fulltimer56
11-20-2007, 02:43 AM
NEWS OF THE WEEK FOR NOV. 19, 2007
Heroes Art To Be Auctioned
Three original paintings by artist Tim Sale featured in NBC's hit series Heroes are part of an online auction (http://www.nbc.com/auctions) launching Nov. 19 by NBC Universal Video, Music & Product Development and Delivery Agent, in conjunction with the NBC Universal Online Store, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The auction will also feature props, wardrobe items and other collectibles from NBC and Universal Media Studios series, including The Office, 30 Rock, Las Vegas and Friday Night Lights. The first group of items will be available to bid on through Dec. 3.
A portion of the auction's proceeds will benefit the United Way and its various partner organizations. (NBC is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.)
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Darabont Mulls 451 Remake
Writer-director Frank Darabont told SCI FI Wire that he's considering remaking Fahrenheit 451 and doing a film based on Robert McCammon's SF novel Mine, among other options for his next project. Darabont (the upcoming The Mist) said that Fahrenheit 451, based on Ray Bradbury's classic SF novel, is closest to becoming a reality.
"That is—fingers crossed—I would say 90 percent a go, but in the film business, 90 percent ain't real until it's 100 percent," Darabont said in an interview. "It's looking very positive for next year. I'm hoping that this whole [writers'] strike thing doesn't throw a wrench into our being able to plan it. So I'm hoping that the film doesn't jump off the track for that reason."
Darabont recalled reading the novel as a 9-year-old. "Even then I wanted to make a movie out of it," he said. "I remember seeing the [1966 François] Truffaut [film] version and thinking, 'Wow, that missed this book by several country miles.' So it's not something that I feel has ever been put on film well. If it were a terrific movie, believe me, I wouldn't be bothering."
Mine, meanwhile, is Robert McCammon's psychological horror tale about a deeply disturbed female 1960s revolutionary who kidnaps a baby, goes on a killing spree and sparks a desperate chase. "That is also in the works," Darabont said. "We're working on that, too. That is an intense and primal thriller. It's a female-driven thriller, which is perhaps one of the reasons that it's not an obvious 'yes' for a studio. The hero and the villain are great women's roles, and studios kind of have to be talked into that [kind of] thing, because it's not the obvious to them." —Ian Spelling
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Strike Idles Bionic Production
NBC's Bionic Woman shut down production in Vancouver, Canada, on Nov. 9, well ahead of its scheduled Dec. 12 close, because of the ongoing writers' strike, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The fourth season of SCI FI Channel's original series Battlestar Galactica (http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/), which is also shot in Vancouver, will wrap on Nov. 15 for the same reason, the trade paper reported. The show had been scheduled to shoot through mid-March, according to Canadian newspaper reports.
SCI FI has made no official announcement about the show's status.
NBC and SCI FI are owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
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Potter 6 Casting Complete
Casting has been completed on the upcoming sixth Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Warner Brothers announced. David Yates, who directed this year's Order of the Phoenix, returns to helm the next installment, based on J.K. Rowling's book.
Among the new cast members are Jim Broadbent, who will play potions professor Horace Slughorn, and Helen McCrory, who will play Narcissa Malfoy, mother to Draco Malfoy and sister to the evil Bellatrix Lestrange.
Also new to the franchise are Jessie Cave as Lavender Brown, Hero Fiennes Tiffin as young Tom Riddle and Frank Dillane as the teenage Riddle.
The returning cast includes stars Daniel Radcliffe (Harry), Rupert Grint (Ron) and Emma Watson (Hermione), who will be reunited with Helena Bonham Carter, David Bradley, Robbie Coltrane, Warwick Davis, Tom Felton, Michael Gambon, Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith, Natalia Tena, Julie Walters and David Thewlis, as well as Evanna Lynch, Matthew Lewis and Bonnie Wright.
Steve Kloves, who wrote the first four installments of the film franchise, is adapting the screenplay.
In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Lord Voldemort is tightening his grip on both the Muggle and wizard worlds, and Hogwarts is no longer the safe haven it once was. Harry suspects that dangers may even lie within the castle, but Dumbledore (Gambon) is more intent upon preparing him for the final battle that he knows is fast approaching.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince will be released on Nov. 21, 2008.
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Beowulf Cast Exposed
The cast of Robert Zemeckis' animated Beowulf film told reporters that it was unusual to see themselves depicted in various states of undress as photo-realistic computer-generated characters that resemble them.
Ray Winstone, who voices the title character, is perhaps most exposed: His animated character appears completely nude, though cleverly hidden from any full-frontal exposure, during a climactic fight with the monster Grendel.
"My wife loves the pictures. She thinks it's great," Winstone said with a laugh in group interviews in Beverly Hills, Calif., last weekend. "It's really weird, because 6 foot 6 or something, with an eight-pack, and I'm 5 foot 10. I play a warrior, so it was important that I try to walk like I'm that tall. And, of course, I'm older now. ... My wife pulled out a picture of me when I was 18, when I was boxing. I didn't have the eight-pack, right yeah, but it looks like me."
Angelina Jolie, who plays Grendel's monstrous mother, told reporters in a separate news conference that she got a bit shy when she saw her character, which looks just like Jolie, with a few monstrous modifications. "I really wasn't expecting it to be as real," she said of the animated character. "I didn't expect ourselves to come out as much. Because of especially the type of character I play, it was kind of funny at first. ... I was really surprised that I felt that exposed." She added that she liked her character's body in the final rendering: "I love my tail."
Anthony Hopkins' King Hrothgar wears a royal robe that exposes his backside a few times. But Hopkins said that had not yet seen the film. "I don't remember anything like that," he said. "Are you sure you've seen the right movie? I must've been drunk at the time. What you're telling me is very strange [laughs]."
Hopkins added: "You feel naked up there anyway, defenseless, you don't have an idea of what is going to be done with the surroundings. So, in a way, I felt naked the whole time anyway."
Beowulf also stars Crispin Glover, John Malkovich, Robin Wright Penn, Brendan Gleeson and Alison Lohman. It opened nationwide Nov. 16. —Mike Szymanski
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Southland Killed For Song
Richard Kelly, who wrote and directed the SF epic movie Southland Tales, told reporters that he got the rock band the Killers to let him use the song "All These Things That I Have Done" by showing them early footage of pop star Justin Timberlake lip-synching it.
"The producers were like, 'Rich, we can't afford this song. They're never going to give it to us. It's a fortune. It's the biggest band in the world,'" Kelly said in a group interview last week in Beverly Hills, Calif. "And so we did one take with no lip-synching. ... We'd get everyone warmed up and lip-synched the second, third and fourth take."
In the scene, shot in a skee-ball arcade on the pier in Santa Monica, Calif., Timberlake plays Pilot Abilene, a disfigured veteran, who sings directly into the camera in a dream sequence. He is wearing a white T-shirt streaked with blood and pours a can of beer over his head while dancers dressed as nurses writhe around him.
"We cut it together, and, like, the next day my editor had a cut of it, and we sent it off to the Killers, to their management, and we were just like, 'Please. God. Please let them like this. Because we can't afford this song,'" Kelly said. "And the management saw it, and they're like, 'OK. We love this. How much money do you have?' and we were like [mumbles], And they're like, 'OK. You can have it.' They said yes right away."
Getting the Killers on board opened the way for other top bands to jump in, Kelly said.
"It set in motion us getting all this other music," Kelly said. "'Oh, well, the Killers are doing it for how much?' And then it was the Pixies and Muse and Radiohead. ... I still have never met the band, but I'd like give them a hug if I did."
Southland Tales stars Sarah Michelle Gellar, Seann William Scott and Dwayne Johnson as characters caught up in events leading up to the Fourth of July 2008 and an indeterminate apocalypse in Los Angeles. It opened in limited release on Nov. 14. —Patrick Lee, News Editor (scifiwire@scifi.com)
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Gellar's Southland Role Grew
Sarah Michelle Gellar, who stars in Richard Kelly's Southland Tales movie, told SCI FI Wire that her role—an entrepreneurial porn star named Krysta Now—was actually much smaller, and that Gellar was originally up for an even smaller role.
"Initially, Richard had originally approached me about playing Amy Poehler's character," a revolutionary involved in a conspiracy in near-future Los Angeles, Gellar said in a telephone interview last week. "And through different incarnations of the script, the roles had changed, and Krysta started to become [a larger character]. She was a very, very small character initially."
In the movie, Krysta Now finds an amnesiac action-movie star, Boxer Santaros (Dwayne Johnson), in the desert, and the couple become key characters in the epic drama-comedy, set on the eve of an unspecified apocalypse.
"I just started to love her, and one day I went, and I was actually going to talk to Richard about it, and before I had the chance to bring it up to him, he actually brought it up to me," Gellar said about taking on the role of Krysta.
Gellar, best known as TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, jumped at the chance of playing the character. "Just because it was something so different, and she was becoming sort of this amazing character that no one had seen," Gellar said. "And I just thought, 'How exciting to do something just so the antithesis of what would generally be expected of me.' And I think that's what I hope for as a career. I never want to be the girl that you expect to see in something. I want to be 'Whoa, I didn't expect that.' Or 'I didn't see that happening.'"
Krysta Now is inadvertently funny, but Gellar didn't play it that way. "Dwayne and I talked about it," Gellar said. "And although at its heart I do believe this movie is a dark comedy, I think what's funny is when the characters are not self-aware. And I think what makes Krysta funny is that she doesn't realize she's funny. If it becomes too nod-nod, wink-wink, I think the audience is like, 'Oh, I get it.' But I think the humor comes from the fact that she says the most ridiculous things, which she truly believes in. And to me, that's what's funny." Southland Tales opened Nov. 14. —Patrick Lee, News Editor (scifiwire@scifi.com)
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Southland Wins Festival Love
Southland Tales received a warmer reception at the end of the AFI FEST on Nov. 11 than it did at last year's Cannes Film Festival. The movie was part of the two-week Los Angeles festival's series of SF and genre-related films.
Crowds applauded at the ending of Southland Tales, which was revamped after an early cut was poorly received at Cannes. Now opening in limited release on Nov. 14, the film stars Sarah Michelle Gellar, Seann William Scott and Dwayne Johnson. The political satire takes place during an Independence Day celebration. Johnson plays an actor stricken with amnesia; Gellar is a porn starlet who finds him; and Scott is a police officer involved in a vast conspiracy.
The AFI FEST also premiered Confessions of a Superhero, a documentary about the people who dress as Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and the Hulk and pose for photos with tourists in Hollywood while seeking their big break. Christopher Dennis, the actor who portrays Superman, was walking around in his cape for much of the festival's first week. "This has been a dream come true for me," he said. "It doesn't always show me in a flattering light, but it's pretty cool."
Three documentaries about genre filmmakers also debuted. Spine Tingler: The William Castle Story spotlights the man behind several horror movies in the 1950s and '60s, including House on Haunted Hill and The Tingler. 1940s B-movie producer Val Lewton, meanwhile, is the subject of The Man in the Shadows. Narrated by Martin Scorsese, the documentary focuses on the man who made Ghost Ship, I Walked With a Zombie and Cat People. A third documentary, Lynch, delves into the mind of David Lynch, the filmmaker behind Eraserhead and Dune.
AFI also is holding a tribute for The Hunger star Catherine Deneuve, who was also a voice in the animated film Persepolis, about an Iranian girl during the Islamic Revolution. Other animated films debuting at the festival included The Quest for the Missing Piece, from Israel, about a baby born along a seashore who is subjected to a mysterious ancient ceremony. —Mike Szymanski
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No Makeup For Magorium Star
Dustin Hoffman, the famously perfectionistic actor who stars in the family fantasy film Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, said he actually didn't worry too much about finding the right look and tone for his latest role. Hoffman plays the title character, the 243-year-old proprietor of a magical toy store.
"I visited a lot of graveyards and ...," Hoffman joked during a Nov. 12 news conference in New York when asked whether he researched the role. "No. OK, succinct answer. When the writer-director [Zach Helm] and I met for this, we agreed on what we didn't want to do first, and that was to use prosthetics. I don't know what the frame of reference would [be], except for King Tut. He looked pretty good, but that's 3,000 years, isn't it? Mummified dude. So we agreed not to do that."
Hoffman co-stars with Natalie Portman, who plays an insecure young woman who inherits the store from Hoffman's Magorium.
"Once we agreed not to do [prosthetic makeup], then how do we handle it?" Hoffman said. The answer, he said, was to play the character as if he truly believed he was 243 years old, whether it was apparent or not.
"So there was nothing to research then," Hoffman said. "When you meet people, and they [say] something, you think, 'It doesn't matter if they're lying or not. What's important is if they believe it.'"
Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium opened nationwide on Nov. 16. —Ian Spelling
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Magorium Gets The G
Zach Helm, writer-director of the family fantasy film Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, told SCI FI Wire that he's thrilled the film received a G rating, an increasingly rare occurrence. Helm said he set out to earn a G for the film from the Motion Picture Association of America.
