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10-23-2006, 10:37 PM
NEWS OF THE WEEK FOR OCT. 23, 2006
Studios Abandon Halo Film
In a surprise move, both Universal and Fox have pulled out of their agreement to co-finance a movie version of Microsoft's Halo SF video game, Variety reported. Rumors had circulated that the studios were concerned over a budget that was rising above the original projected $135 million pricetag. But the filmmakers said the double defection came after Universal and Fox played hardball and unsuccessfully tried to get the filmmakers and Microsoft to reduce their profit participation, the trade paper reported.
The studios made the pay cut demand as an Oct. 15 deadline approached. On that day Microsoft was to have received the bulk of a promised $5 million up-front payday. The software giant also stood to receive 10 percent of gross revenues for rights to the game and a script by Alex Garland, the trade paper reported.
Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh were on board as executive producers. They denied through representatives rumors that the budget had ballooned to around $200 million, Variety reported. Mary Parent, Scott Stuber and Peter Schlessel are producers.
Microsoft is already in talks with other distribution partners. Prep work on the film continues. Most of the preproduction is being done at Jackson and Walsh's visual-effects studios in New Zealand, Weta Digital and Weta Workshop.
As word of the Universal and Fox exit spread, speculation centered around the inexperience of Halo director Neill Blomkamp, a 27-year-old first-time feature director.
Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM; on Oct. 19, NBC Universal announced plans to cut 700 employees, or 5 percent of its global workforce.
Batman 2 Prep Is Easier
Director Christopher Nolan—whose next film will be The Dark Knight, the sequel to last year's Batman Begins—told SCI FI Wire that the preproduction phase of the film has been easier this time around. "There are certain things that obviously you're not having to worry about and spend time on," Nolan said in an interview while promoting his current film, The Prestige, which opened Oct. 20. "We've already made the Batmobile. We already have the main members of the cast. So, yeah. But, frankly, the new film poses all kinds of new challenges, so it'll be just as tricky in its own way."
Nolan said he is conscious of the high expectations for the sequel based on the success of the first film, but isn't bothered by the pressure. "It's a pretty dumb thing of me to do, to go back and try and do it again," he said. "But [I] like the challenge. I just found the world and the characters pretty fascinating. And we felt that you just wanted to push on [with] the story, really. But it'll be a huge challenge. We were very happy with the way the first film worked out and then was perceived. So, yeah, it's an enormous risk. That's really what you have to be doing as a filmmaker, I think, is taking enormous risks."
Nolan said he is currently fine-tuning the latest draft of the script, written by his brother and frequent collaborator, Jonathan Nolan. The brothers previously collaborated on the Oscar-winning film Memento, as well as The Prestige. Until the script is finished, Nolan doesn't plan to be doing any casting beyond the role of the Joker, which recently went to Brokeback Mountain star Heath Ledger. "I haven't thought about casting at all," Nolan said. "Heath was a particular case in point, because he just became a possibility, and I jumped on that because he was the guy I needed. But I haven't finished the script yet. There'll be plenty of time for that." —Cindy White
Caine In Batman's Suit?
Michael Caine, who will reprise his role as Bruce Wayne's faithful butler Alfred in the next Batman film, The Dark Knight, told SCI FI Wire that he has made some suggestions to director Christopher Nolan about what he'd like to see his character do this time around. "I was talking to the widow of the man who wrote Batman, and she said that he wrote a marvelous scene that [we] should do in [our] next movie," Caine said in an interview while promoting his latest film, The Prestige. "She told me that he wrote a sequence where Batman was trying to get bad guys, and he wanted to use the butler dressed as Batman as a ruse, and then go back around behind him. So I said to Christopher—and I don't know whether he's going to use it, because he won't tell you anything about the script—but I mentioned this to him, because I thought that this was a great idea. I think that if he dresses me as Batman, it could be one of the funniest sequences in the history of movies."
Caine added, laughing, "Can you imagine what I would make out of that? Trying to get into the Batman suit and then running around the woods [while] he's going around the [other] way to try and get the bad guys? See, you're already laughing, and those films are very serious. My job is to bring the humor of the sort of ordinary person being in that situation, which is what I am."
Caine said that he hasn't read the Dark Knight script yet, despite repeated requests to writer-director Nolan, who also directed him in The Prestige. "I'm just waiting to get the script," Caine said. "Every time I ask him for it he says, 'I haven't finished it.' I know he's finished it, otherwise [Warner Brothers] wouldn't have given it the go-ahead."
Dark Knight Is Brotherly Effort
Jonathan Nolan, brother of director Christopher Nolan, told SCI FI Wire that Christopher is in the process of polishing the first draft of The Dark Knight, his follow-up to last year's Batman Begins. "We do discrete drafts," Jonathan Nolan said in an interview while promoting the latest Nolan brothers collaboration, The Prestige. "We tried at various points to write together, and that doesn't work. We both think of writing as a tortured and solitary process. And so I'll do my draft, but there's always a dialogue there, always conversations. I mean, he's right now fixing all my mistakes on The Dark Knight, and we're talking about it. And then I'll hopefully get back in there and do a little more work on that film. We sort of tend to bounce the script back and forth as complete drafts."
Jonathan Nolan rejected claims of nepotism, since he has been with his brother since the beginning as a writer on his breakout film, Memento. And although David Goyer wrote the definitive screenplay for Batman Begins, Jonathan Nolan worked as a consultant for a year and a half before the production began. "Sometimes it's tricky to figure out who the right guy for the material is," Jonathan Nolan said. "I worked on Batman Begins as a consultant for 18 months, so I have a pretty good familiarity with that character. One of the fun things is I didn't read a lot of comic books when I was a kid, but my brother, when I was 14, for my 14th birthday gave me a copy of The Dark Knight Returns. And 15 years later to the day we went to the premiere of Batman Begins."
In writing the script for the next Batman film, Jonathan Nolan said he went back through the character's history to familiarize himself with the source material. "The adaptation there is from 60 years' worth of unbelievably talented, creative people working on one character," he said. "So that's a really fun job, because you get to read thousands of comic books and sort of get to choose what's good and what's not good. And then you also get to sit around and say, 'All right, what would I like to do with this character who's been so well developed and such a rich sort of background?' That's a really, really fun job. I'd think we'd be more nervous about making a sequel to something, but with that character it really is so much fun to work on. Hard to mess up." —Cindy White
Hellboy 2 Nearly Green-Lighted
Guillermo del Toro—who directed the 2004 big-screen version of Hellboy, based on Mike Mignola's comic-book series—told SCI FI Wire that the long-gestating sequel, Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, is all but a "go" project. "It is officially a go, but we're still working on the budget to prove to the studio that we can do it for that number," del Toro said in an interview while promoting his upcoming film, Pan's Labyrinth. "It's a pretty low number for the size of movie we want to do. Adjusted for inflation, it's as low a budget as the first one, but the scale of it is about twice the first one."
Hellboy 2 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. It will also feature killer robots and a new character, the spectral B.P.R.D. agent Johann Kraus. "The heart of the film is that fantasy has been grounded by reality," del Toro said. "It's been ground to dust by reality. Hellboy is fighting for the humans, but he starts realizing that maybe not everything is right in the way that he does things. Everyone will be back—Ron, Selma, Doug—except for Agent Myers [Rupert Evans]." 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. —Ian Spelling
Del Toro Conjuring Witches
Pan's Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro told SCI FI Wire that he wants to make a more faithful film version of Roald Dahl's dark fantasy children's book The Witches, which was adapted for the screen once before, in 1990, by director Nicholas Roeg. "I liked a lot of the Roeg film, but I really, really disliked that the ending was changed, because I think the essence of the Dahl story is that the kid remains a mouse," said del Toro, who said The Witches is his favorite Dahl book. "Having said that, how the hell do I know that they won't change it on me again? They probably did that to Nicholas Roeg. So it may happen again. But I want to try."
