fulltimer56
10-02-2006, 10:13 PM
NEWS OF THE WEEK FOR OCT. 02, 2006
(Of course "redsun" beat SciFi to this story!)
Downey Is Iron Man
Robert Downey Jr. has been cast as Tony Stark in Jon Favreau's Iron Man movie for Marvel Studios, Variety reported.
The movie, based on the classic Marvel Comics character, is set for release by Paramount in May 2008. It will be the first to be self-financed by Marvel.
Downey will play Stark, a wealthy industrialist who invents a high-tech suit of body armor that gives him super powers when he is kidnapped.
In the comics, Stark was an alcoholic, a trait that will undoubtedly draw public comparisons with Downey's own struggles with substance abuse, the trade paper reported. But Marvel production president Kevin Feige told the trade paper that the first Iron Man movie won't deal with Stark's alcohol problems, though it would likely come up in potential sequels.
The first film will deal with Stark's invention of the Iron Man suit and his conflicted past as a weapons inventor. Principal photography on "Iron Man" is set to begin in February.
Microsoft, Jackson Game Partners
Microsoft announced that it is partnering with King Kong director Peter Jackson and his writing partner, Fran Walsh, to create the next Halo video game and a second as-yet-undetermined game. Jackson and Walsh, who are producing an upcoming movie based on the Halo game franchise, will work with Bungie Studios on the next Halo title.
In addition, in collaboration with Microsoft Game Studios, Jackson and Walsh are creating Wingnut Interactive, which is described as a world-class interactive entertainment studio fusing the strength of Microsoft's technology and interactive entertainment experience with the creative and imaginative excellence of the Wingnut Interactive team.
"Microsoft has built an amazing living canvas with Xbox 360 and Xbox Live, which allows the storytellers of our time to express themselves in a new medium. They have fundamentally changed how people think about games," Jackson said in a statement. "My vision, together with Microsoft Game Studios, is to push the boundaries of game development and the future of interactive entertainment. From a moviemaker's point of view, it is clear to me that the Xbox 360 platform is the stage where storytellers can work their craft in the same way they do today with movies and books, but taking it further with interactivity."
The Halo movie will be directed by Neill Blomkamp, under the WingNut Films banner, for Universal Pictures and Twentieth Century Fox. (Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.)
Meanwhile, Microsoft Game Studios announced Halo Wars, an all-new real-time strategy game based on the Halo universe, created exclusively for the Xbox 360 by Ensemble Studios (Age of Empires). Halo Wars places the player in command of human URNS armies as they deploy for mankind's first deadly encounter with the enemy Covenant forces.
Pan Gets Oscar Boost
Guillermo del Toro's fantasy horror film Pan's Labyrinth will represent Mexico in this year's foreign-language film Oscar race, Variety reported.
Picturehouse, which picked up North American rights at Sundance for close to $6 million, will release the Spanish-language drama Dec. 29 in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago before expanding to 35 other markets on Jan. 12, 2007.
Ivana Baquero stars in the movie as a little girl whose fantasy world allows her to cope with the harsh realities of post-civil-war Spain. Del Toro, who also wrote the screenplay, based the movie's fantasy characters and sets on his own sketches.
Producers of the Mexican-Spanish co-production include Mexican helmer Alfonso Cuaron, Tequila Gang's Bertha Navarro, Frida Torresblanco of Esperanto Filmoj and Alvaro Augustin of Spain's Estudios Picasso.
Pan's Labyrinth premiered at Cannes, where it competed for the Palme d'Or and received a 22-minute standing ovation.
Del Toro Reveals Hellboy 2 Hints
Guillermo del Toro, who is readying Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, told SCI FI Wire that the sequel to 2004's Hellboy will feature killer robots and a new character, the spectral B.P.R.D. agent Johann Kraus, but will eliminate Rupert Evans' Agent Myers, the only character not drawn from Mike Mignola's Hellboy comics series. As for the plot, del Toro likened it to his upcoming historical fantasy film Pan's Labyrinth.
"The idea is, in a strange way, not very different from Pan's Labyrinth," del Toro said in a telephone interview on Sept. 28. "It's a clash between the real world and the fantasy world, you know? And how the world of humans is destroying, eroding, imagination."
Del Toro said the sequel will bring back most of the main characters, including Ron Perlman's big red demon, Selma Blair's pyrokinetic Liz Sherman and Doug Jones' amphibious Abe Sapien. "Yeah, actually, everybody will be back, except Agent Myers, ... the only non-comic-book-based character of the first one," del Toro said. "And we're bringing in Johann Kraus, the ectoplasmic agent from the comics." In the comics, Kraus is a disembodied spirit with psychic abilities who maintains form by wearing a containment suit and is an active member of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense.
Another well-known character from the comics, Roger the Homunculus, may appear in the film, but only briefly, del Toro added. "We will only see him in the background, in the corridor, like we did the first time," he said. "We played with the idea of bringing him in, but in a strange way, ... Roger ... in the comics is not very removed from Hellboy's plight in the first movie, which is he's essentially a very human soul trapped in a very brutal body. So I think ... Mike Mignola and I both felt, in writing the story, that it was too similar."
As for the robots? The won't be like the killer robotized gorillas in the comics. "There will be killer robots, period," del Toro said with a laugh. "Gorilla-sized, but not gorillas."
Hellboy 2: The Golden Army is slated to begin shooting in April in Budapest and London for Universal Studios. Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM. —Patrick Lee, News Editor
Hellboy Spawns Toys, Comics
Dark Horse Deluxe will release comics and toys based on the upcoming Hellboy Animated DVD release in late 2006, the company announced. The Sword of Storms, a new animated version of Mike Mignola's Hellboy comics franchise, is being produced by Starz Media and released on DVD by Anchor Bay.
Inspired by Tad Stones and Jeff Matsuda, the look of the Hellboy Animated series differs from the Mignola comics with its contemporary look, the company said.
Dark Horse Deluxe will take its design cues from the animated film in its release of two full-size limited-edition statues, both sculpted by Tony Cipriano, which will appear on store shelves just before the holidays. The first, Hellboy, features the muscular red demon in his billowing trench coat, posed with his gun ready to fire. The second statue will depict Hellboy's amphibious confidant, Abe Sapien.
In early 2007, the company will release an original digest-size comic drawn in the animated style, a boxed set of three 4-inch PVC figures, the first in a series of mini-busts and sculptural refrigerator magnets. The busts are sculpted by Tim Bruckner. Gentle Giant Studios created the PVC figures and magnets. Dark Horse plans to update the line with new releases throughout 2007.
Blade Gets The Spike
Spike TV confirmed to SCI FI Wire reports that its original series Blade has been canceled. "Yes, that's true," a Spike representative said in an interview on Sept. 29. "It won't be renewed for a second season. I can tell you that Spike TV was very happy with the creative part of Blade. The cast, the actual production. We absolutely enjoyed working with New Line and [executive producer] David Goyer, [writer] Geoff Johns. But honestly, the network was disappointed with the audience turnout and the ratings. But I can tell you that New Line is going to be issuing a DVD of the entire season." No date was announced for the DVD.
The statement confirmed rumors first posted by co-star Jill Wagner on her MySpace.com page, http://www.myspace.com/jillwagner according to a report on the THEOcracy Web site. http://theocracy.wordpress.com/2006/09/28/blade-gets-staked/ The post in which Wagner (Krista Starr) reports the news is only visible to Wagner's friends. The news was also reported on Ain't It Cool News. http://www.aintitcool.com/node/30228
The series was quietly put to sleep after the end of its first 13-episode season. The show was based on the Blade movies and the Marvel Comics character, with Kirk "Sticky" Jones playing the title character. Wagner played his counterpart, a former soldier who becomes a vampire but struggles to retain her humanity.
Exclusive 300 Video Posted
An exclusive SCI FI Wire behind-the-scenes video from the upcoming film 300 has gone live on the SCI FI Pulse broadband video network, featuring creature-shop supervisor Mark Rappaport and others discussing special makeup to create the fantastical movie's characters.
The movie is based on Frank Miller's graphic novel about the 480 B.C. Battle of Thermopylae, in which Leonidas, the king of Sparta, led his small army against the advancing Persians; the battle is said to have inspired the creation of the world's first democracy. The film stars Gerard Butler as Leonidas. Directed by Zack Snyder, 300 opens March 2007.
Tamblyn, Gellar Reunite In Grudge 2
Amber Tamblyn, who stars in the upcoming sequel film The Grudge 2, told SCI FI Wire that she was attracted to the film in part for the chance to work again with Sarah Michelle Gellar, the first film's star. Gellar reprises the role of Karen in a cameo; Tamblyn plays Karen's sister, Aubrey, who has come to Japan to help her sister and encounters the curse called The Grudge.
Tamblyn had previously worked with Gellar in an episode of Gellar's cult TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (2001's "All the Way"). In The Grudge 2, Tamblyn said, "I got to work with her for about a week. She's got a fairly pivotal part of the film as far [as] all the turning points. There are several different storylines that sort of collide. It was really fun to work with her. She'd spent a little time on soap operas, and I spent a lot of time on soap operas, and we both came from the TV world, her with Buffy and me with Joan [of Arcadia]."
Tamblyn added: "So we both like to shoot. We like to block. We like to talk. We both think and talk really fast. It was just really fun. I had a great time with her. She's hilarious. And she remembered me from the episode of Buffy, though I'd met her a couple of times before that, too. Anytime we met up with each other at dinner she'd just give me a hug and whisper, 'I'm so happy you're doing this.'" The Grudge 2 opens nationwide on Oct. 13. —Ian Spelling
Tamblyn Praises Grudge Helmer
Amber Tamblyn, who stars in director Takashi Shimizu's upcoming supernatural sequel The Grudge 2, told SCI FI Wire that the Japanese director impressed her in every way possible. Shimizu created and directed the Japanese Ju-On series of horror films and directed both the English-language remake The Grudge and the sequel. Tamblyn (TV's Joan of Arcadia) plays Aubrey, a young woman who must venture alone to Japan to help her sister, the first film's heroine, Karen (Sarah Michelle Gellar), who's been overtaken by the deadly curse called the Grudge.