"I knew from the moment that I started writing it that what I wanted to do was make a live-action, G-rated film, because they're so rare," Helm said in an interview. "My favorite films from growing up—Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang—all of those were G-rated. And I thought if I could add my film to that long list, I would be very proud. So we actually knew right away what we were heading for."
Magorium stars Natalie Portman as the good-natured but self-doubting manager of a magical toy store whose 243-year-old proprietor (Dustin Hoffman as Mr. Magorium) shocks her by announcing that he's leaving and turning the store over to her.
The G rating does limit Helm in one way, he said. "Granted, I would love to do a director's commentary in which I get to swear, but maybe on the next one," Helm (Stranger Than Fiction) added with a laugh. Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium opened on Nov. 16. —Ian Spelling
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[B]Magorium's Portman A Kid Again
Natalie Portman, who stars in the fantasy/drama Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, told SCI FI Wire that the film took her back to her childhood.
The 26-year-old actress plays Molly Mahoney, a good-natured but self-doubting manager of a magical toy store, whose 243-year-old proprietor (Dustin Hoffman as Mr. Magorium) shocks her by announcing that he's leaving and giving her the store.
"It did take me back to my childhood in a way," Portman said in an interview. "What was interesting was I started working as a kid—I started working when I was 11—but I was never in a kids' movie. And all of a sudden I'm in a kids' movie, but I don't get kid treatment, because I'm the grown-up. That was sort of a bizarre experience, to be like, 'Ooh, I'm finally doing a kids' movie,' and then be like, 'Wait, but I have to work as many hours as they want. There's no limit. I don't get a few hours off for tutoring. I don't get a longer lunch.' All the perks of being a kid I was sort of left out of."
Growing up, Portman (Star Wars, V for Vendetta) said that she loved Tub Toys and was "full into" all the '80s classic toys: the Cabbage Patch Kid, the My Little Pony, Rainbow Brite. "All of that stuff was fully in my sphere," she said. "And I did love the toys in the movie. The weird thing was the really simple, not-flashy stuff was the stuff I got obsessive about. I loved the bouncy balls. I'd addictively . And, well, now I'm admitting it, because they can't really come after me, but there was this barrel of squishy lizards, like stress-ball lizards. I took a lot of those." Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium open for business on Nov. 16. —Ian Spelling
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Mist Had Lots Of Help
Frank Darabont, writer-director of the upcoming SF horror film The Mist, told SCI FI Wire that he had two very important and helpful collaborators in star Thomas Jane and author Stephen King, on whose novella the movie is based.
The movie centers on a group of desperate residents of a small town who find themselves trapped in a supermarket as a mysterious mist rolls in, bringing with it lethal and horrific creatures.
Jane plays David Drayton, who's trapped with his young son (Nathan Gamble); he tries to deal as rationally as possible with both the monsters outside and the growing chaos in the store.
Darabont said that Jane (The Punisher) was the first actor he approached for The Mist. "He was on board from an earlier point than most people," Darabont said in an interview. "We had a good consensus about what the movie should be, and we had a great consensus about what his character should be. We never wanted the lead role to veer into the action-hero, movie-hero type thing. I wanted to keep—and Tom was on board with it—the character as dimensional and as real and as vulnerable as possible."
King and Darabont, meanwhile, go way back. King famously granted Darabont the rights to "The Woman in the Room" for one dollar when Darabont was an aspiring 24-year-old filmmaker. Darabont went on to adapt and direct The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, both of which were based on King books and achieved critical and financial success.
"Steve has been just lovely," Darabont said of the horror writer's role in The Mist. "He's been involved about to the degree he has been with the other films as well, which is to say he gives me the rights, and I send him the script when it's done. Basically, his reaction usually is, 'Wow, great, make sure you invite me to the premiere.' He remains supportive throughout the process, and I think he's particularly happy with this one. I think The Mist has been one of his favorites of his own for a lot of years, and he's really happy with [the film], which delights me no end. He's the first guy I want to please." The Mist opens Nov. 21. —Ian Spelling
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[B]King Praises The Mist
Stephen King told reporters that he's tremendously satisfied with writer-director Frank Darabont's big-screen adaptation of The Mist, one of King's most popular stories.
"I love it," King said in a Nov. 12 news conference in New York. "Frank does good work, and this thing has a different look. ... I don't want to sound like a critic, but it's a wonderful sort of documentary feel. It's separated from the other horror-suspense movies of the last couple of years because of that documentary feel. It has a sense of the Twilight Zones that I loved when I was a kid, the Outer Limits episodes that I loved as a kid."
The film, like the novella, centers on a group of small-town residents trapped in a supermarket after a mysterious and creature-laden mist rolls into their small town. The Mist is Darabont's fourth King-inspired movie, following the short The Woman in the Room and the features The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile.
King added that he's pleased the movie doesn't fit with the current series of torture-porn films. "Here's a movie that was made by an adult," he said. "It's not—I'm not going to name any names—but it isn't part of this splat pack of young guys who haven't quite come to a realization yet that this is as serious as any other genre. So you've got a picture that asks some serious questions, if people want to ask them. Or if they just want to have a good time, it's there, too. But it has a wonderful realistic look that I was just crazy about."
King praised Darabont's use of actors he's employed before, such as Jeffrey DeMunn, Laurie Holden and Brian Libby. "Jeffrey DeMunn [has] always been a favorite of mine, to the point where he's recorded some of my books on tape," King said. "[And I] love Thomas Jane, always have." The Mist opens on Nov. 21. —Ian Spelling
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Mist Alters King's Ending
Frank Darabont—who wrote and directed the upcoming SF movie The Mist based on Stephen King's novella—told SCI FI Wire that he ended the movie very differently from the book. The film, like the book, centers on a group of increasingly panicked people trapped in a supermarket after a mysterious and creature-laden mist rolls into their small Maine town.
King's finale was open to interpretation; Darabont's is not. "That was the ending that always made sense to me," he said in an interview. "I always felt that the movie needed a definitive ending, and it really fell in line with my philosophy of 'This is a horror movie, and it should send people out of the theater horrified and disturbed.' I always knew that the ending was a risk. It's kind of a bold move, but I thought, 'Well, why take half-measures?' We have seen plenty of movies where they kind of wimp out, and I didn't want to do that. I wanted to try to make something that counted in the genre."
Darabont (The Green Mile, The Shawshank Redemption) added that the film's final moments came to him more than a decade ago. "When I say 'wimp out,' I don't necessarily mean in literature, but in a movie," he said. "I was always one of those people who hated The Birds, even when I was a kid, because there was no ending to the movie. I didn't much care for that. It's not a judgment on Steve's story as much as ... I just don't think it would work in a film."
King, according to Darabont, concurred. "We had plenty of conversations about that," Darabont said. "From the earliest days he said, 'What are you going to do for the ending?' The nicest result of it was that, when he first read the screenplay, he paid me a great compliment. And I still have the e-mail. He said, 'Wow, I love the ending. If I'd thought of it, I'd have used it in the story.'" The Mist opens on Nov. 21. —Ian Spelling
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Burton Doing 3-D Alice
Director Tim Burton has signed a two-picture deal with his longtime studio, Disney , that will see him direct and produce 3-D movies of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and a remake of his short Frankenweenie, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The Alice adaptation will be a combination of live-action and performance-capture animation and will be based on a script by Linda Woolverton (The Lion King). It will be produced by longtime Burton collaborator Richard Zanuck and former Disney chairman Joe Roth, with Jennifer and Suzanne Todd.
Filming will begin in early 2008, with a production completion date in May.
Burton will then segue to produce and direct a full-length motion-picture version of his cult favorite 1984 film short, Frankenweenie, about a pet dog who is brought back to life by his loyal owner in a very unusual way. The film will be shot in stop-motion animation.
Both movies will be presented in Disney Digital 3-D.
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Discworld's Pratchett Does TV
Best-selling SF author Terry Pratchett told SCI FI Wire that he makes a cameo appearance as a character named The Toymaker in Hogfather, the upcoming four-hour TV movie based on his Discworld novel.
Set in a parallel universe, the story follows Death and his granddaughter (Michelle Dockery) as they seek to fill the void when the Santa-like figure the Hogfather suddenly disappears and the villainous Auditors prepare to seize control of Discworld.
"I was obviously terrified [about shooting the cameo] for two reasons," Pratchett said in an interview. "While I often do [public] talks, and I have a lot of fun doing that, it was my first time doing it in front of a movie camera. And the other thing was that Marnix [Van Den Broeke], who plays Death, or who we should say plays the figure of Death—because [the since-deceased] Ian Richardson played the voice of Death—at one point, out of camera shot, while I was looking at him during my scene, was giving me a thumbs up with his skeletal hand. It was beautifully articulated. The hand unfolded and the thumb came up, and I was thinking, 'A man should not be so closely confronted with the products of his imagination.'"
Hogfather aired as a two-part miniseries in the United Kingdom during the holidays last year and comes to the American cable television network ION this month. It also stars David Jason, Marc Warren, Joss Ackland, David Warner, Neil Pearson and Nigel Planner. Vadim Jean adapted the screenplay and directed the film.
Pratchett said that that Jean kept him in the loop from beginning to end. Shooting his cameo and visiting the set, the British author said, made him marvel at the fact that Discworld was indeed coming to life in a different medium.
"Because I was so closely involved I saw bits of it all the time," Pratchett said. "A DVD [containing dailies] would arrive every week. I was also on set. There was one stage where I was on the set, and I sort of spun around like Maria in The Sound of Music, because, A, they got this, and, B, got this right. It was a very nice feeling, I can assure you. And I had to keep telling myself that they were making it for other people and not just for me." Hogfather will debut on ION on Nov. 25 at 7 p.m. ET/PT. —Ian Spelling
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Tooth Bites Into Philly
Mark Young, writer and director of the SF horror movie Tooth & Nail, told SCI FI Wire that he spent the most money trashing Philadelphia for his independent post-apocalyptic cannibal film.
"Believe it or not, it costs money to make things look desolate and abandoned," Young said in an interview. "The Philadelphia film office helped us enormously. We shot in all the iconic Philadelphia locales: the Rocky steps, City Hall and the Swann fountain, which was conveniently empty. Without a doubt, the best locale, which helped establish our bleak world, was the Ben Franklin Bridge, which we shut down and littered with cars and trash. The film office helped cut through the red tape and make it happen, which involved closing off both the Pennsylvania and New Jersey sides of the bridge."
Young, who also directed and wrote the supernatural horror film Southern Gothic, focused his film on a group of people fighting bloodthirsty cannibals in the City of Brotherly Love. His cast includes Robert Carradine, Vinnie Jones, Rider Strong, Rachel Miner and Michael Madsen.
"It's surreal to direct someone of his stature," Young said about Kill Bill's Madsen. "I was a bit awestruck, but he was very easygoing. I found him to be a consummate professional; spot-on every take."
The movie takes place in the future, but, Young said, "we tried very hard to make it naturalistic and not fantastical. Nothing is stylized or terribly different from our current reality. I think this is the scariest thing of all: that we could be in this similar situation in the near future, and there would be no laws or government to protect us from the very worst of mankind."
Young said that he's oblivious to the current trend of cannibal films. "I can only write what interests me personally and hope the story and characters resonate with an audience," he said. "Tooth & Nail is primarily about the fine line between civilization and savagery and what protects us from the dark side of human nature."
The $4.2 million film was shot in 20 days. "I only had two weeks to write the first draft of the script before we began preproduction," Young confessed. "We were literally casting into the first week of shooting."
Tooth & Nail is part of the After Dark Horrorfest, which will feature "8 Films to Die For." It screens on more than 300 screens nationwide through Nov. 18. —Mike Szymanski
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House's Morrison Joins Trek
J.J. Abrams, director of Star Trek, told TV Guide that he has hired Jennifer Morrison (TV's House) for the cast of the reboot movie.
"She is indeed in the movie," Abrams told columnist Michael Ausiello. "And she is most excellent!"
Last week, Morrison was spotted outside one of Trek's Hollywood soundstages, sparking rumors that she had quietly come aboard the ensemble alongside Chris Pine, Simon Pegg, Karl Urban and Heroes' Zachary Quinto.
Abrams won't say what role Morrisson will play but denied rumors that she would be Yeoman Rand, the role originated by Grace Lee Whitney.
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EMPYRE Begins At End
SF author Josh Conviser told SCI FI Wire that his latest novel, EMPYRE, begins where most science fiction ends.
"Big Brother is dead. Humanity is once again free. So what happens the day after?" Conviser said in an interview. "How would our world react if we realized tomorrow that all the major events over the past years had been manipulated by a clandestine power?"
The technology in EMPYRE is all based on research being done today, Conviser said. "I'm ... fascinated with the landscape of the future and spent a lot of time researching the cutting edge of architecture to come up with a possible future," he said. "I love the research. I think one of the hardest things in writing is having to cut out some of the great ideas, concepts and technologies I find along the way. But that's what the next book is for, right?"
