fulltimer56
07-06-2006, 11:48 PM
NEWS OF THE WEEK FOR JUL. 03, 2006
Part 1 of 3
Rowling Contemplates Potter's End
Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling revealed that two characters will die in the upcoming seventh and final volume in her best-selling series, the Associated Press reported. "The final chapter is hidden away, although it's now changed very slightly," she said in a live interview on Channel 4's Richard & Judy in the United Kingdom, the AP reported. "One character got a reprieve. But I have to say two die that I didn't intend to die. A price has to be paid. We are dealing with pure evil here. They don't target extras, do they? They go for the main characters. Well, I do."
Rowling wouldn't reveal if one of the two characters is Harry himself. She added that she has never been tempted to kill him off before the final book because she had always planned seven.
"I can completely understand, however, the mentality of an author who thinks, 'Well, I'm going to kill them off, because that means there can be no non-author-written sequels,'" she said. "So it will end with me, and after I'm dead and gone they won't be able to bring back the character.'"
Rowling also confessed that she is feeling sad that her days writing the books are almost over, the Reuters news service reported. Rowling went to a garden party for 2,000 children at Buckingham Palace in London on June 25 to celebrate Queen Elizabeth's 80th birthday. But, she allowed: "I am feeling sad as it is the last one. But so far, so good."
Pressed on when the book would be ready for publication, she would only say: "I'm doing well, I think. You can never really tell till you get near the end. I am not quite there yet."
Dragons Take Wing In Movie
Cindi Rice, co-executive producer of the upcoming animated fantasy movie Dragons of Autumn Twilight http://www.dragonlance-movie.com/ , told SCI FI Wire that the film will remain true to the book by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, the first in their Dragonlance Chronicles series. "I'm extremely proud of the creative team I brought together," Rice said in an interview. "George Strayton has written a very cool script while staying true to Margaret's and Tracy's vision. Will Meugniot is simply an animation genius, and he's helping us create a very innovative and complex film. It is a joy to work with both of them."
Helmed by Meugniot (the animated X-Men TV series) and written by Strayton (Cleopatra 2525, Xena: Warrior Princess), the movie will feature the voices of Xena star Lucy Lawless and Michael Rosenbaum (TV's Smallville).
The Dragonlance saga was developed from the venerable Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game series and evolved into a series of books, originally created by Hickman.
Rice said that the Dragons movie is in the final stages of preproduction. "We've already recorded 90 percent of the voices, and we'll be finalizing the animatic [animated storyboard] next month," she said. She added that the movie would combine traditional 2-D animation and computer-generated 3-D elements.
It's taken 20 years to go from book to movie, and script development began in March 2005. "I've been waiting a long time to see Dragonlance made into a movie," Rice said. If the movie is successful, Rice said that she hopes to make other movies based on the books. Dragons of Autumn Twilight will be released worldwide by Paramount in the fall of 2007. —Carol Pinchefsky
Galactica 2.5 Due Sept. 19
Battlestar Galactica 2.5 http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/ , the DVD set encompassing the second half of the second season of the Emmy-winning SCI FI Channel original series, will be released on Sept. 19 with several special features, including an extended version of the cliffhanger season finale "Pegasus." The set includes episodes 11-20 of the second season, which follows the ongoing battle of President Laura Roslin (Mary McDonnell) and Cmdr. William Adama (Edward James Olmos) in their crusade to save humanity from the deadly Cylons.
The DVD set, which carries a suggested retail price of $49.98, includes deleted scenes, podcasts and producer David Eick's video blog (originally seen on SCIFI.COM).
Larter: Heroes Will Surprise
MEXICO CITY—Ali Larter, who stars in the upcoming NBC SF drama Heroes, told SCI FI Wire that audiences will be surprised by the ensemble series, about average people who suddenly discover they possess supernatural powers. "I'm so excited to be part of the show," Larter said in an interview during a break in filming on the set of her upcoming movie Resident Evil: Extinction here."It's about 10 characters from all over the world [who] discover they have these extraordinary abilities. It's not like X-Men, where all of a sudden we're flying and we know what we are. It's more a question of if you are sitting right there and you figure out that you can hear everyone else's thoughts, but you have to ... come to work every day, and you have to take your kids to school, and you still have to pay your bills."
Larter (Final Destination) plays Niki Sanders, a Las Vegas stripper and single mother facing financial problems while raising her intellectually gifted young son (played by Noah Gray-Cabey). The show also stars Adrian Pasdar, Milo Ventimiglia, Hayden Panettiere and Greg Grunberg.