"Shimizu-san and I talked extensively about ideas," Tamblyn said in an interview. "He was a really big fan of The Haunting, so when my dad [Haunting star Russ Tamblyn] came to Japan he was ecstatic, over the moon. He was really excited. We talked a lot about having this film be a lot more like the original version of The Haunting and not the god-awful remake, where it becomes much more of a psychological film, much more about psychology and trickery and really drawing the audience into a place where, when you drop a bomb on them, it's absolutely terrifying. It's not just a gore-fest all the way through. I think that was a very important element to Shimizu-san, to maintain that integrity."
Tamblyn added: "And then, on top of that, he doesn't like to use CGI. That was one of the coolest things I found out. He really hates it. There is a little bit of it in the film, but as much as he could he refrained from that. Sometimes it would take a really long time to get a scene done because it'd be so much about the actor moving with the camera while getting Kayako [Takako Fuji] or someone else to come into the frame in a certain position. It all became very, very elemental within the scenes, to try to get it all right, which I thought was just so cool. Shimizu-san was like, 'I'm going to set this up and terrify people, and they're going to know that the actor was really in the room with this thing.' It's not like someone was paid a billion dollars to make these things on a computer." The Grudge 2 opens nationwide on Oct. 13. —Ian Spelling
Day Break Beats The Clock
Rob Bowman—co-executive producer of the upcoming ABC series Day Break and director of several of its episodes, including the pilot and the subsequent two shows—told SCI FI Wire that he's not sweating the timeline issues presented by the SF-ish plot. In the show, Brett Hopper (Taye Diggs), a narcotics cop who's been framed for murder, relives one fateful day—the day he's accused of the murder in question—over and over again.
"Within this discussion lies Hopper's daily urgency," Bowman said in an interview. "He knows that things happen initially at a certain time on that first repeat day, and so when he wakes up in the morning he's on a schedule to beat everybody to [the punch], to do whatever he's got to do. He's got to go back to the mailbox, and he's got to get that envelope before the SWAT guys show up. And if he gets held up in the morning somehow, and he's going to be late, well, he can't get the package today, so the package, whatever is in that manila envelope, might lead to some discoveries. But I think a lot of what grounds it [in reality] is Taye's performance. [Hopper] is an ordinary guy, a narcotics cop who's just trying to figure this out. There's a sobriety, I think, to all of the performances that keeps us grounded, because they're all real people dealing with it."
Bowman is best known for his work directing episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and The X-Files, as well as the feature films Reign of Fire and Elektra. About Day Break, he said, "We only have 42 and a half minutes to tell the whole story. And most of it is about Hopper's emotional state and his carrying over knowledge from the previous day. It's an action-thriller. I'd say it's short of science fiction because we're not saying that aliens are causing this or anything. It's short of science fiction, so it's got to be kept in the real world. But to me, the thing that's most powerful about it is the emotional value in it and the fact that [Hopper's girlfriend] Rita [Moon Bloodgood] dies, if he can't prevent it, every day. So you don't get caught up in a lot of the tiny details, although we're very, very careful about continuity. When we go back to the same place, we've got the same extras in place. We've got the pilot [episode] on set and know who was moving where. So I think for the scrutinizing viewer, the TiVo-ing viewer, they can go back and see that we're, ... I don't know if we're perfect, but we're sure trying hard to keep things identical in the repeat days so that there's some good water-cooler talk to be discussed." Day Break, which also stars Victoria Pratt and Adam Baldwin, will debut Nov. 15 on ABC. —Ian Spelling
Pratt: Don't Call Day Break SF
Victoria Pratt, who stars in ABC's upcoming surreal drama Day Break, told SCI FI Wire that she doesn't consider it a science fiction show. Day Break stars Taye Diggs as Brett Hopper, a narcotics cop who's been framed for murder, who relives the same day over and over again. Pratt (Mutant X) plays Andrea Battle, Hopper's partner.
"There is obviously an element of the unknown," Pratt said in an interview. "I guess it depends on what your definition of science fiction is. There is an element of the unknown, but nobody other than Hopper knows it. The rest of the characters, we're just living our lives completely oblivious to the fact that this day is repeating. So I just get up, and I do my thing. My day has changed because of information I've learned or because of things that happen around me, but in my character's eyes, I'm just waking up, and it's another day. Hopper is the only one who might wake up and think he's in the middle of a sci-fi show, but it's definitely not played for that. It's a mystery, really."
Pratt said that "the whole show is based on relationships." Hopper is a man dealing with several fractured relationships, and Battle's relationship with him is one of the most fractured. "We're partners, but there's a distance," she said. "He's been doing something that he hasn't been telling me about. I've been doing something that I haven't been telling him about. We've got secrets from each other. Ultimately it's his job to find a way to repair these relationships. So our relationship is a very interesting one, because there's obviously a closeness, a love that comes from protecting each other and watching each other's back, but as much as you care for a person, that's how much you can hurt them by withdrawing and by being secretive. So it's a very neat dynamic between the two of us."
Pratt added: "Most of my interactions are with Hopper and with Adam Baldwin's character, Chad Shelton, the head of internal affairs. My character is being investigated by internal affairs. So my career is kind of on the line, and I'm always doing things to endanger my career. They've explained to me that I'm a good person doing all the wrong things for all the right reasons. It's a really neat, neat line to walk." Day Break debuts Nov. 15 and will air Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT, the timeslot vacated by Lost, which takes a midseason break. —Ian Spelling
Pratt Battles Vamps In Blood
Victoria Pratt, who stars in the upcoming horror film Brotherhood of Blood, told SCI FI Wire that she enjoyed working with such SF and horror veterans as Sid Haig (House of the Dead 2), Ken Foree (Dawn of the Dead) and Jack Donner (Star Trek). "Poor Ken," Pratt said in an interview while promoting her upcoming ABC surreal TV series, Day Break. "I had to torture him. He was strapped onto this big table, and I spent the better part of a day straddling him and extracting his teeth. So it was a good time."
Pratt, who is best known for work on syndicated TV's Mutant X and Cleopatra 2525, is also joined in Brotherhood of Blood by Jason Connery and former Charmed co-star Wes Ramsey.
The film is written and directed by Michael Roesch and Peter Scheerer, who make their directing debuts after having written House of the Dead 2 and Alone in the Dark.
"It's a vampire movie," Pratt said. "I play a vampire hunter. It was fun. To my knowledge, it's the only vampire movie without a vampire bite. It gets a little bloody and gory. You can't have a vampire movie without blood and gore. Or maybe that'll be the next one. The film is about myself and my team of vampire hunters. We're trying to track down these bad guys and exterminate them." Brotherhood of Blood will likely receive a limited theatrical release before arriving on DVD later this year. —Ian Spelling
Shakespeare To Appear On Who
Russell T. Davies, executive producer of the BBC's hit SF drama Doctor Who, http://www.scifi.com/doctorwho/ told SCI FI Wire that the show's upcoming third season will again introduce a famous character from British history, in this case the author of Hamlet and King Lear. "William Shakespeare [played by Dean Lennox Kelly] is going to be in one of the episodes," Davies revealed in an interview in London. "And I think it's going to be one of those lavish, gorgeous episodes. We're really traveling around the country to get the right locations, because Elizabethan streets are not easy to come by, so the whole crew is going on the road. We're spending three nights in the Globe Theatre, which is the replica of Shakespeare's Globe, so it's a really big shoot. I'm very excited about that one and the script by Gareth Roberts, which is just gorgeous, so that's going to be very exciting."
The third season, which began shooting in July in the United Kingdom, will also introduce the Judoon, a clan of galactic stormtroopers, Davies said. "But otherwise, it's just too early to go into it yet," he added, declining to discuss other season-three spoilers.
The third season will bring back David Tennant as the Doctor, pairing him with a new companion, medical student Martha Jones, played by Freema Agyeman, who replaces Billie Piper's Rose Tyler. According to Davies, the relationship between the Doctor and Martha is very different from the previous dynamic, which is evident from their first scenes together. "To the extent that, on a show like this, when you change the format and get somebody else in, you can be in a situation where you've got to have a few extra rehearsals and rewrites and stuff like that," Davies said. "But there's been none of that. I haven't had to be on set yet, but I watch the rushes every day, and I'm delighted with it. He's happy. She's happy, and it looks gorgeous."
Before the third season begins in the United Kingdom next year, Doctor Who will return with a new edition of its annual one-hour holiday special, titled "The Runaway Bride," which picks up the story directly from the final scene of season two's finale, "Doomsday." It guest-stars award-winning British comedy actress Catherine Tate as the title bride. Details of the special remain under wraps, although it will feature a spider creature that is reportedly the biggest animatronic monster in the show's history. "The Runaway Bride" will debut on BBC1, most likely on Christmas Day. Season two of Doctor Who, meanwhile, begins airing in the United States on SCI FI Channel starting Sept. 29 and will air Fridays at 8 p.m. ET/PT. —Joe Nazzaro
Tennant Talks New Who
Russell T. Davies, executive producer of Doctor Who, http://www.scifi.com/doctorwho/ and star David Tennant insist they didn't consciously set out to make the 10th Doctor different from his predecessors. Tennant (U.K. TV's Casanova) took over the role from Christopher Eccleston, who left at the end of season one; the second season of Doctor Who airs in the United States on SCI FI Channel starting Sept. 29 at 8 p.m. ET/PT.