EMPYRE is a sequel to Conviser's first novel, Echelon. In that book, the central characters, Ryan Laing and Sarah Peters, destroyed Echelon, the word's first total surveillance system. "They should be heroes, right? Revered as the people who brought freedom back to the world? Not so much," Conviser said. "The sudden loss of 'Big Brother' has sent the world into a tailspin."
Ryan Laing is a tortured soul and the world's first true cyborg, Conviser said. "He has 'drones' flowing through him. Think the nanotechnology, robotics and AI we have today amped to the next level," he said. "His total integration with the technological offers him tremendous power (both physical and mental), but also shifts who he is on a fundamental level."
There's a lot of SF devoted to far-future cyborgs who are totally comfortable in their own skin, but that isn't Ryan, Conviser said. "I'm more interested in what the first cyborg would be like, how such a fundamental shift would alter that first guinea pig," he said.
Conviser is deep into researching his next book and working on some other projects, he said. "I'm taking a TV series out to Hollywood right now," he said. "Something that will bring a Ryan Laing-type character to the small screen." —John Joseph Adams
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Will Indy 4 Include Darabont?
Frank Darabont, who was one of the many writers who took a stab at writing the upcoming script for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, told SCI FI Wire that he's not sure how much, if any, of his contribution will turn up in the finished film. David Koepp (Jurassic Park) is expected to be credited as the sole screenwriter, with executive producer George Lucas getting a "story by" credit.
"That's a total question mark for me," Darabont said in an interview while promoting his upcoming The Mist. "I have no idea, other than hearing from some people ... that they feel that there's a good bit of my stuff left in there conceptually or whatnot."
During the development of the fourth Indy adventure, Darabont was one of several writers who turned in drafts, which were ultimately rejected. Koepp's draft was the one that got the OK from Lucas, director Steven Spielberg and star Harrison Ford. The film wrapped production on Oct. 11 and will hit theaters on May 22, 2008. Darabont hinted that there may be some kind of proceeding through the Writers Guild of America about who gets final credit for the screenplay.
"I haven't read their script yet," Darabont said. "I'm sure I will, because I'm sure there will be an arbitration, as there always is on these things. I haven't read the script, so I don't know what exactly they've shot. I just know I have faith in Steven Spielberg, and I'm sure he's making a terrific movie. You know, fingers crossed."
That doesn't mean Darabont doesn't have proprietary feelings about Indy. "Hell, I'd love to see some of the work I did up there," he said. —Ian Spelling
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Poitier Gets Knight Role
Actress Sydney Poitier (Grindhouse) has landed a role on NBC's two-hour movie Knight Rider, which will serve as a pilot for a possible remake of the TV series about a man and his talking car, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The Transformers-inspired sequel centers on Mike Tracer (Justin Bruening), the son of Michael Knight, the character played by David Hasselhoff in the original show. Poitier will play a feisty FBI agent who dislikes Mike.
Poitier, youngest daughter of actor Sidney Poitier, starred in Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof portion of the Grindhouse double feature, as well as in the CW series Veronica Mars. (NBC is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.)
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Helm Has Visions Of God
Writer/director Zach Helm told SCI FI Wire that his next project will be The DisAssociate, about a man who experiences visions of God—who has an unusual request. Helm (Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium) added that the movie may be delayed by the current writers' strike.
"It's hard with the strike right now," Helm said in an interview. "Right now, I'm on strike. The script is not finished. I want to rewrite it, [that] is the problem. Before we go into production, I think, as the director, the writer needs to go back and take another crack at it, and I can't do that right now."
Helm said that The DisAssociate centers on "a man who has a midlevel corporate job and starts having visions from God telling him that he should create the universal language. So I'm sort of going back to the crazy, high-concept, no-studio-in-the-world-would-ever-make-it kind of movie." —Ian Spelling
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Ghostbusters Game Develops
Vivendi Games has signed a deal with Sony Pictures to turn Ghostbusters into a video-game franchise, Variety reported.
The first title in what the publisher hopes will be a series of games is set for release in fall '08 from Vivendi's Sierra label.
All four members of the movie team—Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Bill Murray and Harold Ramis—will be granting voice and likeness rights for the game. Some supporting cast members have signed up as well, including William Atherton, Brian Doyle-Murray and Annie Potts.
In addition, the original film's writers, Aykroyd and Ramis, will pen a story for the game, which will take place in the early '90s, after the events in Ghostbusters II, amid a new ghoul invasion of New York.
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Missing Infects Fictional Town
Horror author Sarah Langan told SCI FI Wire that a virus that causes rapid consumption and psychosis overruns the fictional town of Corpus Christi, Maine, in her latest novel, The Missing.
"I researched the virus in my environmental toxicology program at NYU," Langan said in an interview. "And also some of the things I learned about global warming."
Langan identified with the victims of the virus, as she once had serious respiratory problems that left her bedridden for a couple of years, she said. "I was in my 20s, living back with my parents and feeling like my life was passing me by," Langan said. "I think you can see that [bitterness] in [the novel]. ... I was trying to work through that, because bitterness is best left behind, or it will eat you alive."
The Missing is the story of an upper-middle-class family in crisis. "Meg Wintrob is thinking about leaving her husband when [the] virus takes over the town, and the people most important to her (her husband, Fenstad, and purple-haired daughter, Maddie,) become apparent," Langan said.
Fenstad is a successful psychiatrist who is passionately, and far too quietly, in love with his wife, Langan said. "Meg Wintrob is the pragmatic half to Fenstad's sentiment, though neither of them realize it, and in fact think the reverse is true," she said. "They work, but they don't know it. Their sheltered daughter is a spoiled nutcase prone to tantrums who at heart is probably the sweetest and most dear character in the novel."
Langan was contractually obligated to write a sequel to her first novel, The Keeper, but was not comfortable continuing that storyline, she said. "So I made some changes, invented Corpus Christi, a generic American suburb, and told the fable about consumption that I've been itching to pen for a long time," Langan said. "I think it reflects a lot of things going on in the world, if obliquely."
Next up for Langan is another novel, Audrey's Door. "[It's] about a woman so wounded by her childhood that she's unable to commit to her boyfriend and instead breaks up with him," Langan said. "She moves into a haunted apartment, where something in the walls compels her to build a door." —John Joseph Adams
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Dancing Enchanted Dempsey
Patrick Dempsey, who plays a jaded New York divorce lawyer in Disney's upcoming fantasy musical Enchanted, told SCI FI Wire that his favorite thing about the film was learning the dance steps for the elaborate musical numbers.
"For me, the real exciting part of the movie and the real challenge was certainly the dance numbers," Dempsey said in an interview while promoting the film. "And [John 'Cha Cha' O'Connell], the choreographer, who did Moulin Rouge and Strictly Ballroom and things like that, has a wonderful, sensitive, emotional quality towards his choreography. And when he talks to the dancers, it was really very emotional. And each move meant something. That was really fascinating, to work with him."
Enchanted centers on the relationship between Dempsey's character and a strange girl (played by Amy Adams) who has been transported from the animated world into real life by an evil sorceress (Susan Sarandon). Dempsey is featured in two of the film's major musical sequences, including a costume ball and an elaborate sequence filmed in Central Park.
"I probably enjoyed the rehearsal process with Amy and the ballroom scene and all those numbers more than anything else," Dempsey said. "That was so unusual and different. There's something timeless about it, and very special. There was movie magic in those scenes. Certainly, in Manhattan, shooting in Central Park, that was a phenomenal experience."
Dempsey said part of the reason he took the role was to please a certain fan of Disney musicals, his 5-year-old daughter, Tallulah.
"She's thrilled," Dempsey said of his daughter's reaction to the film. "She really enjoyed the animation part of the movie and the first number with all the animals. She hated Susan Sarandon's character, obviously. She didn't like her at all. She'd bury her head when she'd come on screen. So that was good. But, yeah, that was another reason for doing it, certainly. I go see these movies more than I go see anything else, this type of movie. So it was nice to be able to do something that a family can go see." Enchanted opens Nov. 21. —Cindy White
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Andromeda Is All New (I don't know, I liked the 1971 movie and never read the book) #oldie#
Andre Braugher, who stars in A&E's upcoming miniseries The Andromeda Strain, told SCI FI Wire that it will completely rework the Michael Crichton novel on which it is based.
"Crichton's book doesn't hold up to the test of time," Braugher said of the book, which was previously adapted as a movie in 1971. "And so not much happens when you go back to 1968 and you read that book. It's anticlimactic, period. So this is an entire ... retelling of the story, with the same premise, but an entirely different retelling."
Braugher co-stars alongside Benjamin Bratt, Christa Miller, Eric McCormack and Rick Schroder.
"I play a military man," Braugher said in an interview while promoting The Mist. "He's the head of the division that's supposed to be taking on this Andromeda Strain, this virus that's taking over [after a U.S. government satellite crash-lands in Utah]. Benjamin Bratt plays the mecurial, hot-headed scientist who's responsible for tracking this thing down and destroying it."
Braugher added: "The virus ultimately proves deadly. The virus escapes, and it mutates, and it's on the loose. And we have to discover a response to it. There are elements of that film Sphere [which was also based on a Crichton book], ... in terms of the involvement of another power in the creation of the virus. But ultimately it just updates it, you know? It just brings it to a present-day realm where, instead of there being this wonderful deus ex machina where the virus just mysteriously happens to become benign, now it's not mysteriously benign. It's still malignant, and it's on the loose." The Andromeda Strain will premiere in early 2008. —Ian Spelling
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Chatwin In Wong's Dragonball
Twentieth Century Fox is bringing the Japanese manga phenomenon Dragonball to the big screen in a movie starring Justin Chatwin and directed by James Wong (Final Destination), Variety reported.
Chatwin (War of the Worlds) will star as Goku, a powerful warrior who protects the Earth from an endless stream of rogues bent on dominating the universe and controlling the mystical objects from which the film takes its name. James Marsters (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) is on board as the film's villain, Piccolo.
Actor-director-writer Stephen Chow (Kung Fu Hustle) is producing. Wong will direct from a script he penned. Ben Ramsey wrote an earlier draft.
The story is based on Akira Toriyama's popular manga, which has spawned graphic novels, a long-running TV series and more than 25 video games. The Jump Comics division of Tokyo-based Shueisha published the Dragonball manga.
Shooting is scheduled to begin later this month, with a release date of Aug. 15, 2008.
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King Says He's Mellowed
Master horror author Stephen King told SCI FI Wire that he's matured and mellowed as a writer over the years. The legendary author made his comments during a press conference in New York over the weekend to promote The Mist, the movie version of his best-selling novella, from writer-director Frank Darabont.
"The first thing that crossed my mind when you said, 'How has my writing evolved?' ... I probably know 2,000 or 3,000 more words than I did when I was 24," King said, laughing, in response to a SCI FI Wire question. "So my vocabulary has improved a little bit. [But] no. No, I'm not as angry as I used to be, because I'm not 25 anymore. I'm 60. And that'll kick your ass every time."
The Mist centers on a group of panicked people trapped in a supermarket after a mysterious and creature-laden mist rolls into their small town.
"There's an Elvis Costello song that says, 'I used to be angry, now I'm just amused,' or something like that," King said. "I'm not amused. There's a little more despair in some of the works than there used to be. In that sense, The Mist is actually a fairly mature work in that it's even darker than some of the other stuff. I'm still just trying to tell good stories and find a way to do that and not repeat myself and not fall into a rut, and to find new ways to do things. I guess that's it." The Mist rolls into theaters on Nov. 21. —Ian Spelling
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Jane Helms [I]Dark Country
Thomas Jane (The Mist) will make his feature-film-directing debut on The Dark Country, a noir thriller that is being shot in 3-D high definition as well as 2-D high-def, Variety reported. Tab Murphy (Tarzan) wrote the script.
The thriller concerns a couple who find their honeymoon to be a hellish adventure. The movie has just begun shooting in Albuquerque, N.M.
The cast, which will be familiar to genre fans, includes Ron Perlman (Hellboy) and Lauren German (Hostel: Part II).
Jane is a genre enthusiast who has started a graphic novel/horror comics company called Raw Entertainment. He next stars in the Frank Darabont-directed Stephen King adaptation The Mist for Dimension Films, which opens Nov. 21.
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Mulberry Hearts NY
Jim Mickle, director and co-writer of the horror movie Mulberry Street, told SCI FI Wire that he sees the movie as a love letter to New York—even though it deals with an uncontrolled virus and creatures that live in the sewers.
Mickle added that the movie was inspired by his experience of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as well as by the Katrina disaster in New Orleans. "Our experience on Sept. 11th was of a New York City that came together, bonded and soldiered on in spite of the obstacles," he said in an interview. "The individual stories are what give the grand concepts their personality and character. We try to capture that in a heightened, fantastical way with Mulberry. A B movie with a personal, NYC twist."