"The internal question is: 'Are you going crazy or is this for real?'" Larter said of her character. "The way [creator and executive producer] Tim [Kring] is writing it and why I'm so excited about being part of this show is the questioning of the why. Are you helping people? Or are you hurting people in understanding what your powers are?"
As to the specifics of her character's powers, Larter would only say: "There's something that has to do with my reflection and what's happening with that, and possibly some extraordinary strength may have something to do with it all."
Larter added: "The first season is about understanding what is happening to us. The characters will end up meeting each other and figuring it out, but it's not right on the nose. You don't know what is happening, and I think it will make audiences relate, because it could happen to any of us. The way [Kring] writes it makes you believe that it can. I don't know if anyone ever thought this would come out of Tim Kring's mind from Crossing Jordan. It's like he kept this locked in a special place, because he's created such an extraordinary world. It's really special." Heroes will air Mondays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on NBC this fall. NBC is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM. —Tara DiLullo
Ryder Has Personal Scanner Link
Winona Ryder, who stars in the upcoming film adaptation of Philip K. Dick's SF book A Scanner Darkly, told SCI FI Wire that her godfather, philosopher and drug guru Timothy Leary, was a friend of Dick. "My godfather was actually roommates with him briefly," Ryder said in a news conference. "When I was really little, apparently, I met a lot of really interesting and great people. I wish that I could remember them, because it would be great, but at the time they were just grown-ups to me. My dad, as well, he was always sort of a part of the circle of the crowd that my dad and mom are in."
Ryder said she remembered reading A Scanner Darkly as a youth and added that her father has a jacket of the author's. "My godfather was good friends with him, and my dad actually has this jacket of his in his closet," Ryder said. "I think that my dad was pretty close to him. He gets very misty when he talks about him."
Ryder's family grew up in Northern California as part of a liberal literary art social circuit and knew Leary, poet Allen Ginsberg and other writers of the era. When Dick left Leary's apartment, he left a Post-It note on the refrigerator that said, "Tim, You won't be seeing me for a long time. Phil." A Scanner Darkly director Richard Linklater said he now has that note on his refrigerator door. "I think it's a very cool parting note," he said separately.
Ryder co-stars with Keanu Reeves in Scanner, a futuristic tale about an undercover drug cop in pursuit of a mysterious felon. A Scanner Darkly also stars Woody Harrelson, Robert Downey Jr. and Rory Cochrane. —Mike Szymanski
Reeves, Ryder Reunite In Scanner
Keanu Reeves reunites with his Dracula co-star Winona Ryder in the upcoming SF adaptation A Scanner Darkly, and both told SCI FI Wire that they have very different memories of their first collaboration, in Francis Ford Coppola's movie version of Bram Stoker's vampire novel.
Reeves loved the 19th-century costumes the pair wore in the 1992 movie. "Are you kidding? Those costumes were fantastic," Reeves said in interviews to promote A Scanner Darkly.
Ryder disagreed. "Noooo!" she chimed in. She and the other actresses in Dracula complained at the time about the constricting corsets of the period costumes. Reminded of this, Reeves apologized. "That's right," he said. "You were bound and gagged in the corset hell."
Ryder said: "I had that coat on my back with strings that pulled back and choked me the whole time." In Dracula, Ryder played Mina Murray opposite Reeves' Jonathan Harker.
In their latest collaboration, a movie version of Philip K. Dick's story, the actors play characters set in the future. Their live-action performances are painted over with animation in a technique that mirrors director Richard Linklater's previous film, Waking Life.
Ryder said that she was thrilled to work with Reeves again and added that she was glad not to have the costumes they wore in Dracula. Reeves concurred. "Well, from my perspective, [the costumes] were fantastic," he said. "Winona suffered for her art in that. I didn't have to suffer." A Scanner Darkly also stars Woody Harrelson, Robert Downey Jr. and Rory Cochrane and opens nationwide on July 7. —Mike Szymanski
Scanner Scrambles For Suit
Creators of the film adaptation of Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly told SCI FI Wire that lots of people they know show up in pieces of the "Scramble Suit" worn by Keanu Reeves' character in the film. A Scramble Suit is the kinetic protective suit worn by the undercover drug cops in Dick's futuristic SF novel.