"To be honest, I write them the same," Davies said at a press conference in the United Kingdom to promote Tennant's season-two debut. "I think you can get very hung up on those adjectives: He's foppish, quirky, eccentric, but it's better not to talk about it. I write it, and he does it, and somewhere in the middle of that, it sort of works. I think it's a big mistake to sit down and say, 'Oh, let's make him allergic to bananas and left-handed,' because you just end up with a list of adjectives and not a character at all. He is a man reborn in some ways, so he's got a lot of energy, and it's interesting to watch that."
For his part, Tennant agreed. "I think there's always a danger with characters that are this kind of open-ended of being self-conscious and cocky," he said. "I think you can trap yourself in 'Oh, he must always hop on a Tuesday,' and you're then left with this rather ugly mannerism that you have to stick with for however long you're doing this."
Davies said that the Doctor is always the Doctor. "And there is a huge amount that you just can't change," he added. "He goes into a situation and is the hero and takes the moral high ground as well, and you're just not going to get away from it. There's no point to trying to come up with differences."
But one character trait that was decided from the beginning was that Tennant would not use his own Scots accent as the Doctor. As Davies explained, "There's a line that got cut from the Christmas special, with Mickey saying that he [the Doctor] picked up Rose's accent; when you're very close to somebody, you pick up their accent, and lo and behold, out of the entire special, we didn't shoot that scene."
Whenever anybody asked that question, added Tennant, "We kept saying, 'Oh, it will all be explained in the Christmas special,' and that line was cut!"
A longtime Doctor Who fan himself, Tennant grew up with the series, not realizing that he'd one day be starring in it. "Tom Baker was the one that I grew to love as a kid, and Peter Davison as well," Tennant said. "I was 10 when he took over. I haven't really drawn from either of them, but I suppose having a knowledge of the show and what's gone before [helps], and, as Russell said, the Doctor is the Doctor, so everything that he's been before feeds into what he is now in terms of the character and probably the performance. I don't consciously think, 'Oh, I'll do this bit like Tom did!' But I'm sure it's all in there."
Tennant said that he actually heard from both actors during his first day of filming on "The Christmas Invasion," in which his Doctor is introduced. "One of our dressers on the show came fresh from [the British TV show] Monarch of the Glen and came clutching a little good-luck message from Tom Baker, which was very well received, and somebody else came in with a very nice message from Peter Davison, so I was very honored and very thrilled to hear from them," he said.
Season two of Doctor Who commences on SCI FI with "The Christmas Invasion." Doctor Who will air Fridays at 8 p.m. —Joe Nazzaro
Who's Sarah Jane Gets Own Show
Doctor Who http://www.scifi.com/doctorwho/ executive producer Russell T. Davies told SCI FI Wire that production is underway on the spinoff The Sarah Jane Adventures, featuring Elisabeth Sladen in her role as the title investigative journalist, Sarah Jane Smith, who is known to Who fans as the companion to the third and fourth Doctors in the 1970s. "It's a one-off special, not a pilot," Davies said in an interview in London. "And that will be followed by a series that starts filming in April. Right now, we have to balance Doctor Who and [spinoff series] Torchwood, but the most important thing we always have to remember is that Doctor Who is the mothership. Without that, we wouldn't exist, so we plan everything very carefully."
The one-hour Sarah Jane special will bring back the character, who was re-introduced in the second season of the current incarnation of Doctor Who in an episode titled "School Reunion" earlier this year on BBC1 in the United Kingdom. Smith was originally introduced in an earlier version of Doctor Who in 1973. "[We're] getting our team ready to make a one-hour Sarah Jane," Davies said. "After that, we'll start working on the scripts, and by next April we'll be ready for the series, so it's all dovetailed nicely."
In the new series, Sladen's Smith will appear with Yasmine Paige, who plays Smith's 13-year-old niece, Maria, and the two team up to battle alien forces they encounter around Britain, including the scheming Ms. Wormwood (played by Samantha Bond), who appears in the one-hour special.
One character that won't be appearing in the series is Smith's loyal robot dog, K-9, who last appeared in "School Reunion" and will also play a role in the special. "Sadly, we don't own the rights to K-9," Davies said. "[Writer] Bob Baker granted us the rights for 'School Reunion,' but he's been planning his own spinoff series for K-9 for the past 10-15 years. That series is in development right now with Jetix, so I hope it happens, and good luck to him."
The character of Sarah Jane Smith has recently appeared in a series of licensed audio adventures by Big Finish. But Davies said that he doesn't consider those appearances part of the Doctor Who canon. "Nothing we say in The Sarah Jane Adventures will contradict anything that ever happened in the Big Finish stories, but neither will we refer to them, because we're very different," Davies said. "Much as I love the Big Finish adventures, it's a very small and very specific audience, and if we tried to pick up from that, no one would have any idea what we're on about. Plus, those Sarah Jane stories were very much for adults, and this is a children's series, and it won't be shown in the Doctor Who timeslot either; it will be shown earlier. So it's a brand-new start. It's written as though if you never heard of Sarah Jane and don't know what's going on."
Doctor Who begins its third season in the United Kingdom on BBC1 early next year. The second season of Doctor Who begins airing in the United States on SCI FI Channel on Sept. 29 and will air Fridays at 8 p.m. ET/PT. The "School Reunion" episode will air on SCI FI on Oct. 11. —Joe Nazzaro
Lost's Garcia Looks Ahead
Jorge Garcia, who again plays Hurley in the upcoming third season of ABC's hit SF series Lost, told SCI FI Wire that last season taught him one lesson about the show's attitude toward women. "Yeah, sex kills girls," Garcia said with a laugh. He's joking, of course, referring to last season's deaths of Shannon (Maggie Grace), Ana-Lucia (Michelle Rodriguez) and poor Libby (Cynthia Watros), who was about to hook up with Garcia's character when she met her demise. "It seems whenever a cast member ends up having or thinking about sex, they sometimes die," Garcia said in an interview.
Lost's cast and crew have been tight-lipped about where the series is headed in its upcoming third season, which premieres Oct. 4. But Garcia does have a thought or two that he's willing to share. "There is going to be a lot about the Others in season three," Garcia said. "A lot more of their story as to what their interest is in that list and the people that they kept, which is exciting for me, because I enjoyed working with them. In the last few days of shooting we were all just kind of hanging out on the pier." As for Hurley? "Maybe we will see if he steps further into [the hero] role with the three of them gone,” Garcia said.
The "three of them" are Jack (Matthew Fox), Kate (Evangeline Lilly) and Sawyer (Josh Holloway), who were last seen as captives of the Others, while Hurley was sent back to the survivors' camp. This season, Garcia would like to see Hurley get more aggressive. "Yeah, he is more of a lover, not a fighter," Garcia said. "But, you know, at some point, push has to come to shove. ... It would be cool if Hurley became a little bit more of a leader in this new season."
The second-season finale hinted that the show's centerpiece plane crash may have been caused by a magnetic phenomenon on the island. The finale also revealed what happens when the lostaways fail to input Hurley's numbers into the computer. (The secret meaning of the numbers http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=1&id=38050 was revealed over the summer through the Lost Experience alternate-reality game.)
As for the next season, Garcia said: "I am wondering if the numbers going to zero might have brought some new plane down ... or run a ship up on the beach or who knows? A Bermuda Triangle-esque accident might have occurred because of the numbers. ... Actually, what I'm most excited about in season three is that whole situation with the outside world getting a blip that we are around. We showed up on radar somewhere."
That "blip" was the first time since Lost began that the series has featured a scene that didn't take place on the island or in a flashback. The blip happened "in the real world, so it's not a dream or purgatory or any of the more surreal type of environments that some people think the show might be in," Garcia said. "It puts us on a real plane. It puts us on Earth somewhere." Lost airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT. —Kathie Huddleston
Lost Is A Moving Target
Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis, co-executive producers of ABC's hit SF series Lost, told SCI FI Wire that they can't reveal secrets about the upcoming third season, but allowed that things will head in a different direction. If last year was the Year of the Hatch, "you might think of season three as the mystery of who the Others are," Horowitz said in an interview.
Michael Emerson, who played the mysterious Henry Gale, returns this season, along with several other characters from previous seasons, including some of the deceased characters. "Just because you're dead doesn't mean your story is over," Horowitz said with a laugh.
Kitsis added: "We think we're going to blow some minds this year."
The first six episodes of Lost will air starting next month, after which the show will take a 13-week break. The first self-contained pod of episodes constitutes a mini-season, which Horowitz said he hopes will get people excited about Lost's return in February. At that point the series will run straight through without reruns.
The producers consider themselves fans of the show who just got lucky enough to end up writing it. "As writers we come in every day ready to play," Kitsis said. "We don't take a day off. To us, Lost isn't a job. It's a lifestyle. It's a way of life. It's almost like we forget. You go to the newsstand, and you see it in Newsweek or in TV Guide, and you're like, 'Oh, right. It goes out.' We're just guys. We're just people that sit in [a] room and come up with stuff, and then it's like you forget that everyone sees it."
Horowitz added: "What's surprising to me is that the show can somehow still manage to be surprising, at least from our perspective."
"Lost is a moving target," Kitsis said. "It's always changing. It's always surprising, and it's always moving forward."
The moving target hasn't been harmed by continuing storylines that have derailed other shows. Kitsis and Horowitz admitted that DVDs and TiVos have helped people keep up. "We want to write Lost for as many people who want to watch it as possible," Horowitz said. "And obviously make it as accessible to as many people as possible. But also we want to reward any fan who has been there from the beginning, ... to sort of reward the longtime viewer in interesting and new ways." Lost returns Oct. 4 and airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT. —Kathie Huddleston
Sulu Beams Up In Fan Trek
George Takei has agreed to play his Star Trek character, Hikaru Sulu, in an episode of the fan-produced Star Trek: New Voyages http://www.newvoyages.com/ Web films, the Associated Press reported.
