fulltimer56
07-18-2006, 11:55 PM
NEWS OF THE WEEK FOR JUL. 17, 2006
Part 1 of 2
Pirates 2 Smashes Records
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest set a new record for the highest opening in box-office history, smashing the four-year-old record held by Spider-Man, Walt Disney Co. told the Reuters news service.
The sequel, starring Johnny Depp, took in an estimated $132 million in its first three days of release across North America, beginning July 7, easily surpassing industry expectations of an opening in the $100 million range.
The old three-day mark of $115 million was set by Spider-Man in May 2002.
Dead Man's Chest's first-day take of $55.5 million on Friday set a new record for a single day, beating the $50 million earned on a Thursday in May 2005 by Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith, Reuters reported.
Disney To Cut Slate, Workers
In the wake of the box-office success of its Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Disney will announce within the next 10 days that it's cutting back on the number of films it makes to around eight per year from 18 and will substantially reduce its workforce, Variety reported. All movies will be Disney-branded, meaning companies like Touchstone could be vastly diminished.
The cutbacks will be far greater than many anticipated, as Walt Disney Studios chairman Dick Cook looks to reinvent the architecture of his studio. The move reflects an effort to improve the studio's return on investment and get infrastructure back into line, the trade paper reported.
Disney has had a mixed track record this year: Pirates and Pixar's Cars have been hits, but Stick It, Annapolis, Stay Alive and The Wild have not.
Lady's Howard Reunites With Night
Bryce Dallas Howard, who stars in M. Night Shyamalan's upcoming fantasy film Lady in the Water, spoke to SCI FI Wire about collaborating with the director again after their first project together, 2004's The Village. "I wasn't blind [in this film], but I was partially naked," Howard joked in an interview in New York last weekend.
Howard added: "I am part of a theater company in New York, and [this movie] was exactly what I hoped it would be, because with a company you are able to work with people over and over again to get past all the small talk and actually get to the essence of what we are trying to do, and that's exactly what this experience was like. With The Village, which was wonderful, it was still like an introduction. We were introducing each other to each other. Near the end of shooting, we were like, 'Oh, this is how you tick and how I tick!' We were able to start from that place when we did Lady in the Water and go even deeper."
In Lady in the Water, Howard plays Story, a mythic storybook creature called a "narf," who gets trapped in the human world, where she finds herself protected by a community of disparate neighbors in an apartment complex in suburban Philadelphia. Speaking of her eccentric commonality with Shyamalan, the actress said: "We are both a little weird. I think we definitely look at the world similarly, and it's nice to work with someone that way."
Shyamalan created the character of a narf from a bedtime story he concocted for his little girls, and Howard said the role was unique because of that. "The way that I describe [Story] is that she is like a water nymph," Howard said. "I couldn't do much research. It was a very freeing experience, because Night created all this mythology and this whole world. At the beginning of the process, I came in like a good little actor and did all this research about fairy tales and had all these opinions to present to him in a way that was diplomatic and wonderful. Of course, he was listening and collaborating, but as I started then listening to him and not trying to be impressive, I realized, 'Oh, I just have to show up, and he's going to know what to tell me to do, and that's going to be the best way that we go through this process.' This is all from his crazy, brilliant, wonderful mind, and that's what I wanted to be for him: someone that would allow that vision to manifest. My job on this film was to serve the director. I realize that this is his thing." Lady in the Water opens nationwide on July 21. —Tara DiLullo
Lady's Giamatti Clarifies Reports
Paul Giamatti, who stars in M. Night Shyamalan's Lady in the Water, spoke out to SCI FI Wire to correct what he called inaccurate reports that he delayed committing to the film. Michael Bamberger's upcoming new book, The Man Who Heard Voices: Or, How M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on a Fairy Tale, reports that the Oscar-nominated actor held off committing to Lady for five months. "That's not true! Fiction!" Giamatti said in an interview in New York over the weekend. "No, it couldn't have been five months. It was probably five days."
An excerpt of Bamberger's book, which appeared in the July 14 issue of Entertainment Weekly, also reports that Shyamalan repeatedly tried unsuccessfully to reach Giamatti after telling the actor that he was the first choice for the role. When Giamatti didn't call back, Bamberger reports, Shyamalan even considered hiring Kevin Costner for the lead in the movie. "I think [Night] was anxious, and I felt bad when I heard that, ... that I made him so anxious," Giamatti says now. Giamatti eventually signed on.
In Lady in the Water, Giamatti plays apartment-complex maintenance man Cleveland Heep, a down-and-out soul who finds a mythical creature (played by Bryce Dallas Howard) in the swimming pool.
Asked why he delayed reading the script, Giamatti said: "I think I was just kind of tired, and I was at home and forgot to read it for a couple of days. I honestly, ... when I heard that, I felt terrible that I made the guy wait. I just think I was slow that day. I wasn't really on top of it,” he said with a sheepish laugh. "I don't remember there being a million things, but once I read his script, I thought it was great. You know, there was no question."
Lady in the Water marks Giamatti's first collaboration with Shyamalan, and he said it was the director's unique storytelling that attracted him to the mythically themed film about fantasy creatures living in the real world. "It's a kind of an ambitious idea," Giamatti said. "He's an eccentric making eccentric movies, and that's what I think is most interesting. They are commercial movies. ... He's just a fascinating guy, in and of himself, what he is doing and what he is trying to do, and he pulls it off. But they are eccentric movies. They are very strange, and I thought it was kind of great. I thought this was a very weird idea, if he could pull it off. I think he does, but it's not an easy thing to pull off."
Asked if the film is aimed at children, Giamatti laughed. "Well, it's a movie about children and aimed around children," he said. "I don't know that it's something I would necessarily take my 5-year-old kid to see. ... Scar him for life. It's about children. Weird kids might like it, older kids, ... that kind of thing. I would have liked it when I was a kid. I see it falling more into fantasy than science fiction and horror. Like [Shyamalan] says, it's a fairy tale or a bedtime story or a myth almost, but it's being told about all these normal people in an apartment building." Lady in the Water opens nationwide on July 21. —Tara DiLullo
Spidey 3's Howard Hints At Triangle
Bryce Dallas Howard, who takes on the role of Gwen Stacy in Sam Raimi's upcoming Spider-Man 3, told SCI FI Wire that her character adds a new dynamic to Peter Parker's romantic life. "Gwen Stacy is a pretty famous comic-book character," Howard said in an interview in New York over the weekend while promoting her next film, Lady in the Water. "She was one of Peter Parker's first loves. In this film, it's a love triangle between Mary Jane [Kirsten Dunst], Peter Parker [Tobey Maguire] and herself. She's young and kind of sexy, but I don't want to give away too much."
Howard said that she auditioned for the role in the third installment in the comic-book franchise before she landed the part last year. About working with director Raimi, she said: "In Spider-Man 3, it was really fun, because I was a part of this group, and all together we tell the story. Sam Raimi was there to guide us and inspire us and, of all the choices we offered him, to take the choices that were best for the story. It was a very empowering experience. It's a very, very dramatic film. The conflict is very high, and stakes are very high in this story."
