff piece on local firefighters, they don't suspect that their ride-along to investigate a distress call from a nearby apartment building will lead them straight into a living hell. What appears to be a simple rescue turns into a fight for their lives when Angela, Steve, the firefighters (Jay Hernandez, Johnathon Schaech) and an assortment of policemen and residents (Columbus Short, Greg Germann, Dania Ramirez and Rade Serbedzija) encounter a mutant strain of rabies that's been concocted by a twisted being who defies description.

The story is shown completely through the lens of Scott's camera, and the takes are long and uncut. "It's a lot like live theater," Carpenter said. "[As the newscasters,] we are constantly aware that there is an audience out there. We are taping this whole movie so people know what happened inside this building. So, in that way, it's all live." Quarantine opens nationwide on Oct. 10. --Staci Layne Wilson



SCI FI, RHI Announce Film Slate

SCI FI Channel and RHI Entertainment have entered into a network license agreement for a slate of U.S. premiere television movies, the network announced.

The deal includes basic cable rights for five new horror and thriller projects. Two of the films have already wrapped production on location in Romania, including Hellhounds, directed by Ricky Schroder. Set in 500 B.C., Hellhounds stars Scott Elrod as a Greek warrior who fights against the demonic hellhounds of Hades in order to rescue his bride (Amanda Brooks) and bring her back to life. Rise of the Gargoyle has also just completed production. It stars Eric Balfour as a struggling author in Paris who finds himself face to face with a horrific monster: a live version of the stone gargoyles he's devoted his life to studying. The film is directed by Bill Corcoran.

Production on the following films, also to be shot on location in Romania, is set to begin shortly: Alien Western, set in the 1890s, about monstrous buglike machines from another world that attack anyone who gets in their way; Carney, based on the Jersey Devil legend, about a fiendish carnival sideshow attraction that escapes and terrorizes a Depression-era town; and Sand Serpents, about American combat soldiers in the Afghan desert who must battle both the Taliban and a horde of giant carnivorous wormlike serpents.

The two-hour television movies are produced for RHI by Muse Entertainment Enterprises.



Bell Flies With Astro Boy

Heroes' Kristen Bell has joined the voice cast of the upcoming computer-animated Astro Boy movie, Variety reported.

Matt Lucas (Little Britain) also joins the cast of the film from Hong Kong-based Imagi Studios.

The movie previously announced that Nicolas Cage, Donald Sutherland and Freddie Highmore had been cast.

The tale of a boy robot is an adaptation of the classic comic-book story created by manga author Osamu Tezuka and is slated for U.S. release Oct. 23, 2009.



Superman 'Motion Comic' Due

Warner Premiere and Warner Brothers Digital Distribution are developing Web-based short-form "motion comics" based on Batman: Black & White and Superman: Red Son.

Meanwhile, the first and second chapters of a motion comic based on Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen are now available for download via iTunes, Amazon Video on Demand, Xbox Live and the Sony PlayStation Store.

Warner Premiere said that its motion comics bring a new visually engaging experience to life through the use of subtle movements, voice-overs, sweeping music scores and stunning comic-book artwork.

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Superman: Red Son (Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc.)

Batman: Black & White is taken from three award-winning volumes of short stories featuring the Caped Crusader. The motion comics will reflect the original and diverse visions of various artists and writers as they tell stories in the now-infamous world of Gotham City.

Superman: Red Son is based on the Eisner Award-winning graphic novel written by Mark Milar and drawn by Dave Johnson, an alternate-universe story in which Superman lands in Russia and becomes the Soviet Union's greatest weapon as the world is transformed into a communist state opposed only by a crumbling capitalistic America and its president, Lex Luthor.



Underground Digs Up Myths

Fantasy author Kat Richardson told SCI FI Wire that her new novel, Underground, grew out of her desire to write a "monster in the sewer" book.

"There's just no setting as perfect for a tale of ghosts and monsters eating unsuspecting people than a condemned and abandoned city hidden under the streets," Richardson said in an interview. "So I took my monster out of the sewer and let it run amok in the crumbling streets of buried Seattle. It was ridiculous amounts of fun to write."

In the book, something is eating homeless people in Seattle's Pioneer Square and leaving the gnawed remains lying in and around the underground city. "Harper Blaine's friend Quinton fears he'll be associated with the deaths, so he convinces her to look into the situation, and they soon discover that they're up against a creature straight out of local Indian legends--and it's really hungry," Richardson said. "They'll have to get a lot of help from their friends as well as the local Indians to put a stop to the monster and its master before it makes them the next item on the menu."

Underground is based largely in the history of Seattle's downtown and the legends of local Native American groups. "Both of which are topics that have often been ignored or marginalized," Richardson said. "Through the Seattle Public Library, I discovered a book of local Indian legends collected and translated by a Seattle settler named J.G. Ballard and several books on the redevelopment of Pioneer Square after the Seattle fire of 1897, which was the cause of the underground city. Online newspaper sources connected me to some examples of spoken Lushootseed--the language of the local Indian tribes--and information on the distribution of the language and people throughout the Pacific Northwest."