Mickle said that he didn't want to spare the city in his movie simply because it had weathered real-life disasters. "Mulberry Street is a popcorn-movie love letter to New York City," he said. "We set it here because it's what we know, and we couldn't afford to leave town to shoot it anywhere else! Until now, I can think of very few outbreak/zombie horror films that take place in Manhattan. We thought it would be refreshing to show New Yorkers reacting in a realistic way in a genre film and not just as stereotypical New Yorkers. This movie is for every New Yorker who is tired of being painted on the screen in broad, obvious strokes."
Mulberry Street tells the story of six tenants who are trapped in a crumbling apartment complex after rats spread a virus that turns people into zombies. Starring Nick Damici, Kim Blair and Ron Brice, the film already has won praise from foreign critics.
"We've found in a lot of the European screenings that most audience members come away shocked by our portrayal of New York in a sobering, honest and natural light," Mickle said. "They couldn't believe there was a middle class in New York City. They're only exposed to Sopranos and Sex in the City. That, and rat zombies aren't that far-fetched."
Mickle shot the movie in downtown Manhattan at night. "A lot of it was done in the lead actor/co-writer's [Damici] one-bedroom railroad apartment," he added. "Making an apocalyptic-outbreak action-horror movie under those conditions meant we couldn't really solve problems with money. Our biggest weakness was what led us to make some of the more interesting choices in the film."
Mulberry Street is part of the After Dark Horrorfest, which features "8 Films to Die For" on more than 350 screens nationwide from Nov. 9 to Nov. 18. —Mike Szymanski
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No Songs For Enchanted Star
Tony-winning Broadway star Idina Menzel (Wicked) told SCI FI Wire that she appears in Disney's upcoming fantasy musical film Enchanted—but doesn't sing. Why?
"You've got to take that up with somebody else," Menzel said in an interview while promoting the film. "I was just happy to be part of a big movie." She added: "It was the first time I ever got an offer, [and] I didn't have to audition. So I forgot about the other stuff."
Menzel—best known for her role on Broadway as Elphaba, the green-skinned Wicked Witch of the West, in Wicked—plays Nancy, the girlfriend of Patrick Dempsey's character, Robert. Nancy finds that she has a rival for Robert's affections when a strange girl named Giselle (Amy Adams) comes into his life. What she doesn't know is that Giselle is really an animated character from a fantasy kingdom, who has been sent to the real world by an evil sorceress (Susan Sarandon).
Menzel said that her character comes from the reality-based world, so it wouldn't have made sense in the film to have her sing. "Nancy wasn't written with any songs, honestly," she said. "Patrick's character and my character are the New York people, and we don't sing. It was never written that way, and I actually was really flattered to be hired as an actress."
Well, not quite. Oscar winner Alan Menken (Aladdin), who co-wrote Enchanted's musical numbers with lyricist Stephen Schwartz, said that there was a song for Nancy and Prince Edward, Giselle's love from the animated world (played by James Marsden). But it didn't end up in the final cut.
"Stephen was really pushing for concluding the film with a song sequence and something new, not just a little reprise moment," Menken said in a separate interview. "And we wrote a title song called 'Enchanted,' where Edward and Nancy first connect, and then it opens up into a montage. Really, on practical terms, it was just really extremely difficult that late in the game to deliver that kind of song."
Menken added that audiences may still get a chance to hear the number on the eventual DVD release. "Much to our delight, we found out that they're actually going to be including that number on the DVD, I think," he said.
Menzel also said that she is open to the idea of singing in a possible sequel. "I would totally be up for a sequel," she said. "The amount of times I've been asked about not singing in this movie, I think [director Kevin Lima] would give me a song." Enchanted opens Nov. 21. —Cindy White
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Orphanage Wowed Del Toro
Juan Antonio Bayona, the Spanish director of the upcoming supernatural thriller film The Orphanage, told SCI FI Wire he met producer Guillermo del Toro when he was a young man, posing as a journalist at a film festival.
"It was a quite fun meeting, because I was pretending to work as a journalist for a film festival in order to get free tickets to the movies and interview a lot of people I really admire," Bayona said in a group interview in Beverly Hills, Calif., last week. "And I remember, I was a minor, and when Guillermo saw me, the first thing he thought [was that] I was like a 10-year-old boy with sideburns. And he was very impressed by my questions, and we kept in touch since then."
Bayona, a native of Barcelona, has directed more than 30 short films, commercials and music videos; he makes his feature-film-directing debut with The Orphanage, which was a hit in Spain when it was released as El Orfanato.
Sergio G. Sánchez, who wrote the screenplay, said that it so impressed del Toro (the director of Pan's Labyrinth) that he decided not only to produce it, but also to present it, an unusual thing for del Toro.
"Antonio ... knew Guillermo del Toro from like 15 years ago, when he was presenting for us, ... and they had kept in touch, and he was always watching his short films and music videos and ads and stuff," Sánchez said, adding: "He wanted to produce the movie, but when he read the script, he wanted to present it, which is kind of a special commitment."
In The Orphanage, Laura (Bélen Rueda) returns with her husband and adopted son to the orphanage where she grew up, which she plans to turn into a home for other children. When her son, Simón, goes missing, she begins to think the orphanage may be haunted.
Bayona said the movie is part fairy tale, like del Toro's own Oscar-winning Pan's Labyrinth. "We understand why Guillermo was so touched by the story, because there are themes we were sharing, like the idea we need fantasy to deal ... with a very cruel reality and how we try to understand how the world works with fairy tales," Bayona said. The Orphanage opens in the United States in December. —Patrick Lee, News Editor (scifiwire@scifi.com)
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Scott Turns To Stones
Ridley Scott has signed on to direct Stones, a supernatural thriller written by Matt Cirulnick, Variety reported. The large-scale production revolves around the mysterious destruction of ancient religious sites around the world. It turns out that Stonehenge is the tie that binds together artifacts that still have primeval powers.
The idea for the film came while Cirulnick was writing another script, Elysium, which weaves Greek mythology into a drama. He fixed on the idea that Stonehenge, the great pyramids and other artifacts were built for a specific unified purpose.
The film is on hold until the Writers Guild of America strike concludes. In the meantime, Scott is set to direct Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe in Body of Lies. He is expected to follow that with another Crowe vehicle, Nottingham, about the love triangle between Robin Hood, Maid Marian and the Sheriff of Nottingham.
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Lake Dead Cut For R Rating
George Bessudo—who directed Lake Dead, one of the offerings in this year's After Dark Horrorfest—told SCI FI Wire that he had to cut disturbing elements to get an R rating.
"There was pressure from the [Motion Picture Association of America] to tone the movie down," Bessudo said in an interview. "And in the end, we had to comply in order to get an R rating. A director is never happy to make cuts to his or her movie, but I still think the R-rated version is going to really satisfy the horror fans. And if they want even more, they can always check out the unrated DVD. It's going to be a real shocker!"
Lake Dead, scripted by Daniel P. Coughlin, is about three sisters and their friends who travel to the home of their grandfather, who died in a particularly grisly way. They run across a family of psychos who are living in the old man's cabin. The cast includes Kelsey Crane (Waking Up With Monsters), Jim Devoti (Terra) and James Burns (Decadent Evil 2).
"I think Lake Dead takes the 'teens-stranded-in-the-woods' formula to another level, because Dan Coughlin, the writer, introduces some very disturbing elements that I had never seen before," Bessudo said. "I'm a little reluctant to discuss them here, because I don't want to spoil the movie for anyone, but let's just say that some of the most shocking moments in the film have nothing to do with violence or gore. I'm sure the fans are really going to get a kick out of this one."
Lake Dead was made in 15 days, and the cast did a lot of improvising. "Often, that type of shooting is very stressful, but in our case it proved beneficial, because we came up with some great stuff on the fly," Bessudo said.
Bessudo shot the film at Sable Ranch north of Los Angeles, a well-known location where they could shoot the desired desolate cabins, isolated lake and fog-shrouded forests. "Lots of films go there, because it offers so many possibilities, and we really took advantage of that," he said. "Since we had such a tight shooting schedule, we didn't have the luxury of making many production moves."
The After Dark Horrorfest will feature "8 Films to Die For" and premieres on more than 300 screens nationwide over the weekends of Nov. 9-11 and 16-18. —Mike Szymanski
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Juno Duo Reunites For Body
Jason Reitman will produce the comedic horror movie Jennifer's Body, written by Diablo Cody, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The pair previously worked together on the upcoming dark teen comedy Juno, which Cody wrote and Reitman directed.
Megan Fox (Transformers) stars in the film, about a cheerleader who is possessed by a demon and starts feeding off the boys in a Minnesota farming town. Her "plain Jane" best friend must kill her, then escape from a correctional facility to go after the Satan-worshiping rock band responsible for the transformation.
"Comedy and horror have always been inescapable cousins," Reitman told the trade paper. "They both draw a similar type of storyteller, one who wants to manipulate the audience. Whether you want to make an audience laugh or you want to make an audience freak out, you're looking for a similar firsthand relationship with the viewer where you are pushing them to react."
The film is expected to begin shooting in late winter.
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Jumper Game In The Works
Video-game publisher Brash Entertainment has secured the game rights to the upcoming film Jumper, Variety reported. The Jumper game will be the second release for the company, which is focused on Hollywood licenses.
The film, directed by Doug Liman (Mr. and Mrs. Smith) stars Hayden Christensen as a young man with the ability to instantly teleport himself anywhere. The game will follow a supporting character, played in the film by Jamie Bell, as he tries to avenge the death of his parents. Brash has secured likeness rights to Bell, Christensen and Samuel L. Jackson, who also appears in the film, though deals aren't done for any voice work.
Given its futuristic setting, chase elements and the focus on teleportation powers, Brash executives told Variety that Jumper was a natural to turn into a video game. Collision Studios is developing the game for PlayStation 2 and Wii, while RedTribe is making a version for Xbox 360. Brash plans to release the game on Feb. 14, day and date with the film.
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BRIEFLY NOTED
Kristen Stewart has signed on to star in Summit Entertainment's vampire romance Twilight, based on the first of Stephenie Meyer's young-adult novels, Variety reported.
Moviehole reported that McG will direct Warner Brothers' Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins, the fourth installment in the popular franchise, which is expected to hit theaters in the summer of 2009.
Hayden Panettiere, star of NBC's Heroes, told E! News that Japan may be seeking her arrest for her efforts as an animal activist to save dolphins and pilot whales from being hunted there, TV Guide reported.
IESB.net (http://www.iesb.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3715&Itemid=99) has posted a Toyfare Magazine interview with screenwriter Justin Marks talking about the proposed He-Man movie.
Entertainment Weekly (http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20160052,00.html) has posted images of promotional one-sheets for Fox's upcoming midseason SF series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
The official Web site (http://www.ironmanmovie.com/) for Jon Favreau's Iron Man movie has been updated.
John C. Reilly will play the lead vampire role in Cirque du Freak, Universal's upcoming adaptation of the best-selling children's books by Darren Shan, Variety reported; Paul Weitz wrote and will direct the movie.
Steven Spielberg will receive the Cecil B. DeMille Award for his "outstanding contribution to the entertainment field" at the 2008 Golden Globe Awards, the Associated Press reported.
The CBBC Newsround (http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_7090000/newsid_7093300/7093314.stm) reported that Jessie Cave has been cast as Lavender Brown in the next Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince; her character is Ron Weasley's (Rupert Grint) first girlfriend.
Chris Hemsworth and Clifton Collins Jr. have joined the cast of J.J. Abrams' Star Trek, Variety reported; Hemsworth will play Captain Kirk's father, George Kirk, while Collins will play Ayel, the cohort and general to Nero, played by Eric Bana.
Warner Brothers has created I-AM-IMMUNE.com (http://www.i-am-immune.com/), a community Web site tied to its upcoming SF movie I Am Legend.
SyFy Portal (http://www.syfyportal.com/news424424.html) quoted SF author Harlan Ellison addressing rumors that J.J. Abrams' upcoming Star Trek movie may feature elements from Ellison's "City on the Edge of Forever" episode from the original TV series.
Bloody-Disgusting (http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/news/10437) reported a rumor that Mandate Pictures will be producing a remake of Poltergeist for MGM.
Movie blog JFX Online has posted the first glimpse (http://www.jfxonline.com/jfxonline/2007/11/12/exclusive-quinto-as-young-spock/) of Zachary Quinto as young Spock on the set of the next Star Trek film. The site has a series of pictures taken during the filming of a scene which appears to feature a Vulcan Council meeting.
Titan Publishing Group announced the launch of the official Supernatural magazine, tied to the series on The CW. It goes on sale Nov. 27.
Sony Pictures Entertainment has acquired North American distribution rights as well as distribution rights in a significant number of foreign territories to District 9, an SF movie produced by Peter Jackson.
The Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan denied a report that pollution led him to cut a scene in which Batman dived into Hong Kong's harbor pollution, the Agence France-Presse reported; "It was simply a script decision," Nolan told reporters. "Once you see the finished film, you will understand why. As far as the pollution question goes, I honestly have no problem dumping movie stars in it." :D
Heroes Art To Be Auctioned
Three original paintings by artist Tim Sale featured in NBC's hit series Heroes are part of an online auction (http://www.nbc.com/auctions) launching Nov. 19 by NBC Universal Video, Music & Product Development and Delivery Agent, in conjunction with the NBC Universal Online Store, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The auction will also feature props, wardrobe items and other collectibles from NBC and Universal Media Studios series, including The Office, 30 Rock, Las Vegas and Friday Night Lights. The first group of items will be available to bid on through Dec. 3.
A portion of the auction's proceeds will benefit the United Way and its various partner organizations. (NBC is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.)
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Darabont Mulls 451 Remake
Writer-director Frank Darabont told SCI FI Wire that he's considering remaking Fahrenheit 451 and doing a film based on Robert McCammon's SF novel Mine, among other options for his next project. Darabont (the upcoming The Mist) said that Fahrenheit 451, based on Ray Bradbury's classic SF novel, is closest to becoming a reality.
"That is—fingers crossed—I would say 90 percent a go, but in the film business, 90 percent ain't real until it's 100 percent," Darabont said in an interview. "It's looking very positive for next year. I'm hoping that this whole [writers'] strike thing doesn't throw a wrench into our being able to plan it. So I'm hoping that the film doesn't jump off the track for that reason."
Darabont recalled reading the novel as a 9-year-old. "Even then I wanted to make a movie out of it," he said. "I remember seeing the [1966 François] Truffaut [film] version and thinking, 'Wow, that missed this book by several country miles.' So it's not something that I feel has ever been put on film well. If it were a terrific movie, believe me, I wouldn't be bothering."
Mine, meanwhile, is Robert McCammon's psychological horror tale about a deeply disturbed female 1960s revolutionary who kidnaps a baby, goes on a killing spree and sparks a desperate chase. "That is also in the works," Darabont said. "We're working on that, too. That is an intense and primal thriller. It's a female-driven thriller, which is perhaps one of the reasons that it's not an obvious 'yes' for a studio. The hero and the villain are great women's roles, and studios kind of have to be talked into that [kind of] thing, because it's not the obvious to them." —Ian Spelling
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Strike Idles Bionic Production
NBC's Bionic Woman shut down production in Vancouver, Canada, on Nov. 9, well ahead of its scheduled Dec. 12 close, because of the ongoing writers' strike, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The fourth season of SCI FI Channel's original series Battlestar Galactica (http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/), which is also shot in Vancouver, will wrap on Nov. 15 for the same reason, the trade paper reported. The show had been scheduled to shoot through mid-March, according to Canadian newspaper reports.
SCI FI has made no official announcement about the show's status.
NBC and SCI FI are owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
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Potter 6 Casting Complete
Casting has been completed on the upcoming sixth Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Warner Brothers announced. David Yates, who directed this year's Order of the Phoenix, returns to helm the next installment, based on J.K. Rowling's book.
Among the new cast members are Jim Broadbent, who will play potions professor Horace Slughorn, and Helen McCrory, who will play Narcissa Malfoy, mother to Draco Malfoy and sister to the evil Bellatrix Lestrange.
Also new to the franchise are Jessie Cave as Lavender Brown, Hero Fiennes Tiffin as young Tom Riddle and Frank Dillane as the teenage Riddle.
The returning cast includes stars Daniel Radcliffe (Harry), Rupert Grint (Ron) and Emma Watson (Hermione), who will be reunited with Helena Bonham Carter, David Bradley, Robbie Coltrane, Warwick Davis, Tom Felton, Michael Gambon, Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith, Natalia Tena, Julie Walters and David Thewlis, as well as Evanna Lynch, Matthew Lewis and Bonnie Wright.
Steve Kloves, who wrote the first four installments of the film franchise, is adapting the screenplay.
In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Lord Voldemort is tightening his grip on both the Muggle and wizard worlds, and Hogwarts is no longer the safe haven it once was. Harry suspects that dangers may even lie within the castle, but Dumbledore (Gambon) is more intent upon preparing him for the final battle that he knows is fast approaching.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince will be released on Nov. 21, 2008.
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Beowulf Cast Exposed
The cast of Robert Zemeckis' animated Beowulf film told reporters that it was unusual to see themselves depicted in various states of undress as photo-realistic computer-generated characters that resemble them.
Ray Winstone, who voices the title character, is perhaps most exposed: His animated character appears completely nude, though cleverly hidden from any full-frontal exposure, during a climactic fight with the monster Grendel.
"My wife loves the pictures. She thinks it's great," Winstone said with a laugh in group interviews in Beverly Hills, Calif., last weekend. "It's really weird, because 6 foot 6 or something, with an eight-pack, and I'm 5 foot 10. I play a warrior, so it was important that I try to walk like I'm that tall. And, of course, I'm older now. ... My wife pulled out a picture of me when I was 18, when I was boxing. I didn't have the eight-pack, right yeah, but it looks like me."
Angelina Jolie, who plays Grendel's monstrous mother, told reporters in a separate news conference that she got a bit shy when she saw her character, which looks just like Jolie, with a few monstrous modifications. "I really wasn't expecting it to be as real," she said of the animated character. "I didn't expect ourselves to come out as much. Because of especially the type of character I play, it was kind of funny at first. ... I was really surprised that I felt that exposed." She added that she liked her character's body in the final rendering: "I love my tail."
Anthony Hopkins' King Hrothgar wears a royal robe that exposes his backside a few times. But Hopkins said that had not yet seen the film. "I don't remember anything like that," he said. "Are you sure you've seen the right movie? I must've been drunk at the time. What you're telling me is very strange [laughs]."
Hopkins added: "You feel naked up there anyway, defenseless, you don't have an idea of what is going to be done with the surroundings. So, in a way, I felt naked the whole time anyway."
Beowulf also stars Crispin Glover, John Malkovich, Robin Wright Penn, Brendan Gleeson and Alison Lohman. It opened nationwide Nov. 16. —Mike Szymanski
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Southland Killed For Song
Richard Kelly, who wrote and directed the SF epic movie Southland Tales, told reporters that he got the rock band the Killers to let him use the song "All These Things That I Have Done" by showing them early footage of pop star Justin Timberlake lip-synching it.
"The producers were like, 'Rich, we can't afford this song. They're never going to give it to us. It's a fortune. It's the biggest band in the world,'" Kelly said in a group interview last week in Beverly Hills, Calif. "And so we did one take with no lip-synching. ... We'd get everyone warmed up and lip-synched the second, third and fourth take."
In the scene, shot in a skee-ball arcade on the pier in Santa Monica, Calif., Timberlake plays Pilot Abilene, a disfigured veteran, who sings directly into the camera in a dream sequence. He is wearing a white T-shirt streaked with blood and pours a can of beer over his head while dancers dressed as nurses writhe around him.
"We cut it together, and, like, the next day my editor had a cut of it, and we sent it off to the Killers, to their management, and we were just like, 'Please. God. Please let them like this. Because we can't afford this song,'" Kelly said. "And the management saw it, and they're like, 'OK. We love this. How much money do you have?' and we were like [mumbles], And they're like, 'OK. You can have it.' They said yes right away."
Getting the Killers on board opened the way for other top bands to jump in, Kelly said.
"It set in motion us getting all this other music," Kelly said. "'Oh, well, the Killers are doing it for how much?' And then it was the Pixies and Muse and Radiohead. ... I still have never met the band, but I'd like give them a hug if I did."
Southland Tales stars Sarah Michelle Gellar, Seann William Scott and Dwayne Johnson as characters caught up in events leading up to the Fourth of July 2008 and an indeterminate apocalypse in Los Angeles. It opened in limited release on Nov. 14. —Patrick Lee, News Editor (scifiwire@scifi.com)
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Gellar's Southland Role Grew
Sarah Michelle Gellar, who stars in Richard Kelly's Southland Tales movie, told SCI FI Wire that her role—an entrepreneurial porn star named Krysta Now—was actually much smaller, and that Gellar was originally up for an even smaller role.
"Initially, Richard had originally approached me about playing Amy Poehler's character," a revolutionary involved in a conspiracy in near-future Los Angeles, Gellar said in a telephone interview last week. "And through different incarnations of the script, the roles had changed, and Krysta started to become [a larger character]. She was a very, very small character initially."
In the movie, Krysta Now finds an amnesiac action-movie star, Boxer Santaros (Dwayne Johnson), in the desert, and the couple become key characters in the epic drama-comedy, set on the eve of an unspecified apocalypse.
"I just started to love her, and one day I went, and I was actually going to talk to Richard about it, and before I had the chance to bring it up to him, he actually brought it up to me," Gellar said about taking on the role of Krysta.
Gellar, best known as TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, jumped at the chance of playing the character. "Just because it was something so different, and she was becoming sort of this amazing character that no one had seen," Gellar said. "And I just thought, 'How exciting to do something just so the antithesis of what would generally be expected of me.' And I think that's what I hope for as a career. I never want to be the girl that you expect to see in something. I want to be 'Whoa, I didn't expect that.' Or 'I didn't see that happening.'"
Krysta Now is inadvertently funny, but Gellar didn't play it that way. "Dwayne and I talked about it," Gellar said. "And although at its heart I do believe this movie is a dark comedy, I think what's funny is when the characters are not self-aware. And I think what makes Krysta funny is that she doesn't realize she's funny. If it becomes too nod-nod, wink-wink, I think the audience is like, 'Oh, I get it.' But I think the humor comes from the fact that she says the most ridiculous things, which she truly believes in. And to me, that's what's funny." Southland Tales opened Nov. 14. —Patrick Lee, News Editor (scifiwire@scifi.com)
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Southland Wins Festival Love
Southland Tales received a warmer reception at the end of the AFI FEST on Nov. 11 than it did at last year's Cannes Film Festival. The movie was part of the two-week Los Angeles festival's series of SF and genre-related films.
Crowds applauded at the ending of Southland Tales, which was revamped after an early cut was poorly received at Cannes. Now opening in limited release on Nov. 14, the film stars Sarah Michelle Gellar, Seann William Scott and Dwayne Johnson. The political satire takes place during an Independence Day celebration. Johnson plays an actor stricken with amnesia; Gellar is a porn starlet who finds him; and Scott is a police officer involved in a vast conspiracy.
The AFI FEST also premiered Confessions of a Superhero, a documentary about the people who dress as Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and the Hulk and pose for photos with tourists in Hollywood while seeking their big break. Christopher Dennis, the actor who portrays Superman, was walking around in his cape for much of the festival's first week. "This has been a dream come true for me," he said. "It doesn't always show me in a flattering light, but it's pretty cool."
Three documentaries about genre filmmakers also debuted. Spine Tingler: The William Castle Story spotlights the man behind several horror movies in the 1950s and '60s, including House on Haunted Hill and The Tingler. 1940s B-movie producer Val Lewton, meanwhile, is the subject of The Man in the Shadows. Narrated by Martin Scorsese, the documentary focuses on the man who made Ghost Ship, I Walked With a Zombie and Cat People. A third documentary, Lynch, delves into the mind of David Lynch, the filmmaker behind Eraserhead and Dune.
AFI also is holding a tribute for The Hunger star Catherine Deneuve, who was also a voice in the animated film Persepolis, about an Iranian girl during the Islamic Revolution. Other animated films debuting at the festival included The Quest for the Missing Piece, from Israel, about a baby born along a seashore who is subjected to a mysterious ancient ceremony. —Mike Szymanski
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No Makeup For Magorium Star
Dustin Hoffman, the famously perfectionistic actor who stars in the family fantasy film Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, said he actually didn't worry too much about finding the right look and tone for his latest role. Hoffman plays the title character, the 243-year-old proprietor of a magical toy store.
"I visited a lot of graveyards and ...," Hoffman joked during a Nov. 12 news conference in New York when asked whether he researched the role. "No. OK, succinct answer. When the writer-director [Zach Helm] and I met for this, we agreed on what we didn't want to do first, and that was to use prosthetics. I don't know what the frame of reference would [be], except for King Tut. He looked pretty good, but that's 3,000 years, isn't it? Mummified dude. So we agreed not to do that."
Hoffman co-stars with Natalie Portman, who plays an insecure young woman who inherits the store from Hoffman's Magorium.
"Once we agreed not to do [prosthetic makeup], then how do we handle it?" Hoffman said. The answer, he said, was to play the character as if he truly believed he was 243 years old, whether it was apparent or not.
"So there was nothing to research then," Hoffman said. "When you meet people, and they [say] something, you think, 'It doesn't matter if they're lying or not. What's important is if they believe it.'"
Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium opened nationwide on Nov. 16. —Ian Spelling
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Magorium Gets The G
Zach Helm, writer-director of the family fantasy film Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, told SCI FI Wire that he's thrilled the film received a G rating, an increasingly rare occurrence. Helm said he set out to earn a G for the film from the Motion Picture Association of America.