In The Witches, a group of witches aims to rid England of all children, but their plot is thwarted by a resourceful little boy who won't give up, even after he's transformed into a tiny mouse.
Del Toro added: "Growing up, it was my favorite Dahl book. It was my favorite, because the witches represent adulthood. They represent the world. They represent all things that f--k up a kid. And I always thought it was great that the grandmother and the boy were essentially the same age and, therefore, were susceptible to witches that were in the guise of respectable old ladies. I thought Dahl has that subversive streak in him. It was there in his Unexpected tales, but it was also in his children's books. And much like H.H. Munro, Dahl has a very definitely sophisticated point of view on what the children's world is. That script is written. It's budgeted and awaiting a green light."
Del Toro added that he's got several other fantasy and horror projects on his plate that he hopes to produce and/or direct in the near future, among them The Coffin, Mountains of Madness, Dead Man and Left Hand of Darkness. Pan's Labyrinth opens in limited release on Dec. 29 and goes wide in January. —Ian Spelling
Pan's Del Toro Credits Cuarón
Guillermo del Toro, the Mexican-born writer and director of the upcoming fantasy film Pan's Labyrinth, told SCI FI Wire that his friend, countryman and fellow producer Alfonso Cuarón played a major behind-the-scene role in helping realize the Spanish-Mexican co-production. Young Spanish actress Ivana Baquero stars in the movie as Ofelia, a girl whose fantasy world allows her to cope with the harsh realities of post-civil war Spain. Del Toro (Hellboy, Cronos), who also wrote the screenplay, based the movie's fantasy characters and sets on his own exotic sketches.
"Well, originally, Alfonso was going to produce it with his partner, Jorge Vergara, in Mexico, and then Jorge dropped out," del Toro said in an interview. "But I really thought Alfonso had some good ideas on how to market the movie and get it out there. He said, 'Well, if you want, I will leave, and you can produce it yourself.' And I said, 'No, you know what? I truly value the fact that now I have a pretext to call you at ungodly hours of the morning and ask your opinion on things.'"
Del Toro added: "And sure enough, he was incredibly helpful in setting the movie up, getting Warner Brothers to pre-buy it, getting Picturehouse interested in it in preproduction. But beyond those nuts-and-bolts things, he was incredibly encouraging in just my doing this one in complete freedom, because I really needed to do my movie. To do that I needed my absolute freedom. It was urgent for me. He said, 'Look, go and do it exactly as you want to do it.'"
Cuarón, the director of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, visited del Toro once in Spain during preproduction, but not at all during the actual shoot, as he was busy directing his own film, the upcoming SF drama Children of Men. But Cuarón returned to the project at least a couple of times during the post-production phase. (The Spanish-language film, called El Laberinto del Fauno in that tongue, is subtitled in English for its North American release.)
"Every time we met it was crucial," del Toro said. "It's not the quantity of time, but the quality. I would come in in post, and I was nervous, and I would say, 'Would you watch the cut with me?' He'd watch the cut with me, and he loved it so much that I felt validated. He said to me, 'Why don't you move two or three sequences? Why don't you move them in this other order so that you have a fantasy one in the middle and blah blah.' And they were beautiful notes, beautiful notes. I think Alfonso is one of those friends who is better to have officially on the movie, because you can trouble him more." Pan's Labyrinth opens in limited release on Dec. 29 and goes wide in January. —Ian Spelling
Prestige Magical For Jackman
Hugh Jackman, who plays a magician in the supernatural thriller The Prestige, told SCI FI Wire that he became fascinated with stage magic while making the film. "I did love the stage stuff," he said in an interview. "I loved it all. I did a lot of work with [technical consultants and real-life magicians] Ricky Jay and Michael Weber on the style of performance, and I really modeled my character, in terms of style, on a guy called Channing Pollock, who was a magician of the '50s. ... But I enjoyed it a lot. And of course, without giving too much away, I don't know how much you can reveal, but we play a character that has a number of disguises, and then another character. And I really enjoyed that. Creating all those characters and those looks was terrific."
Jackman said he's always been interested in magic and had read a biography of Houdini just before beginning filming. "Maybe there's something serendipitous about that," he said. "I find the world fascinating, particularly ... this era, which is that Houdini era, because magicians were the movie stars, rock stars, of the day. And there was an incredible contract with the audience at that time. I don't know if you're aware, but in America, spiritualism was an even larger religion or way of thought than Christianity. So magicians were seen as very real kind of mediators between the other world and this world. And so people bought into the magician's shtick, really, whereas now they don't."
For the film, there was only one trick Jackman learned and performed himself on screen, one in which he makes a bullet disappear from his hand. "That one I did," he said. "But I have to have that particular bullet [laughs]. I couldn't do it with this [pen], for example." The Prestige opened Oct. 20. —Cindy White
Prestige's Bale Talks Jackman
Christian Bale, who stars opposite Hugh Jackman in the supernatural thriller The Prestige, told SCI FI Wire that the on-screen rivalry between the two main characters sometimes echoed the actors' behind-the-scenes relationship. "It was really interesting, because both of us absolutely sided with our characters," Bale said in an interview while promoting the film. "We would sit and have a brief talk about a scene before doing it. And, to me, it was very clear that my character had the sincerity, the substance, [and] was really talking the truth here. And his character was just talking a lot of crap. It was all this superficial nonsense. And then Hugh would kind of look at me and go, 'What the hell are you talking about? That ain't the case at all.' And then he gave me very good arguments about why his argument was absolutely fantastic, really nicely reasoned and [a] very almost altruistic argument, and why mine wasn't."
In The Prestige, which is set in London at the turn of the 20th century, Bale plays Alfred Borden, an ambitious magician from a working-class background who has great talent but little stage presence. Jackman's character, an American named Rupert Angier, relies more on showmanship to sell his illusions to an audience. The two enter into a bitter feud early in their careers, which grows into a mutual obsession over time.
"It was just really good casting," Bale said. "Hugh is a fantastic showman. He's a great singer and dancer. He's very used to the stage and very comfortable on the stage. I've only done one thing on stage in my life, and it is just not what drives me. I'm not as intrigued by theater as I am with film. So you had, just in Hugh and I, one very good natural performer and another one who was like, 'I ... really didn't know what I'm doing up here. I don't really know how to handle this.' And again, it was kind of 'no acting required.' It was ideal for the different roles we were playing."
Bale said that it was helpful to the actors to develop a friendly rivalry, which helped them better understand their characters in the film. "For me, the rivalry that I was focusing on more was just the knowledge of a more brilliant magician that a more brilliant showman was being considered to be the better talent," Bale said. "And his hatred of having to sell yourself in that way in order for people to understand. My character just doesn't understand why people can't see what he is doing is by far the best magic being performed at that time." The Prestige, directed by Christopher Nolan and also starring Scarlett Johannson, Michael Caine and David Bowie, opened Oct. 20. —Cindy White
Caine: Prestige Is Ingenious
Michael Caine, who reunites with Batman Begins director Christopher Nolan and star Christian Bale in The Prestige, told SCI FI Wire that his character represents the point of view of the audience. "I find that Christopher is extraordinarily clever," Caine said in an interview. "He's very clever and has put me in the middle, someone like us amongst all these extraordinary people, which is sort of the same type of thing that I did in Batman, where every time everything was going on in that movie you're going, 'What the hell?' Alfred said, 'What the hell is going on?' Alfred got all the laughs, and there weren't many laughs in Batman. But Alfred got all of the laughs, and the sympathies of the people were with him because he is us."