The head historian at the Seattle Underground Tour was another terrific source of information and a wonderful storyteller himself, Richardson said. "I also spent a lot of time walking around, looking at the historic district--and under it--and asking really strange questions of people who were mostly very gracious about answering them," she said. "I'm a sucker for weird tales from history, and the book required a lot of digging in that field, which was fascinating and fun." --John Joseph Adams



Indy DVD Retailer Extras

Retailers will be offering different extras to persuade fans to buy the upcoming DVD and Blu-ray of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which drops Oct. 14.

Circuit City will offer two lithographs of concept art from the movie. Best Buy will sell a gift set with a replica crystal skull from Sideshow Collectibles and a $25 gift card to Sideshowcollectibles.com.

Target will feature exclusive packaging and a hardcover book from Palace Press with 80 pages of behind-the-scenes photos, including many never-before-published images.

Kmart and Sears will offer four exclusive LEGO mini-posters, with a LEGO replica of the original theatrical poster from all four Indy films. Trans World will sell exclusive steel packaging.



Monaghan Stars In Fortuna

Former Lost star Dominic Monaghan and Freddy Rodriguez (Six Feet Under) star in Fortuna, an SF horror thriller, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Set in 2100, Fortuna envisions an Earth where a collapsed economy and climate crises have eliminated the middle class, leaving a few very wealthy and the teeming masses in severe poverty.

To give hope and avoid revolt, the elite create Fortuna, a mysterious game where one in a thousand wins a big payday and joins the upper classes. But their hidden goal to "reduce poverty" by 30 percent over 50 years comes with a deadly price tag.

Monaghan, Rodriguez and Fortuna writer-director Barthelemy Grossmann will play desperate men who play the game in a nearby tower, despite apprehensions that none of its contestants are ever seen again.

The six-week Fortuna shoot begins Nov. 10 in Sofia, Bulgaria. Desolate, ghettolike sets are being built for a film Zilber compares to 1973's post-apocalyptic thriller Soylent Green.



Sladen Is Tops In Sarah Jane

Elisabeth Sladen--star of the British Doctor Who spinoff series The Sarah Jane Adventures--told SCI FI Wire that it's amazing to see her name first on the callsheet of a Who project after appearing in the show and its various iterations over the last 35-plus years. Sladen played Sarah Jane Smith, investigative journalist and companion of the third and fourth incarnations of the Doctor.

"I was extremely aware of it, and I've ignored it as much as I could," Sladen said in an interview while promoting this week's DVD release of The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Complete First Season. "It's not something I like to think about. I mean, I respond to being directed, to a team effort, and it is, and that includes the crew as well."

Sladen added: "Yes, you are aware that [as the lead of a show] there are certain things that you have at your fingertips, that you can say and do, but it's lovely to be able to do it in a supportive manner. You're saying it for the sake of the program rather than picking yourself up. I'd rather cut something I'm doing if there's something better than can happen that will move the pace along."

The new DVD features 10 episodes of the SF family series, as well as cast and crew interviews, a gadget glossary, photo galleries and a Sarah Jane Smith timeline.

First-season episodes of The Sarah Jane Adventures currently air on SCI FI Channel. Season two--consisting of 12 episodes, or six two-part stories--premiered late last month in England on BBC One. --Ian Spelling





Lima Helms Warner's Thumb

Warner Brothers and Red Wagon have lined up Kevin Lima (Enchanted) to direct Tom Thumb, a live-action take on the origins of the tiny character, Variety reported.

Red Wagon principals Doug Wick and Lucy Fisher will produce, with Chris Chase executive-producing.

The film, penned by Robert Rodat (Saving Private Ryan), centers on an arrogant knight who's shrunk to 6 inches while assigned to protect a princess and then discovers what it means to be a real hero.

Warner is aiming to develop Thumb as a tentpole project with worldwide appeal. The Tom Thumb character originated in English folklore in the 16th century, while thumb-sized heroes have appeared in cultures throughout the world.



Uninvited Trailer Unspools

A new trailer has gone live for The Uninvited, a horror movie based on Kim Jee-Woon's 2003 Korean horror film Changhwa Hongryon.

It revolves around Anna (Emily Browning), who returns home after spending time in the hospital only to discover that her father (David Strathairn) has become engaged to her mother's former nurse, Rachel (Elizabeth Banks). That night, Anna is visited by her mother's ghost, who warns her of Rachel's intentions.

The film, formerly called The Tale of Two Sisters, also stars Arielle Kebbel. The Guard Brothers directed from a screenplay by Craig Rosenberg and Doug Miro & Carlo Bernard. The Uninvited opens Jan. 30, 2009.





Romero's Crazies Gets Remade

Overture Films will produce and distribute The Crazies, a remake of the 1973 George Romero movie, Variety reported.

Breck Eisner will direct from a script by Ray Wright and Scott Kosar. Michael Aguilar and Dean Georgaris will produce; Romero will serve as executive producer.

Production is set to begin early next year.

The Crazies revolves around people in a small Kansas town who are beset by a virus that causes insanity and death after a mysterious toxin contaminates the local water supply.



Avengers Animated Series Starts

Marvel Animation, the cartoon division of Marvel Entertainment, is beginning production on The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, the company's latest animated TV series, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Film Roman, the company behind The Simpsons, has been tapped to produce the 26-episode series, which will be available for broadcast in 2011. That same year, Marvel Studios will release the live-action movies The First Avenger: Captain America and The Avengers.