Takei's character will age 30 years, with flowing hair and leather clothes, in "World Enough and Time," a 50-minute fan production being filmed at an old car dealership in the Adirondacks in upstate New York.
James Cawley, a fan who lives in nearby Ticonderoga, has financed 15 years of such Star Trek episodes from his earnings as an Elvis impersonator and plays Capt. James T. Kirk in this episode. Cawley told the AP that the episode will be released in March as a free Internet download from his Web site.
Superman Fights China Pirates
To combat DVD piracy in China, CAV Warner Home Entertainment announced that it is distributing DVDs of Superman Returns there two months ahead of the rest of the world, Variety reported. The U.S. DVD release is slated for Nov. 28.
The Chinese disc's priced at between $1.80 and $2.80, comparable to pirated prices, with an encryption technology that makes it very difficult to produce a DVD-quality copy, the trade paper reported. It will be available in more than 8,000 outlets, thousands of which had previously sold only illegally copied Hollywood films.
Pirate DVDs of hit movies are frequently on sale in China within hours of, or indeed long before, their legal equivalents in the West.
CAV Warner Home Entertainment, a joint entertainment distribution venture between Warner Home Video and China Audio Video, said it had released Superman's latest incarnation on Mandarin language-only DVDs.
Jones, Weta Signed On Four 2
The Hollywood Reporter confirmed that Doug Jones will provide performance and movement references for the Silver Surfer in the upcoming sequel film The Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and that New Zealand's Weta Digital will provide the character's visual effects for the Fox movie.
Jones will take part in a process similar to that in which Andy Serkis portrayed Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The voice casting of Silver Surfer has yet to be determined, the trade paper reported.
Weta (King Kong) has developed an advanced computer-generated-animation process that employs motion-capture techniques updated to add further dimensionality to the liquid-metal hero.
In Fantastic Four lore, Silver Surfer is the herald to a cosmic being known as Galactus, an entity who devours worlds. Known for his silver skin and surfboard-like vehicle, Silver Surfer travels the galaxy in search of worlds for Galactus to consume. When he arrives on Earth and decides it will suit his master, the Fantastic Four are called in.
Jones is widely known for his performance and mime-like work under prosthetics. He has become a regular player in the oeuvre of director Guillermo del Toro, who previously cast Jones in 1997's Mimic and 2004's Hellboy. Jones also co-stars in del Toro's upcoming Pan's Labyrinth, in dual roles as Pan and the villainous Pale Man. Labyrinth is set to open Dec. 29.
Jones also is set to reprise his role as Abe Sapien in the upcoming Hellboy sequel, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, which is set to begin production in April.
Open's Messing Gets Animated
Debra Messing, who voices a park ranger in the upcoming animated film Open Season, told SCI FI Wire that animators modeled her skinny, red-haired character after the former Will & Grace star. "Oh, yes, she was red-headed as soon as I accepted the part" three years ago, Messing said in an interview. "They made it for me."
Messing explained: "I came into it about a year and a half into their process. So they had just finished doing the renderings of the look of it. They had pictures up all over the place of the animation itself, of the valley and then some of the different characters as well, and they had some of the script. But, for the most part, when I went in there, I didn't have a script to use. They just pitched the film to me verbally and said that these were the relationships and so on."
Messing didn't think the feature animation role would take as much time as it did, but she didn't mind not having to look her best. She was pregnant for some of the taping and went to the studio in sweatpants and without makeup. "I didn't think that I would be going in quite as often" as she did, she said. "Again, this was my first time [doing a major animated role], and so everything was a first for me. I thought that I was just going to go in and say my lines and that would be it. But the way that they worked is that I would go in, and we would put some of the things down, and then they would have Ashton [Kutcher] come in and put some of the things down, and Martin [Lawrence]. And then they would start to edit things together and see what was working and what wasn't working. So they would sort of construct it and then redefine it as it went along. There were scenes or parts of scenes that we did several times because they had changed the approach to a scene on the other side of that one. So it was really interesting to see the fine-tuning at the very end of this." Open Season opens nationwide on Sept. 29. —Mike Szymanski
Open Star Found Inner Bear
Martin Lawrence, who voices a bear named Boog in the upcoming animated Open Season, told SCI FI Wire he had to figure out how to be natural and still have a bear voice. "You know what, I just tried it and threw the voice out there, and they said, 'You're right there. You don't need to do much more than that,'" Lawrrence said in an interview. "So I didn't have to try to over-exaggerate him or under-exaggerate him. I just had to keep him right there in the center. And the great thing was that they were there to let me [know] whether I was on point or not."
Boog is a pampered bear who gets released back into the wilderness by a park ranger voiced by Debra Messing. Messing's character had to show Boog how to roar, so Messing shared in Lawrence's bear practice. "I found that I have a natural and robust roar that's there and very accessible," Messing said with a laugh.
For Lawrence, it was a spontaneous roar. "I just tried it on the spot," he said. "Whether they used it or not I'm not sure, but it was cool to do."
Messing said that getting the right voice was like doing acting training in a theater class. "No matter what, when you walked into that room it's inspiring, and the whole process of playing became just that," she said. "I was never worried about anyone judging me and saying, 'Oh, that was awful.' Everything was just, 'OK, let's try something else.' It was almost like going back to graduate school and being in a theater-games class, where it was like, 'Oh, let's try this.'"
Lawrence said he wanted to be realistic as a bear, but not become too scary. "What I liked [about] it was the fact that they could put my voice into a big bear and hopefully make him likable and lovable and energetic and fun," he said.
Open Season, from Sony Pictures Animation, also stars Gary Sinise, Ashton Kutcher, Patrick Warburton, Billy Connolly, Jon Favreau, Jane Krakowski and Georgia Engel. It opens Sept. 29 in regular theaters and in IMAX 3-D. —Mike Szymanski
Open Is More Animated
Creators of Sony Pictures Animation's Open Season told SCI FI Wire that the movie makes use of a new style of computer animation, called "squash and stretch," which allows characters to look more realistic as they fall or get smashed against a wall.
"Squash and stretch is based on the idea that, instead of a rigid skeletal structure, characters have the ability to squash and stretch in exaggerated fashion so that even the motion of the film is caricatured," said animator Jill Culton, who co-directed the feature with Roger Allers.
Producer Michelle Murdocca added: "We created these line and shape tools that were totally unique and were the brainchild of Jill Culton."
The new technique allows the characters to be more malleable in ways that have never been seen before in 3-D computer animation, said Michael Ford, the character setup supervisor. "Basically, we are taking arms and pulling them way out, or squishing faces, like when the rabbits get smashed up against the garage window," Ford said.
Supervising animator Chris Hurtt pointed out that the technique greatly enhanced the animation of Boog, the giant grizzly bear voiced by Martin Lawrence. "When Boog is falling from the cliff, we wanted to show his fur and his fat jiggling in the wind," Hurtt said. "Before we had this tool at our disposal, this shot would have been more static. Now you can see his fat arm rippling under his fur. It adds a measure of believability and life when the flesh and fur are actually moving."
The visual-effects team on Open Season won Oscars for their visual effects on Spider-Man 2 and the short film ChubbChubbs and earned nominations for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Hollow Man, Stuart Little and Starship Troopers.
Other voices in the animated film include Debra Messing, Ashton Kutcher, Patrick Warburton, Billy Connolly, Jon Favreau, Jane Krakowski and Georgia Engel. The film is scheduled for release on Sept. 29. —Mike Szymanski
Open Actors Worked Solo
Debra Messing and Martin Lawrence, two of the voice stars of the upcoming animated movie Open Season, told SCI FI Wire that their first starring roles in an animated feature were "unnerving" and "scary." "I never had his voice to play off of, which was really shocking," Messing said in an interview about working with Lawrence. In fact, she didn't even meet Lawrence until the day of the interview with SCI FI Wire. "I never met him until two minutes ago in the hall, which is the other thing," she added. "That was the thing that was so bizarre, and it really makes it all that much more impressive what the editors and the animators and the sound people [do]. They make it seem as if we're all just there in the room playing with each other, and it never happened. We were individually in there one at a time, and then they do it all with their technical brilliance."
In Open Season, Messing plays a park ranger named Beth who has raised a grizzly bear named Boog (Lawrence) from a cub, but has to release him into the wild. Messing had done a small animated part in Garfield before, but this marked her first major toon role.
"The whole process of working in animation at first is so intimidating and scary, because you have no one to act opposite, and so much of it is just having courage to try different things and make yourself look like an idiot and putting your entire trust and faith in other people's hands who are going to put it together to make it funny or tender or what have you," Messing added. "At first that was kind of scary and daunting, and then very quickly that became thrilling and liberating. I just really fell in love with the whole thing of rolling out of bed in my sweatpants, not having to put on makeup, not having to brush my hair and walking into a studio and having all of these people who are so excited about this project and passionate and playful."
Lawrence's Boog ends up befriending a mule deer named Elliot, voiced by Ashton Kutcher. "I didn't have nothing to work off of," Lawrence said. "I didn't even meet Ashton until a couple of weeks ago, and so we were never in the room together. ... The hardest thing about it was that we would do something for one month, and then come back four months later and then have to pick up where we left off and all of that. That was the hard part. But the directors, Jill [Culton] and Roger [Allers], would constantly feed us everything that we needed to get back on track and get out energy where we needed it to be. So that was a lot of fun, and when I look at the movie and I see how me and Ashton's chemistry is together without having ever been in the room together, I'm amazed at what they have done." Open Season opens nationwide on Sept. 29. —Mike Szymanski
(Of course "redsun" beat SciFi to this story!)