The Spider-Man sequel will be Howard's highest-profile film to date, after making a mark in M. Night Shyamalan's The Village and starring in his upcoming thriller Lady in the Water. When asked if she is looking to be a movie star, the actress said, "I don't want for things that you can't control. I want to be the best actor that I can be. I want to be working in this business, so if that means being a movie star, fine. To me, being a movie star and celebrity is very different from being an actor." Lady in the Water opens nationwide on July 21. Spider-Man 3 opens May 4, 2007. —Tara DiLullo
Shyamalan Talks Disney Breakup
Director M. Night Shyamalan, speaking publicly for the first time about about his highly publicized breakup with Walt Disney Co. over the making of the upcoming Lady in the Water, tried to put a nice face on the controversy and even left open the possibility of working with Disney again in an interview with SCI FI Wire. Michael Bamberger's upcoming new book, The Man Who Heard Voices: Or, How M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on a Fairy Tale, details the director's falling-out with Disney after executives there declined to finance the film.
"They are good people," Shyamalan said in an interview in New York over the weekend about the Disney executives who made the decision. "The success of the four movies [The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs and The Village that Shyamalan made for Disney] has allowed me the freedom to never deal with that conversation that I had with them and that I want to have in the future with them. For me, I felt like this would be a great fit for that company: an eccentric, childlike, adult imagination kind of thing, but it was not the right time or the right movie."
An excerpt of Bamberger's book, which appeared in the July 14 issue of Entertainment Weekly, reported that Shyamalan was so upset by the Disney executives' feedback and lack of understanding and faith in Lady in the Water that he left a rancorous dinner meeting in tears. Shyamalan confirmed the report and explained, "We did have a parent/child relationship in a great way. It was coming from a little bit of a parental place, and I appreciate that from them. But sometimes you just have to go, 'I have to go to college. I gotta go do my thing. I'll be back. Don't worry.' It was also that there was a person I was going to make this movie for, and that was Alan Horn [president and chief operating officer of Warner Brothers Entertainment Inc., which is releasing Lady]. He was always someone that has been right there and connected to my movies. So I took it to him. I said, 'Do you get this?'"
Shyamalan said that Bamberger's book changed focus shortly after the Disney relationship deteriorated. "His was supposed to be a book about the fifth movie at Disney," Shyamalan said. "I remember calling him and saying, 'You are not going to believe this.' I was really worried, but the movie, the book, that whole time period, was really a huge, giant act of faith for me. You put yourself at great, great risk. I shook hands with . There was no contract with him. The reason was that he wrote me a very moving letter as a human being, and ... this guy was true to the soul of the person that wrote that letter. Lady was, the same way, a leap of faith. I went, 'I've got to get up from the table, and I'm going to go find somebody. I think somebody is going to believe in it.' What's nice about [the book] is that people can see the struggle, because the struggle is there in all of [my movies]. It's a torturous process to make personal movies. It's this weird thing that I am doing, making personal films that get released in a blockbuster capacity. It's not [a dynamic] that I contrived. It is naturally the sum of the elements of how I think." Lady in the Water opens nationwide on July 21. —Tara DiLullo
[b]Story Reveals Four 2 Hints
Tim Story, the Fantastic Four director who is readying the upcoming sequel film, told fans on his MySpace.com blog that the movie will feature a few surprises, including a new flying "Fantasticar."
"I've been going crazy prepping this thing," Story wrote. "Just got back from Vancouver, which is of course where we will be filming the movie, and things are shaping up. It's the hard part of the phase where I have to make the ... 's work. Even with 100-plus million [dollars], there's never enough money. Looking at the plan for the new Baxter Building interior, and it's going to be hot. We're going more high-tech, and we're giving Reed Richards [Ioan Gruffudd] and the gang more gadgets this time around. The '4' logo will be everywhere as we are used to seeing it. They are a corporation now."
Story added: "I'm going to use some looks that have been inspired from more recent comics, like in 'The Ultimate Extinction' and a little from the 'Ultimate Fan Four' series. I know what you're thinking: 'Kirby, Kirby, Kirby!' [Marvel Comics writer Jack Kirby] There will be much props given to Kirby throughout the movie."
Story added that he's excited about is the Fantasticar, the superhero quartet's new vehicle. "It's coming, guys, in all its glory," Story said. "Wait until you see it. It's going to split in pieces and all that. Johnny [Chris Evans] and Ben [Michael Chiklis] fight over who should fly it. All the fun you expect."
Payne: Four 2 Will Do More
Don Payne, who is writing the upcoming Fantastic Four sequel movie, confirmed to SCI FI Wire the previously reported news that the follow-up to the superhero hit will prominently feature the Silver Surfer, herald of the planet-devouring Galactus. "That's the worst-kept secret in town," Payne said in an interview while promoting his latest project, the superhero romantic comedy My Super Ex-Girlfriend. "The Silver Surfer will be in it. The Fantasticar will be in it. We're just trying to make it more exciting and funnier, and, you know, we're trying to top the first one."
Payne (The Simpsons) said that the second Fantastic Four adventure presents numerous opportunities, as so much of the first film was devoted to establishing the characters and introducing the Fantastic Four universe. Now, for example, there will be more time given over to developing Fantastic Four leader Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd), aka Mr. Fantastic. "I think people know the characters now," Payne said. "They know the tone a little bit better. Origin stories are always hard to get off the ground, and we're going to be up and running. I think the one thing I really want to do is make Reed Richards, that character, smarter and tougher. He's the leader. I think Ioan did a great job [in the first film], but I think he could have had more stuff to play as the leader. Reed Richards has his nerdy side, but he ultimately has to make some tough choices." The Fantastic Four sequel will begin production later this summer with an eye toward a June 15, 2007, release. —Ian Spelling
Alba Looks At Eye
Lionsgate is picking up the Cruise/Wagner-produced remake of the Hong Kong supernatural horror movie The Eye out of turnaround from Paramount and is negotiating with Jessica Alba to star and French helmers David Moreau and Xavier Palud to direct, Variety reported. The movie will shoot this winter.
The Eye is a thriller about a cornea transplant recipient who sees disturbing images in the mirror that send her on a quest to find out what happened to the eye's previous owner. The original was made in Hong Kong by Thai directing brothers Danny and Oxide Pang.
Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner persuaded Paramount to buy the remake rights in 2002 and got close to making it there with Renee Zellweger. When Zellweger dropped out, the project lost its momentum and the studio put it into turnaround.
News of the Lionsgate pickup comes as Cruise/Wagner's deal nears its expiration at Paramount, and speculation has the pair eyeing other studios.
Alba is in talks to make The Eye her next picture after the Fantastic Four sequel. Moreau and Palud, who last directed the French thriller Ils, will make The Eye their first U.S. picture.
McShane Channels Al In Panda
English actor Ian McShane, who voices Captain Hook in the upcoming animated sequel Shrek 3, told SCI FI Wire that the role led directly to an offer from DreamWorks Animation boss Jeffrey Katzenberg to voice a snow leopard in another of the studio's upcoming films, Kung Fu Panda. "Captain Hook, I think I've got one more session on that," McShane said in an interview in New York while promoting his latest film, Woody Allen's fantasy comedy Scoop. "The snow leopard in Kung Fu Panda with Jack Black, we've got to start that yet. They've not done the script on that yet."