Producing the TV series is Ciro Nieli, whose credits include Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper Force Go! and Teen Titans.

Based on the long-running comic, Avengers features some of the company's most popular characters, including Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Giant Man and the comely Wasp, who fight forces of evil that no single hero stands a chance against.



New Spectrobes Previewed

Steven Dodson, brand manager for the Spectrobes video-game franchise, told SCI FI Wire that Spectrobes: Beyond the Portals closes the gap between players and Spectrobes. In the first game, players controlled the character Rallen while his Spectrobes--creatures of light cultivated from fossils--assisted in battle.

"This time around, we realized that having Rallen inside the battle was a little bit difficult," Dodson said in a phone interview on Oct. 6. "What you really wanted to do is attack with your Spectrobe. So we pulled Rallen out of that battle, and now you directly control it. We primarily use the D-pad and the buttons to control different Spectrobes actions, like charge attacks or combination attacks or just your normal Spectrobes attack."

Players will fight with two Spectrobes at a time, with the second Spectrobe controlled by AI. They can swap Spectrobes with the press of a button.

"This gives you more direct control of the Spectrobes, and they have different attacks. They'll have range attacks. Some Spectrobes shoot things. Some are really fast and can run around all over the battle plane and avoid attacks and then dart in for a quick attack. Some are slow and heavy but have very forceful attacks. So there's a lot of strategy to picking your Spectrobes team."

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Rallen still gets to fight. He faces smaller enemies that he can fend off on his own with a sword, blaster or stun weapon. Players should find it easy to switch between Rallen battles and Spectrobes brawls.

"They're fairly similar control sets," Dodson said. "You'll be using a lot of the same buttons. It's a little bit different, because each of Rallen's attacks is mapped to a different button, but we have a lock-on system that helps you stay centered on one enemy at a time. That way you can kind of strafe the enemy or walk around him without that enemy moving off screen. The lock system is the same between the Spectrobes' battles and Rallen's battles, so they're actually very similar battle systems."

Fans of Spectrobes will see all of their favorite Spectrobes return, plus a new set of Spectrobes. Dodson said the sequel features double the Spectrobes of its predecessor.

"All these Spectrobes were created with our development team in Japan, our production team in Japan and our developer, Jupiter," Dodson said. "They reference Egyptian art and Aztec-type drawings, traditional Japanese characters, so they used a lot of different outside influences when creating the Spectrobes."

Spectrobes 2 also introduces "Dark" Spectrobes, Spectrobes controlled by the evil High Krawl, who can be turned good by Rallen. "Those are kind of the anti-Spectrobes. They're Spectrobes that have been combined by the Krawl, and they're very rare creatures. So throughout the game, Rallen will have the opportunity to find and raise his own dark Spectrobes to add to his stable of creatures." Spectrobes: Beyond the Portals is now in stores for the Nintendo DS. --Fred Topel



Guest Mixes Wizards And Starships

Multiple-award-winning SF/fantasy author Gene Wolfe told SCI FI Wire that his latest novel, An Evil Guest, takes place in the same world as his novella "Memorare," which was a finalist for both the Hugo and Nebula awards.

"I'd written 'Memorare,' laid in a world in which a low-cost star drive had been discovered in the near future, and I wanted to set another story there," Wolfe said in an interview.

But while that sounds like a traditional science fiction story, An Evil Guest includes many other elements, such as wizards and werewolves.

Years ago, Wolfe heard someone describe a consultant as a "wizard," so he thought: What if that consultant everybody said was a wizard actually was a wizard? "When I had pictured him in the Oval Office talking to the president, I knew what he looked like and what he was like, and I knew that his name was Gideon Chase," Wolfe said.

In the novel, the wizard Gideon Chase is asked to go after sinister billionaire William Reis. "Unable to locate Reis, Chase uses his powers to render a minor actress--Cassie Casey--beautiful, glamorous and immensely talented," Wolfe said. "Reis takes the bait. He steals it, too."

There are many technological (and other) wonders in the book. "The star drive is the main technological marvel," Wolfe said. "The money that would buy you a light plane today will buy you a spacecraft. Cassie's agent says her hopper [spacecraft] is just a little pink bug, but one she can drive to Mars. [Also,] Reis can manufacture gold, but his gold is radioactive. There are aliens living on Earth and keeping out of sight."

Wolfe is currently working on two new books. "The Sorcerer's House [is] almost ready to go to the agency; of course it's been almost ready for about a year," he said. "I'm still writing the first draft of Home Fires, and the second is going to be a bear." --John Joseph Adams



Shyamalan Unpacks The Happening

Director M. Night Shyamalan offered insights into his SF thriller film The Happening, which arrives on DVD this week, in a conference call with reporters. The film stars Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo and Spencer Breslin in a story about people trying to figure out what is causing an epidemic of sudden suicide. The film made $161 million worldwide. Following are Shyamalan's thoughts about key elements in the movie.

"You deserve this." When Mark Wahlberg passes into the Clear Hill community, there's a sign that announces, "You deserve this." Shyamalan said that the ironic motto embodies his own disdain for encroaching suburbia. "I've always been a little bit averse to the whole sprawling development stuff, where they take farmland and they take all these forests and drop 90 identical homes on a hillside," he said. "For many reasons, then, some of them would seem odd, but even in terms of individuality and personal expression, I love driving by someone's home and being able to know something about them, that there's no other home like that particular home. However little or large, it's something of an extension of the human being. And then to spread in that fashion the way we do now, so hundreds and hundreds of acres are taken up, and then we put identical homes and everyone just goes into their cubicle without personal expression and without regard to what we're doing to nature, it just seems we're going into a soulless place. ...