In The Prestige, Caine plays an ingenieur, a designer of magical effects who becomes a mentor to famed magician Rupert Angier, played by Hugh Jackman. "In a way, although he is a very different character [from Alfred], he is us in this," Caine said. "And you had these guys then, these engineers. You have to remember that those magicians of that time of Victorian England and Victorian America—Harry Houdini being one of them—they were the rock stars and the movie stars of the day. They were massive, massive stars, and these people who ran them were like Colonel Parker with Elvis, the guys behind the whole thing. That's what I am. He was never a magician, but he just had the moxie to make them machines."
Caine said he was thrilled to be working with Nolan again and that the director has made the most of his strengths as an actor. "The biggest magician of the lot is Christopher Nolan," Caine said. "The whole movie is one great big magic trick, which is what's fascinating about it. So you get these layers, and no one is what they seem. My daughters are going to the premiere in London, and they asked me what it was like, and I said, 'Well, my advice to you is don't go to the toilet, because when you come back you're going to be in trouble, because nothing—nothing—is what it seems. Except me.'" The Prestige opened Oct. 20. —Cindy White
Nolan: Prestige Was Tricky
Christopher Nolan, director and co-writer of the The Prestige, told SCI FI Wire that the film was structured to match the three stages of a magic trick. "The idea was always really to address ... magic from the point of view of not trying to show magic in the film and impress people with stage magic, because that can't work on film," Nolan said in an interview. "People are aware of camera trickery and all the rest. The idea was always to create a marriage of that function according to the principles of a magic trick, or a set of magic tricks. And that involved conforming to this three-act structure."
The film, based on the book by Christopher Priest, follows the careers of two magicians, played by Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman, who become obsessed with outdoing each other. Nolan, who wrote the script along with his brother, Jonathan, said that the book's use of different points of view and fractured narrative made it particularly difficult to adapt. "It was quite challenging to find the right structure," Nolan said. "It took a lot of time. We really spent years working on the script. And it required interlocking framing devices and interlocking voice-overs, combined with the notion of structuring using the three-act structure of the trick. Yeah, it took a long time. The key being the need to express multiple points of view purposefully and clearly. It was a difficult script to write."
Although Nolan doesn't reveal how the real magic tricks in the film are done, he does let the audience in on a few secrets by the end. "The real paradox, which is the paradox of magic—but this is to me what's interesting about the subject—is that, much as the audience wants to know the secret, the secret ultimately will be disappointing," he said. "That's the nature of magic. And that's, to me, the key thing which I'm trying to do in the film." The Prestige opened Oct. 20. —Cindy White
Jackman Defends The Fountain
Hugh Jackman, who stars in Darren Aronofsky's epic science-fiction love story The Fountain, told SCI FI Wire that he was disappointed to read news reports of audience members booing at a screening at the Venice Film Festival, when there were much more interesting stories that could have been written about the event. "The truth was, at that press screening, about 80 percent of the people gave it a standing ovation, and about 20 percent of the people booed," Jackman said in an interview while promoting his latest film, The Prestige. "And a fight began between the press. And two of them had to be pulled apart. And I thought, 'That's a great story. Why wasn't that story told?' That's exactly how the movie, I think, will be seen."
In The Fountain, Jackman plays a man in three different periods of history separated by 500 years who tries to save his ailing wife. Jackman was surprised by the negative reactions to the film, but urged potential audience members to give it a chance because of Aronofsky's stunning visuals and carefully crafted storyline. "I'm shocked, actually, that people are passionately against it," he said. "But that's fine. I think it's a confronting movie, but I think regardless of what you think of the content, it's visually amazing production-wise. I think it'd be hard to deny that it deserves attention, even if you don't like the subject matter. But hey, that's just me."
Jackman added that no matter what the critics say, he's still grateful to have been a part of the project. "I loved it," he said. "I'm incredibly proud of the movie, and I'm thrilled that in some of the lead-up, there's been controversy, because I expect nothing less from a Darren Aronofsky movie." The Fountain, also starring Rachel Weisz, opens Nov. 22. —Cindy White
Eragon Star, Author Meet
Ed Speleers, star of the upcoming fantasy film Eragon, told SCI FI Wire that it wasn't until after the movie was complete that he actually got to meet young author Christopher Paolini, on whose best-selling book the movie is based.
"We had planned to catch up and get together a few times, but he was on a book tour in Spain, because he had just launched the sequel," Speleers said. "He's a bit older than I am."
Speleers, now 18, was only 17 when he worked on the film, his first. Paolini, by contrast, was only 16 when he wrote the first of what would become his Inheritance trilogy of novels and is now just 22 and writing the final volume. Eragon became a best-seller in 2003, selling more than a million copies in half a year and appearing on The New York Times best-seller list for 87 weeks. It's been published in 37 countries. The story explores the tale of a young man and a telepathic dragon who defeat an evil king.
"I think that every kid has to deal with the emotions that are so well spelled out in this story, [and] that is what makes it so universal," Speleers said. "I think the reason why this book is such a success is because it was written by a young writer. I think he's great. We were supposed to meet a few times earlier, and he apologized when he couldn't. But when we did finally meet, it was great, and [we] exchanged e-mail addresses. I've e-mailed him today."
Paolini's second book, Eldest, came out during filming. Speleers said he has a voracious appetite for books, so he read it right away. And the young actor said he would definitely be up for a few more movies in the role. Eragon opens Dec. 15. —Mike Szymanski
Flushed Has SF&F Homages
Look closely, the directors of the animated film Flushed Away told SCI FI Wire: There are lots of inside jokes that SF&F fans will enjoy in the upcoming computer-animated movie. "We have to do it," co-director Sam Fell said in an interview. "I mean, look at the cast we have."
Fell referred to Flushed Away's voice cast, which includes such actors as Ian McKellen (The Lord of the Rings and X-Men), Hugh Jackman (X-Men, The Fountain), Andy Serkis (King Kong, The Prestige), Bill Nighy (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest), Jean Reno (Godzilla, Rollerball) and more. "We threw in little things that some people may notice, and others may not notice, and it won't be distracting," co-director David Bowers added.
Flushed Away centers on a pampered rat named Roddy (Jackman), who finds himself summarily flushed down into the sewers, where he encounters a different class of rat society. In one scene, as Roddy searches through doll outfits for something to wear, "for a brief instant, he holds up his Wolverine outfit [from the X-Men movies]," Bowers said. "It's a quick moment, but in the right audience, it gets a big laugh."
One of the funniest moments, which is also one of the most difficult to catch, comes when McKellen's frog character opens the door to a giant refrigerator, in which he has imprisoned Roddy. "If you look closely, you'll see Han Solo frozen in ice in there, too," Fell said. "We have little things like that all throughout the film."
Flushed Away comes from Aardman Animations, the same company responsible for the stop-motion-animated hit films Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and Chicken Run. Bowers, who worked on Chicken Run, said fans may notice an homage to that film's rat character Fetcher. But he added that the filmmakers weren't going to be blatant enough to include a nod to the cheese-loving Englishman Wallace and his intelligent dog, Gromit. "We borrow some of the look of the Wallace and Gromit characters, but we don't include them," said Bowers.