"The Scramble Suit was a big challenge," said director Richard Linklater, who also adapted the story for the film. "There's a lengthy description of it [in the book], but it's also vague. It's a bit of a blur of multi-personalities. We spent months coming up with a design for it."
The outcome is a mask that generates an array of human faces of every age and race, which is worn by Reeves' character, Bob Arctor. Arctor is a secret agent trying to uncover a drug ring.
The Scramble Suit is accomplished by using animation over live footage. Linklater used the technique for the entire movie, much as he did in his 2001 film Waking Life. "No one face ever shows up in total at one time," the director said of the Scramble Suit. Author Dick's likeness is one of the faces that pop through the hundreds of animated characters that make up the suit.
Producer Tommy Pallotta said that he had to keep a watchful eye on the animation team while they were drawing the many characters for the suit. "They drew people they knew—friends, and stuff like that—but they began adding different characters from other science fiction stories, nerdy stuff, and they would have jumped out too much if I let [it go] through," Pallotta said.
Reeves said when they actually filmed the scenes of him wearing the mask, it didn't have all the faces it does in the final animated version. "It was some nylon stuff," he said. Also starring Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson, A Scanner Darkly opens nationwide July 7. —Mike Szymanski
PKD's Kin Had Scanner Input
Richard Linklater, director of the upcoming film adaptation of Philip K. Dick's SF book A Scanner Darkly, told SCI FI Wire that the author's daughters had unprecedented involvement in the making of the movie. "They were never so involved with any of the film projects of any of their father's writings that were brought to film, and it was great," Linklater said in an interview. "They knew it was a very personal story for him. ... I wanted to stay faithful to the book, not do an adaptation or inspired-by, and wanted to tell the whole story."
Dick's daughters, Laura Leslie and Isa Hackett, visited the set and spoke to stars Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson, as well as the rest of the cast and crew, about the futuristic film involving spying and drugs. The women "knew I wasn't going to be cavalier with the drug aspect [of the story]," Linklater said. "They were very frank. They said, 'You know, if it wasn't for drugs, our dad would still be writing today, instead of dying in 1982.'"
Dick's stories have inspired such films as Blade Runner, Minority Report, Total Recall, Screamers and others, and the author's personal struggle with drug addiction and the troubles his friends went through were what inspired A Scanner Darkly.
Producer Tommy Pallotta said, "We took a very personal story and hope that his legacy is portrayed in it as it was in the book. We have the dedication at the end to his friends, as he wrote it in the book." A Scanner Darkly, starring Keanu Reeves, opens nationwide July 7. —Mike Szymanski
Scanner Animation Was Tedious
Richard Linklater, director of the film adaptation of Philip K. Dick's SF book A Scanner Darkly, told SCI FI Wire that the movie was created with animation superimposed over live action, a tedious process that took up to 500 hours of labor per minute of film. "This is very artist-heavy," Linklater said in an interview. "It's 10 times harder to do than live action. You have to have a [constant] visual design." Linklater first used the technique, called "rotoscoping," in his 2001 movie Waking Life.
In A Scanner Darkly, the filmmakers used computers to overlay color animation on digital live-action footage, Linklater said. "It's really a computer variant of rotoscoping now," he said.
A Scanner Darkly, starring Winona Ryder, Keanu Reeves, Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey Jr., is set in a futuristic Orange County, Calif., and centers on an undercover drug cop's paranoid investigations.
Producer Tommy Pallotta said that the live action was shot in about two weeks, but that "it took 50 animators a year and a half to do [the animation]."
After doing Waking Life, Linklater said that he was inspired to adapt Dick's story for film after thinking about doing it for nearly 20 years and that the animation technique seemed appropriate for the material. "In a Philip K. Dick story, you're aways asking what is the reality, ... and this seemed like an appropriate forum," Linklater said. "It triggered something for me. ... I thought it would work." But, Linklater added: "I do not want to do an animated film anytime soon again." A Scanner Darkly opens on Juy 7. —Mike Szymanski
Scanner Resembles Reality
Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder, who star in the upcoming film adaptation of Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly, told SCI FI Wire that the bleak future depicted in the movie isn't so removed from the reality they see around them. "I mean, it's happening," Ryder said in an interview. "I think that it was really weird at the time, watching the news, because there were things happening. It's really eerie how relevant it is politically and socially, and I'm really happy to be a part of a movie like that, aside from just loving the movie as a personal story. Philip K. Dick was really, really on the money when he wrote it. It's amazing what he predicted, and to me—I'm just speaking for me—I just think that it is a terrifying time right now in this country and in the world."