"I'd seen the sign once for one of these developments: ... [the] "Make your dreams come true," "You've worked hard," ... "You've earned this" kind of feeling. And so it stuck in my head when I was making that one ... [to] see if we could play on the words a little bit."

An Inconvenient coincidence? Shyamalan wrote the environmentally themed Happening before Al Gore's global-warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth came out. But he said that he was amazed at how the documentary coincided with some of his movie. "I saw it after I wrote it, and I did feel a little bit like this was the fictional, science fiction version of that," he said. "That documentary [about] 'How can we continue to think that we're not a threat to the planet?' If we don't change our ways within 100 years, any rational person can see that there'll be nothing left if we continue to do what we're doing."

Surprise, surprise! How does Shyamalan keep his films fresh? "I think that is the bane of being an original filmmaker," he said. "You always get the 'I thought I was getting ... .' And then you get judged by that, as opposed to, well, there should be an assumption that you don't know what you're getting. And then please don't use another movie of someone else or even my movies to have an expectation about what you're going to see. ... Let's say I Am Legend and The Happening are similar movies in terms of their subject [matter]--end-of-the-world movies, that kind of thing--where one ends with man saving the day. Mine ends with man being the villain. That in and of itself is a specific choice that is important to me as the author, but contrary to the expectations of the human being who came and sat in the multiplex."

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Ashlyn Sanchez (from left), John Leguizamo and Mark Wahlberg are caught in the middle of M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening.



Scare tactics. "I have a creative autism or something that just makes me focus in on the thing that is getting me really excited," Shyamalan said. "I can understand intellectually how it would be that wind might not be naturally scary to somebody, but if I told you that there's a gas in the wind, and it's coming and that you have to shut the doors and close the windows and make sure no air gets in, I can see a million variations of how

that would be scary to me. I love taking something innocuous and then, by the end of the movie, making you nervous about it and imbuing it with ominous or portentous qualities."

Film mentors. "I feel a little bit like a dinosaur in this day and age of filmmaking, maybe momentarily not knowing whether my accent means anything to anybody," Shyamalan said. "But where it came from, this idea of Kurosawa or even Kubrick or Hitchcock, those three guys [have] their quiet tension that they do with the frame, as opposed to stimuli scares or suspense. I'm not naturally the stimuli suspense guy. ... I don't think in terms of when I think of an alien invasion I think of hearing about it, and then seeing a couple of lights on a TV, as opposed to all these amazing filmmakers, I'm sure like Spielberg and Jackson and obviously Lucas and all these guys, James Cameron, they would all do the spectacular version of it. But my mind never goes there."

Effect of Green Effect. The original script was called The Green Effect and centered more on an environmental crisis. "In that draft, it was much larger scale, so it's happening all over the world instantaneously, so it was very apocalyptic," Shyamalan said. "And that one, as most of my instincts do start out, was pretty dark. I remember I had calculated--I have it all scribbled down in some notebook somewhere--but I calculated the population of how much I wanted left on the planet when this was all done, to kind of start over in an innocuous number of the species so we could have another chance at repopulating the correct way again, and it was something like .0006 percent or something. So I had calculated down how many people that would leave in each country before the environment stopped and said, 'OK, now we're back at equilibrium.'"

The R Factor. This is one of the few movies of Shyamalan's where a lot of the violence is shown and marks the director's first R rating. "The screenplay I wrote was just an impossibility to shoot as a PG-13 movie, as my other movies have been," Shyamalan said. "And, to some extent, the movies that I've been inspired by in my life--like The Exorcist, The Godfather and others--there is a visceralness to them that I hadn't really let myself go there, except on occasion, like in the stabbing scene in The Village or a few moments in Sixth Sense or the fingers getting cut off in Signs. ... You know, the two sides of me, for whatever reason, are this kind of really naive 'Santa Claus is real' side and then the 'Oh, my God!' I know how to throw that lady off the roof of the building and make it really disgusting. I don't know why they both live in the same head, but they're there."

Knocking hot dogs. There's a rant about hot dogs in the film. "I'm an All-American boy, I'm a big cheeseburger and hot dog guy and all of that stuff," Shyamalan said. "You know, I'm not allowed to take my kids [for junk food], because my wife is vegetarian and all healthy and all that stuff. But occasionally [I do]. I actually went to visit an orphanage in India recently, and she's like, 'Where are you going with them?' I said, 'I'm taking them out.' 'Where are you going?' 'Well, we're going to McDonalds.' And she said, 'What, what did you say?' And I said, 'I'm taking them to McDonalds.' I took the whole orphanage to McDonalds. So I have a great affinity for all that stuff. I do think they get a bad rap, man."

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Director M. Night Shyamalan on the set of his last SF movie, The Happening.



Personal reflections? What movie is most like the writer/director? "I've been really different from The Sixth Sense to Unbreakable, and if this was a therapy session--which these often are--I would say that Unbreakable and Lady in the Water are the truest versions of me, and the other movies are parts of me."