Kate Winslet also stars in Flushed Away, voicing a sassy sewer rat named Rita. The Titanic star's character is seen piloting a boat in Flushed Away, with the requisite Titanic joke, Bowers said. "We actually used more from The African Queen in those segments," he added. "That's where we came up with the leeches." Fell added: "We call them slugs—and ours sing." Flushed Away opens nationwide on Nov. 3. —Mike Szymanski
Loken Takes A Painkiller
Kristanna Loken (Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines) will star in SCI FI Channel's upcoming original series Painkiller Jane, based on the comic book created by Jimmy Palmiotti and Joe Quesada.
SCI FI gave a green light to the show, ordering 22 one-hour episodes, which will premiere in the spring of 2007. Insight Film Studios, in association with Starz Media and Kickstar Comic Arts Studio, is producing.
Loken will play Jane Vasko, a DEA agent recruited by a covert government agency that hunts genetically enhanced individuals. Vasko discovers that she can heal rapidly from any injury and begins to investigate the source of her powers.
Gil Grant (NCIS) is the executive producer. Loken will co-executive-produce. Production begins next month in Vancouver, B.C.
The Painkiller Jane series differs completely from the SCI FI Channel original movie Painkiller Jane, which aired in 2005.
Watts One For The Birds?
TMZ.com (http://www.tmz.com/2006/10/06/exclusive-universal-and-bay-cuckoo-about-the-birds/) reported a rumor that Australian actress Naomi Watts is being offered the lead role in a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's classic suspense thriller The Birds.
Universal Pictures is reportedly partnering with Michael Bay's production company, Platinum Dunes, to hatch the remake of the 1963 film, which starred Tippi Hedren and Rod Taylor as a couple caught up in a mysterious attack by flocks of ravening birds in Northern California.
The remake is being written by Leslie Dixson. The original film was based on Daphne du Maurier's short story.
Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Dimension Ties Up Boathouse
Dimension Films announced that it has acquired the rights to develop The Boathouse, a supernatural thriller pitch being written by David Loucka. Iain Softley (The Skeleton Key) is set to direct the film, which will be produced by Softley and Sarah Curtis (Mrs. Brown) through their company, Forthcoming Productions, along with Ehren Kruger (writer of The Ring and The Skeleton Key) and Daniel Bobker.
The Boathouse centers on a man who falls into a torrid affair with a mysterious young woman and who slowly discovers that several of the woman's past lovers were murdered under suspicious circumstances and that the sexy woman might carry with her a dark curse.
Richard Saperstein, president of production, and Matthew Stein, senior vice president of production, will oversee the project for Dimension Films.
Serkis Voices Sword Game
Although it looks like he's spending a lot of time in front of the camera, Andy Serkis told SCI FI Wire he's devoted much of this year to working on the story and directing sections of the video game Heavenly Sword. Serkis, the embodiment of Gollum from The Lord of the Rings and the big gorilla in King Kong, said that he also did the motion-capture movements for some of the characters in the animated game.
"Well, that's taken up quite a lot of my year and has been the sort of backbone of my year creatively," said Serkis, who was in Los Angeles this week promoting his first animated role in Flushed Away. "I got involved with it through a company called Ninja Theory, who is producing Heavenly Sword. They approached me, and I thought that there was a real gap between concept art and the look of it and the technology and actually the performance. Well, there is a real appetite out there for games now with performance."
Heavenly Sword, a combat game from PlayStation 3, centers on a clan warrior's daughter, named Nariko, who takes up a Heavenly Sword against an evil King and his army.
"I hadn't done games before, and so I came at it purely from a dramatic perspective," Serkis said. "So I got involved in the story design and the character development and then in the casting. We went back to New Zealand, and we rehearsed it, and then we shot all the motion capture. I directed all the performances for that game."
Serkis is voicing a rat in Flushed Away, which opens Nov. 3, and he's in The Prestige and the upcoming action-adventure movie Stormbreaker. —Mike Szymanski
Kombat Allows Kustomization
It's been 15 years since gamers started fighting their way through the Mortal Kombat game series, and once again the ever-popular Midway brawler is on the new-release shelf with Mortal Kombat: Armageddon. Ed Boon, creative director at Midway and co-creator of the Mortal Kombat franchise, told SCI FI Wire that the latest title features new fighting mechanics and a "Kreate-a-Fighter" component.
"We've made some dramatic additions to the fighting mechanic," Boon said in an interview. "Air Kombat is one of the biggest additions, as you can perform as elaborate combos in the air as on the ground. It really changes the pacing of the fighting game, as jumping plays a lot bigger role in combat, similar to how it did in the 2-D Mortal Kombat games."
Mortal Kombat: Armageddon also features a "Kombat Mode," with 60-plus playable characters who most fans of the series will recognize immediately. The "Konquest Mode" follows a storyline that revolves around a be-all, end-all battle that will destroy the universe and is reminiscent of Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks.
The "Kreate-a-Fighter" and "Kreate-a-Fatality" features do exactly what they sound like: Give players a bevy of choices to customize their own fighter and fatalities.
"The freedom within the create-a-character mode is amazing," Boon said. "So far, we've seen some visually amazing characters produced by people on the MK team. If you have a character in mind, you can pretty much make it. But even cooler is the fact that you can choose [and name] your character's fighting styles, combos and even backstory."
Boon added: "Our goal with the fatality system was to make it interactive. In all the previous MK games, fatalities were triggered, and then both players would just sit back and watch the show. We want players to control each move done in the fatality and allow them to decide which order they want to perform each action. This allows players [to] perform their own custom fatalities. There will be time limitations for each step of the fatality, so really good players will be able to fire off five- or six-step fatality sequences." Mortal Kombat: Armageddon is now available at retailers. —Casey Lynch
Star Carves Into Pumpkinhead
Lance Henriksen, who stars in the original SCI FI Channel movie Pumpkinhead: Ashes to Ashes (http://www.scifi.com/pumpkinhead/), said that the sequel is a morality tale, like the original 1989 feature film Pumpkinhead and the upcoming second sequel Pumpkinhead: Love Hurts. Henriksen starred in the original movie as Ed Harley, a man who joins a witch, Haggis, in summoning the demon creature Pumpkinhead to exact revenge on a group of teens after they accidentally kill his young son. The actor reprises his role in Ashes to Ashes and Love Hurts.
In Ashes to Ashes, a group of people turn to Haggis to summon Pumpkinhead after they discover that the staff at the local crematorium has been stealing body parts and disposing of the bodies of their loved ones in a swamp instead of cremating them. Harley turns up to haunt one particular character, Bunt Wallace (Douglas Roberts), who was a child when the events of the original Pumpkinhead occurred.
"I play the ghost of Harley in both of the films, and they're both morality plays," Henriksen said in an interview. "And in our search for morality in the world that we're in today—since we don't trust politicians and don't trust what's being told to us in the news—when somebody screws up, somebody has to be accountable. That was the theme of Pumpkinhead, and it's the theme of Pumpkinhead III and IV. I feel they captured it again. It was there in the script, and what we did on set seemed to capture it. These kinds of films, sci-fi and horror, can put across a really good morality tale when they're done well. And I think these are both done well and will appeal to people who like these kinds of films." Pumpkinhead: Ashes to Ashes, which also stars Doug Bradley of the Hellraiser films, debuts Oct. 28 at 9 p.m. ET/PT. —Ian Spelling
Henriksen Up For New Dark
Lance Henriksen, one of the original stars of the cult 1987 vampire film Near Dark, reacted with glee when SCI FI Wire informed him that director Michael Bay's production company, Platinum Dunes, had secured the rights and was planning a remake. "Oh, man, I hadn't heard that," Henriksen said in an interview. "It's one of my favorites, Near Dark. If they were smart, what they would do is get ahold of [Henriksen's co-stars] Bill Paxton, Jenette Goldstein and me, and do something that starts as a prequel to Near Dark. They need to have a conversation with us, because, man, Billy Paxton and I have been talking about this, about what we would do, if we did a prequel. And really great stuff came up. So it would be very wise of them to connect with us."