A Scanner Darkly, based on Dick's 1977 novel, is set in suburban Orange County, Calif., in a future where America has lost the war on drugs. When one reluctant undercover cop is ordered to start spying on his friends, he is launched on a paranoid journey.
Reeves said that the movie offers social comment. "It gives you a lot of commentary and cautionary aspects to it, and so I think it relates, absolutely," he said. "I think that it's probably something that all of us, all of the cities, are going to have to deal with, and the idea of surveillance [and] the rights of the individual versus the impulse of the state."
Reeves said he didn't see the movie as something similar to his most famous SF movie, The Matrix. "I was really attracted to the material, because it has a lot to offer to the viewer, a lot of commentary," he said. "It's tossing out some commentary to the world, and so that was the grand inspiration."
Reeves said he has always been a fan of Philip K. Dick. "Well, he tells great stories, and I relate to the situations that he finds his character in," he said. "I love his writing. He is funny, wickedly funny, and he has little irony. I like the context of his scenes. These seem to be stories of, not the little guy, but people kind of in situations that all of a sudden aren't what they seem. His stories tell of fights of the individual against forces beyond their control and then being manipulated by them. He tells really good romantic stories and writes really cool women. There is a kind of flesh and blood there. People are greedy. People are angry. People are mean. People are scared. And I just relate to the worlds that he writes."
Dick's work has inspired such films as Minority Report, Blade Runner and Total Recall. But none are like A Scanner Darkly, Reeves said. "It's funny, because even when they are adaptations, they're not really adaptations of his novels," he said. "They're almost more kind of like inspired by, because they're never really quite adapted works. I'd really say that this is the first true adaptation of a Philip K. Dick book, [speaking] as a Philip K. Dick fan. ... This is the best one." A Scanner Darkly also stars Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson and Rory Cochrane and opens nationwide July 7. —Mike Szymanski
Ryder Plays Sex And Death
Winona Ryder told SCI FI Wire she is excited to re-team with her Heathers director Dan Waters for the upcoming surreal comedy Sex and Death 101. "I play Death," Ryder said at a press conference to promote her next film, A Scanner Darkly. "I just came from the set. We're shooting it now. I haven't slept."
In Sex and Death 101, Ryder portrays Death Nell, a woman who seduces men and puts them in a coma, then pursues a man played by Simon Baker (Land of the Dead), who has received a list of all the women he's slept with and all the women he will sleep with for the rest of his life.
Ryder said she is happy to reunite with Waters and looks forward to a long-discussed Heathers sequel. About Sex and Death 101, she said: "It's complex. It's complicated. The material is still very challenging. [Waters] is a tremendous writer, and I can't begin to explain what this movie is all about, but it will definitely get noticed. ... This is sort of impossible to describe, the script, but it's so Dan. It's so twisted and great, and he's just a great director, a great director. It's wonderful and really a dream for me." Sex and Death 101 is currently in production, with an eye to a 2007 release. —Mike Szymanski
Now Singer Back On Logan?
So is Bryan Singer dropping Logan's Run or not? "It's not dead," the Superman Returns director told iFMagazine http://ifmagazine.com/new.asp?article=3110 on June 27. "It's too magnificent. The world we developed and the things we pre-vized [pre-visualized] is too extraordinary."
This directly contradicts a report on Dark Horizons http://www.darkhorizons.com/news06/super4.php on June 16 quoting Singer saying he wasn't going to direct the SF remake, at least not right now.
Singer has been developing the Logan's Run movie for a while now, but has been sidetracked, first with SCI FI Channel's original miniseries The Triangle http://www.scifi.com/triangle/ , which he executive-produced with Dean Devlin, and then with Superman Returns, which opened June 28. And his next movie could be an expected Superman sequel film.
"Not only was I shooting [Superman Returns] over the last two years, but also I have my [Fox] TV series House [which he executive-produces], and I also produced [The Triangle] miniseries for the SCI FI network, which was simultaneously shooting in South Africa," Singer told the site. "So some of these things were relatively new to me over the last two years while [I was] making [Superman Returns], so these two years were very overwhelming, and I couldn't jump right into a movie of that scope, and Logan's Run was becoming a movie of tremendous scope. And as I explained in the earlier part of the movie, how challenging and exhausting these things can be. Right now I have to take a sort of enforced vacation."