More blood on DVD. The DVD extras contains some of the more violent scenes that needed to be cut from the film. "You see some of that on the DVD," Shyamalan said. "I'm anal about the experience being the one that I frame-for-frame decided was the best experience, with the balance of everything I just did, but I really wanted you to see those sequences that were more visceral, that ended up for me feeling like trauma to the audience, that they couldn't recover from them, but powerful. So those are on the DVD." --Mike Szymanski



Shyamalan Mulls Unbreakable Sequel

M. Night Shyamalan said he is considering working on a sequel to his hit Unbreakable, a superhero tale about a man (Bruce Willis) who finds that he is impervious to harm and is called to become a savior.

"I'm a strange creature," the writer/director said in a conference call with reporters last week. "When Unbreakable came out, I was like, 'God, man, I'm so excited.' I thought [it] was like comic books. No one has really done comic books like this: reality-based comic books. I really think this is a metaphor for things that people can go crazy over."

Though the film was eventually a hit, the initial reaction was mixed. "When the reaction was mixed, kind of a disappointment, I was pettily hurt, and I was like, 'God, I took so many incredible risks' and things like that," Shyamalan said.

Because of that, Shyamalan's excitement about a sequel to the movie was muted. "I felt really hurt, and I couldn't bring myself to write," he said. "It's literally like a relationship I have with the audience. ... And then, over the years, as it just grew and grew and grew, and people were like, 'You know, I really like that. That's actually my favorite movie, and I watch that all the time,' and on and on. I'll be on the street, and some kid will run across traffic with it in his backpack--he just is carrying it in his backpack--and he'll be running [saying], 'I can't believe it's you!' Will you sign my Unbreakable DVD?' And quoting the thing and all that stuff."

As a result, Shyamalan said that the sequel idea now haunts him. "How bizarre," he said. "I want to write it right now, but I want to write it for the right reasons. I want a story to pop into my head that is organic and expressive of who I am. You know, these are all kind of journals of where I am emotionally, so it's kind of hard. I'm kind of trying to go back to the journal that existed in 1999 for me. But I know me: As soon as I give up on it is when the idea will come to me. It's just I need to go into therapy; I guess that's the end of that answer to this."

The DVD of Shyamalan's last film, The Happening, drops on Oct. 7. --Mike Szymanski



Bruce Willis played a reluctant superhero in M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable.



Shyamalan Unveils Airbender Secrets

Director M. Night Shyamalan said he is on track for a July 2010 release of his live-action version of The Last Airbender.

"It's going to be really cool," the director said about the Paramount picture on which he is now working. "I'm at the stage where we have [pre-visualized] about the last act of the movie. And because my normal approach to filmmaking is almost like I'm making an animated movie, to some extent--I think out every shot and analyze everything--it kind of lays out really nicely for a big CGI movie."

Speaking in a conference call last week with reporters, Shyamalan added, "Basically, I feel like I'm making the movie right now, like I'm editing it and all that stuff, because I'm doing the [pre-visualizations]. Like, if you were here, I could show you the last 30 minutes of The Last Airbender in animatic form, and it is an amazing and emotional experience just to watch that. I'm like, 'Oh, this is so exciting.' It gives you such safety, because it's such a different kind of movie than I'm used to making. But yet, as we all were, we all came kind of born out of Star Wars, and somewhere in there is the desire to return to fantasy on that level."

Expect a lot more colors, the director of The Happening said. "This fantasy movie may seem as if it's coming out of nowhere, but it's not," he said. "You'll see the seeds of it in Unbreakable and in Lady [in the Water] and in Signs, all of them a little piece of this and that, and the formality of The Village and the things in it should all go, 'Oh, I get it, these are all the colors of his personality.' As opposed to 'I don't get these other ones, how they relate.' Do you know what I mean? It should be more of an honest palette."

Shyamalan said that Airbender, which is based on the animated TV series, is very spiritual. "And sometimes in my movies, like Signs, they're more overt, but sometimes--like in The Happening--they're more about faith, and not necessarily religious faith. So when he steps outside, it's really just a holy moment."

Shyamalan said Airbender is slated for release over the Independence Day weekend of 2010. After that, he said that he will think about his next project. "There are scripts," he said. "I cannot tell you anything about them. But there are three that I'm struggling with in my head right now, trying to decide. They are very different tonalities, so I'm trying to decide what to do. It's hard to guess where you're going to be. I mean, a little bit of it is like going on a date for two years. So it's like, do you really want to go skydiving for two years? Do you really want to [go] rock climbing for two years? So you've got to think about it really carefully. And I have no idea how I'm going to feel, post ... Airbender, as I'm about to start the next one. But I do have a couple of ideas."

Shyamalan's follow-up film could be very different. "I don't even know if fantasy is the correct word," he said. "I don't even know what to call it, but it has some really amazing quasi-martial-arts stuff. I mean, probably, when I saw The Matrix, it struck me, because that came out in '99, I think, and I remember when it came out I was, like, 'I've always wanted to make a signature martial-arts movie that's different than anything that's ever come before it.' So I was totally in awe of those guys when they made that movie. And so this has a lot of those interests of mine, because I took martial arts for a long time. And so all those kinds of interests, they're all coming out."