Near Dark, co-written and directed by Kathryn Bigelow, was a vampire western that starred Adrian Pasdar as Caleb, a freshly turned vampire who doesn't fit in with his new clan of hillbilly bloodsuckers, which included Henriksen as Jesse, Paxton as Severen, Jenny Wright as Mae and Goldstein as Diamondback.
Henriksen said that he and Paxton are "as hot as ever to work on it. We all had so much fun doing Near Dark. We really created a lot of it, right there on the set. So put out a message, man. Tell them we're sitting by the side of the road, waiting for them to drive by, if you know what I mean."
Henriksen's credits include 50-plus horror and SF films, television movies and television series, including Aliens and Millennium.
Platinum Dunes will also produce remakes of The Changeling and The Birds as part of a three-year, first-look deal with Rogue Pictures, the genre division of Universal-based Focus Features. Universal, Rogue and Focus are all owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM. —Ian Spelling
Studios Abandon Halo Film
In a surprise move, both Universal and Fox have pulled out of their agreement to co-finance a movie version of Microsoft's Halo SF video game, Variety reported. Rumors had circulated that the studios were concerned over a budget that was rising above the original projected $135 million pricetag. But the filmmakers said the double defection came after Universal and Fox played hardball and unsuccessfully tried to get the filmmakers and Microsoft to reduce their profit participation, the trade paper reported.
The studios made the pay cut demand as an Oct. 15 deadline approached. On that day Microsoft was to have received the bulk of a promised $5 million up-front payday. The software giant also stood to receive 10 percent of gross revenues for rights to the game and a script by Alex Garland, the trade paper reported.
Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh were on board as executive producers. They denied through representatives rumors that the budget had ballooned to around $200 million, Variety reported. Mary Parent, Scott Stuber and Peter Schlessel are producers.
Microsoft is already in talks with other distribution partners. Prep work on the film continues. Most of the preproduction is being done at Jackson and Walsh's visual-effects studios in New Zealand, Weta Digital and Weta Workshop.
As word of the Universal and Fox exit spread, speculation centered around the inexperience of Halo director Neill Blomkamp, a 27-year-old first-time feature director.
Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM; on Oct. 19, NBC Universal announced plans to cut 700 employees, or 5 percent of its global workforce.
Batman 2 Prep Is Easier
Director Christopher Nolan—whose next film will be The Dark Knight, the sequel to last year's Batman Begins—told SCI FI Wire that the preproduction phase of the film has been easier this time around. "There are certain things that obviously you're not having to worry about and spend time on," Nolan said in an interview while promoting his current film, The Prestige, which opened Oct. 20. "We've already made the Batmobile. We already have the main members of the cast. So, yeah. But, frankly, the new film poses all kinds of new challenges, so it'll be just as tricky in its own way."
Nolan said he is conscious of the high expectations for the sequel based on the success of the first film, but isn't bothered by the pressure. "It's a pretty dumb thing of me to do, to go back and try and do it again," he said. "But [I] like the challenge. I just found the world and the characters pretty fascinating. And we felt that you just wanted to push on [with] the story, really. But it'll be a huge challenge. We were very happy with the way the first film worked out and then was perceived. So, yeah, it's an enormous risk. That's really what you have to be doing as a filmmaker, I think, is taking enormous risks."
Nolan said he is currently fine-tuning the latest draft of the script, written by his brother and frequent collaborator, Jonathan Nolan. The brothers previously collaborated on the Oscar-winning film Memento, as well as The Prestige. Until the script is finished, Nolan doesn't plan to be doing any casting beyond the role of the Joker, which recently went to Brokeback Mountain star Heath Ledger. "I haven't thought about casting at all," Nolan said. "Heath was a particular case in point, because he just became a possibility, and I jumped on that because he was the guy I needed. But I haven't finished the script yet. There'll be plenty of time for that." —Cindy White
Caine In Batman's Suit?
Michael Caine, who will reprise his role as Bruce Wayne's faithful butler Alfred in the next Batman film, The Dark Knight, told SCI FI Wire that he has made some suggestions to director Christopher Nolan about what he'd like to see his character do this time around. "I was talking to the widow of the man who wrote Batman, and she said that he wrote a marvelous scene that [we] should do in [our] next movie," Caine said in an interview while promoting his latest film, The Prestige. "She told me that he wrote a sequence where Batman was trying to get bad guys, and he wanted to use the butler dressed as Batman as a ruse, and then go back around behind him. So I said to Christopher—and I don't know whether he's going to use it, because he won't tell you anything about the script—but I mentioned this to him, because I thought that this was a great idea. I think that if he dresses me as Batman, it could be one of the funniest sequences in the history of movies."
Caine added, laughing, "Can you imagine what I would make out of that? Trying to get into the Batman suit and then running around the woods [while] he's going around the [other] way to try and get the bad guys? See, you're already laughing, and those films are very serious. My job is to bring the humor of the sort of ordinary person being in that situation, which is what I am."
Caine said that he hasn't read the Dark Knight script yet, despite repeated requests to writer-director Nolan, who also directed him in The Prestige. "I'm just waiting to get the script," Caine said. "Every time I ask him for it he says, 'I haven't finished it.' I know he's finished it, otherwise [Warner Brothers] wouldn't have given it the go-ahead."
Dark Knight Is Brotherly Effort
Jonathan Nolan, brother of director Christopher Nolan, told SCI FI Wire that Christopher is in the process of polishing the first draft of The Dark Knight, his follow-up to last year's Batman Begins. "We do discrete drafts," Jonathan Nolan said in an interview while promoting the latest Nolan brothers collaboration, The Prestige. "We tried at various points to write together, and that doesn't work. We both think of writing as a tortured and solitary process. And so I'll do my draft, but there's always a dialogue there, always conversations. I mean, he's right now fixing all my mistakes on The Dark Knight, and we're talking about it. And then I'll hopefully get back in there and do a little more work on that film. We sort of tend to bounce the script back and forth as complete drafts."
Jonathan Nolan rejected claims of nepotism, since he has been with his brother since the beginning as a writer on his breakout film, Memento. And although David Goyer wrote the definitive screenplay for Batman Begins, Jonathan Nolan worked as a consultant for a year and a half before the production began. "Sometimes it's tricky to figure out who the right guy for the material is," Jonathan Nolan said. "I worked on Batman Begins as a consultant for 18 months, so I have a pretty good familiarity with that character. One of the fun things is I didn't read a lot of comic books when I was a kid, but my brother, when I was 14, for my 14th birthday gave me a copy of The Dark Knight Returns. And 15 years later to the day we went to the premiere of Batman Begins."
In writing the script for the next Batman film, Jonathan Nolan said he went back through the character's history to familiarize himself with the source material. "The adaptation there is from 60 years' worth of unbelievably talented, creative people working on one character," he said. "So that's a really fun job, because you get to read thousands of comic books and sort of get to choose what's good and what's not good. And then you also get to sit around and say, 'All right, what would I like to do with this character who's been so well developed and such a rich sort of background?' That's a really, really fun job. I'd think we'd be more nervous about making a sequel to something, but with that character it really is so much fun to work on. Hard to mess up." —Cindy White
Hellboy 2 Nearly Green-Lighted
Guillermo del Toro—who directed the 2004 big-screen version of Hellboy, based on Mike Mignola's comic-book series—told SCI FI Wire that the long-gestating sequel, Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, is all but a "go" project. "It is officially a go, but we're still working on the budget to prove to the studio that we can do it for that number," del Toro said in an interview while promoting his upcoming film, Pan's Labyrinth. "It's a pretty low number for the size of movie we want to do. Adjusted for inflation, it's as low a budget as the first one, but the scale of it is about twice the first one."