Downey Is Iron Man
Robert Downey Jr. has been cast as Tony Stark in Jon Favreau's Iron Man movie for Marvel Studios, Variety reported.
The movie, based on the classic Marvel Comics character, is set for release by Paramount in May 2008. It will be the first to be self-financed by Marvel.
Downey will play Stark, a wealthy industrialist who invents a high-tech suit of body armor that gives him super powers when he is kidnapped.
In the comics, Stark was an alcoholic, a trait that will undoubtedly draw public comparisons with Downey's own struggles with substance abuse, the trade paper reported. But Marvel production president Kevin Feige told the trade paper that the first Iron Man movie won't deal with Stark's alcohol problems, though it would likely come up in potential sequels.
The first film will deal with Stark's invention of the Iron Man suit and his conflicted past as a weapons inventor. Principal photography on "Iron Man" is set to begin in February.
Microsoft, Jackson Game Partners
Microsoft announced that it is partnering with King Kong director Peter Jackson and his writing partner, Fran Walsh, to create the next Halo video game and a second as-yet-undetermined game. Jackson and Walsh, who are producing an upcoming movie based on the Halo game franchise, will work with Bungie Studios on the next Halo title.
In addition, in collaboration with Microsoft Game Studios, Jackson and Walsh are creating Wingnut Interactive, which is described as a world-class interactive entertainment studio fusing the strength of Microsoft's technology and interactive entertainment experience with the creative and imaginative excellence of the Wingnut Interactive team.
"Microsoft has built an amazing living canvas with Xbox 360 and Xbox Live, which allows the storytellers of our time to express themselves in a new medium. They have fundamentally changed how people think about games," Jackson said in a statement. "My vision, together with Microsoft Game Studios, is to push the boundaries of game development and the future of interactive entertainment. From a moviemaker's point of view, it is clear to me that the Xbox 360 platform is the stage where storytellers can work their craft in the same way they do today with movies and books, but taking it further with interactivity."
The Halo movie will be directed by Neill Blomkamp, under the WingNut Films banner, for Universal Pictures and Twentieth Century Fox. (Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.)
Meanwhile, Microsoft Game Studios announced Halo Wars, an all-new real-time strategy game based on the Halo universe, created exclusively for the Xbox 360 by Ensemble Studios (Age of Empires). Halo Wars places the player in command of human URNS armies as they deploy for mankind's first deadly encounter with the enemy Covenant forces.
Pan Gets Oscar Boost
Guillermo del Toro's fantasy horror film Pan's Labyrinth will represent Mexico in this year's foreign-language film Oscar race, Variety reported.
Picturehouse, which picked up North American rights at Sundance for close to $6 million, will release the Spanish-language drama Dec. 29 in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago before expanding to 35 other markets on Jan. 12, 2007.
Ivana Baquero stars in the movie as a little girl whose fantasy world allows her to cope with the harsh realities of post-civil-war Spain. Del Toro, who also wrote the screenplay, based the movie's fantasy characters and sets on his own sketches.
Producers of the Mexican-Spanish co-production include Mexican helmer Alfonso Cuaron, Tequila Gang's Bertha Navarro, Frida Torresblanco of Esperanto Filmoj and Alvaro Augustin of Spain's Estudios Picasso.
Pan's Labyrinth premiered at Cannes, where it competed for the Palme d'Or and received a 22-minute standing ovation.
Del Toro Reveals Hellboy 2 Hints
Guillermo del Toro, who is readying Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, told SCI FI Wire that the sequel to 2004's Hellboy will feature killer robots and a new character, the spectral B.P.R.D. agent Johann Kraus, but will eliminate Rupert Evans' Agent Myers, the only character not drawn from Mike Mignola's Hellboy comics series. As for the plot, del Toro likened it to his upcoming historical fantasy film Pan's Labyrinth.
"The idea is, in a strange way, not very different from Pan's Labyrinth," del Toro said in a telephone interview on Sept. 28. "It's a clash between the real world and the fantasy world, you know? And how the world of humans is destroying, eroding, imagination."
Del Toro said the sequel will bring back most of the main characters, including Ron Perlman's big red demon, Selma Blair's pyrokinetic Liz Sherman and Doug Jones' amphibious Abe Sapien. "Yeah, actually, everybody will be back, except Agent Myers, ... the only non-comic-book-based character of the first one," del Toro said. "And we're bringing in Johann Kraus, the ectoplasmic agent from the comics." In the comics, Kraus is a disembodied spirit with psychic abilities who maintains form by wearing a containment suit and is an active member of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense.
Another well-known character from the comics, Roger the Homunculus, may appear in the film, but only briefly, del Toro added. "We will only see him in the background, in the corridor, like we did the first time," he said. "We played with the idea of bringing him in, but in a strange way, ... Roger ... in the comics is not very removed from Hellboy's plight in the first movie, which is he's essentially a very human soul trapped in a very brutal body. So I think ... Mike Mignola and I both felt, in writing the story, that it was too similar."
As for the robots? The won't be like the killer robotized gorillas in the comics. "There will be killer robots, period," del Toro said with a laugh. "Gorilla-sized, but not gorillas."
Hellboy 2: The Golden Army is slated to begin shooting in April in Budapest and London for Universal Studios. Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM. —Patrick Lee, News Editor
Hellboy Spawns Toys, Comics
Dark Horse Deluxe will release comics and toys based on the upcoming Hellboy Animated DVD release in late 2006, the company announced. The Sword of Storms, a new animated version of Mike Mignola's Hellboy comics franchise, is being produced by Starz Media and released on DVD by Anchor Bay.
Inspired by Tad Stones and Jeff Matsuda, the look of the Hellboy Animated series differs from the Mignola comics with its contemporary look, the company said.
Dark Horse Deluxe will take its design cues from the animated film in its release of two full-size limited-edition statues, both sculpted by Tony Cipriano, which will appear on store shelves just before the holidays. The first, Hellboy, features the muscular red demon in his billowing trench coat, posed with his gun ready to fire. The second statue will depict Hellboy's amphibious confidant, Abe Sapien.
In early 2007, the company will release an original digest-size comic drawn in the animated style, a boxed set of three 4-inch PVC figures, the first in a series of mini-busts and sculptural refrigerator magnets. The busts are sculpted by Tim Bruckner. Gentle Giant Studios created the PVC figures and magnets. Dark Horse plans to update the line with new releases throughout 2007.
Blade Gets The Spike
Spike TV confirmed to SCI FI Wire reports that its original series Blade has been canceled. "Yes, that's true," a Spike representative said in an interview on Sept. 29. "It won't be renewed for a second season. I can tell you that Spike TV was very happy with the creative part of Blade. The cast, the actual production. We absolutely enjoyed working with New Line and [executive producer] David Goyer, [writer] Geoff Johns. But honestly, the network was disappointed with the audience turnout and the ratings. But I can tell you that New Line is going to be issuing a DVD of the entire season." No date was announced for the DVD.
The statement confirmed rumors first posted by co-star Jill Wagner on her MySpace.com page, http://www.myspace.com/jillwagner according to a report on the THEOcracy Web site. http://theocracy.wordpress.com/2006/09/28/blade-gets-staked/ The post in which Wagner (Krista Starr) reports the news is only visible to Wagner's friends. The news was also reported on Ain't It Cool News. http://www.aintitcool.com/node/30228
The series was quietly put to sleep after the end of its first 13-episode season. The show was based on the Blade movies and the Marvel Comics character, with Kirk "Sticky" Jones playing the title character. Wagner played his counterpart, a former soldier who becomes a vampire but struggles to retain her humanity.
Exclusive 300 Video Posted
An exclusive SCI FI Wire behind-the-scenes video from the upcoming film 300 has gone live on the SCI FI Pulse broadband video network, featuring creature-shop supervisor Mark Rappaport and others discussing special makeup to create the fantastical movie's characters.
The movie is based on Frank Miller's graphic novel about the 480 B.C. Battle of Thermopylae, in which Leonidas, the king of Sparta, led his small army against the advancing Persians; the battle is said to have inspired the creation of the world's first democracy. The film stars Gerard Butler as Leonidas. Directed by Zack Snyder, 300 opens March 2007.
Tamblyn, Gellar Reunite In Grudge 2
Amber Tamblyn, who stars in the upcoming sequel film The Grudge 2, told SCI FI Wire that she was attracted to the film in part for the chance to work again with Sarah Michelle Gellar, the first film's star. Gellar reprises the role of Karen in a cameo; Tamblyn plays Karen's sister, Aubrey, who has come to Japan to help her sister and encounters the curse called The Grudge.
Tamblyn had previously worked with Gellar in an episode of Gellar's cult TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (2001's "All the Way"). In The Grudge 2, Tamblyn said, "I got to work with her for about a week. She's got a fairly pivotal part of the film as far [as] all the turning points. There are several different storylines that sort of collide. It was really fun to work with her. She'd spent a little time on soap operas, and I spent a lot of time on soap operas, and we both came from the TV world, her with Buffy and me with Joan [of Arcadia]."
Tamblyn added: "So we both like to shoot. We like to block. We like to talk. We both think and talk really fast. It was just really fun. I had a great time with her. She's hilarious. And she remembered me from the episode of Buffy, though I'd met her a couple of times before that, too. Anytime we met up with each other at dinner she'd just give me a hug and whisper, 'I'm so happy you're doing this.'" The Grudge 2 opens nationwide on Oct. 13. —Ian Spelling
Tamblyn Praises Grudge Helmer
Amber Tamblyn, who stars in director Takashi Shimizu's upcoming supernatural sequel The Grudge 2, told SCI FI Wire that the Japanese director impressed her in every way possible. Shimizu created and directed the Japanese Ju-On series of horror films and directed both the English-language remake The Grudge and the sequel. Tamblyn (TV's Joan of Arcadia) plays Aubrey, a young woman who must venture alone to Japan to help her sister, the first film's heroine, Karen (Sarah Michelle Gellar), who's been overtaken by the deadly curse called the Grudge.