Shyamalan offered this much about possible new films. "One is straight-up scary," he said. "One is more light-head scary, more in the

>Signs vein, that tinfoil-helmet thing, which I had a great time doing that, having that light end on it. And then one is gothic. But I'm always in that world when I'm thinking about the original idea."

The DVD of Shyamalan's last film, The Happening, drops on Oct. 7. --Mike Szymanski



Hathaway Joins Burton's Alice

Anne Hathaway, who is generating buzz for her performance in Rachel Getting Married, has signed for a role in Alice in Wonderland, which Tim Burton is directing for Disney, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Helena Bonham Carter also has joined the film.

The movie, which stars Mia Wasikowska as Alice and Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, will use a combination of live action and performance-capture technology to tell the Lewis Carroll story.

Hathaway is playing the White Queen, a benevolent monarch who is deposed and banished by her sister, the Red Queen (Carter), who has an affinity for crying out, "Off with their heads!" The White Queen needs Alice to slay a creature known as the Bandersnatch.

Richard Zanuck, Joe Roth and Jennifer and Suzanne Todd are producing.



Quantum Game: To Spy In L.A.

Topel. Fred Topel.

As an operative for SCI FI Wire, I took part in a spy escapade in Los Angeles last week, sponsored by the nefarious international criminal organization known as Activision (well, maybe they're not so criminal), who were promoting Quantum of Solace, a new video game themed to the upcoming 22nd James Bond movie.

The experience left me both shaken and stirred.

It all began when a hired driver pulled up in a limousine. A comely redhead named Nikki--slinky black gown, high heels--held the door as I and a fellow journalist took our seats in the back.

Two traffic lights into the drive, our driver spotted an enemy tailing us. He took evasive action into an alley. Nikki rushed us out the back. The driver sped off, providing a decoy for our tail.

We met our contact in the alley. He handed us personalized briefcases with weapons (a plastic gun), cover (a T-shirt with a tuxedo pattern on it) and, most important, press kits for the game. We wouldn't want that to fall into enemy hands.

Having lost the tail, our driver returned. He took us to the Viceroy Hotel, a deluxe hostelry in Santa Monica, Calif. Nikki and her equally comely companions greeted us--we apparently were not the only two press people on this mission. To maintain our cover, we all posed for photos in front of an Aston Martin. Waiters passed around vodka martinis. (Shaken? Stirred? Do I look like I give a damn?)

Nikki and her companions notwithstanding, the roomful of gaming journalists were focused on screens displaying the game's multiplayer action and single-player tactical missions. Nikki and her beautiful friends nevertheless remained. Their mission: to pretend as if they thought the video game was cool.

Quantum of Solace is Activision's first James Bond title. It follows the story of both the upcoming movie and its predecessor film, Casino Royale, both of which star Daniel Craig as 007.

The player controls Bond in a first-person-shooter mode but can also play from a third-person perspective, watching Craig's likeness in tactical modes. Co-design director Jeremy Luyties explained the gameplay.

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"It's important as a Bond game that we wanted to be able to get back to the action, it being a first-person shooter, but we also wanted the player to be able to see Bond," Luyties said in an interview. "What better situation than to be able to have you go in third person and see Bond shoot?"

By pressing a button on the controller, the player can make Bond take cover. The camera pulls back from first person to show 007 backed up against a wall or crouching behind a box. The transition is smooth, with no disorientation when the perspective shifts.

"There are many different games that have a lot of different cover systems," Luyties said. "We looked at the ones that tried to come up with the easiest way to get into it. So, as you can see when you play, you just hit a button, you're in. You pull out, you see a couple modifiers, you hit the button, and you're moving around. It's very simple. We thought it was really more for the player to both see Bond and play him as a first person. Also, too, when you get cover into a game, it makes it a little bit more tactical, which is something that Bond is."

Skilled players may use those tactics in multiplayer modes as well. Quantum offers traditional multiplayer modes, such as Death Match, Golden Gun (one-shot kills) and Territory Control (fighting to occupy sections of the game map).

A new mode, Bond Versus, pits one player against a team of up to 20 other players. "It's very intimidating when you finally get to be Bond, and next thing you know, there's tons of guys looking for you," Luyties said.

To make the game a challenge for the players teaming up against Bond, their characters will be fragile and slow, requiring them to use strategy to defeat the powerful spy. "If you come around the corner, he'll mow through five or six of you, and you've got to make sure that you work together to take him out," Luyties said.

Quantum of Solace hits stores Nov. 4. (This demo and interview apply to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions, designed by Treyarch. Other development companies designed Quantum games for the Wii, PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable and Nintendo DS.)

As for me? Nikki and I will always have Santa Monica. --Fred Topel, with Patrick Lee



Get Smart Sequel Espied

Warner Brothers is developing a sequel to its hit Get Smart and has signed a three-year first-look deal with its star, Steve Carell, Variety reported.

Carell has formed Carousel Productions.

Vance DeGeneres and Charlie Hartsock will run the company, which will take offices on the Warner lot.

The sequel will bring Carell back as bumbling secret agent Maxwell Smart. That sequel is not part of the new overall deal.



Glover Is President In 2012

Danny Glover announced that he will stand for president of the United States. Not that he's angling to supplant Barack Obama as possibly the first African-American in the White House: Glover told reporters that he will play the Commander in Chief in director Roland Emmerich's upcoming apocalyptic epic 2012.