"I knew from the moment that I started writing it that what I wanted to do was make a live-action, G-rated film, because they're so rare," Helm said in an interview. "My favorite films from growing up—Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang—all of those were G-rated. And I thought if I could add my film to that long list, I would be very proud. So we actually knew right away what we were heading for."
Magorium stars Natalie Portman as the good-natured but self-doubting manager of a magical toy store whose 243-year-old proprietor (Dustin Hoffman as Mr. Magorium) shocks her by announcing that he's leaving and turning the store over to her.
The G rating does limit Helm in one way, he said. "Granted, I would love to do a director's commentary in which I get to swear, but maybe on the next one," Helm (Stranger Than Fiction) added with a laugh. Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium opened on Nov. 16. —Ian Spelling
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[B]Magorium's Portman A Kid Again
Natalie Portman, who stars in the fantasy/drama Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, told SCI FI Wire that the film took her back to her childhood.
The 26-year-old actress plays Molly Mahoney, a good-natured but self-doubting manager of a magical toy store, whose 243-year-old proprietor (Dustin Hoffman as Mr. Magorium) shocks her by announcing that he's leaving and giving her the store.
"It did take me back to my childhood in a way," Portman said in an interview. "What was interesting was I started working as a kid—I started working when I was 11—but I was never in a kids' movie. And all of a sudden I'm in a kids' movie, but I don't get kid treatment, because I'm the grown-up. That was sort of a bizarre experience, to be like, 'Ooh, I'm finally doing a kids' movie,' and then be like, 'Wait, but I have to work as many hours as they want. There's no limit. I don't get a few hours off for tutoring. I don't get a longer lunch.' All the perks of being a kid I was sort of left out of."
Growing up, Portman (Star Wars, V for Vendetta) said that she loved Tub Toys and was "full into" all the '80s classic toys: the Cabbage Patch Kid, the My Little Pony, Rainbow Brite. "All of that stuff was fully in my sphere," she said. "And I did love the toys in the movie. The weird thing was the really simple, not-flashy stuff was the stuff I got obsessive about. I loved the bouncy balls. I'd addictively . And, well, now I'm admitting it, because they can't really come after me, but there was this barrel of squishy lizards, like stress-ball lizards. I took a lot of those." Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium open for business on Nov. 16. —Ian Spelling
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Mist Had Lots Of Help
Frank Darabont, writer-director of the upcoming SF horror film The Mist, told SCI FI Wire that he had two very important and helpful collaborators in star Thomas Jane and author Stephen King, on whose novella the movie is based.
The movie centers on a group of desperate residents of a small town who find themselves trapped in a supermarket as a mysterious mist rolls in, bringing with it lethal and horrific creatures.
Jane plays David Drayton, who's trapped with his young son (Nathan Gamble); he tries to deal as rationally as possible with both the monsters outside and the growing chaos in the store.
Darabont said that Jane (The Punisher) was the first actor he approached for The Mist. "He was on board from an earlier point than most people," Darabont said in an interview. "We had a good consensus about what the movie should be, and we had a great consensus about what his character should be. We never wanted the lead role to veer into the action-hero, movie-hero type thing. I wanted to keep—and Tom was on board with it—the character as dimensional and as real and as vulnerable as possible."
King and Darabont, meanwhile, go way back. King famously granted Darabont the rights to "The Woman in the Room" for one dollar when Darabont was an aspiring 24-year-old filmmaker. Darabont went on to adapt and direct The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, both of which were based on King books and achieved critical and financial success.
"Steve has been just lovely," Darabont said of the horror writer's role in The Mist. "He's been involved about to the degree he has been with the other films as well, which is to say he gives me the rights, and I send him the script when it's done. Basically, his reaction usually is, 'Wow, great, make sure you invite me to the premiere.' He remains supportive throughout the process, and I think he's particularly happy with this one. I think The Mist has been one of his favorites of his own for a lot of years, and he's really happy with [the film], which delights me no end. He's the first guy I want to please." The Mist opens Nov. 21. —Ian Spelling
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[B]King Praises The Mist
Stephen King told reporters that he's tremendously satisfied with writer-director Frank Darabont's big-screen adaptation of The Mist, one of King's most popular stories.
"I love it," King said in a Nov. 12 news conference in New York. "Frank does good work, and this thing has a different look. ... I don't want to sound like a critic, but it's a wonderful sort of documentary feel. It's separated from the other horror-suspense movies of the last couple of years because of that documentary feel. It has a sense of the Twilight Zones that I loved when I was a kid, the Outer Limits episodes that I loved as a kid."
The film, like the novella, centers on a group of small-town residents trapped in a supermarket after a mysterious and creature-laden mist rolls into their small town. The Mist is Darabont's fourth King-inspired movie, following the short The Woman in the Room and the features The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile.
King added that he's pleased the movie doesn't fit with the current series of torture-porn films. "Here's a movie that was made by an adult," he said. "It's not—I'm not going to name any names—but it isn't part of this splat pack of young guys who haven't quite come to a realization yet that this is as serious as any other genre. So you've got a picture that asks some serious questions, if people want to ask them. Or if they just want to have a good time, it's there, too. But it has a wonderful realistic look that I was just crazy about."
King praised Darabont's use of actors he's employed before, such as Jeffrey DeMunn, Laurie Holden and Brian Libby. "Jeffrey DeMunn [has] always been a favorite of mine, to the point where he's recorded some of my books on tape," King said. "[And I] love Thomas Jane, always have." The Mist opens on Nov. 21. —Ian Spelling
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Mist Alters King's Ending
Frank Darabont—who wrote and directed the upcoming SF movie The Mist based on Stephen King's novella—told SCI FI Wire that he ended the movie very differently from the book. The film, like the book, centers on a group of increasingly panicked people trapped in a supermarket after a mysterious and creature-laden mist rolls into their small Maine town.
King's finale was open to interpretation; Darabont's is not. "That was the ending that always made sense to me," he said in an interview. "I always felt that the movie needed a definitive ending, and it really fell in line with my philosophy of 'This is a horror movie, and it should send people out of the theater horrified and disturbed.' I always knew that the ending was a risk. It's kind of a bold move, but I thought, 'Well, why take half-measures?' We have seen plenty of movies where they kind of wimp out, and I didn't want to do that. I wanted to try to make something that counted in the genre."
Darabont (The Green Mile, The Shawshank Redemption) added that the film's final moments came to him more than a decade ago. "When I say 'wimp out,' I don't necessarily mean in literature, but in a movie," he said. "I was always one of those people who hated The Birds, even when I was a kid, because there was no ending to the movie. I didn't much care for that. It's not a judgment on Steve's story as much as ... I just don't think it would work in a film."
King, according to Darabont, concurred. "We had plenty of conversations about that," Darabont said. "From the earliest days he said, 'What are you going to do for the ending?' The nicest result of it was that, when he first read the screenplay, he paid me a great compliment. And I still have the e-mail. He said, 'Wow, I love the ending. If I'd thought of it, I'd have used it in the story.'" The Mist opens on Nov. 21. —Ian Spelling
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Burton Doing 3-D Alice
Director Tim Burton has signed a two-picture deal with his longtime studio, Disney , that will see him direct and produce 3-D movies of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and a remake of his short Frankenweenie, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The Alice adaptation will be a combination of live-action and performance-capture animation and will be based on a script by Linda Woolverton (The Lion King). It will be produced by longtime Burton collaborator Richard Zanuck and former Disney chairman Joe Roth, with Jennifer and Suzanne Todd.
Filming will begin in early 2008, with a production completion date in May.
Burton will then segue to produce and direct a full-length motion-picture version of his cult favorite 1984 film short, Frankenweenie, about a pet dog who is brought back to life by his loyal owner in a very unusual way. The film will be shot in stop-motion animation.
Both movies will be presented in Disney Digital 3-D.
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Discworld's Pratchett Does TV
Best-selling SF author Terry Pratchett told SCI FI Wire that he makes a cameo appearance as a character named The Toymaker in Hogfather, the upcoming four-hour TV movie based on his Discworld novel.
Set in a parallel universe, the story follows Death and his granddaughter (Michelle Dockery) as they seek to fill the void when the Santa-like figure the Hogfather suddenly disappears and the villainous Auditors prepare to seize control of Discworld.
"I was obviously terrified [about shooting the cameo] for two reasons," Pratchett said in an interview. "While I often do [public] talks, and I have a lot of fun doing that, it was my first time doing it in front of a movie camera. And the other thing was that Marnix [Van Den Broeke], who plays Death, or who we should say plays the figure of Death—because [the since-deceased] Ian Richardson played the voice of Death—at one point, out of camera shot, while I was looking at him during my scene, was giving me a thumbs up with his skeletal hand. It was beautifully articulated. The hand unfolded and the thumb came up, and I was thinking, 'A man should not be so closely confronted with the products of his imagination.'"
Hogfather aired as a two-part miniseries in the United Kingdom during the holidays last year and comes to the American cable television network ION this month. It also stars David Jason, Marc Warren, Joss Ackland, David Warner, Neil Pearson and Nigel Planner. Vadim Jean adapted the screenplay and directed the film.
Pratchett said that that Jean kept him in the loop from beginning to end. Shooting his cameo and visiting the set, the British author said, made him marvel at the fact that Discworld was indeed coming to life in a different medium.
"Because I was so closely involved I saw bits of it all the time," Pratchett said. "A DVD [containing dailies] would arrive every week. I was also on set. There was one stage where I was on the set, and I sort of spun around like Maria in The Sound of Music, because, A, they got this, and, B, got this right. It was a very nice feeling, I can assure you. And I had to keep telling myself that they were making it for other people and not just for me." Hogfather will debut on ION on Nov. 25 at 7 p.m. ET/PT. —Ian Spelling
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Tooth Bites Into Philly
Mark Young, writer and director of the SF horror movie Tooth & Nail, told SCI FI Wire that he spent the most money trashing Philadelphia for his independent post-apocalyptic cannibal film.
"Believe it or not, it costs money to make things look desolate and abandoned," Young said in an interview. "The Philadelphia film office helped us enormously. We shot in all the iconic Philadelphia locales: the Rocky steps, City Hall and the Swann fountain, which was conveniently empty. Without a doubt, the best locale, which helped establish our bleak world, was the Ben Franklin Bridge, which we shut down and littered with cars and trash. The film office helped cut through the red tape and make it happen, which involved closing off both the Pennsylvania and New Jersey sides of the bridge."
Young, who also directed and wrote the supernatural horror film Southern Gothic, focused his film on a group of people fighting bloodthirsty cannibals in the City of Brotherly Love. His cast includes Robert Carradine, Vinnie Jones, Rider Strong, Rachel Miner and Michael Madsen.
"It's surreal to direct someone of his stature," Young said about Kill Bill's Madsen. "I was a bit awestruck, but he was very easygoing. I found him to be a consummate professional; spot-on every take."
The movie takes place in the future, but, Young said, "we tried very hard to make it naturalistic and not fantastical. Nothing is stylized or terribly different from our current reality. I think this is the scariest thing of all: that we could be in this similar situation in the near future, and there would be no laws or government to protect us from the very worst of mankind."
Young said that he's oblivious to the current trend of cannibal films. "I can only write what interests me personally and hope the story and characters resonate with an audience," he said. "Tooth & Nail is primarily about the fine line between civilization and savagery and what protects us from the dark side of human nature."
The $4.2 million film was shot in 20 days. "I only had two weeks to write the first draft of the script before we began preproduction," Young confessed. "We were literally casting into the first week of shooting."
Tooth & Nail is part of the After Dark Horrorfest, which will feature "8 Films to Die For." It screens on more than 300 screens nationwide through Nov. 18. —Mike Szymanski
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House's Morrison Joins Trek
J.J. Abrams, director of Star Trek, told TV Guide that he has hired Jennifer Morrison (TV's House) for the cast of the reboot movie.
"She is indeed in the movie," Abrams told columnist Michael Ausiello. "And she is most excellent!"
Last week, Morrison was spotted outside one of Trek's Hollywood soundstages, sparking rumors that she had quietly come aboard the ensemble alongside Chris Pine, Simon Pegg, Karl Urban and Heroes' Zachary Quinto.
Abrams won't say what role Morrisson will play but denied rumors that she would be Yeoman Rand, the role originated by Grace Lee Whitney.
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EMPYRE Begins At End
SF author Josh Conviser told SCI FI Wire that his latest novel, EMPYRE, begins where most science fiction ends.
"Big Brother is dead. Humanity is once again free. So what happens the day after?" Conviser said in an interview. "How would our world react if we realized tomorrow that all the major events over the past years had been manipulated by a clandestine power?"
The technology in EMPYRE is all based on research being done today, Conviser said. "I'm ... fascinated with the landscape of the future and spent a lot of time researching the cutting edge of architecture to come up with a possible future," he said. "I love the research. I think one of the hardest things in writing is having to cut out some of the great ideas, concepts and technologies I find along the way. But that's what the next book is for, right?"