"Shimizu-san and I talked extensively about ideas," Tamblyn said in an interview. "He was a really big fan of The Haunting, so when my dad [Haunting star Russ Tamblyn] came to Japan he was ecstatic, over the moon. He was really excited. We talked a lot about having this film be a lot more like the original version of The Haunting and not the god-awful remake, where it becomes much more of a psychological film, much more about psychology and trickery and really drawing the audience into a place where, when you drop a bomb on them, it's absolutely terrifying. It's not just a gore-fest all the way through. I think that was a very important element to Shimizu-san, to maintain that integrity."
Tamblyn added: "And then, on top of that, he doesn't like to use CGI. That was one of the coolest things I found out. He really hates it. There is a little bit of it in the film, but as much as he could he refrained from that. Sometimes it would take a really long time to get a scene done because it'd be so much about the actor moving with the camera while getting Kayako [Takako Fuji] or someone else to come into the frame in a certain position. It all became very, very elemental within the scenes, to try to get it all right, which I thought was just so cool. Shimizu-san was like, 'I'm going to set this up and terrify people, and they're going to know that the actor was really in the room with this thing.' It's not like someone was paid a billion dollars to make these things on a computer." The Grudge 2 opens nationwide on Oct. 13. —Ian Spelling
Day Break Beats The Clock
Rob Bowman—co-executive producer of the upcoming ABC series Day Break and director of several of its episodes, including the pilot and the subsequent two shows—told SCI FI Wire that he's not sweating the timeline issues presented by the SF-ish plot. In the show, Brett Hopper (Taye Diggs), a narcotics cop who's been framed for murder, relives one fateful day—the day he's accused of the murder in question—over and over again.
"Within this discussion lies Hopper's daily urgency," Bowman said in an interview. "He knows that things happen initially at a certain time on that first repeat day, and so when he wakes up in the morning he's on a schedule to beat everybody to [the punch], to do whatever he's got to do. He's got to go back to the mailbox, and he's got to get that envelope before the SWAT guys show up. And if he gets held up in the morning somehow, and he's going to be late, well, he can't get the package today, so the package, whatever is in that manila envelope, might lead to some discoveries. But I think a lot of what grounds it [in reality] is Taye's performance. [Hopper] is an ordinary guy, a narcotics cop who's just trying to figure this out. There's a sobriety, I think, to all of the performances that keeps us grounded, because they're all real people dealing with it."
Bowman is best known for his work directing episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and The X-Files, as well as the feature films Reign of Fire and Elektra. About Day Break, he said, "We only have 42 and a half minutes to tell the whole story. And most of it is about Hopper's emotional state and his carrying over knowledge from the previous day. It's an action-thriller. I'd say it's short of science fiction because we're not saying that aliens are causing this or anything. It's short of science fiction, so it's got to be kept in the real world. But to me, the thing that's most powerful about it is the emotional value in it and the fact that [Hopper's girlfriend] Rita [Moon Bloodgood] dies, if he can't prevent it, every day. So you don't get caught up in a lot of the tiny details, although we're very, very careful about continuity. When we go back to the same place, we've got the same extras in place. We've got the pilot [episode] on set and know who was moving where. So I think for the scrutinizing viewer, the TiVo-ing viewer, they can go back and see that we're, ... I don't know if we're perfect, but we're sure trying hard to keep things identical in the repeat days so that there's some good water-cooler talk to be discussed." Day Break, which also stars Victoria Pratt and Adam Baldwin, will debut Nov. 15 on ABC. —Ian Spelling
Pratt: Don't Call Day Break SF
Victoria Pratt, who stars in ABC's upcoming surreal drama Day Break, told SCI FI Wire that she doesn't consider it a science fiction show. Day Break stars Taye Diggs as Brett Hopper, a narcotics cop who's been framed for murder, who relives the same day over and over again. Pratt (Mutant X) plays Andrea Battle, Hopper's partner.
"There is obviously an element of the unknown," Pratt said in an interview. "I guess it depends on what your definition of science fiction is. There is an element of the unknown, but nobody other than Hopper knows it. The rest of the characters, we're just living our lives completely oblivious to the fact that this day is repeating. So I just get up, and I do my thing. My day has changed because of information I've learned or because of things that happen around me, but in my character's eyes, I'm just waking up, and it's another day. Hopper is the only one who might wake up and think he's in the middle of a sci-fi show, but it's definitely not played for that. It's a mystery, really."
Pratt said that "the whole show is based on relationships." Hopper is a man dealing with several fractured relationships, and Battle's relationship with him is one of the most fractured. "We're partners, but there's a distance," she said. "He's been doing something that he hasn't been telling me about. I've been doing something that I haven't been telling him about. We've got secrets from each other. Ultimately it's his job to find a way to repair these relationships. So our relationship is a very interesting one, because there's obviously a closeness, a love that comes from protecting each other and watching each other's back, but as much as you care for a person, that's how much you can hurt them by withdrawing and by being secretive. So it's a very neat dynamic between the two of us."
Pratt added: "Most of my interactions are with Hopper and with Adam Baldwin's character, Chad Shelton, the head of internal affairs. My character is being investigated by internal affairs. So my career is kind of on the line, and I'm always doing things to endanger my career. They've explained to me that I'm a good person doing all the wrong things for all the right reasons. It's a really neat, neat line to walk." Day Break debuts Nov. 15 and will air Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT, the timeslot vacated by Lost, which takes a midseason break. —Ian Spelling
Pratt Battles Vamps In Blood
Victoria Pratt, who stars in the upcoming horror film Brotherhood of Blood, told SCI FI Wire that she enjoyed working with such SF and horror veterans as Sid Haig (House of the Dead 2), Ken Foree (Dawn of the Dead) and Jack Donner (Star Trek). "Poor Ken," Pratt said in an interview while promoting her upcoming ABC surreal TV series, Day Break. "I had to torture him. He was strapped onto this big table, and I spent the better part of a day straddling him and extracting his teeth. So it was a good time."
Pratt, who is best known for work on syndicated TV's Mutant X and Cleopatra 2525, is also joined in Brotherhood of Blood by Jason Connery and former Charmed co-star Wes Ramsey.
The film is written and directed by Michael Roesch and Peter Scheerer, who make their directing debuts after having written House of the Dead 2 and Alone in the Dark.
"It's a vampire movie," Pratt said. "I play a vampire hunter. It was fun. To my knowledge, it's the only vampire movie without a vampire bite. It gets a little bloody and gory. You can't have a vampire movie without blood and gore. Or maybe that'll be the next one. The film is about myself and my team of vampire hunters. We're trying to track down these bad guys and exterminate them." Brotherhood of Blood will likely receive a limited theatrical release before arriving on DVD later this year. —Ian Spelling
Shakespeare To Appear On Who
Russell T. Davies, executive producer of the BBC's hit SF drama Doctor Who, http://www.scifi.com/doctorwho/ told SCI FI Wire that the show's upcoming third season will again introduce a famous character from British history, in this case the author of Hamlet and King Lear. "William Shakespeare [played by Dean Lennox Kelly] is going to be in one of the episodes," Davies revealed in an interview in London. "And I think it's going to be one of those lavish, gorgeous episodes. We're really traveling around the country to get the right locations, because Elizabethan streets are not easy to come by, so the whole crew is going on the road. We're spending three nights in the Globe Theatre, which is the replica of Shakespeare's Globe, so it's a really big shoot. I'm very excited about that one and the script by Gareth Roberts, which is just gorgeous, so that's going to be very exciting."
The third season, which began shooting in July in the United Kingdom, will also introduce the Judoon, a clan of galactic stormtroopers, Davies said. "But otherwise, it's just too early to go into it yet," he added, declining to discuss other season-three spoilers.
The third season will bring back David Tennant as the Doctor, pairing him with a new companion, medical student Martha Jones, played by Freema Agyeman, who replaces Billie Piper's Rose Tyler. According to Davies, the relationship between the Doctor and Martha is very different from the previous dynamic, which is evident from their first scenes together. "To the extent that, on a show like this, when you change the format and get somebody else in, you can be in a situation where you've got to have a few extra rehearsals and rewrites and stuff like that," Davies said. "But there's been none of that. I haven't had to be on set yet, but I watch the rushes every day, and I'm delighted with it. He's happy. She's happy, and it looks gorgeous."
Before the third season begins in the United Kingdom next year, Doctor Who will return with a new edition of its annual one-hour holiday special, titled "The Runaway Bride," which picks up the story directly from the final scene of season two's finale, "Doomsday." It guest-stars award-winning British comedy actress Catherine Tate as the title bride. Details of the special remain under wraps, although it will feature a spider creature that is reportedly the biggest animatronic monster in the show's history. "The Runaway Bride" will debut on BBC1, most likely on Christmas Day. Season two of Doctor Who, meanwhile, begins airing in the United States on SCI FI Channel starting Sept. 29 and will air Fridays at 8 p.m. ET/PT. —Joe Nazzaro
Tennant Talks New Who
Russell T. Davies, executive producer of Doctor Who, http://www.scifi.com/doctorwho/ and star David Tennant insist they didn't consciously set out to make the 10th Doctor different from his predecessors. Tennant (U.K. TV's Casanova) took over the role from Christopher Eccleston, who left at the end of season one; the second season of Doctor Who airs in the United States on SCI FI Channel starting Sept. 29 at 8 p.m. ET/PT.