"I think it's a symbolic role within the film," Glover said in a news conference in New York last week while promoting Blindness. "2012 is ... what do they call Roland Emmerich? The king of destruction? So, you know, the Mayan cosmology says the world ends in 2012. This president happens to be elected in 2008."

Glover added: "There's a really wonderful cast [that includes Woody Harrelson, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Peet, John Cusack and Thandie Newton]. Woody Harrelson and Chiwetel Ejiofor are really wonderful. But it's really interesting. I've never been in a film like this before. Well, I think the last thing I'd been in with all this destruction, like, that was Predator 2 or something like that, years ago. It's almost another lifetime, a lifetime ago."

The film finds all of the characters dealing--each in his or her own way--with the reality that the world is crumbling around them. "It's as the destruction is happening," Glover confirmed.

2012 will open on July 10, 2009. --Ian Spelling



Braga Does The SF Mambo

Alice Braga (I Am Legend) told reporters that she co-stars with Jude Law in the SF thriller Repossession Mambo. The movie, from first-time director Miguel Sapochnik, also features Forest Whitaker, Carice van Houten, The RZA and Liev Schreiber.

"It's really interesting," Braga said in a news conference last week in New York, where she was promoting Blindness. "It's a crazy story in a way, supposing that there's an industry of artificial organs. So it's kind of a crazy movie."

Repossession Mambo takes place in the not-too-distant future, when people can buy artificial organs using credit. Pity those who fall behind on their payments, as someone may come calling to get the organs back.

Law plays Remy, a repo man whose body is filled with artificial organs ... and who must go on the run when he can no longer pay the bills.

"I play a character [who's] ... a young girl with dreams and life ahead of her, and then suddenly everything changes," Braga said. "And then her whole body changes. It's really hard to talk about her, because if I say something about it, it [reveals too much about] the journey of the character." There's no release date yet for the movie. --Ian Spelling



Q&A: Slater Balances Enemy Roles

Christian Slater is setting the stage for a career comeback this fall in NBC's new series My Own Worst Enemy. The show will offer the actor twice the opportunity to strut his stuff as he takes on the dual roles of Henry Spivey and Edward Albright.

Spivey is the average man living the American dream: a home in the suburbs, a wife, two kids, a dog and a minivan. He works in a mundane job as an efficiency expert. But he has a far-from-mundane alternate personality: Albright, a top-notch government operative who can run a 4-minute mile, speaks 13 languages and is a trained killer.

Joining Slater on the show is an impressive supporting cast that includes James Cromwell, Alfre Woodard, Saffron Burrows, Taylor Lautner and Madchen Amick as Henry's wife, Angie.

As one might imagine, Slater is a busy man, appearing in nearly every frame of My Own Worst Enemy as either Edward or Henry. He took a quick break from the set on Oct. 3 to speak with press about the show, and SCI FI Wire was on hand. Below is an edited version of the conversation. My Own Worst Enemy debuts Oct. 13 and will air Mondays at 10 p.m. ET/PT, right after Heroes. (NBC is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.)

Are you able to focus for a whole day on Henry or Edward, or do you jump back and forth?

Slater: On the first episode, it was pretty specific who I was playing on which particular day, but as we moved on, we've gotten to do a lot of fun things, and the other personality starts to come out in the midst of being in the middle of a fight or something like that. That's been challenging and fun.

As we peel the layers of this onion and continue to get into these characters, I think I'm going to continue to discover new things. The writers [are] just unleashed, coming up with a lot of interesting and creative scenarios and situations to put both of these characters into. For me, it's a continual process of discovery.

Was it the dual-personality aspect of this that made this part appealing?

Slater: The dual-personality aspect is definitely something that I enjoyed about this script. Taking the Jekyll-and-Hyde, angel-and-devil-on-your-shoulder [plotline] and blowing it up in such an extreme way was something that was very identifiable and very interesting.

This show has much higher production values than a lot of shows premiering this season. Was that one of the aspects that appealed to you about this series?

Slater: [The producers] told me each week they were going to try to put a movie on TV, and, as far as I can tell, the production value and the things we've been able to do have been extraordinary.

Is this kind of role fun for you, and how much does it play to your acting strengths?

Slater: We were shooting stuff yesterday, running through corridors and having this gun battle. [It's like] being a kid playing in my backyard, I'll be honest with you. I enjoyed doing it then, and I certainly enjoy doing it now. On every level, it's a unique and interesting challenge.

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Christian Slater as Edward Albright in My Own Worst Enemy. (Paul Drinkwater for NBC)



Edward speaks 13 languages. How difficult is emulating the languages?

Slater: They've brought in dialogue coaches. They give it to me with enough time to prepare and get ready. The languages that we're tackling so far have been Russian, a little Chinese and some German. It's all about listening. I try to listen to the specifics of what the teacher is telling me to do and get the details as much as possible. It's the specifics and repetition is really the trick, so far, that I've discovered to get a sense of the languages.

Are there different keys to playing Henry and Edward?

Slater: There are subtle differenc

es and certainly some specific emotional differences between the characters. As we've gone along, we've discovered a lot of ways to make a distinction between the two characters in a very subtle fashion. Henry is certainly a character who is much more in touch with his heart. ... Edward is without a doubt the opposite end of that spectrum.