Part 1 of 3
Rowling Contemplates Potter's End
Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling revealed that two characters will die in the upcoming seventh and final volume in her best-selling series, the Associated Press reported. "The final chapter is hidden away, although it's now changed very slightly," she said in a live interview on Channel 4's Richard & Judy in the United Kingdom, the AP reported. "One character got a reprieve. But I have to say two die that I didn't intend to die. A price has to be paid. We are dealing with pure evil here. They don't target extras, do they? They go for the main characters. Well, I do."
Rowling wouldn't reveal if one of the two characters is Harry himself. She added that she has never been tempted to kill him off before the final book because she had always planned seven.
"I can completely understand, however, the mentality of an author who thinks, 'Well, I'm going to kill them off, because that means there can be no non-author-written sequels,'" she said. "So it will end with me, and after I'm dead and gone they won't be able to bring back the character.'"
Rowling also confessed that she is feeling sad that her days writing the books are almost over, the Reuters news service reported. Rowling went to a garden party for 2,000 children at Buckingham Palace in London on June 25 to celebrate Queen Elizabeth's 80th birthday. But, she allowed: "I am feeling sad as it is the last one. But so far, so good."
Pressed on when the book would be ready for publication, she would only say: "I'm doing well, I think. You can never really tell till you get near the end. I am not quite there yet."
Dragons Take Wing In Movie
Cindi Rice, co-executive producer of the upcoming animated fantasy movie Dragons of Autumn Twilight http://www.dragonlance-movie.com/ , told SCI FI Wire that the film will remain true to the book by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, the first in their Dragonlance Chronicles series. "I'm extremely proud of the creative team I brought together," Rice said in an interview. "George Strayton has written a very cool script while staying true to Margaret's and Tracy's vision. Will Meugniot is simply an animation genius, and he's helping us create a very innovative and complex film. It is a joy to work with both of them."
Helmed by Meugniot (the animated X-Men TV series) and written by Strayton (Cleopatra 2525, Xena: Warrior Princess), the movie will feature the voices of Xena star Lucy Lawless and Michael Rosenbaum (TV's Smallville).
The Dragonlance saga was developed from the venerable Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game series and evolved into a series of books, originally created by Hickman.
Rice said that the Dragons movie is in the final stages of preproduction. "We've already recorded 90 percent of the voices, and we'll be finalizing the animatic [animated storyboard] next month," she said. She added that the movie would combine traditional 2-D animation and computer-generated 3-D elements.
It's taken 20 years to go from book to movie, and script development began in March 2005. "I've been waiting a long time to see Dragonlance made into a movie," Rice said. If the movie is successful, Rice said that she hopes to make other movies based on the books. Dragons of Autumn Twilight will be released worldwide by Paramount in the fall of 2007. —Carol Pinchefsky
Galactica 2.5 Due Sept. 19
Battlestar Galactica 2.5 http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/ , the DVD set encompassing the second half of the second season of the Emmy-winning SCI FI Channel original series, will be released on Sept. 19 with several special features, including an extended version of the cliffhanger season finale "Pegasus." The set includes episodes 11-20 of the second season, which follows the ongoing battle of President Laura Roslin (Mary McDonnell) and Cmdr. William Adama (Edward James Olmos) in their crusade to save humanity from the deadly Cylons.
The DVD set, which carries a suggested retail price of $49.98, includes deleted scenes, podcasts and producer David Eick's video blog (originally seen on SCIFI.COM).
Larter: Heroes Will Surprise
MEXICO CITY—Ali Larter, who stars in the upcoming NBC SF drama Heroes, told SCI FI Wire that audiences will be surprised by the ensemble series, about average people who suddenly discover they possess supernatural powers. "I'm so excited to be part of the show," Larter said in an interview during a break in filming on the set of her upcoming movie Resident Evil: Extinction here."It's about 10 characters from all over the world [who] discover they have these extraordinary abilities. It's not like X-Men, where all of a sudden we're flying and we know what we are. It's more a question of if you are sitting right there and you figure out that you can hear everyone else's thoughts, but you have to ... come to work every day, and you have to take your kids to school, and you still have to pay your bills."
Larter (Final Destination) plays Niki Sanders, a Las Vegas stripper and single mother facing financial problems while raising her intellectually gifted young son (played by Noah Gray-Cabey). The show also stars Adrian Pasdar, Milo Ventimiglia, Hayden Panettiere and Greg Grunberg.