"To be honest, I write them the same," Davies said at a press conference in the United Kingdom to promote Tennant's season-two debut. "I think you can get very hung up on those adjectives: He's foppish, quirky, eccentric, but it's better not to talk about it. I write it, and he does it, and somewhere in the middle of that, it sort of works. I think it's a big mistake to sit down and say, 'Oh, let's make him allergic to bananas and left-handed,' because you just end up with a list of adjectives and not a character at all. He is a man reborn in some ways, so he's got a lot of energy, and it's interesting to watch that."
For his part, Tennant agreed. "I think there's always a danger with characters that are this kind of open-ended of being self-conscious and cocky," he said. "I think you can trap yourself in 'Oh, he must always hop on a Tuesday,' and you're then left with this rather ugly mannerism that you have to stick with for however long you're doing this."
Davies said that the Doctor is always the Doctor. "And there is a huge amount that you just can't change," he added. "He goes into a situation and is the hero and takes the moral high ground as well, and you're just not going to get away from it. There's no point to trying to come up with differences."
But one character trait that was decided from the beginning was that Tennant would not use his own Scots accent as the Doctor. As Davies explained, "There's a line that got cut from the Christmas special, with Mickey saying that he [the Doctor] picked up Rose's accent; when you're very close to somebody, you pick up their accent, and lo and behold, out of the entire special, we didn't shoot that scene."
Whenever anybody asked that question, added Tennant, "We kept saying, 'Oh, it will all be explained in the Christmas special,' and that line was cut!"
A longtime Doctor Who fan himself, Tennant grew up with the series, not realizing that he'd one day be starring in it. "Tom Baker was the one that I grew to love as a kid, and Peter Davison as well," Tennant said. "I was 10 when he took over. I haven't really drawn from either of them, but I suppose having a knowledge of the show and what's gone before [helps], and, as Russell said, the Doctor is the Doctor, so everything that he's been before feeds into what he is now in terms of the character and probably the performance. I don't consciously think, 'Oh, I'll do this bit like Tom did!' But I'm sure it's all in there."
Tennant said that he actually heard from both actors during his first day of filming on "The Christmas Invasion," in which his Doctor is introduced. "One of our dressers on the show came fresh from [the British TV show] Monarch of the Glen and came clutching a little good-luck message from Tom Baker, which was very well received, and somebody else came in with a very nice message from Peter Davison, so I was very honored and very thrilled to hear from them," he said.
Season two of Doctor Who commences on SCI FI with "The Christmas Invasion." Doctor Who will air Fridays at 8 p.m. —Joe Nazzaro
Who's Sarah Jane Gets Own Show
Doctor Who http://www.scifi.com/doctorwho/ executive producer Russell T. Davies told SCI FI Wire that production is underway on the spinoff The Sarah Jane Adventures, featuring Elisabeth Sladen in her role as the title investigative journalist, Sarah Jane Smith, who is known to Who fans as the companion to the third and fourth Doctors in the 1970s. "It's a one-off special, not a pilot," Davies said in an interview in London. "And that will be followed by a series that starts filming in April. Right now, we have to balance Doctor Who and [spinoff series] Torchwood, but the most important thing we always have to remember is that Doctor Who is the mothership. Without that, we wouldn't exist, so we plan everything very carefully."
The one-hour Sarah Jane special will bring back the character, who was re-introduced in the second season of the current incarnation of Doctor Who in an episode titled "School Reunion" earlier this year on BBC1 in the United Kingdom. Smith was originally introduced in an earlier version of Doctor Who in 1973. "[We're] getting our team ready to make a one-hour Sarah Jane," Davies said. "After that, we'll start working on the scripts, and by next April we'll be ready for the series, so it's all dovetailed nicely."
In the new series, Sladen's Smith will appear with Yasmine Paige, who plays Smith's 13-year-old niece, Maria, and the two team up to battle alien forces they encounter around Britain, including the scheming Ms. Wormwood (played by Samantha Bond), who appears in the one-hour special.
One character that won't be appearing in the series is Smith's loyal robot dog, K-9, who last appeared in "School Reunion" and will also play a role in the special. "Sadly, we don't own the rights to K-9," Davies said. "[Writer] Bob Baker granted us the rights for 'School Reunion,' but he's been planning his own spinoff series for K-9 for the past 10-15 years. That series is in development right now with Jetix, so I hope it happens, and good luck to him."
The character of Sarah Jane Smith has recently appeared in a series of licensed audio adventures by Big Finish. But Davies said that he doesn't consider those appearances part of the Doctor Who canon. "Nothing we say in The Sarah Jane Adventures will contradict anything that ever happened in the Big Finish stories, but neither will we refer to them, because we're very different," Davies said. "Much as I love the Big Finish adventures, it's a very small and very specific audience, and if we tried to pick up from that, no one would have any idea what we're on about. Plus, those Sarah Jane stories were very much for adults, and this is a children's series, and it won't be shown in the Doctor Who timeslot either; it will be shown earlier. So it's a brand-new start. It's written as though if you never heard of Sarah Jane and don't know what's going on."
Doctor Who begins its third season in the United Kingdom on BBC1 early next year. The second season of Doctor Who begins airing in the United States on SCI FI Channel on Sept. 29 and will air Fridays at 8 p.m. ET/PT. The "School Reunion" episode will air on SCI FI on Oct. 11. —Joe Nazzaro
Lost's Garcia Looks Ahead
Jorge Garcia, who again plays Hurley in the upcoming third season of ABC's hit SF series Lost, told SCI FI Wire that last season taught him one lesson about the show's attitude toward women. "Yeah, sex kills girls," Garcia said with a laugh. He's joking, of course, referring to last season's deaths of Shannon (Maggie Grace), Ana-Lucia (Michelle Rodriguez) and poor Libby (Cynthia Watros), who was about to hook up with Garcia's character when she met her demise. "It seems whenever a cast member ends up having or thinking about sex, they sometimes die," Garcia said in an interview.
Lost's cast and crew have been tight-lipped about where the series is headed in its upcoming third season, which premieres Oct. 4. But Garcia does have a thought or two that he's willing to share. "There is going to be a lot about the Others in season three," Garcia said. "A lot more of their story as to what their interest is in that list and the people that they kept, which is exciting for me, because I enjoyed working with them. In the last few days of shooting we were all just kind of hanging out on the pier." As for Hurley? "Maybe we will see if he steps further into [the hero] role with the three of them gone,” Garcia said.
The "three of them" are Jack (Matthew Fox), Kate (Evangeline Lilly) and Sawyer (Josh Holloway), who were last seen as captives of the Others, while Hurley was sent back to the survivors' camp. This season, Garcia would like to see Hurley get more aggressive. "Yeah, he is more of a lover, not a fighter," Garcia said. "But, you know, at some point, push has to come to shove. ... It would be cool if Hurley became a little bit more of a leader in this new season."
The second-season finale hinted that the show's centerpiece plane crash may have been caused by a magnetic phenomenon on the island. The finale also revealed what happens when the lostaways fail to input Hurley's numbers into the computer. (The secret meaning of the numbers http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=1&id=38050 was revealed over the summer through the Lost Experience alternate-reality game.)
As for the next season, Garcia said: "I am wondering if the numbers going to zero might have brought some new plane down ... or run a ship up on the beach or who knows? A Bermuda Triangle-esque accident might have occurred because of the numbers. ... Actually, what I'm most excited about in season three is that whole situation with the outside world getting a blip that we are around. We showed up on radar somewhere."
That "blip" was the first time since Lost began that the series has featured a scene that didn't take place on the island or in a flashback. The blip happened "in the real world, so it's not a dream or purgatory or any of the more surreal type of environments that some people think the show might be in," Garcia said. "It puts us on a real plane. It puts us on Earth somewhere." Lost airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT. —Kathie Huddleston
Lost Is A Moving Target
Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis, co-executive producers of ABC's hit SF series Lost, told SCI FI Wire that they can't reveal secrets about the upcoming third season, but allowed that things will head in a different direction. If last year was the Year of the Hatch, "you might think of season three as the mystery of who the Others are," Horowitz said in an interview.
Michael Emerson, who played the mysterious Henry Gale, returns this season, along with several other characters from previous seasons, including some of the deceased characters. "Just because you're dead doesn't mean your story is over," Horowitz said with a laugh.
Kitsis added: "We think we're going to blow some minds this year."
The first six episodes of Lost will air starting next month, after which the show will take a 13-week break. The first self-contained pod of episodes constitutes a mini-season, which Horowitz said he hopes will get people excited about Lost's return in February. At that point the series will run straight through without reruns.
The producers consider themselves fans of the show who just got lucky enough to end up writing it. "As writers we come in every day ready to play," Kitsis said. "We don't take a day off. To us, Lost isn't a job. It's a lifestyle. It's a way of life. It's almost like we forget. You go to the newsstand, and you see it in Newsweek or in TV Guide, and you're like, 'Oh, right. It goes out.' We're just guys. We're just people that sit in [a] room and come up with stuff, and then it's like you forget that everyone sees it."
Horowitz added: "What's surprising to me is that the show can somehow still manage to be surprising, at least from our perspective."
"Lost is a moving target," Kitsis said. "It's always changing. It's always surprising, and it's always moving forward."
The moving target hasn't been harmed by continuing storylines that have derailed other shows. Kitsis and Horowitz admitted that DVDs and TiVos have helped people keep up. "We want to write Lost for as many people who want to watch it as possible," Horowitz said. "And obviously make it as accessible to as many people as possible. But also we want to reward any fan who has been there from the beginning, ... to sort of reward the longtime viewer in interesting and new ways." Lost returns Oct. 4 and airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT. —Kathie Huddleston
Sulu Beams Up In Fan Trek
George Takei has agreed to play his Star Trek character, Hikaru Sulu, in an episode of the fan-produced Star Trek: New Voyages http://www.newvoyages.com/ Web films, the Associated Press reported.