Hellboy 2 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. It will also feature killer robots and a new character, the spectral B.P.R.D. agent Johann Kraus. "The heart of the film is that fantasy has been grounded by reality," del Toro said. "It's been ground to dust by reality. Hellboy is fighting for the humans, but he starts realizing that maybe not everything is right in the way that he does things. Everyone will be back—Ron, Selma, Doug—except for Agent Myers [Rupert Evans]." 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. —Ian Spelling
Del Toro Conjuring Witches
Pan's Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro told SCI FI Wire that he wants to make a more faithful film version of Roald Dahl's dark fantasy children's book The Witches, which was adapted for the screen once before, in 1990, by director Nicholas Roeg. "I liked a lot of the Roeg film, but I really, really disliked that the ending was changed, because I think the essence of the Dahl story is that the kid remains a mouse," said del Toro, who said The Witches is his favorite Dahl book. "Having said that, how the hell do I know that they won't change it on me again? They probably did that to Nicholas Roeg. So it may happen again. But I want to try."
In The Witches, a group of witches aims to rid England of all children, but their plot is thwarted by a resourceful little boy who won't give up, even after he's transformed into a tiny mouse.
Del Toro added: "Growing up, it was my favorite Dahl book. It was my favorite, because the witches represent adulthood. They represent the world. They represent all things that f--k up a kid. And I always thought it was great that the grandmother and the boy were essentially the same age and, therefore, were susceptible to witches that were in the guise of respectable old ladies. I thought Dahl has that subversive streak in him. It was there in his Unexpected tales, but it was also in his children's books. And much like H.H. Munro, Dahl has a very definitely sophisticated point of view on what the children's world is. That script is written. It's budgeted and awaiting a green light."
Del Toro added that he's got several other fantasy and horror projects on his plate that he hopes to produce and/or direct in the near future, among them The Coffin, Mountains of Madness, Dead Man and Left Hand of Darkness. Pan's Labyrinth opens in limited release on Dec. 29 and goes wide in January. —Ian Spelling
Pan's Del Toro Credits Cuarón
Guillermo del Toro, the Mexican-born writer and director of the upcoming fantasy film Pan's Labyrinth, told SCI FI Wire that his friend, countryman and fellow producer Alfonso Cuarón played a major behind-the-scene role in helping realize the Spanish-Mexican co-production. Young Spanish actress Ivana Baquero stars in the movie as Ofelia, a girl whose fantasy world allows her to cope with the harsh realities of post-civil war Spain. Del Toro (Hellboy, Cronos), who also wrote the screenplay, based the movie's fantasy characters and sets on his own exotic sketches.
"Well, originally, Alfonso was going to produce it with his partner, Jorge Vergara, in Mexico, and then Jorge dropped out," del Toro said in an interview. "But I really thought Alfonso had some good ideas on how to market the movie and get it out there. He said, 'Well, if you want, I will leave, and you can produce it yourself.' And I said, 'No, you know what? I truly value the fact that now I have a pretext to call you at ungodly hours of the morning and ask your opinion on things.'"
Del Toro added: "And sure enough, he was incredibly helpful in setting the movie up, getting Warner Brothers to pre-buy it, getting Picturehouse interested in it in preproduction. But beyond those nuts-and-bolts things, he was incredibly encouraging in just my doing this one in complete freedom, because I really needed to do my movie. To do that I needed my absolute freedom. It was urgent for me. He said, 'Look, go and do it exactly as you want to do it.'"
Cuarón, the director of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, visited del Toro once in Spain during preproduction, but not at all during the actual shoot, as he was busy directing his own film, the upcoming SF drama Children of Men. But Cuarón returned to the project at least a couple of times during the post-production phase. (The Spanish-language film, called El Laberinto del Fauno in that tongue, is subtitled in English for its North American release.)
"Every time we met it was crucial," del Toro said. "It's not the quantity of time, but the quality. I would come in in post, and I was nervous, and I would say, 'Would you watch the cut with me?' He'd watch the cut with me, and he loved it so much that I felt validated. He said to me, 'Why don't you move two or three sequences? Why don't you move them in this other order so that you have a fantasy one in the middle and blah blah.' And they were beautiful notes, beautiful notes. I think Alfonso is one of those friends who is better to have officially on the movie, because you can trouble him more." Pan's Labyrinth opens in limited release on Dec. 29 and goes wide in January. —Ian Spelling
Prestige Magical For Jackman
Hugh Jackman, who plays a magician in the supernatural thriller The Prestige, told SCI FI Wire that he became fascinated with stage magic while making the film. "I did love the stage stuff," he said in an interview. "I loved it all. I did a lot of work with [technical consultants and real-life magicians] Ricky Jay and Michael Weber on the style of performance, and I really modeled my character, in terms of style, on a guy called Channing Pollock, who was a magician of the '50s. ... But I enjoyed it a lot. And of course, without giving too much away, I don't know how much you can reveal, but we play a character that has a number of disguises, and then another character. And I really enjoyed that. Creating all those characters and those looks was terrific."
Jackman said he's always been interested in magic and had read a biography of Houdini just before beginning filming. "Maybe there's something serendipitous about that," he said. "I find the world fascinating, particularly ... this era, which is that Houdini era, because magicians were the movie stars, rock stars, of the day. And there was an incredible contract with the audience at that time. I don't know if you're aware, but in America, spiritualism was an even larger religion or way of thought than Christianity. So magicians were seen as very real kind of mediators between the other world and this world. And so people bought into the magician's shtick, really, whereas now they don't."
For the film, there was only one trick Jackman learned and performed himself on screen, one in which he makes a bullet disappear from his hand. "That one I did," he said. "But I have to have that particular bullet [laughs]. I couldn't do it with this [pen], for example." The Prestige opened Oct. 20. —Cindy White
Prestige's Bale Talks Jackman
Christian Bale, who stars opposite Hugh Jackman in the supernatural thriller The Prestige, told SCI FI Wire that the on-screen rivalry between the two main characters sometimes echoed the actors' behind-the-scenes relationship. "It was really interesting, because both of us absolutely sided with our characters," Bale said in an interview while promoting the film. "We would sit and have a brief talk about a scene before doing it. And, to me, it was very clear that my character had the sincerity, the substance, [and] was really talking the truth here. And his character was just talking a lot of crap. It was all this superficial nonsense. And then Hugh would kind of look at me and go, 'What the hell are you talking about? That ain't the case at all.' And then he gave me very good arguments about why his argument was absolutely fantastic, really nicely reasoned and [a] very almost altruistic argument, and why mine wasn't."
In The Prestige, which is set in London at the turn of the 20th century, Bale plays Alfred Borden, an ambitious magician from a working-class background who has great talent but little stage presence. Jackman's character, an American named Rupert Angier, relies more on showmanship to sell his illusions to an audience. The two enter into a bitter feud early in their careers, which grows into a mutual obsession over time.
"It was just really good casting," Bale said. "Hugh is a fantastic showman. He's a great singer and dancer. He's very used to the stage and very comfortable on the stage. I've only done one thing on stage in my life, and it is just not what drives me. I'm not as intrigued by theater as I am with film. So you had, just in Hugh and I, one very good natural performer and another one who was like, 'I ... really didn't know what I'm doing up here. I don't really know how to handle this.' And again, it was kind of 'no acting required.' It was ideal for the different roles we were playing."