McShane is a veteran character actor whose genre credits include Space: 1999, The Fantastic Journey, Babylon 5: The River of Souls and The Twilight Zone. He's perhaps best known these days for his award-winning role as the ruthless Al Swearengen on the HBO series Deadwood. It was that role that apparently caught the attention of the Kung Fu Panda team when they developed the character they hoped McShane would play.
"It's a lot of fun," McShane said of doing animated films. "You go in there, and you have 15 animators looking at you, these 15 sort of nerdy guys with glasses. You're doing your bit, and you're like, 'What am I doing here?' You feel like you're the animal behind the cage in a zoo. But it's lovely. When I finished the first session on Captain Hook, Katzenberg called me up and said, 'We want you to come in meet us and talk to us about doing this Kung Fu Panda.' And I went to DreamWorks, their animation place, in Glendale [Calif.]. Gorgeous, like a campus, isn't it? They call it nerd heaven, don't they? What they had done, though, was great. They'd taken a sequence from the first Deadwood show, some dialogue where I beat Trixie [Paula Malcomson] up in the first episode, and they've animated this leopard with the same voice. And they said, 'There, you see, we can do this.' I don't think that will be on the DVD." Shrek 3 will be released in 2007, with Kung Fu Panda likely to follow in 2008.
New Mom Jolie Joins Panda
Angelina Jolie has chosen her first post-baby project, signing on to voice a character in DreamWorks Animation's Kung Fu Panda, Variety reported. Jolie joins Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman, Jackie Chan, Lucy Liu and Ian McShane in the computer-animated film.
Jolie will voice Tigress, one of the "furious five" martial-arts masters who help train Po (Black) to become Kung Fu Panda.
Scheduled for release in May 2008, Kung Fu Panda is about a lowly waiter in a noodle restaurant whose shape doesn't lend itself to kung fu fighting.
Foxx Sees The Power Of Duff
Jamie Foxx and his manager, Jaime Rucker King, will produce The Power of Duff, joining Marc Platt, who already has been developing the fantasy feature film via his Marc Platt Productions, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Foxx and King will help develop the drama, which Foxx is eyeing as a possible starring vehicle.
Power has been a hot property at Universal, which won the script in a bidding war last year, paying $900,000 against $1.25 million. The script attracted Russell Crowe and Ron Howard at one point, as well as Tom Hanks.
Written by Stephen Belber, Power follows a Rochester, N.Y., TV news anchor who, after the death of his father, begins praying aloud for things to happen while reading the evening news. When his prayers start coming true, it ignites controversy about whether he's a prophet, a pundit or a charlatan.
Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Krause Cast In Lost Room
SCI FI Channel announced that it has cast Peter Krause (Six Feet Under) as the star of its upcoming limited series The Lost Room, slated for late 2006. The series is scheduled to begin shooting in Albuquerque, N.M., on July 19. Richard Hatem (Supernatural) will executive-produce. Krause co-stars with Elle Fanning, the sister of Dakota Fanning (Steven Spielberg Presents Taken). SCI FI made the announcement at the Television Critics Association summer press tour in Pasadena, Calif., on July 13.
Krause plays Joe Miller, a homicide detective who discovers a key that contains unimaginable power and that is only one of several seemingly mundane objects with powers that others would do anything to possess. Elle Fanning plays Miller's daughter, who vanishes inside a motel room that is the locus of power.
Meanwhile, SCI FI announced that it has given a green light to Painkiller Jane, a 22-episode series centering on a female superhero with uncanny healing abilities. Based on the comic book by Jimmy Palmiotti and Joe Quesada, the series has not been cast yet, but is slated to premiere in January 2007.
Warner Adapting Locke Lamora
Warner Brothers has tapped the Hageman brothers to adapt author Scott Lynch's fantasy epic The Lies of Locke Lamora, Variety reported. Michael De Luca and Julie Yorn are producing for the studio.
Locke Lamora, the first of a seven-book series, hit the stands earlier this summer in the United Kingdom and United States to glowing reviews.
The storyline revolves around the adventures of a likable con artist as he and his band of followers, the Gentlemen Bastards, navigate the Venice-like city of Camorr.
It's the second Warners project for Kevin and Dan Hageman. They recently adapted the book Carpe Demon: Adventures of a Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom for 1492 Pictures, which is producing for the studio.
SCI FI Unveils New Slate
SCI FI Channel announced a development slate of new series and miniseries from producers including Mark Burnett (Survivor), Ben Edlund (The Tick) and Lynda Obst (Contact) at the Television Critics Association summer press tour in Pasadena, Calif., on July 13.
The new miniseries is Outpost, from executive producer Obst, which centers on a group of space explorers in the near future who discover an ancient artifact buried beneath the surface of an alien planet. Eric Jendresen (Band of Brothers) wrote the miniseries, which is produced by astronomer David Grinspoon.
The new series include Devil's Advocate, from executive producer Burnett, a one-hour conspiracy thriller from executive producer/writer Jonas McCord (Earth: Final Conflict), about a theology professor who finds himself in the world of secret societies, religious espionage and genetic research. He is hired by a corporation to form a team of "devil's advocates" to explore bizarre cases.
From Edlund comes Witch Doctor, a comedic drama that centers on a man who finds himself endowed with amazing healing powers, which opens him up to a magical world.
The other new series is Stoner, from Jeff Kline (Jackie Chan Adventures), which takes place in an alternate-reality Los Angeles where superheroes actually exist. It centers on a slacker who is mistakenly thrust into the limelight as a superhero.
SCI FI also announced three new late-night series in development: George Noory, centered on the overnight radio talk-show host of Coast to Coast AM; Alien Invasion, a computer-animated comedy from Dave Goetsch (3rd Rock From the Sun); and Prove It, a lighthearted panel discussion hosted by Mark DeCarlo (Curb Your Enthusiasm).
Keys To Unlock Bell Remake
Grammy-winning singer Alicia Keys and producing partner-manager Jeff Robinson have signed a multiyear first-look film production deal at Disney, with her first movie a remake of the 1958 film Bell Book and Candle, with Keys to play the witch role originated by Kim Novak, Variety reported. She'll produce with Robinson
Keys and Robinson said they will develop live-action and animated projects at their company, Big Pita, Little Pita, with Keys participating as producer and actor and the banner spearheading soundtrack and music supervision. The duo's TV production company is called Big Pita.
They chose Bell Book and Candle as a starting vehicle after Robinson watched the original and saw potential for Keys.
Tekken: Dark Resurrection Due
Namco Bandai Games America announced that Tekken: Dark Resurrection for the PSP is ready for manufacture and will hit stores on July 25. The latest installment in the hit series introduces two new characters, Lili and Dragunov, who will battle returning classic Tekken characters, including Armor King, Jin, Heihachi and Yoshimitsu, the company said
Tekken: Dark Resurrection will double the customizable items seen in Tekken 5 and include minigames such as Tekken Bowling and Gold Rush. A new feature allows fans to play their friends using just one game. The new title also includes a "ghost" mode.
Shrek 3 Casts Ninja Princesses
DreamWorks Animation has announced the voice cast for Shrek the Third, which will include an elite, ninja-like strike force of fairy-tale princesses voiced by Amy Sedaris as Cinderella, Amy Poehler as Snow White, Maya Rudolph as Rapunzel and Cheri Oteri as Sleeping Beauty, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The third installment in the satirical animated franchise is set for release May 18, 2007, the trade paper reported.