EMPYRE is a sequel to Conviser's first novel, Echelon. In that book, the central characters, Ryan Laing and Sarah Peters, destroyed Echelon, the word's first total surveillance system. "They should be heroes, right? Revered as the people who brought freedom back to the world? Not so much," Conviser said. "The sudden loss of 'Big Brother' has sent the world into a tailspin."
Ryan Laing is a tortured soul and the world's first true cyborg, Conviser said. "He has 'drones' flowing through him. Think the nanotechnology, robotics and AI we have today amped to the next level," he said. "His total integration with the technological offers him tremendous power (both physical and mental), but also shifts who he is on a fundamental level."
There's a lot of SF devoted to far-future cyborgs who are totally comfortable in their own skin, but that isn't Ryan, Conviser said. "I'm more interested in what the first cyborg would be like, how such a fundamental shift would alter that first guinea pig," he said.
Conviser is deep into researching his next book and working on some other projects, he said. "I'm taking a TV series out to Hollywood right now," he said. "Something that will bring a Ryan Laing-type character to the small screen." —John Joseph Adams
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Will Indy 4 Include Darabont?
Frank Darabont, who was one of the many writers who took a stab at writing the upcoming script for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, told SCI FI Wire that he's not sure how much, if any, of his contribution will turn up in the finished film. David Koepp (Jurassic Park) is expected to be credited as the sole screenwriter, with executive producer George Lucas getting a "story by" credit.
"That's a total question mark for me," Darabont said in an interview while promoting his upcoming The Mist. "I have no idea, other than hearing from some people ... that they feel that there's a good bit of my stuff left in there conceptually or whatnot."
During the development of the fourth Indy adventure, Darabont was one of several writers who turned in drafts, which were ultimately rejected. Koepp's draft was the one that got the OK from Lucas, director Steven Spielberg and star Harrison Ford. The film wrapped production on Oct. 11 and will hit theaters on May 22, 2008. Darabont hinted that there may be some kind of proceeding through the Writers Guild of America about who gets final credit for the screenplay.
"I haven't read their script yet," Darabont said. "I'm sure I will, because I'm sure there will be an arbitration, as there always is on these things. I haven't read the script, so I don't know what exactly they've shot. I just know I have faith in Steven Spielberg, and I'm sure he's making a terrific movie. You know, fingers crossed."
That doesn't mean Darabont doesn't have proprietary feelings about Indy. "Hell, I'd love to see some of the work I did up there," he said. —Ian Spelling
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Poitier Gets Knight Role
Actress Sydney Poitier (Grindhouse) has landed a role on NBC's two-hour movie Knight Rider, which will serve as a pilot for a possible remake of the TV series about a man and his talking car, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The Transformers-inspired sequel centers on Mike Tracer (Justin Bruening), the son of Michael Knight, the character played by David Hasselhoff in the original show. Poitier will play a feisty FBI agent who dislikes Mike.
Poitier, youngest daughter of actor Sidney Poitier, starred in Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof portion of the Grindhouse double feature, as well as in the CW series Veronica Mars. (NBC is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.)
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Helm Has Visions Of God
Writer/director Zach Helm told SCI FI Wire that his next project will be The DisAssociate, about a man who experiences visions of God—who has an unusual request. Helm (Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium) added that the movie may be delayed by the current writers' strike.
"It's hard with the strike right now," Helm said in an interview. "Right now, I'm on strike. The script is not finished. I want to rewrite it, [that] is the problem. Before we go into production, I think, as the director, the writer needs to go back and take another crack at it, and I can't do that right now."
Helm said that The DisAssociate centers on "a man who has a midlevel corporate job and starts having visions from God telling him that he should create the universal language. So I'm sort of going back to the crazy, high-concept, no-studio-in-the-world-would-ever-make-it kind of movie." —Ian Spelling
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Ghostbusters Game Develops
Vivendi Games has signed a deal with Sony Pictures to turn Ghostbusters into a video-game franchise, Variety reported.
The first title in what the publisher hopes will be a series of games is set for release in fall '08 from Vivendi's Sierra label.
All four members of the movie team—Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Bill Murray and Harold Ramis—will be granting voice and likeness rights for the game. Some supporting cast members have signed up as well, including William Atherton, Brian Doyle-Murray and Annie Potts.
In addition, the original film's writers, Aykroyd and Ramis, will pen a story for the game, which will take place in the early '90s, after the events in Ghostbusters II, amid a new ghoul invasion of New York.
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Missing Infects Fictional Town
Horror author Sarah Langan told SCI FI Wire that a virus that causes rapid consumption and psychosis overruns the fictional town of Corpus Christi, Maine, in her latest novel, The Missing.
"I researched the virus in my environmental toxicology program at NYU," Langan said in an interview. "And also some of the things I learned about global warming."
Langan identified with the victims of the virus, as she once had serious respiratory problems that left her bedridden for a couple of years, she said. "I was in my 20s, living back with my parents and feeling like my life was passing me by," Langan said. "I think you can see that [bitterness] in [the novel]. ... I was trying to work through that, because bitterness is best left behind, or it will eat you alive."
The Missing is the story of an upper-middle-class family in crisis. "Meg Wintrob is thinking about leaving her husband when [the] virus takes over the town, and the people most important to her (her husband, Fenstad, and purple-haired daughter, Maddie,) become apparent," Langan said.
Fenstad is a successful psychiatrist who is passionately, and far too quietly, in love with his wife, Langan said. "Meg Wintrob is the pragmatic half to Fenstad's sentiment, though neither of them realize it, and in fact think the reverse is true," she said. "They work, but they don't know it. Their sheltered daughter is a spoiled nutcase prone to tantrums who at heart is probably the sweetest and most dear character in the novel."
Langan was contractually obligated to write a sequel to her first novel, The Keeper, but was not comfortable continuing that storyline, she said. "So I made some changes, invented Corpus Christi, a generic American suburb, and told the fable about consumption that I've been itching to pen for a long time," Langan said. "I think it reflects a lot of things going on in the world, if obliquely."
Next up for Langan is another novel, Audrey's Door. "[It's] about a woman so wounded by her childhood that she's unable to commit to her boyfriend and instead breaks up with him," Langan said. "She moves into a haunted apartment, where something in the walls compels her to build a door." —John Joseph Adams
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Dancing Enchanted Dempsey
Patrick Dempsey, who plays a jaded New York divorce lawyer in Disney's upcoming fantasy musical Enchanted, told SCI FI Wire that his favorite thing about the film was learning the dance steps for the elaborate musical numbers.
"For me, the real exciting part of the movie and the real challenge was certainly the dance numbers," Dempsey said in an interview while promoting the film. "And [John 'Cha Cha' O'Connell], the choreographer, who did Moulin Rouge and Strictly Ballroom and things like that, has a wonderful, sensitive, emotional quality towards his choreography. And when he talks to the dancers, it was really very emotional. And each move meant something. That was really fascinating, to work with him."
Enchanted centers on the relationship between Dempsey's character and a strange girl (played by Amy Adams) who has been transported from the animated world into real life by an evil sorceress (Susan Sarandon). Dempsey is featured in two of the film's major musical sequences, including a costume ball and an elaborate sequence filmed in Central Park.
"I probably enjoyed the rehearsal process with Amy and the ballroom scene and all those numbers more than anything else," Dempsey said. "That was so unusual and different. There's something timeless about it, and very special. There was movie magic in those scenes. Certainly, in Manhattan, shooting in Central Park, that was a phenomenal experience."
Dempsey said part of the reason he took the role was to please a certain fan of Disney musicals, his 5-year-old daughter, Tallulah.
"She's thrilled," Dempsey said of his daughter's reaction to the film. "She really enjoyed the animation part of the movie and the first number with all the animals. She hated Susan Sarandon's character, obviously. She didn't like her at all. She'd bury her head when she'd come on screen. So that was good. But, yeah, that was another reason for doing it, certainly. I go see these movies more than I go see anything else, this type of movie. So it was nice to be able to do something that a family can go see." Enchanted opens Nov. 21. —Cindy White
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Andromeda Is All New (I don't know, I liked the 1971 movie and never read the book) #oldie#
Andre Braugher, who stars in A&E's upcoming miniseries The Andromeda Strain, told SCI FI Wire that it will completely rework the Michael Crichton novel on which it is based.
"Crichton's book doesn't hold up to the test of time," Braugher said of the book, which was previously adapted as a movie in 1971. "And so not much happens when you go back to 1968 and you read that book. It's anticlimactic, period. So this is an entire ... retelling of the story, with the same premise, but an entirely different retelling."
Braugher co-stars alongside Benjamin Bratt, Christa Miller, Eric McCormack and Rick Schroder.
"I play a military man," Braugher said in an interview while promoting The Mist. "He's the head of the division that's supposed to be taking on this Andromeda Strain, this virus that's taking over [after a U.S. government satellite crash-lands in Utah]. Benjamin Bratt plays the mecurial, hot-headed scientist who's responsible for tracking this thing down and destroying it."
Braugher added: "The virus ultimately proves deadly. The virus escapes, and it mutates, and it's on the loose. And we have to discover a response to it. There are elements of that film Sphere [which was also based on a Crichton book], ... in terms of the involvement of another power in the creation of the virus. But ultimately it just updates it, you know? It just brings it to a present-day realm where, instead of there being this wonderful deus ex machina where the virus just mysteriously happens to become benign, now it's not mysteriously benign. It's still malignant, and it's on the loose." The Andromeda Strain will premiere in early 2008. —Ian Spelling
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Chatwin In Wong's Dragonball
Twentieth Century Fox is bringing the Japanese manga phenomenon Dragonball to the big screen in a movie starring Justin Chatwin and directed by James Wong (Final Destination), Variety reported.
Chatwin (War of the Worlds) will star as Goku, a powerful warrior who protects the Earth from an endless stream of rogues bent on dominating the universe and controlling the mystical objects from which the film takes its name. James Marsters (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) is on board as the film's villain, Piccolo.
Actor-director-writer Stephen Chow (Kung Fu Hustle) is producing. Wong will direct from a script he penned. Ben Ramsey wrote an earlier draft.
The story is based on Akira Toriyama's popular manga, which has spawned graphic novels, a long-running TV series and more than 25 video games. The Jump Comics division of Tokyo-based Shueisha published the Dragonball manga.
Shooting is scheduled to begin later this month, with a release date of Aug. 15, 2008.
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King Says He's Mellowed
Master horror author Stephen King told SCI FI Wire that he's matured and mellowed as a writer over the years. The legendary author made his comments during a press conference in New York over the weekend to promote The Mist, the movie version of his best-selling novella, from writer-director Frank Darabont.
"The first thing that crossed my mind when you said, 'How has my writing evolved?' ... I probably know 2,000 or 3,000 more words than I did when I was 24," King said, laughing, in response to a SCI FI Wire question. "So my vocabulary has improved a little bit. [But] no. No, I'm not as angry as I used to be, because I'm not 25 anymore. I'm 60. And that'll kick your ass every time."
The Mist centers on a group of panicked people trapped in a supermarket after a mysterious and creature-laden mist rolls into their small town.
"There's an Elvis Costello song that says, 'I used to be angry, now I'm just amused,' or something like that," King said. "I'm not amused. There's a little more despair in some of the works than there used to be. In that sense, The Mist is actually a fairly mature work in that it's even darker than some of the other stuff. I'm still just trying to tell good stories and find a way to do that and not repeat myself and not fall into a rut, and to find new ways to do things. I guess that's it." The Mist rolls into theaters on Nov. 21. —Ian Spelling
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Jane Helms [I]Dark Country
Thomas Jane (The Mist) will make his feature-film-directing debut on The Dark Country, a noir thriller that is being shot in 3-D high definition as well as 2-D high-def, Variety reported. Tab Murphy (Tarzan) wrote the script.
The thriller concerns a couple who find their honeymoon to be a hellish adventure. The movie has just begun shooting in Albuquerque, N.M.
The cast, which will be familiar to genre fans, includes Ron Perlman (Hellboy) and Lauren German (Hostel: Part II).
Jane is a genre enthusiast who has started a graphic novel/horror comics company called Raw Entertainment. He next stars in the Frank Darabont-directed Stephen King adaptation The Mist for Dimension Films, which opens Nov. 21.
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Mulberry Hearts NY
Jim Mickle, director and co-writer of the horror movie Mulberry Street, told SCI FI Wire that he sees the movie as a love letter to New York—even though it deals with an uncontrolled virus and creatures that live in the sewers.
Mickle added that the movie was inspired by his experience of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as well as by the Katrina disaster in New Orleans. "Our experience on Sept. 11th was of a New York City that came together, bonded and soldiered on in spite of the obstacles," he said in an interview. "The individual stories are what give the grand concepts their personality and character. We try to capture that in a heightened, fantastical way with Mulberry. A B movie with a personal, NYC twist."