Bale said that it was helpful to the actors to develop a friendly rivalry, which helped them better understand their characters in the film. "For me, the rivalry that I was focusing on more was just the knowledge of a more brilliant magician that a more brilliant showman was being considered to be the better talent," Bale said. "And his hatred of having to sell yourself in that way in order for people to understand. My character just doesn't understand why people can't see what he is doing is by far the best magic being performed at that time." The Prestige, directed by Christopher Nolan and also starring Scarlett Johannson, Michael Caine and David Bowie, opened Oct. 20. —Cindy White
Caine: Prestige Is Ingenious
Michael Caine, who reunites with Batman Begins director Christopher Nolan and star Christian Bale in The Prestige, told SCI FI Wire that his character represents the point of view of the audience. "I find that Christopher is extraordinarily clever," Caine said in an interview. "He's very clever and has put me in the middle, someone like us amongst all these extraordinary people, which is sort of the same type of thing that I did in Batman, where every time everything was going on in that movie you're going, 'What the hell?' Alfred said, 'What the hell is going on?' Alfred got all the laughs, and there weren't many laughs in Batman. But Alfred got all of the laughs, and the sympathies of the people were with him because he is us."
In The Prestige, Caine plays an ingenieur, a designer of magical effects who becomes a mentor to famed magician Rupert Angier, played by Hugh Jackman. "In a way, although he is a very different character [from Alfred], he is us in this," Caine said. "And you had these guys then, these engineers. You have to remember that those magicians of that time of Victorian England and Victorian America—Harry Houdini being one of them—they were the rock stars and the movie stars of the day. They were massive, massive stars, and these people who ran them were like Colonel Parker with Elvis, the guys behind the whole thing. That's what I am. He was never a magician, but he just had the moxie to make them machines."
Caine said he was thrilled to be working with Nolan again and that the director has made the most of his strengths as an actor. "The biggest magician of the lot is Christopher Nolan," Caine said. "The whole movie is one great big magic trick, which is what's fascinating about it. So you get these layers, and no one is what they seem. My daughters are going to the premiere in London, and they asked me what it was like, and I said, 'Well, my advice to you is don't go to the toilet, because when you come back you're going to be in trouble, because nothing—nothing—is what it seems. Except me.'" The Prestige opened Oct. 20. —Cindy White
Nolan: Prestige Was Tricky
Christopher Nolan, director and co-writer of the The Prestige, told SCI FI Wire that the film was structured to match the three stages of a magic trick. "The idea was always really to address ... magic from the point of view of not trying to show magic in the film and impress people with stage magic, because that can't work on film," Nolan said in an interview. "People are aware of camera trickery and all the rest. The idea was always to create a marriage of that function according to the principles of a magic trick, or a set of magic tricks. And that involved conforming to this three-act structure."
The film, based on the book by Christopher Priest, follows the careers of two magicians, played by Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman, who become obsessed with outdoing each other. Nolan, who wrote the script along with his brother, Jonathan, said that the book's use of different points of view and fractured narrative made it particularly difficult to adapt. "It was quite challenging to find the right structure," Nolan said. "It took a lot of time. We really spent years working on the script. And it required interlocking framing devices and interlocking voice-overs, combined with the notion of structuring using the three-act structure of the trick. Yeah, it took a long time. The key being the need to express multiple points of view purposefully and clearly. It was a difficult script to write."
Although Nolan doesn't reveal how the real magic tricks in the film are done, he does let the audience in on a few secrets by the end. "The real paradox, which is the paradox of magic—but this is to me what's interesting about the subject—is that, much as the audience wants to know the secret, the secret ultimately will be disappointing," he said. "That's the nature of magic. And that's, to me, the key thing which I'm trying to do in the film." The Prestige opened Oct. 20. —Cindy White
Jackman Defends The Fountain
Hugh Jackman, who stars in Darren Aronofsky's epic science-fiction love story The Fountain, told SCI FI Wire that he was disappointed to read news reports of audience members booing at a screening at the Venice Film Festival, when there were much more interesting stories that could have been written about the event. "The truth was, at that press screening, about 80 percent of the people gave it a standing ovation, and about 20 percent of the people booed," Jackman said in an interview while promoting his latest film, The Prestige. "And a fight began between the press. And two of them had to be pulled apart. And I thought, 'That's a great story. Why wasn't that story told?' That's exactly how the movie, I think, will be seen."
In The Fountain, Jackman plays a man in three different periods of history separated by 500 years who tries to save his ailing wife. Jackman was surprised by the negative reactions to the film, but urged potential audience members to give it a chance because of Aronofsky's stunning visuals and carefully crafted storyline. "I'm shocked, actually, that people are passionately against it," he said. "But that's fine. I think it's a confronting movie, but I think regardless of what you think of the content, it's visually amazing production-wise. I think it'd be hard to deny that it deserves attention, even if you don't like the subject matter. But hey, that's just me."
Jackman added that no matter what the critics say, he's still grateful to have been a part of the project. "I loved it," he said. "I'm incredibly proud of the movie, and I'm thrilled that in some of the lead-up, there's been controversy, because I expect nothing less from a Darren Aronofsky movie." The Fountain, also starring Rachel Weisz, opens Nov. 22. —Cindy White
Eragon Star, Author Meet
Ed Speleers, star of the upcoming fantasy film Eragon, told SCI FI Wire that it wasn't until after the movie was complete that he actually got to meet young author Christopher Paolini, on whose best-selling book the movie is based.
"We had planned to catch up and get together a few times, but he was on a book tour in Spain, because he had just launched the sequel," Speleers said. "He's a bit older than I am."
Speleers, now 18, was only 17 when he worked on the film, his first. Paolini, by contrast, was only 16 when he wrote the first of what would become his Inheritance trilogy of novels and is now just 22 and writing the final volume. Eragon became a best-seller in 2003, selling more than a million copies in half a year and appearing on The New York Times best-seller list for 87 weeks. It's been published in 37 countries. The story explores the tale of a young man and a telepathic dragon who defeat an evil king.
"I think that every kid has to deal with the emotions that are so well spelled out in this story, [and] that is what makes it so universal," Speleers said. "I think the reason why this book is such a success is because it was written by a young writer. I think he's great. We were supposed to meet a few times earlier, and he apologized when he couldn't. But when we did finally meet, it was great, and [we] exchanged e-mail addresses. I've e-mailed him today."
Paolini's second book, Eldest, came out during filming. Speleers said he has a voracious appetite for books, so he read it right away. And the young actor said he would definitely be up for a few more movies in the role. Eragon opens Dec. 15. —Mike Szymanski
Flushed Has SF&F Homages
Look closely, the directors of the animated film Flushed Away told SCI FI Wire: There are lots of inside jokes that SF&F fans will enjoy in the upcoming computer-animated movie. "We have to do it," co-director Sam Fell said in an interview. "I mean, look at the cast we have."
Fell referred to Flushed Away's voice cast, which includes such actors as Ian McKellen (The Lord of the Rings and X-Men), Hugh Jackman (X-Men, The Fountain), Andy Serkis (King Kong, The Prestige), Bill Nighy (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest), Jean Reno (Godzilla, Rollerball) and more. "We threw in little things that some people may notice, and others may not notice, and it won't be distracting," co-director David Bowers added.