Organized by Princess Fiona, the princesses' underground resistance movement fends off a coup d'etat by Prince Charming (Rupert Everett) in the land of Far, Far Away.
Also joining the hit animated comedy's cast are Ian McShane as Captain Hook, John Krasinski as Sir Lancelot and Monty Python veteran Eric Idle as Merlin the magician.
The film's main roles again will be voiced by Mike Myers (Shrek), Cameron Diaz (Princess Fiona), Eddie Murphy (Donkey) and Antonio Banderas (Puss in Boots). Justin Timberlake will voice King Arthur, aka Artie.
Shrek the Third is being directed by Chris Miller, co-directed by Raman Hui, produced by Aron Warner and executive-produced by Andrew Adamson and John H. Williams.
Warner Fans A Firestorm
Warner Brothers has bought the film rights to Firestorm, the first volume in David Klass' young-adult Caretaker Trilogy, Variety reported. The studio has set it up with Basil Iwanyk's Thunder Road to produce. Warner has the right to option the two additional books in the SF action-adventure series.
Firestorm revolves around a seemingly normal high-school senior who finds himself at the center of an epic battle that's being fought both now and a thousand years in the future. The fate of Earth hangs in the balance.
Klass is an author and a screenwriter. He has penned more than 30 screenplays, including Kiss the Girls and the Walking Tall remake. His 13 novels include You Don't Know Me, which has been published in 18 languages, and Dark Angel.
Prodigy To Be Adapted
Intrepid Pictures has purchased Dave Kalstein's SF novel Prodigy and hired him to adapt it into a screenplay, with production targeted for next year, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Intrepid will present the thriller to Rogue Pictures as part of its five-year, first-look deal with the Focus Features genre arm.
The story, set in the near future, centers on an elite prep school that promises to turn teenagers into geniuses through a drug and diet regimen for a hefty half-million-dollar tuition. When several alumni turn up dead, the school's impoverished valedictorian, on scholarship, is assigned to investigate the murders, leading him to a fellow student who might be the victim of a cover-up.
Focus and Rogue are owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Manzarek Rocks Snake Moon
Rock legend Ray Manzarek ( http://www.raymanzarek.us/ ), keyboardist of The Doors, told SCI FI Wire that his new novel, Snake Moon, is a story of the supernatural set during the Civil War. "It's a story of forbidden love and man's madness, greed, desire and lust," Manzarek said in an interview.
Manzarek said that the novel began life as a screenplay written with his co-writer, Rick Valentine, and film producer Rick Schmidlin. "We wrote a script, a ghost story set in the Civil War," Manzarek said. " Cold Mountain had come out just when we finished the script and started shopping it around. ... Well, Civil War movies were dead after Cold Mountain; no one wanted to know anything about it, even if it was a low-budget [film]. So the two Ricks and I had done too much work on it to just let it go, and I said to Valentine, 'Hey, I want to novelize this. I'm going to turn this into a novel. This is too good to just drop.' So that's what I did. I took the script and sat down at home and began the process of turning that into a novel. So some of the verbiage is Rick Valentine's, and most of it is mine."
Although Manzarek is best known as a musician, he is no stranger to writing. Manzarek attended UCLA Film School, where he met The Doors' lead singer, Jim Morrison, and previously published an autobiography called Light My Fire: My Life With the Doors, as well as the rock novel The Poet in Exile. "[Snake Moon] is my third book, and my second novel, so I'm used to [writing]," he said. "It all comes out of scriptwriting. I've written scripts, [and] story and dialogue and description are all in the film scripts. ... It's not difficult to go from writing a script to writing a novel."
What's exciting about writing a novel is that the author disappears into it, Manzarek said. "You journey into that time and place that you're writing about," he said. "For instance, when I was writing Light My Fire: My Life With the Doors, I would relive in my mind's eye those experiences with The Doors. And in Snake Moon, I was there. I was in 1863. I was in the Civil War, and I was with those people, walking with them, the two main characters who go on this journey. I was following them, and I was with the women when the evil Yankees came down south and did bad things to [them]. I was there and watching it. I was eating with them and drinking with them, and I was carousing and I was insane with them. That's the fun of writing a novel: You leave yourself and walk with the characters."
Manzarek is currently researching a new novel, which he described as "a story of mystical thought in ancient Egypt," adding: "It's about Akhenaten, the pharaoh of the 18th dynasty." —John Joseph Adams
[b]Nightmares Scares Up Ratings
The TNT anthology Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King scared up strong ratings in its July 12 debut, finishing number one and number two in basic cable for the night with back-to-back episodes, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The first installment of the anthology, William Hurt's "Battleground," drew 5.2 million total viewers at 9 p.m. Its 18-49 and 25-54 demographic totals were the highest a scripted cable series has seen year-to-date, topping a mark set last week by the new USA Network drama Psych.
A second Nightmares episode at 10 p.m., "Crouch End," reached 4.8 million. Nightmares & Dreamscapes is a limited series that will air for the next three weeks on Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET.
Henson Helms Talk-Free Nightmare
Brian Henson—who directed the "Battleground" episode of TNT's limited anthology series Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King—told SCI FI Wire that one of his biggest challenges was creating an hour's worth of television with virtually no dialogue. "I got a call from [producer] Bill Haber, who said, 'I'm in a horrible situation. I have the most wonderful script, but it's impossible to shoot, [but] would you read it anyway?'" Henson recalled in an interview. "Even though I thought it was going to be impossible to make, I was still very intrigued about doing it."
Based on a short story by King, "Battleground" centers on professional hit man Jason Renshaw (William Hurt), who successfully murders the chief executive of a major toy company only to face a life-and-death battle of his own when a box of toy soldiers suddenly comes to life.
Henson worked closely with writer Richard Christian Matheson to create a story that could be told without dialogue, a bold step for any made-for-television project. "When I first talked to Richard about it, his first draft had some dialogue," Henson said. "But once Renshaw was in his apartment, there was no reason for dialogue. So he came up with the idea that it would be cool to do the whole thing with no dialogue. The general broadcasters' attitude is that every TV production needs to play like radio. You have to assume that your audience is cooking dinner while they're watching your show, so they need to hear every story point coming out of somebody's mouth, and I was really impressed that TNT was daring enough to say, 'No, this will be cool!'"
Henson added: "'Battleground' is based on a nine-page short story, and the adaptation is this wonderfully intimate piece, where you're almost trapped inside the head of this kind of psychotic character, as we're watching everything he does over this one-day period of time. Richard and I ended up probably rewriting everything that happens in that movie two or three times to figure out how to do it all."
Sharp-eyed viewers may notice a few subtle references to the 1970s TV movie Trilogy of Terror, written by Matheson's father, award-winning novelist and screenwriter Richard Matheson. But Henson insisted he wasn't trying to imitate the work of director Dan Curtis in that piece. "I'm a big fan of Trilogy of Terror, but what I was trying to do was a more '80s style of directing, with static cameras and clean compositions, where the movements of the lead actor are very dominating in frame, because there isn't a lot else going on. It's clean, almost sterile sometimes, in its visual presentation in order to put more emphasis on the character of Renshaw." "Battleground" debuted commercial-free at 9 p.m. ET/PT on July 12, with an encore July 13. Nightmares & Dreamscapes will air Wednesdays at 9 p.m. —Joe Nazzaro
Part 1 of 2
Pirates 2 Smashes Records
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest set a new record for the highest opening in box-office history, smashing the four-year-old record held by Spider-Man, Walt Disney Co. told the Reuters news service.