Mickle said that he didn't want to spare the city in his movie simply because it had weathered real-life disasters. "Mulberry Street is a popcorn-movie love letter to New York City," he said. "We set it here because it's what we know, and we couldn't afford to leave town to shoot it anywhere else! Until now, I can think of very few outbreak/zombie horror films that take place in Manhattan. We thought it would be refreshing to show New Yorkers reacting in a realistic way in a genre film and not just as stereotypical New Yorkers. This movie is for every New Yorker who is tired of being painted on the screen in broad, obvious strokes."
Mulberry Street tells the story of six tenants who are trapped in a crumbling apartment complex after rats spread a virus that turns people into zombies. Starring Nick Damici, Kim Blair and Ron Brice, the film already has won praise from foreign critics.
"We've found in a lot of the European screenings that most audience members come away shocked by our portrayal of New York in a sobering, honest and natural light," Mickle said. "They couldn't believe there was a middle class in New York City. They're only exposed to Sopranos and Sex in the City. That, and rat zombies aren't that far-fetched."
Mickle shot the movie in downtown Manhattan at night. "A lot of it was done in the lead actor/co-writer's [Damici] one-bedroom railroad apartment," he added. "Making an apocalyptic-outbreak action-horror movie under those conditions meant we couldn't really solve problems with money. Our biggest weakness was what led us to make some of the more interesting choices in the film."
Mulberry Street is part of the After Dark Horrorfest, which features "8 Films to Die For" on more than 350 screens nationwide from Nov. 9 to Nov. 18. —Mike Szymanski
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No Songs For Enchanted Star
Tony-winning Broadway star Idina Menzel (Wicked) told SCI FI Wire that she appears in Disney's upcoming fantasy musical film Enchanted—but doesn't sing. Why?
"You've got to take that up with somebody else," Menzel said in an interview while promoting the film. "I was just happy to be part of a big movie." She added: "It was the first time I ever got an offer, [and] I didn't have to audition. So I forgot about the other stuff."
Menzel—best known for her role on Broadway as Elphaba, the green-skinned Wicked Witch of the West, in Wicked—plays Nancy, the girlfriend of Patrick Dempsey's character, Robert. Nancy finds that she has a rival for Robert's affections when a strange girl named Giselle (Amy Adams) comes into his life. What she doesn't know is that Giselle is really an animated character from a fantasy kingdom, who has been sent to the real world by an evil sorceress (Susan Sarandon).
Menzel said that her character comes from the reality-based world, so it wouldn't have made sense in the film to have her sing. "Nancy wasn't written with any songs, honestly," she said. "Patrick's character and my character are the New York people, and we don't sing. It was never written that way, and I actually was really flattered to be hired as an actress."
Well, not quite. Oscar winner Alan Menken (Aladdin), who co-wrote Enchanted's musical numbers with lyricist Stephen Schwartz, said that there was a song for Nancy and Prince Edward, Giselle's love from the animated world (played by James Marsden). But it didn't end up in the final cut.
"Stephen was really pushing for concluding the film with a song sequence and something new, not just a little reprise moment," Menken said in a separate interview. "And we wrote a title song called 'Enchanted,' where Edward and Nancy first connect, and then it opens up into a montage. Really, on practical terms, it was just really extremely difficult that late in the game to deliver that kind of song."
Menken added that audiences may still get a chance to hear the number on the eventual DVD release. "Much to our delight, we found out that they're actually going to be including that number on the DVD, I think," he said.
Menzel also said that she is open to the idea of singing in a possible sequel. "I would totally be up for a sequel," she said. "The amount of times I've been asked about not singing in this movie, I think [director Kevin Lima] would give me a song." Enchanted opens Nov. 21. —Cindy White
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Orphanage Wowed Del Toro
Juan Antonio Bayona, the Spanish director of the upcoming supernatural thriller film The Orphanage, told SCI FI Wire he met producer Guillermo del Toro when he was a young man, posing as a journalist at a film festival.
"It was a quite fun meeting, because I was pretending to work as a journalist for a film festival in order to get free tickets to the movies and interview a lot of people I really admire," Bayona said in a group interview in Beverly Hills, Calif., last week. "And I remember, I was a minor, and when Guillermo saw me, the first thing he thought [was that] I was like a 10-year-old boy with sideburns. And he was very impressed by my questions, and we kept in touch since then."
Bayona, a native of Barcelona, has directed more than 30 short films, commercials and music videos; he makes his feature-film-directing debut with The Orphanage, which was a hit in Spain when it was released as El Orfanato.
Sergio G. Sánchez, who wrote the screenplay, said that it so impressed del Toro (the director of Pan's Labyrinth) that he decided not only to produce it, but also to present it, an unusual thing for del Toro.
"Antonio ... knew Guillermo del Toro from like 15 years ago, when he was presenting for us, ... and they had kept in touch, and he was always watching his short films and music videos and ads and stuff," Sánchez said, adding: "He wanted to produce the movie, but when he read the script, he wanted to present it, which is kind of a special commitment."
In The Orphanage, Laura (Bélen Rueda) returns with her husband and adopted son to the orphanage where she grew up, which she plans to turn into a home for other children. When her son, Simón, goes missing, she begins to think the orphanage may be haunted.
Bayona said the movie is part fairy tale, like del Toro's own Oscar-winning Pan's Labyrinth. "We understand why Guillermo was so touched by the story, because there are themes we were sharing, like the idea we need fantasy to deal ... with a very cruel reality and how we try to understand how the world works with fairy tales," Bayona said. The Orphanage opens in the United States in December. —Patrick Lee, News Editor (scifiwire@scifi.com)
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Scott Turns To Stones
Ridley Scott has signed on to direct Stones, a supernatural thriller written by Matt Cirulnick, Variety reported. The large-scale production revolves around the mysterious destruction of ancient religious sites around the world. It turns out that Stonehenge is the tie that binds together artifacts that still have primeval powers.
The idea for the film came while Cirulnick was writing another script, Elysium, which weaves Greek mythology into a drama. He fixed on the idea that Stonehenge, the great pyramids and other artifacts were built for a specific unified purpose.
The film is on hold until the Writers Guild of America strike concludes. In the meantime, Scott is set to direct Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe in Body of Lies. He is expected to follow that with another Crowe vehicle, Nottingham, about the love triangle between Robin Hood, Maid Marian and the Sheriff of Nottingham.
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Lake Dead Cut For R Rating
George Bessudo—who directed Lake Dead, one of the offerings in this year's After Dark Horrorfest—told SCI FI Wire that he had to cut disturbing elements to get an R rating.
"There was pressure from the [Motion Picture Association of America] to tone the movie down," Bessudo said in an interview. "And in the end, we had to comply in order to get an R rating. A director is never happy to make cuts to his or her movie, but I still think the R-rated version is going to really satisfy the horror fans. And if they want even more, they can always check out the unrated DVD. It's going to be a real shocker!"
Lake Dead, scripted by Daniel P. Coughlin, is about three sisters and their friends who travel to the home of their grandfather, who died in a particularly grisly way. They run across a family of psychos who are living in the old man's cabin. The cast includes Kelsey Crane (Waking Up With Monsters), Jim Devoti (Terra) and James Burns (Decadent Evil 2).
"I think Lake Dead takes the 'teens-stranded-in-the-woods' formula to another level, because Dan Coughlin, the writer, introduces some very disturbing elements that I had never seen before," Bessudo said. "I'm a little reluctant to discuss them here, because I don't want to spoil the movie for anyone, but let's just say that some of the most shocking moments in the film have nothing to do with violence or gore. I'm sure the fans are really going to get a kick out of this one."
Lake Dead was made in 15 days, and the cast did a lot of improvising. "Often, that type of shooting is very stressful, but in our case it proved beneficial, because we came up with some great stuff on the fly," Bessudo said.
Bessudo shot the film at Sable Ranch north of Los Angeles, a well-known location where they could shoot the desired desolate cabins, isolated lake and fog-shrouded forests. "Lots of films go there, because it offers so many possibilities, and we really took advantage of that," he said. "Since we had such a tight shooting schedule, we didn't have the luxury of making many production moves."
The After Dark Horrorfest will feature "8 Films to Die For" and premieres on more than 300 screens nationwide over the weekends of Nov. 9-11 and 16-18. —Mike Szymanski
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Juno Duo Reunites For Body
Jason Reitman will produce the comedic horror movie Jennifer's Body, written by Diablo Cody, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The pair previously worked together on the upcoming dark teen comedy Juno, which Cody wrote and Reitman directed.
Megan Fox (Transformers) stars in the film, about a cheerleader who is possessed by a demon and starts feeding off the boys in a Minnesota farming town. Her "plain Jane" best friend must kill her, then escape from a correctional facility to go after the Satan-worshiping rock band responsible for the transformation.
"Comedy and horror have always been inescapable cousins," Reitman told the trade paper. "They both draw a similar type of storyteller, one who wants to manipulate the audience. Whether you want to make an audience laugh or you want to make an audience freak out, you're looking for a similar firsthand relationship with the viewer where you are pushing them to react."
The film is expected to begin shooting in late winter.
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Jumper Game In The Works
Video-game publisher Brash Entertainment has secured the game rights to the upcoming film Jumper, Variety reported. The Jumper game will be the second release for the company, which is focused on Hollywood licenses.
The film, directed by Doug Liman (Mr. and Mrs. Smith) stars Hayden Christensen as a young man with the ability to instantly teleport himself anywhere. The game will follow a supporting character, played in the film by Jamie Bell, as he tries to avenge the death of his parents. Brash has secured likeness rights to Bell, Christensen and Samuel L. Jackson, who also appears in the film, though deals aren't done for any voice work.
Given its futuristic setting, chase elements and the focus on teleportation powers, Brash executives told Variety that Jumper was a natural to turn into a video game. Collision Studios is developing the game for PlayStation 2 and Wii, while RedTribe is making a version for Xbox 360. Brash plans to release the game on Feb. 14, day and date with the film.
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BRIEFLY NOTED
Kristen Stewart has signed on to star in Summit Entertainment's vampire romance Twilight, based on the first of Stephenie Meyer's young-adult novels, Variety reported.
Moviehole reported that McG will direct Warner Brothers' Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins, the fourth installment in the popular franchise, which is expected to hit theaters in the summer of 2009.
Hayden Panettiere, star of NBC's Heroes, told E! News that Japan may be seeking her arrest for her efforts as an animal activist to save dolphins and pilot whales from being hunted there, TV Guide reported.
IESB.net (http://www.iesb.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3715&Itemid=99) has posted a Toyfare Magazine interview with screenwriter Justin Marks talking about the proposed He-Man movie.
Entertainment Weekly (http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20160052,00.html) has posted images of promotional one-sheets for Fox's upcoming midseason SF series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
The official Web site (http://www.ironmanmovie.com/) for Jon Favreau's Iron Man movie has been updated.
John C. Reilly will play the lead vampire role in Cirque du Freak, Universal's upcoming adaptation of the best-selling children's books by Darren Shan, Variety reported; Paul Weitz wrote and will direct the movie.
Steven Spielberg will receive the Cecil B. DeMille Award for his "outstanding contribution to the entertainment field" at the 2008 Golden Globe Awards, the Associated Press reported.
The CBBC Newsround (http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_7090000/newsid_7093300/7093314.stm) reported that Jessie Cave has been cast as Lavender Brown in the next Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince; her character is Ron Weasley's (Rupert Grint) first girlfriend.
Chris Hemsworth and Clifton Collins Jr. have joined the cast of J.J. Abrams' Star Trek, Variety reported; Hemsworth will play Captain Kirk's father, George Kirk, while Collins will play Ayel, the cohort and general to Nero, played by Eric Bana.
Warner Brothers has created I-AM-IMMUNE.com (http://www.i-am-immune.com/), a community Web site tied to its upcoming SF movie I Am Legend.
SyFy Portal (http://www.syfyportal.com/news424424.html) quoted SF author Harlan Ellison addressing rumors that J.J. Abrams' upcoming Star Trek movie may feature elements from Ellison's "City on the Edge of Forever" episode from the original TV series.
Bloody-Disgusting (http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/news/10437) reported a rumor that Mandate Pictures will be producing a remake of Poltergeist for MGM.
Movie blog JFX Online has posted the first glimpse (http://www.jfxonline.com/jfxonline/2007/11/12/exclusive-quinto-as-young-spock/) of Zachary Quinto as young Spock on the set of the next Star Trek film. The site has a series of pictures taken during the filming of a scene which appears to feature a Vulcan Council meeting.
Titan Publishing Group announced the launch of the official Supernatural magazine, tied to the series on The CW. It goes on sale Nov. 27.
Sony Pictures Entertainment has acquired North American distribution rights as well as distribution rights in a significant number of foreign territories to District 9, an SF movie produced by Peter Jackson.
The Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan denied a report that pollution led him to cut a scene in which Batman dived into Hong Kong's harbor pollution, the Agence France-Presse reported; "It was simply a script decision," Nolan told reporters. "Once you see the finished film, you will understand why. As far as the pollution question goes, I honestly have no problem dumping movie stars in it." :D