"The internal question is: 'Are you going crazy or is this for real?'" Larter said of her character. "The way [creator and executive producer] Tim [Kring] is writing it and why I'm so excited about being part of this show is the questioning of the why. Are you helping people? Or are you hurting people in understanding what your powers are?"
As to the specifics of her character's powers, Larter would only say: "There's something that has to do with my reflection and what's happening with that, and possibly some extraordinary strength may have something to do with it all."
Larter added: "The first season is about understanding what is happening to us. The characters will end up meeting each other and figuring it out, but it's not right on the nose. You don't know what is happening, and I think it will make audiences relate, because it could happen to any of us. The way [Kring] writes it makes you believe that it can. I don't know if anyone ever thought this would come out of Tim Kring's mind from Crossing Jordan. It's like he kept this locked in a special place, because he's created such an extraordinary world. It's really special." Heroes will air Mondays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on NBC this fall. NBC is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM. —Tara DiLullo
Ryder Has Personal Scanner Link
Winona Ryder, who stars in the upcoming film adaptation of Philip K. Dick's SF book A Scanner Darkly, told SCI FI Wire that her godfather, philosopher and drug guru Timothy Leary, was a friend of Dick. "My godfather was actually roommates with him briefly," Ryder said in a news conference. "When I was really little, apparently, I met a lot of really interesting and great people. I wish that I could remember them, because it would be great, but at the time they were just grown-ups to me. My dad, as well, he was always sort of a part of the circle of the crowd that my dad and mom are in."
Ryder said she remembered reading A Scanner Darkly as a youth and added that her father has a jacket of the author's. "My godfather was good friends with him, and my dad actually has this jacket of his in his closet," Ryder said. "I think that my dad was pretty close to him. He gets very misty when he talks about him."
Ryder's family grew up in Northern California as part of a liberal literary art social circuit and knew Leary, poet Allen Ginsberg and other writers of the era. When Dick left Leary's apartment, he left a Post-It note on the refrigerator that said, "Tim, You won't be seeing me for a long time. Phil." A Scanner Darkly director Richard Linklater said he now has that note on his refrigerator door. "I think it's a very cool parting note," he said separately.
Ryder co-stars with Keanu Reeves in Scanner, a futuristic tale about an undercover drug cop in pursuit of a mysterious felon. A Scanner Darkly also stars Woody Harrelson, Robert Downey Jr. and Rory Cochrane. —Mike Szymanski
Reeves, Ryder Reunite In Scanner
Keanu Reeves reunites with his Dracula co-star Winona Ryder in the upcoming SF adaptation A Scanner Darkly, and both told SCI FI Wire that they have very different memories of their first collaboration, in Francis Ford Coppola's movie version of Bram Stoker's vampire novel.
Reeves loved the 19th-century costumes the pair wore in the 1992 movie. "Are you kidding? Those costumes were fantastic," Reeves said in interviews to promote A Scanner Darkly.
Ryder disagreed. "Noooo!" she chimed in. She and the other actresses in Dracula complained at the time about the constricting corsets of the period costumes. Reminded of this, Reeves apologized. "That's right," he said. "You were bound and gagged in the corset hell."
Ryder said: "I had that coat on my back with strings that pulled back and choked me the whole time." In Dracula, Ryder played Mina Murray opposite Reeves' Jonathan Harker.
In their latest collaboration, a movie version of Philip K. Dick's story, the actors play characters set in the future. Their live-action performances are painted over with animation in a technique that mirrors director Richard Linklater's previous film, Waking Life.
Ryder said that she was thrilled to work with Reeves again and added that she was glad not to have the costumes they wore in Dracula. Reeves concurred. "Well, from my perspective, [the costumes] were fantastic," he said. "Winona suffered for her art in that. I didn't have to suffer." A Scanner Darkly also stars Woody Harrelson, Robert Downey Jr. and Rory Cochrane and opens nationwide on July 7. —Mike Szymanski
Scanner Scrambles For Suit
Creators of the film adaptation of Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly told SCI FI Wire that lots of people they know show up in pieces of the "Scramble Suit" worn by Keanu Reeves' character in the film. A Scramble Suit is the kinetic protective suit worn by the undercover drug cops in Dick's futuristic SF novel.