The sequel, starring Johnny Depp, took in an estimated $132 million in its first three days of release across North America, beginning July 7, easily surpassing industry expectations of an opening in the $100 million range.
The old three-day mark of $115 million was set by Spider-Man in May 2002.
Dead Man's Chest's first-day take of $55.5 million on Friday set a new record for a single day, beating the $50 million earned on a Thursday in May 2005 by Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith, Reuters reported.
Disney To Cut Slate, Workers
In the wake of the box-office success of its Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Disney will announce within the next 10 days that it's cutting back on the number of films it makes to around eight per year from 18 and will substantially reduce its workforce, Variety reported. All movies will be Disney-branded, meaning companies like Touchstone could be vastly diminished.
The cutbacks will be far greater than many anticipated, as Walt Disney Studios chairman Dick Cook looks to reinvent the architecture of his studio. The move reflects an effort to improve the studio's return on investment and get infrastructure back into line, the trade paper reported.
Disney has had a mixed track record this year: Pirates and Pixar's Cars have been hits, but Stick It, Annapolis, Stay Alive and The Wild have not.
Lady's Howard Reunites With Night
Bryce Dallas Howard, who stars in M. Night Shyamalan's upcoming fantasy film Lady in the Water, spoke to SCI FI Wire about collaborating with the director again after their first project together, 2004's The Village. "I wasn't blind [in this film], but I was partially naked," Howard joked in an interview in New York last weekend.
Howard added: "I am part of a theater company in New York, and [this movie] was exactly what I hoped it would be, because with a company you are able to work with people over and over again to get past all the small talk and actually get to the essence of what we are trying to do, and that's exactly what this experience was like. With The Village, which was wonderful, it was still like an introduction. We were introducing each other to each other. Near the end of shooting, we were like, 'Oh, this is how you tick and how I tick!' We were able to start from that place when we did Lady in the Water and go even deeper."
In Lady in the Water, Howard plays Story, a mythic storybook creature called a "narf," who gets trapped in the human world, where she finds herself protected by a community of disparate neighbors in an apartment complex in suburban Philadelphia. Speaking of her eccentric commonality with Shyamalan, the actress said: "We are both a little weird. I think we definitely look at the world similarly, and it's nice to work with someone that way."
Shyamalan created the character of a narf from a bedtime story he concocted for his little girls, and Howard said the role was unique because of that. "The way that I describe [Story] is that she is like a water nymph," Howard said. "I couldn't do much research. It was a very freeing experience, because Night created all this mythology and this whole world. At the beginning of the process, I came in like a good little actor and did all this research about fairy tales and had all these opinions to present to him in a way that was diplomatic and wonderful. Of course, he was listening and collaborating, but as I started then listening to him and not trying to be impressive, I realized, 'Oh, I just have to show up, and he's going to know what to tell me to do, and that's going to be the best way that we go through this process.' This is all from his crazy, brilliant, wonderful mind, and that's what I wanted to be for him: someone that would allow that vision to manifest. My job on this film was to serve the director. I realize that this is his thing." Lady in the Water opens nationwide on July 21. —Tara DiLullo
Lady's Giamatti Clarifies Reports
Paul Giamatti, who stars in M. Night Shyamalan's Lady in the Water, spoke out to SCI FI Wire to correct what he called inaccurate reports that he delayed committing to the film. Michael Bamberger's upcoming new book, The Man Who Heard Voices: Or, How M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on a Fairy Tale, reports that the Oscar-nominated actor held off committing to Lady for five months. "That's not true! Fiction!" Giamatti said in an interview in New York over the weekend. "No, it couldn't have been five months. It was probably five days."
An excerpt of Bamberger's book, which appeared in the July 14 issue of Entertainment Weekly, also reports that Shyamalan repeatedly tried unsuccessfully to reach Giamatti after telling the actor that he was the first choice for the role. When Giamatti didn't call back, Bamberger reports, Shyamalan even considered hiring Kevin Costner for the lead in the movie. "I think [Night] was anxious, and I felt bad when I heard that, ... that I made him so anxious," Giamatti says now. Giamatti eventually signed on.
In Lady in the Water, Giamatti plays apartment-complex maintenance man Cleveland Heep, a down-and-out soul who finds a mythical creature (played by Bryce Dallas Howard) in the swimming pool.
Asked why he delayed reading the script, Giamatti said: "I think I was just kind of tired, and I was at home and forgot to read it for a couple of days. I honestly, ... when I heard that, I felt terrible that I made the guy wait. I just think I was slow that day. I wasn't really on top of it,” he said with a sheepish laugh. "I don't remember there being a million things, but once I read his script, I thought it was great. You know, there was no question."
Lady in the Water marks Giamatti's first collaboration with Shyamalan, and he said it was the director's unique storytelling that attracted him to the mythically themed film about fantasy creatures living in the real world. "It's a kind of an ambitious idea," Giamatti said. "He's an eccentric making eccentric movies, and that's what I think is most interesting. They are commercial movies. ... He's just a fascinating guy, in and of himself, what he is doing and what he is trying to do, and he pulls it off. But they are eccentric movies. They are very strange, and I thought it was kind of great. I thought this was a very weird idea, if he could pull it off. I think he does, but it's not an easy thing to pull off."
Asked if the film is aimed at children, Giamatti laughed. "Well, it's a movie about children and aimed around children," he said. "I don't know that it's something I would necessarily take my 5-year-old kid to see. ... Scar him for life. It's about children. Weird kids might like it, older kids, ... that kind of thing. I would have liked it when I was a kid. I see it falling more into fantasy than science fiction and horror. Like [Shyamalan] says, it's a fairy tale or a bedtime story or a myth almost, but it's being told about all these normal people in an apartment building." Lady in the Water opens nationwide on July 21. —Tara DiLullo
Spidey 3's Howard Hints At Triangle
Bryce Dallas Howard, who takes on the role of Gwen Stacy in Sam Raimi's upcoming Spider-Man 3, told SCI FI Wire that her character adds a new dynamic to Peter Parker's romantic life. "Gwen Stacy is a pretty famous comic-book character," Howard said in an interview in New York over the weekend while promoting her next film, Lady in the Water. "She was one of Peter Parker's first loves. In this film, it's a love triangle between Mary Jane [Kirsten Dunst], Peter Parker [Tobey Maguire] and herself. She's young and kind of sexy, but I don't want to give away too much."
Howard said that she auditioned for the role in the third installment in the comic-book franchise before she landed the part last year. About working with director Raimi, she said: "In Spider-Man 3, it was really fun, because I was a part of this group, and all together we tell the story. Sam Raimi was there to guide us and inspire us and, of all the choices we offered him, to take the choices that were best for the story. It was a very empowering experience. It's a very, very dramatic film. The conflict is very high, and stakes are very high in this story."