I don't want to give anything away, [but] as we delve deeper into this story, you will see what the purpose and reasoning for Henry's existence is.

Which character are you most like? Who do you enjoy playing the most, and which would you most likely be friends with?

Slater: It's interesting. In the beginning I thought, "I really want to be Edward." He's this really cool, tough guy. [But] as we've gone along I've discovered that I really like Henry and find him to be a very relatable character and a very human guy.

For me, I don't ever want to be the extreme of Edward, so I'm somewhere in the middle between the two. If I could hang out with either one, I'd probably feel a lot safer with Henry.

Both Edward and Henry seem to be surrounded by women who take care of them. Can you talk about those women both of your characters play opposite?

Slater: Alfre is certainly a phenomenally strong actress and a perfect matriarch for this kind of environment, and she carries herself with great authority. She's a powerful actress, and I'm glad that she's the one holding the leash on Henry and Edward.

Saffron Burrows couldn't be a better therapist. She's intelligent and sharp and emotionally a very strongly developed character. Madchen [Amick] is just full of life and, I think, represents a great deal of the heart and soul of the story and what keeps Henry and Edward grounded.

Do you do anything physically different when you play the two characters, such as a look or a way of carrying yourself?

Slater: There's nothing specifically that I try and do with the look. I think it's more in my emotional state. Hopefully it's more in my eyes. I can tell you that Henry prefers to have his suit jacket buttoned and Henry is open.

Are Henry and Edward going to find clues as to the existence of their other personality as the show moves along?

Slater: Yeah. In the first episode, the microchip that's implanted into Edward's brain has started to break down, and the two personalities are beginning to merge, and chaos starts to ensue. They do find different ways to communicate with one another. They write signs on their hands so when they do come to, they can see what the other's been up to. As the show develops, they find much more technological things to be informed.

You had mentioned that, in regards to who you are personally, you've learned who you are not. Who are Henry and Edward not?

Slater: Henry is not Edward and Edward is not Henry. --Jeff Otto



BRIEFLY NOTED

Quiet Earth has posted images from the set of The Road, the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel.

Danny Glover is joining the voice cast of the Fantastic Films International/Crush Productions animatronics feature film Agent Crush, according to The Hollywood Reporter; Glover will supply the voice of Major Rusty Gubbins in the futuristic film, which also features Ioan Gruffudd, Neve Campbell and Roger Moore.

Blade Runner director Ridley Scott talked with io9 about his proposed film adaptation of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.

Iron Man posted the strongest first-week sales tally of any new home-video release this year, with distributor Paramount Home Entertainment selling 7.2 million DVDs and more than 500,000 Blu-ray discs, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Latino Review posted a rumor that Warner Brothers is considering Ryan Gosling for the title role in its proposed Green Lantern movie.

Disney will release the full-length animated movie Tinker Bell on DVD and Blu-ray on Oct. 28.

A new Web site has gone live for Fox's upcoming SF series Dollhouse, along with a new show-themed "wiki"; the show debuts in January.

The 4400: The Complete Series arrives on DVD Oct. 28.

Pushing Daisies creator Bryan Fuller told iFMagazine that he will feature a crossover episode with his canceled fantasy series Wonderfalls: "I had to do a Wonderfalls crossover in this season of Pushing Daisies. That happens in episode eight of the second season, and I'm really excited about it."

Jack Kenny has signed on as show runner and executive producer of SCI FI Channel's upcoming drama series Warehouse 13, according to The Hollywood Reporter; he reunites with executive producer David Simkins, with whom he previously worked on NBC's short-lived 2006 series Book of Daniel.

Matt Lucas (Little Britain) has joined the voice cast of Imagi Studios' computer-animated Astro Boy movie.

ComingSoon.net reported new details about the upcoming X-Men Origins: Wolverine and a possible Deadpool movie.

The Oct. 3 premiere of Cartoon Network's Star Wars: The Clone Wars pulled in 3.96 million total viewers, with bumps of 160 percent and 133 percent, respectively, in the key demographics of boys 6-11 and boys 9-14, Variety reported.

Mandalay Pictures has picked up film rights to Liquid Comics' graphic novel Ramayan 3392 AD for Mark Canton to produce, Variety reported; the comic is based on the epic Hindu poem about the adventures of the blue-skinned warrior Prince Rama, who fights to rescue his wife from the demon king who kidnapped her.

SCI FI Channel's original series Sanctuary was the number-one prime-time cable entertainment program among adults aged 25-54 in its Oct. 3 premiere; the show delivered more than 2.7 million total viewers and was the channel's highest-rated original series premiere since Eureka in July 2006.

Indiana Jones star Harrison Ford told the Los Angeles Times that momentum is already building for a fifth movie. "It's automatic, really; we did well with the last one, and with that having done well and been a positive experience, it's not surprising that some people want to do it again."

ShockTillYouDrop.com reported that Dracula author Bram Stoker's great-grandnephew Dacre Stoker and historian Ian Holt have authorized the publication of a sequel to the classic vampire novel, Dracula: The Un-Dead, which will be published next year.

ComingSoon.net posted an account of director Guillermo del Toro's recent talk in New York about his upcoming projects, including The Hobbit, Frankenstein and At the Mountains of Madness.