"The Scramble Suit was a big challenge," said director Richard Linklater, who also adapted the story for the film. "There's a lengthy description of it [in the book], but it's also vague. It's a bit of a blur of multi-personalities. We spent months coming up with a design for it."
The outcome is a mask that generates an array of human faces of every age and race, which is worn by Reeves' character, Bob Arctor. Arctor is a secret agent trying to uncover a drug ring.
The Scramble Suit is accomplished by using animation over live footage. Linklater used the technique for the entire movie, much as he did in his 2001 film Waking Life. "No one face ever shows up in total at one time," the director said of the Scramble Suit. Author Dick's likeness is one of the faces that pop through the hundreds of animated characters that make up the suit.
Producer Tommy Pallotta said that he had to keep a watchful eye on the animation team while they were drawing the many characters for the suit. "They drew people they knew—friends, and stuff like that—but they began adding different characters from other science fiction stories, nerdy stuff, and they would have jumped out too much if I let [it go] through," Pallotta said.
Reeves said when they actually filmed the scenes of him wearing the mask, it didn't have all the faces it does in the final animated version. "It was some nylon stuff," he said. Also starring Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson, A Scanner Darkly opens nationwide July 7. —Mike Szymanski
PKD's Kin Had Scanner Input
Richard Linklater, director of the upcoming film adaptation of Philip K. Dick's SF book A Scanner Darkly, told SCI FI Wire that the author's daughters had unprecedented involvement in the making of the movie. "They were never so involved with any of the film projects of any of their father's writings that were brought to film, and it was great," Linklater said in an interview. "They knew it was a very personal story for him. ... I wanted to stay faithful to the book, not do an adaptation or inspired-by, and wanted to tell the whole story."
Dick's daughters, Laura Leslie and Isa Hackett, visited the set and spoke to stars Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson, as well as the rest of the cast and crew, about the futuristic film involving spying and drugs. The women "knew I wasn't going to be cavalier with the drug aspect [of the story]," Linklater said. "They were very frank. They said, 'You know, if it wasn't for drugs, our dad would still be writing today, instead of dying in 1982.'"
Dick's stories have inspired such films as Blade Runner, Minority Report, Total Recall, Screamers and others, and the author's personal struggle with drug addiction and the troubles his friends went through were what inspired A Scanner Darkly.
Producer Tommy Pallotta said, "We took a very personal story and hope that his legacy is portrayed in it as it was in the book. We have the dedication at the end to his friends, as he wrote it in the book." A Scanner Darkly, starring Keanu Reeves, opens nationwide July 7. —Mike Szymanski
Scanner Animation Was Tedious
Richard Linklater, director of the film adaptation of Philip K. Dick's SF book A Scanner Darkly, told SCI FI Wire that the movie was created with animation superimposed over live action, a tedious process that took up to 500 hours of labor per minute of film. "This is very artist-heavy," Linklater said in an interview. "It's 10 times harder to do than live action. You have to have a [constant] visual design." Linklater first used the technique, called "rotoscoping," in his 2001 movie Waking Life.
In A Scanner Darkly, the filmmakers used computers to overlay color animation on digital live-action footage, Linklater said. "It's really a computer variant of rotoscoping now," he said.
A Scanner Darkly, starring Winona Ryder, Keanu Reeves, Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey Jr., is set in a futuristic Orange County, Calif., and centers on an undercover drug cop's paranoid investigations.
Producer Tommy Pallotta said that the live action was shot in about two weeks, but that "it took 50 animators a year and a half to do [the animation]."
After doing Waking Life, Linklater said that he was inspired to adapt Dick's story for film after thinking about doing it for nearly 20 years and that the animation technique seemed appropriate for the material. "In a Philip K. Dick story, you're aways asking what is the reality, ... and this seemed like an appropriate forum," Linklater said. "It triggered something for me. ... I thought it would work." But, Linklater added: "I do not want to do an animated film anytime soon again." A Scanner Darkly opens on Juy 7. —Mike Szymanski
Scanner Resembles Reality
Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder, who star in the upcoming film adaptation of Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly, told SCI FI Wire that the bleak future depicted in the movie isn't so removed from the reality they see around them. "I mean, it's happening," Ryder said in an interview. "I think that it was really weird at the time, watching the news, because there were things happening. It's really eerie how relevant it is politically and socially, and I'm really happy to be a part of a movie like that, aside from just loving the movie as a personal story. Philip K. Dick was really, really on the money when he wrote it. It's amazing what he predicted, and to me—I'm just speaking for me—I just think that it is a terrifying time right now in this country and in the world."