The Spider-Man sequel will be Howard's highest-profile film to date, after making a mark in M. Night Shyamalan's The Village and starring in his upcoming thriller Lady in the Water. When asked if she is looking to be a movie star, the actress said, "I don't want for things that you can't control. I want to be the best actor that I can be. I want to be working in this business, so if that means being a movie star, fine. To me, being a movie star and celebrity is very different from being an actor." Lady in the Water opens nationwide on July 21. Spider-Man 3 opens May 4, 2007. —Tara DiLullo
Shyamalan Talks Disney Breakup
Director M. Night Shyamalan, speaking publicly for the first time about about his highly publicized breakup with Walt Disney Co. over the making of the upcoming Lady in the Water, tried to put a nice face on the controversy and even left open the possibility of working with Disney again in an interview with SCI FI Wire. Michael Bamberger's upcoming new book, The Man Who Heard Voices: Or, How M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on a Fairy Tale, details the director's falling-out with Disney after executives there declined to finance the film.
"They are good people," Shyamalan said in an interview in New York over the weekend about the Disney executives who made the decision. "The success of the four movies [The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs and The Village that Shyamalan made for Disney] has allowed me the freedom to never deal with that conversation that I had with them and that I want to have in the future with them. For me, I felt like this would be a great fit for that company: an eccentric, childlike, adult imagination kind of thing, but it was not the right time or the right movie."
An excerpt of Bamberger's book, which appeared in the July 14 issue of Entertainment Weekly, reported that Shyamalan was so upset by the Disney executives' feedback and lack of understanding and faith in Lady in the Water that he left a rancorous dinner meeting in tears. Shyamalan confirmed the report and explained, "We did have a parent/child relationship in a great way. It was coming from a little bit of a parental place, and I appreciate that from them. But sometimes you just have to go, 'I have to go to college. I gotta go do my thing. I'll be back. Don't worry.' It was also that there was a person I was going to make this movie for, and that was Alan Horn [president and chief operating officer of Warner Brothers Entertainment Inc., which is releasing Lady]. He was always someone that has been right there and connected to my movies. So I took it to him. I said, 'Do you get this?'"
Shyamalan said that Bamberger's book changed focus shortly after the Disney relationship deteriorated. "His was supposed to be a book about the fifth movie at Disney," Shyamalan said. "I remember calling him and saying, 'You are not going to believe this.' I was really worried, but the movie, the book, that whole time period, was really a huge, giant act of faith for me. You put yourself at great, great risk. I shook hands with . There was no contract with him. The reason was that he wrote me a very moving letter as a human being, and ... this guy was true to the soul of the person that wrote that letter. Lady was, the same way, a leap of faith. I went, 'I've got to get up from the table, and I'm going to go find somebody. I think somebody is going to believe in it.' What's nice about [the book] is that people can see the struggle, because the struggle is there in all of [my movies]. It's a torturous process to make personal movies. It's this weird thing that I am doing, making personal films that get released in a blockbuster capacity. It's not [a dynamic] that I contrived. It is naturally the sum of the elements of how I think." Lady in the Water opens nationwide on July 21. —Tara DiLullo
[b]Story Reveals Four 2 Hints
Tim Story, the Fantastic Four director who is readying the upcoming sequel film, told fans on his MySpace.com blog that the movie will feature a few surprises, including a new flying "Fantasticar."
"I've been going crazy prepping this thing," Story wrote. "Just got back from Vancouver, which is of course where we will be filming the movie, and things are shaping up. It's the hard part of the phase where I have to make the ... 's work. Even with 100-plus million [dollars], there's never enough money. Looking at the plan for the new Baxter Building interior, and it's going to be hot. We're going more high-tech, and we're giving Reed Richards [Ioan Gruffudd] and the gang more gadgets this time around. The '4' logo will be everywhere as we are used to seeing it. They are a corporation now."
Story added: "I'm going to use some looks that have been inspired from more recent comics, like in 'The Ultimate Extinction' and a little from the 'Ultimate Fan Four' series. I know what you're thinking: 'Kirby, Kirby, Kirby!' [Marvel Comics writer Jack Kirby] There will be much props given to Kirby throughout the movie."
Story added that he's excited about is the Fantasticar, the superhero quartet's new vehicle. "It's coming, guys, in all its glory," Story said. "Wait until you see it. It's going to split in pieces and all that. Johnny [Chris Evans] and Ben [Michael Chiklis] fight over who should fly it. All the fun you expect."
Payne: Four 2 Will Do More
Don Payne, who is writing the upcoming Fantastic Four sequel movie, confirmed to SCI FI Wire the previously reported news that the follow-up to the superhero hit will prominently feature the Silver Surfer, herald of the planet-devouring Galactus. "That's the worst-kept secret in town," Payne said in an interview while promoting his latest project, the superhero romantic comedy My Super Ex-Girlfriend. "The Silver Surfer will be in it. The Fantasticar will be in it. We're just trying to make it more exciting and funnier, and, you know, we're trying to top the first one."
Payne (The Simpsons) said that the second Fantastic Four adventure presents numerous opportunities, as so much of the first film was devoted to establishing the characters and introducing the Fantastic Four universe. Now, for example, there will be more time given over to developing Fantastic Four leader Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd), aka Mr. Fantastic. "I think people know the characters now," Payne said. "They know the tone a little bit better. Origin stories are always hard to get off the ground, and we're going to be up and running. I think the one thing I really want to do is make Reed Richards, that character, smarter and tougher. He's the leader. I think Ioan did a great job [in the first film], but I think he could have had more stuff to play as the leader. Reed Richards has his nerdy side, but he ultimately has to make some tough choices." The Fantastic Four sequel will begin production later this summer with an eye toward a June 15, 2007, release. —Ian Spelling
Alba Looks At Eye
Lionsgate is picking up the Cruise/Wagner-produced remake of the Hong Kong supernatural horror movie The Eye out of turnaround from Paramount and is negotiating with Jessica Alba to star and French helmers David Moreau and Xavier Palud to direct, Variety reported. The movie will shoot this winter.
The Eye is a thriller about a cornea transplant recipient who sees disturbing images in the mirror that send her on a quest to find out what happened to the eye's previous owner. The original was made in Hong Kong by Thai directing brothers Danny and Oxide Pang.
Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner persuaded Paramount to buy the remake rights in 2002 and got close to making it there with Renee Zellweger. When Zellweger dropped out, the project lost its momentum and the studio put it into turnaround.
News of the Lionsgate pickup comes as Cruise/Wagner's deal nears its expiration at Paramount, and speculation has the pair eyeing other studios.
Alba is in talks to make The Eye her next picture after the Fantastic Four sequel. Moreau and Palud, who last directed the French thriller Ils, will make The Eye their first U.S. picture.
McShane Channels Al In Panda
English actor Ian McShane, who voices Captain Hook in the upcoming animated sequel Shrek 3, told SCI FI Wire that the role led directly to an offer from DreamWorks Animation boss Jeffrey Katzenberg to voice a snow leopard in another of the studio's upcoming films, Kung Fu Panda. "Captain Hook, I think I've got one more session on that," McShane said in an interview in New York while promoting his latest film, Woody Allen's fantasy comedy Scoop. "The snow leopard in Kung Fu Panda with Jack Black, we've got to start that yet. They've not done the script on that yet."
McShane is a veteran character actor whose genre credits include Space: 1999, The Fantastic Journey, Babylon 5: The River of Souls and The Twilight Zone. He's perhaps best known these days for his award-winning role as the ruthless Al Swearengen on the HBO series Deadwood. It was that role that apparently caught the attention of the Kung Fu Panda team when they developed the character they hoped McShane would play.