Takei's character will age 30 years, with flowing hair and leather clothes, in "World Enough and Time," a 50-minute fan production being filmed at an old car dealership in the Adirondacks in upstate New York.
James Cawley, a fan who lives in nearby Ticonderoga, has financed 15 years of such Star Trek episodes from his earnings as an Elvis impersonator and plays Capt. James T. Kirk in this episode. Cawley told the AP that the episode will be released in March as a free Internet download from his Web site.
Superman Fights China Pirates
To combat DVD piracy in China, CAV Warner Home Entertainment announced that it is distributing DVDs of Superman Returns there two months ahead of the rest of the world, Variety reported. The U.S. DVD release is slated for Nov. 28.
The Chinese disc's priced at between $1.80 and $2.80, comparable to pirated prices, with an encryption technology that makes it very difficult to produce a DVD-quality copy, the trade paper reported. It will be available in more than 8,000 outlets, thousands of which had previously sold only illegally copied Hollywood films.
Pirate DVDs of hit movies are frequently on sale in China within hours of, or indeed long before, their legal equivalents in the West.
CAV Warner Home Entertainment, a joint entertainment distribution venture between Warner Home Video and China Audio Video, said it had released Superman's latest incarnation on Mandarin language-only DVDs.
Jones, Weta Signed On Four 2
The Hollywood Reporter confirmed that Doug Jones will provide performance and movement references for the Silver Surfer in the upcoming sequel film The Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and that New Zealand's Weta Digital will provide the character's visual effects for the Fox movie.
Jones will take part in a process similar to that in which Andy Serkis portrayed Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The voice casting of Silver Surfer has yet to be determined, the trade paper reported.
Weta (King Kong) has developed an advanced computer-generated-animation process that employs motion-capture techniques updated to add further dimensionality to the liquid-metal hero.
In Fantastic Four lore, Silver Surfer is the herald to a cosmic being known as Galactus, an entity who devours worlds. Known for his silver skin and surfboard-like vehicle, Silver Surfer travels the galaxy in search of worlds for Galactus to consume. When he arrives on Earth and decides it will suit his master, the Fantastic Four are called in.
Jones is widely known for his performance and mime-like work under prosthetics. He has become a regular player in the oeuvre of director Guillermo del Toro, who previously cast Jones in 1997's Mimic and 2004's Hellboy. Jones also co-stars in del Toro's upcoming Pan's Labyrinth, in dual roles as Pan and the villainous Pale Man. Labyrinth is set to open Dec. 29.
Jones also is set to reprise his role as Abe Sapien in the upcoming Hellboy sequel, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, which is set to begin production in April.
Open's Messing Gets Animated
Debra Messing, who voices a park ranger in the upcoming animated film Open Season, told SCI FI Wire that animators modeled her skinny, red-haired character after the former Will & Grace star. "Oh, yes, she was red-headed as soon as I accepted the part" three years ago, Messing said in an interview. "They made it for me."
Messing explained: "I came into it about a year and a half into their process. So they had just finished doing the renderings of the look of it. They had pictures up all over the place of the animation itself, of the valley and then some of the different characters as well, and they had some of the script. But, for the most part, when I went in there, I didn't have a script to use. They just pitched the film to me verbally and said that these were the relationships and so on."
Messing didn't think the feature animation role would take as much time as it did, but she didn't mind not having to look her best. She was pregnant for some of the taping and went to the studio in sweatpants and without makeup. "I didn't think that I would be going in quite as often" as she did, she said. "Again, this was my first time [doing a major animated role], and so everything was a first for me. I thought that I was just going to go in and say my lines and that would be it. But the way that they worked is that I would go in, and we would put some of the things down, and then they would have Ashton [Kutcher] come in and put some of the things down, and Martin [Lawrence]. And then they would start to edit things together and see what was working and what wasn't working. So they would sort of construct it and then redefine it as it went along. There were scenes or parts of scenes that we did several times because they had changed the approach to a scene on the other side of that one. So it was really interesting to see the fine-tuning at the very end of this." Open Season opens nationwide on Sept. 29. —Mike Szymanski
Open Star Found Inner Bear
Martin Lawrence, who voices a bear named Boog in the upcoming animated Open Season, told SCI FI Wire he had to figure out how to be natural and still have a bear voice. "You know what, I just tried it and threw the voice out there, and they said, 'You're right there. You don't need to do much more than that,'" Lawrrence said in an interview. "So I didn't have to try to over-exaggerate him or under-exaggerate him. I just had to keep him right there in the center. And the great thing was that they were there to let me [know] whether I was on point or not."
Boog is a pampered bear who gets released back into the wilderness by a park ranger voiced by Debra Messing. Messing's character had to show Boog how to roar, so Messing shared in Lawrence's bear practice. "I found that I have a natural and robust roar that's there and very accessible," Messing said with a laugh.
For Lawrence, it was a spontaneous roar. "I just tried it on the spot," he said. "Whether they used it or not I'm not sure, but it was cool to do."
Messing said that getting the right voice was like doing acting training in a theater class. "No matter what, when you walked into that room it's inspiring, and the whole process of playing became just that," she said. "I was never worried about anyone judging me and saying, 'Oh, that was awful.' Everything was just, 'OK, let's try something else.' It was almost like going back to graduate school and being in a theater-games class, where it was like, 'Oh, let's try this.'"
Lawrence said he wanted to be realistic as a bear, but not become too scary. "What I liked [about] it was the fact that they could put my voice into a big bear and hopefully make him likable and lovable and energetic and fun," he said.
Open Season, from Sony Pictures Animation, also stars Gary Sinise, Ashton Kutcher, Patrick Warburton, Billy Connolly, Jon Favreau, Jane Krakowski and Georgia Engel. It opens Sept. 29 in regular theaters and in IMAX 3-D. —Mike Szymanski
Open Is More Animated
Creators of Sony Pictures Animation's Open Season told SCI FI Wire that the movie makes use of a new style of computer animation, called "squash and stretch," which allows characters to look more realistic as they fall or get smashed against a wall.
"Squash and stretch is based on the idea that, instead of a rigid skeletal structure, characters have the ability to squash and stretch in exaggerated fashion so that even the motion of the film is caricatured," said animator Jill Culton, who co-directed the feature with Roger Allers.
Producer Michelle Murdocca added: "We created these line and shape tools that were totally unique and were the brainchild of Jill Culton."
The new technique allows the characters to be more malleable in ways that have never been seen before in 3-D computer animation, said Michael Ford, the character setup supervisor. "Basically, we are taking arms and pulling them way out, or squishing faces, like when the rabbits get smashed up against the garage window," Ford said.
Supervising animator Chris Hurtt pointed out that the technique greatly enhanced the animation of Boog, the giant grizzly bear voiced by Martin Lawrence. "When Boog is falling from the cliff, we wanted to show his fur and his fat jiggling in the wind," Hurtt said. "Before we had this tool at our disposal, this shot would have been more static. Now you can see his fat arm rippling under his fur. It adds a measure of believability and life when the flesh and fur are actually moving."
The visual-effects team on Open Season won Oscars for their visual effects on Spider-Man 2 and the short film ChubbChubbs and earned nominations for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Hollow Man, Stuart Little and Starship Troopers.
Other voices in the animated film include Debra Messing, Ashton Kutcher, Patrick Warburton, Billy Connolly, Jon Favreau, Jane Krakowski and Georgia Engel. The film is scheduled for release on Sept. 29. —Mike Szymanski
Open Actors Worked Solo
Debra Messing and Martin Lawrence, two of the voice stars of the upcoming animated movie Open Season, told SCI FI Wire that their first starring roles in an animated feature were "unnerving" and "scary." "I never had his voice to play off of, which was really shocking," Messing said in an interview about working with Lawrence. In fact, she didn't even meet Lawrence until the day of the interview with SCI FI Wire. "I never met him until two minutes ago in the hall, which is the other thing," she added. "That was the thing that was so bizarre, and it really makes it all that much more impressive what the editors and the animators and the sound people [do]. They make it seem as if we're all just there in the room playing with each other, and it never happened. We were individually in there one at a time, and then they do it all with their technical brilliance."
In Open Season, Messing plays a park ranger named Beth who has raised a grizzly bear named Boog (Lawrence) from a cub, but has to release him into the wild. Messing had done a small animated part in Garfield before, but this marked her first major toon role.
"The whole process of working in animation at first is so intimidating and scary, because you have no one to act opposite, and so much of it is just having courage to try different things and make yourself look like an idiot and putting your entire trust and faith in other people's hands who are going to put it together to make it funny or tender or what have you," Messing added. "At first that was kind of scary and daunting, and then very quickly that became thrilling and liberating. I just really fell in love with the whole thing of rolling out of bed in my sweatpants, not having to put on makeup, not having to brush my hair and walking into a studio and having all of these people who are so excited about this project and passionate and playful."
Lawrence's Boog ends up befriending a mule deer named Elliot, voiced by Ashton Kutcher. "I didn't have nothing to work off of," Lawrence said. "I didn't even meet Ashton until a couple of weeks ago, and so we were never in the room together. ... The hardest thing about it was that we would do something for one month, and then come back four months later and then have to pick up where we left off and all of that. That was the hard part. But the directors, Jill [Culton] and Roger [Allers], would constantly feed us everything that we needed to get back on track and get out energy where we needed it to be. So that was a lot of fun, and when I look at the movie and I see how me and Ashton's chemistry is together without having ever been in the room together, I'm amazed at what they have done." Open Season opens nationwide on Sept. 29. —Mike Szymanski