A Scanner Darkly, based on Dick's 1977 novel, is set in suburban Orange County, Calif., in a future where America has lost the war on drugs. When one reluctant undercover cop is ordered to start spying on his friends, he is launched on a paranoid journey.
Reeves said that the movie offers social comment. "It gives you a lot of commentary and cautionary aspects to it, and so I think it relates, absolutely," he said. "I think that it's probably something that all of us, all of the cities, are going to have to deal with, and the idea of surveillance [and] the rights of the individual versus the impulse of the state."
Reeves said he didn't see the movie as something similar to his most famous SF movie, The Matrix. "I was really attracted to the material, because it has a lot to offer to the viewer, a lot of commentary," he said. "It's tossing out some commentary to the world, and so that was the grand inspiration."
Reeves said he has always been a fan of Philip K. Dick. "Well, he tells great stories, and I relate to the situations that he finds his character in," he said. "I love his writing. He is funny, wickedly funny, and he has little irony. I like the context of his scenes. These seem to be stories of, not the little guy, but people kind of in situations that all of a sudden aren't what they seem. His stories tell of fights of the individual against forces beyond their control and then being manipulated by them. He tells really good romantic stories and writes really cool women. There is a kind of flesh and blood there. People are greedy. People are angry. People are mean. People are scared. And I just relate to the worlds that he writes."
Dick's work has inspired such films as Minority Report, Blade Runner and Total Recall. But none are like A Scanner Darkly, Reeves said. "It's funny, because even when they are adaptations, they're not really adaptations of his novels," he said. "They're almost more kind of like inspired by, because they're never really quite adapted works. I'd really say that this is the first true adaptation of a Philip K. Dick book, [speaking] as a Philip K. Dick fan. ... This is the best one." A Scanner Darkly also stars Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson and Rory Cochrane and opens nationwide July 7. —Mike Szymanski
Ryder Plays Sex And Death
Winona Ryder told SCI FI Wire she is excited to re-team with her Heathers director Dan Waters for the upcoming surreal comedy Sex and Death 101. "I play Death," Ryder said at a press conference to promote her next film, A Scanner Darkly. "I just came from the set. We're shooting it now. I haven't slept."
In Sex and Death 101, Ryder portrays Death Nell, a woman who seduces men and puts them in a coma, then pursues a man played by Simon Baker (Land of the Dead), who has received a list of all the women he's slept with and all the women he will sleep with for the rest of his life.
Ryder said she is happy to reunite with Waters and looks forward to a long-discussed Heathers sequel. About Sex and Death 101, she said: "It's complex. It's complicated. The material is still very challenging. [Waters] is a tremendous writer, and I can't begin to explain what this movie is all about, but it will definitely get noticed. ... This is sort of impossible to describe, the script, but it's so Dan. It's so twisted and great, and he's just a great director, a great director. It's wonderful and really a dream for me." Sex and Death 101 is currently in production, with an eye to a 2007 release. —Mike Szymanski
Now Singer Back On Logan?
So is Bryan Singer dropping Logan's Run or not? "It's not dead," the Superman Returns director told iFMagazine http://ifmagazine.com/new.asp?article=3110 on June 27. "It's too magnificent. The world we developed and the things we pre-vized [pre-visualized] is too extraordinary."
This directly contradicts a report on Dark Horizons http://www.darkhorizons.com/news06/super4.php on June 16 quoting Singer saying he wasn't going to direct the SF remake, at least not right now.
Singer has been developing the Logan's Run movie for a while now, but has been sidetracked, first with SCI FI Channel's original miniseries The Triangle http://www.scifi.com/triangle/ , which he executive-produced with Dean Devlin, and then with Superman Returns, which opened June 28. And his next movie could be an expected Superman sequel film.
"Not only was I shooting [Superman Returns] over the last two years, but also I have my [Fox] TV series House [which he executive-produces], and I also produced [The Triangle] miniseries for the SCI FI network, which was simultaneously shooting in South Africa," Singer told the site. "So some of these things were relatively new to me over the last two years while [I was] making [Superman Returns], so these two years were very overwhelming, and I couldn't jump right into a movie of that scope, and Logan's Run was becoming a movie of tremendous scope. And as I explained in the earlier part of the movie, how challenging and exhausting these things can be. Right now I have to take a sort of enforced vacation."