"It's a lot of fun," McShane said of doing animated films. "You go in there, and you have 15 animators looking at you, these 15 sort of nerdy guys with glasses. You're doing your bit, and you're like, 'What am I doing here?' You feel like you're the animal behind the cage in a zoo. But it's lovely. When I finished the first session on Captain Hook, Katzenberg called me up and said, 'We want you to come in meet us and talk to us about doing this Kung Fu Panda.' And I went to DreamWorks, their animation place, in Glendale [Calif.]. Gorgeous, like a campus, isn't it? They call it nerd heaven, don't they? What they had done, though, was great. They'd taken a sequence from the first Deadwood show, some dialogue where I beat Trixie [Paula Malcomson] up in the first episode, and they've animated this leopard with the same voice. And they said, 'There, you see, we can do this.' I don't think that will be on the DVD." Shrek 3 will be released in 2007, with Kung Fu Panda likely to follow in 2008.
New Mom Jolie Joins Panda
Angelina Jolie has chosen her first post-baby project, signing on to voice a character in DreamWorks Animation's Kung Fu Panda, Variety reported. Jolie joins Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman, Jackie Chan, Lucy Liu and Ian McShane in the computer-animated film.
Jolie will voice Tigress, one of the "furious five" martial-arts masters who help train Po (Black) to become Kung Fu Panda.
Scheduled for release in May 2008, Kung Fu Panda is about a lowly waiter in a noodle restaurant whose shape doesn't lend itself to kung fu fighting.
Foxx Sees The Power Of Duff
Jamie Foxx and his manager, Jaime Rucker King, will produce The Power of Duff, joining Marc Platt, who already has been developing the fantasy feature film via his Marc Platt Productions, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Foxx and King will help develop the drama, which Foxx is eyeing as a possible starring vehicle.
Power has been a hot property at Universal, which won the script in a bidding war last year, paying $900,000 against $1.25 million. The script attracted Russell Crowe and Ron Howard at one point, as well as Tom Hanks.
Written by Stephen Belber, Power follows a Rochester, N.Y., TV news anchor who, after the death of his father, begins praying aloud for things to happen while reading the evening news. When his prayers start coming true, it ignites controversy about whether he's a prophet, a pundit or a charlatan.
Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Krause Cast In Lost Room
SCI FI Channel announced that it has cast Peter Krause (Six Feet Under) as the star of its upcoming limited series The Lost Room, slated for late 2006. The series is scheduled to begin shooting in Albuquerque, N.M., on July 19. Richard Hatem (Supernatural) will executive-produce. Krause co-stars with Elle Fanning, the sister of Dakota Fanning (Steven Spielberg Presents Taken). SCI FI made the announcement at the Television Critics Association summer press tour in Pasadena, Calif., on July 13.
Krause plays Joe Miller, a homicide detective who discovers a key that contains unimaginable power and that is only one of several seemingly mundane objects with powers that others would do anything to possess. Elle Fanning plays Miller's daughter, who vanishes inside a motel room that is the locus of power.
Meanwhile, SCI FI announced that it has given a green light to Painkiller Jane, a 22-episode series centering on a female superhero with uncanny healing abilities. Based on the comic book by Jimmy Palmiotti and Joe Quesada, the series has not been cast yet, but is slated to premiere in January 2007.
Warner Adapting Locke Lamora
Warner Brothers has tapped the Hageman brothers to adapt author Scott Lynch's fantasy epic The Lies of Locke Lamora, Variety reported. Michael De Luca and Julie Yorn are producing for the studio.
Locke Lamora, the first of a seven-book series, hit the stands earlier this summer in the United Kingdom and United States to glowing reviews.
The storyline revolves around the adventures of a likable con artist as he and his band of followers, the Gentlemen Bastards, navigate the Venice-like city of Camorr.
It's the second Warners project for Kevin and Dan Hageman. They recently adapted the book Carpe Demon: Adventures of a Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom for 1492 Pictures, which is producing for the studio.
SCI FI Unveils New Slate
SCI FI Channel announced a development slate of new series and miniseries from producers including Mark Burnett (Survivor), Ben Edlund (The Tick) and Lynda Obst (Contact) at the Television Critics Association summer press tour in Pasadena, Calif., on July 13.
The new miniseries is Outpost, from executive producer Obst, which centers on a group of space explorers in the near future who discover an ancient artifact buried beneath the surface of an alien planet. Eric Jendresen (Band of Brothers) wrote the miniseries, which is produced by astronomer David Grinspoon.
The new series include Devil's Advocate, from executive producer Burnett, a one-hour conspiracy thriller from executive producer/writer Jonas McCord (Earth: Final Conflict), about a theology professor who finds himself in the world of secret societies, religious espionage and genetic research. He is hired by a corporation to form a team of "devil's advocates" to explore bizarre cases.
From Edlund comes Witch Doctor, a comedic drama that centers on a man who finds himself endowed with amazing healing powers, which opens him up to a magical world.
The other new series is Stoner, from Jeff Kline (Jackie Chan Adventures), which takes place in an alternate-reality Los Angeles where superheroes actually exist. It centers on a slacker who is mistakenly thrust into the limelight as a superhero.
SCI FI also announced three new late-night series in development: George Noory, centered on the overnight radio talk-show host of Coast to Coast AM; Alien Invasion, a computer-animated comedy from Dave Goetsch (3rd Rock From the Sun); and Prove It, a lighthearted panel discussion hosted by Mark DeCarlo (Curb Your Enthusiasm).
Keys To Unlock Bell Remake
Grammy-winning singer Alicia Keys and producing partner-manager Jeff Robinson have signed a multiyear first-look film production deal at Disney, with her first movie a remake of the 1958 film Bell Book and Candle, with Keys to play the witch role originated by Kim Novak, Variety reported. She'll produce with Robinson
Keys and Robinson said they will develop live-action and animated projects at their company, Big Pita, Little Pita, with Keys participating as producer and actor and the banner spearheading soundtrack and music supervision. The duo's TV production company is called Big Pita.
They chose Bell Book and Candle as a starting vehicle after Robinson watched the original and saw potential for Keys.
Tekken: Dark Resurrection Due
Namco Bandai Games America announced that Tekken: Dark Resurrection for the PSP is ready for manufacture and will hit stores on July 25. The latest installment in the hit series introduces two new characters, Lili and Dragunov, who will battle returning classic Tekken characters, including Armor King, Jin, Heihachi and Yoshimitsu, the company said
Tekken: Dark Resurrection will double the customizable items seen in Tekken 5 and include minigames such as Tekken Bowling and Gold Rush. A new feature allows fans to play their friends using just one game. The new title also includes a "ghost" mode.
Shrek 3 Casts Ninja Princesses
DreamWorks Animation has announced the voice cast for Shrek the Third, which will include an elite, ninja-like strike force of fairy-tale princesses voiced by Amy Sedaris as Cinderella, Amy Poehler as Snow White, Maya Rudolph as Rapunzel and Cheri Oteri as Sleeping Beauty, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The third installment in the satirical animated franchise is set for release May 18, 2007, the trade paper reported.
Organized by Princess Fiona, the princesses' underground resistance movement fends off a coup d'etat by Prince Charming (Rupert Everett) in the land of Far, Far Away.
Also joining the hit animated comedy's cast are Ian McShane as Captain Hook, John Krasinski as Sir Lancelot and Monty Python veteran Eric Idle as Merlin the magician.
The film's main roles again will be voiced by Mike Myers (Shrek), Cameron Diaz (Princess Fiona), Eddie Murphy (Donkey) and Antonio Banderas (Puss in Boots). Justin Timberlake will voice King Arthur, aka Artie.
Shrek the Third is being directed by Chris Miller, co-directed by Raman Hui, produced by Aron Warner and executive-produced by Andrew Adamson and John H. Williams.
Warner Fans A Firestorm
Warner Brothers has bought the film rights to Firestorm, the first volume in David Klass' young-adult Caretaker Trilogy, Variety reported. The studio has set it up with Basil Iwanyk's Thunder Road to produce. Warner has the right to option the two additional books in the SF action-adventure series.
Firestorm revolves around a seemingly normal high-school senior who finds himself at the center of an epic battle that's being fought both now and a thousand years in the future. The fate of Earth hangs in the balance.
Klass is an author and a screenwriter. He has penned more than 30 screenplays, including Kiss the Girls and the Walking Tall remake. His 13 novels include You Don't Know Me, which has been published in 18 languages, and Dark Angel.
Prodigy To Be Adapted
Intrepid Pictures has purchased Dave Kalstein's SF novel Prodigy and hired him to adapt it into a screenplay, with production targeted for next year, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Intrepid will present the thriller to Rogue Pictures as part of its five-year, first-look deal with the Focus Features genre arm.
The story, set in the near future, centers on an elite prep school that promises to turn teenagers into geniuses through a drug and diet regimen for a hefty half-million-dollar tuition. When several alumni turn up dead, the school's impoverished valedictorian, on scholarship, is assigned to investigate the murders, leading him to a fellow student who might be the victim of a cover-up.
Focus and Rogue are owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Manzarek Rocks Snake Moon
Rock legend Ray Manzarek ( http://www.raymanzarek.us/ ), keyboardist of The Doors, told SCI FI Wire that his new novel, Snake Moon, is a story of the supernatural set during the Civil War. "It's a story of forbidden love and man's madness, greed, desire and lust," Manzarek said in an interview.
Manzarek said that the novel began life as a screenplay written with his co-writer, Rick Valentine, and film producer Rick Schmidlin. "We wrote a script, a ghost story set in the Civil War," Manzarek said. " Cold Mountain had come out just when we finished the script and started shopping it around. ... Well, Civil War movies were dead after Cold Mountain; no one wanted to know anything about it, even if it was a low-budget [film]. So the two Ricks and I had done too much work on it to just let it go, and I said to Valentine, 'Hey, I want to novelize this. I'm going to turn this into a novel. This is too good to just drop.' So that's what I did. I took the script and sat down at home and began the process of turning that into a novel. So some of the verbiage is Rick Valentine's, and most of it is mine."
Although Manzarek is best known as a musician, he is no stranger to writing. Manzarek attended UCLA Film School, where he met The Doors' lead singer, Jim Morrison, and previously published an autobiography called Light My Fire: My Life With the Doors, as well as the rock novel The Poet in Exile. "[Snake Moon] is my third book, and my second novel, so I'm used to [writing]," he said. "It all comes out of scriptwriting. I've written scripts, [and] story and dialogue and description are all in the film scripts. ... It's not difficult to go from writing a script to writing a novel."
What's exciting about writing a novel is that the author disappears into it, Manzarek said. "You journey into that time and place that you're writing about," he said. "For instance, when I was writing Light My Fire: My Life With the Doors, I would relive in my mind's eye those experiences with The Doors. And in Snake Moon, I was there. I was in 1863. I was in the Civil War, and I was with those people, walking with them, the two main characters who go on this journey. I was following them, and I was with the women when the evil Yankees came down south and did bad things to [them]. I was there and watching it. I was eating with them and drinking with them, and I was carousing and I was insane with them. That's the fun of writing a novel: You leave yourself and walk with the characters."
Manzarek is currently researching a new novel, which he described as "a story of mystical thought in ancient Egypt," adding: "It's about Akhenaten, the pharaoh of the 18th dynasty." —John Joseph Adams
[b]Nightmares Scares Up Ratings
The TNT anthology Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King scared up strong ratings in its July 12 debut, finishing number one and number two in basic cable for the night with back-to-back episodes, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The first installment of the anthology, William Hurt's "Battleground," drew 5.2 million total viewers at 9 p.m. Its 18-49 and 25-54 demographic totals were the highest a scripted cable series has seen year-to-date, topping a mark set last week by the new USA Network drama Psych.
A second Nightmares episode at 10 p.m., "Crouch End," reached 4.8 million. Nightmares & Dreamscapes is a limited series that will air for the next three weeks on Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET.
Henson Helms Talk-Free Nightmare
Brian Henson—who directed the "Battleground" episode of TNT's limited anthology series Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King—told SCI FI Wire that one of his biggest challenges was creating an hour's worth of television with virtually no dialogue. "I got a call from [producer] Bill Haber, who said, 'I'm in a horrible situation. I have the most wonderful script, but it's impossible to shoot, [but] would you read it anyway?'" Henson recalled in an interview. "Even though I thought it was going to be impossible to make, I was still very intrigued about doing it."
Based on a short story by King, "Battleground" centers on professional hit man Jason Renshaw (William Hurt), who successfully murders the chief executive of a major toy company only to face a life-and-death battle of his own when a box of toy soldiers suddenly comes to life.
Henson worked closely with writer Richard Christian Matheson to create a story that could be told without dialogue, a bold step for any made-for-television project. "When I first talked to Richard about it, his first draft had some dialogue," Henson said. "But once Renshaw was in his apartment, there was no reason for dialogue. So he came up with the idea that it would be cool to do the whole thing with no dialogue. The general broadcasters' attitude is that every TV production needs to play like radio. You have to assume that your audience is cooking dinner while they're watching your show, so they need to hear every story point coming out of somebody's mouth, and I was really impressed that TNT was daring enough to say, 'No, this will be cool!'"
Henson added: "'Battleground' is based on a nine-page short story, and the adaptation is this wonderfully intimate piece, where you're almost trapped inside the head of this kind of psychotic character, as we're watching everything he does over this one-day period of time. Richard and I ended up probably rewriting everything that happens in that movie two or three times to figure out how to do it all."
Sharp-eyed viewers may notice a few subtle references to the 1970s TV movie Trilogy of Terror, written by Matheson's father, award-winning novelist and screenwriter Richard Matheson. But Henson insisted he wasn't trying to imitate the work of director Dan Curtis in that piece. "I'm a big fan of Trilogy of Terror, but what I was trying to do was a more '80s style of directing, with static cameras and clean compositions, where the movements of the lead actor are very dominating in frame, because there isn't a lot else going on. It's clean, almost sterile sometimes, in its visual presentation in order to put more emphasis on the character of Renshaw." "Battleground" debuted commercial-free at 9 p.m. ET/PT on July 12, with an encore July 13. Nightmares & Dreamscapes will air Wednesdays at 9 p.m. —Joe Nazzaro