Flushed Away centers on a pampered rat named Roddy (Jackman), who finds himself summarily flushed down into the sewers, where he encounters a different class of rat society. In one scene, as Roddy searches through doll outfits for something to wear, "for a brief instant, he holds up his Wolverine outfit [from the X-Men movies]," Bowers said. "It's a quick moment, but in the right audience, it gets a big laugh."
One of the funniest moments, which is also one of the most difficult to catch, comes when McKellen's frog character opens the door to a giant refrigerator, in which he has imprisoned Roddy. "If you look closely, you'll see Han Solo frozen in ice in there, too," Fell said. "We have little things like that all throughout the film."
Flushed Away comes from Aardman Animations, the same company responsible for the stop-motion-animated hit films Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and Chicken Run. Bowers, who worked on Chicken Run, said fans may notice an homage to that film's rat character Fetcher. But he added that the filmmakers weren't going to be blatant enough to include a nod to the cheese-loving Englishman Wallace and his intelligent dog, Gromit. "We borrow some of the look of the Wallace and Gromit characters, but we don't include them," said Bowers.
Kate Winslet also stars in Flushed Away, voicing a sassy sewer rat named Rita. The Titanic star's character is seen piloting a boat in Flushed Away, with the requisite Titanic joke, Bowers said. "We actually used more from The African Queen in those segments," he added. "That's where we came up with the leeches." Fell added: "We call them slugs—and ours sing." Flushed Away opens nationwide on Nov. 3. —Mike Szymanski
Loken Takes A Painkiller
Kristanna Loken (Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines) will star in SCI FI Channel's upcoming original series Painkiller Jane, based on the comic book created by Jimmy Palmiotti and Joe Quesada.
SCI FI gave a green light to the show, ordering 22 one-hour episodes, which will premiere in the spring of 2007. Insight Film Studios, in association with Starz Media and Kickstar Comic Arts Studio, is producing.
Loken will play Jane Vasko, a DEA agent recruited by a covert government agency that hunts genetically enhanced individuals. Vasko discovers that she can heal rapidly from any injury and begins to investigate the source of her powers.
Gil Grant (NCIS) is the executive producer. Loken will co-executive-produce. Production begins next month in Vancouver, B.C.
The Painkiller Jane series differs completely from the SCI FI Channel original movie Painkiller Jane, which aired in 2005.
Watts One For The Birds?
TMZ.com (http://www.tmz.com/2006/10/06/exclusive-universal-and-bay-cuckoo-about-the-birds/) reported a rumor that Australian actress Naomi Watts is being offered the lead role in a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's classic suspense thriller The Birds.
Universal Pictures is reportedly partnering with Michael Bay's production company, Platinum Dunes, to hatch the remake of the 1963 film, which starred Tippi Hedren and Rod Taylor as a couple caught up in a mysterious attack by flocks of ravening birds in Northern California.
The remake is being written by Leslie Dixson. The original film was based on Daphne du Maurier's short story.
Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Dimension Ties Up Boathouse
Dimension Films announced that it has acquired the rights to develop The Boathouse, a supernatural thriller pitch being written by David Loucka. Iain Softley (The Skeleton Key) is set to direct the film, which will be produced by Softley and Sarah Curtis (Mrs. Brown) through their company, Forthcoming Productions, along with Ehren Kruger (writer of The Ring and The Skeleton Key) and Daniel Bobker.
The Boathouse centers on a man who falls into a torrid affair with a mysterious young woman and who slowly discovers that several of the woman's past lovers were murdered under suspicious circumstances and that the sexy woman might carry with her a dark curse.
Richard Saperstein, president of production, and Matthew Stein, senior vice president of production, will oversee the project for Dimension Films.
Serkis Voices Sword Game
Although it looks like he's spending a lot of time in front of the camera, Andy Serkis told SCI FI Wire he's devoted much of this year to working on the story and directing sections of the video game Heavenly Sword. Serkis, the embodiment of Gollum from The Lord of the Rings and the big gorilla in King Kong, said that he also did the motion-capture movements for some of the characters in the animated game.
"Well, that's taken up quite a lot of my year and has been the sort of backbone of my year creatively," said Serkis, who was in Los Angeles this week promoting his first animated role in Flushed Away. "I got involved with it through a company called Ninja Theory, who is producing Heavenly Sword. They approached me, and I thought that there was a real gap between concept art and the look of it and the technology and actually the performance. Well, there is a real appetite out there for games now with performance."
Heavenly Sword, a combat game from PlayStation 3, centers on a clan warrior's daughter, named Nariko, who takes up a Heavenly Sword against an evil King and his army.
"I hadn't done games before, and so I came at it purely from a dramatic perspective," Serkis said. "So I got involved in the story design and the character development and then in the casting. We went back to New Zealand, and we rehearsed it, and then we shot all the motion capture. I directed all the performances for that game."
Serkis is voicing a rat in Flushed Away, which opens Nov. 3, and he's in The Prestige and the upcoming action-adventure movie Stormbreaker. —Mike Szymanski
Kombat Allows Kustomization
It's been 15 years since gamers started fighting their way through the Mortal Kombat game series, and once again the ever-popular Midway brawler is on the new-release shelf with Mortal Kombat: Armageddon. Ed Boon, creative director at Midway and co-creator of the Mortal Kombat franchise, told SCI FI Wire that the latest title features new fighting mechanics and a "Kreate-a-Fighter" component.
"We've made some dramatic additions to the fighting mechanic," Boon said in an interview. "Air Kombat is one of the biggest additions, as you can perform as elaborate combos in the air as on the ground. It really changes the pacing of the fighting game, as jumping plays a lot bigger role in combat, similar to how it did in the 2-D Mortal Kombat games."
Mortal Kombat: Armageddon also features a "Kombat Mode," with 60-plus playable characters who most fans of the series will recognize immediately. The "Konquest Mode" follows a storyline that revolves around a be-all, end-all battle that will destroy the universe and is reminiscent of Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks.
The "Kreate-a-Fighter" and "Kreate-a-Fatality" features do exactly what they sound like: Give players a bevy of choices to customize their own fighter and fatalities.
"The freedom within the create-a-character mode is amazing," Boon said. "So far, we've seen some visually amazing characters produced by people on the MK team. If you have a character in mind, you can pretty much make it. But even cooler is the fact that you can choose [and name] your character's fighting styles, combos and even backstory."
Boon added: "Our goal with the fatality system was to make it interactive. In all the previous MK games, fatalities were triggered, and then both players would just sit back and watch the show. We want players to control each move done in the fatality and allow them to decide which order they want to perform each action. This allows players [to] perform their own custom fatalities. There will be time limitations for each step of the fatality, so really good players will be able to fire off five- or six-step fatality sequences." Mortal Kombat: Armageddon is now available at retailers. —Casey Lynch
Star Carves Into Pumpkinhead
Lance Henriksen, who stars in the original SCI FI Channel movie Pumpkinhead: Ashes to Ashes (http://www.scifi.com/pumpkinhead/), said that the sequel is a morality tale, like the original 1989 feature film Pumpkinhead and the upcoming second sequel Pumpkinhead: Love Hurts. Henriksen starred in the original movie as Ed Harley, a man who joins a witch, Haggis, in summoning the demon creature Pumpkinhead to exact revenge on a group of teens after they accidentally kill his young son. The actor reprises his role in Ashes to Ashes and Love Hurts.
In Ashes to Ashes, a group of people turn to Haggis to summon Pumpkinhead after they discover that the staff at the local crematorium has been stealing body parts and disposing of the bodies of their loved ones in a swamp instead of cremating them. Harley turns up to haunt one particular character, Bunt Wallace (Douglas Roberts), who was a child when the events of the original Pumpkinhead occurred.
"I play the ghost of Harley in both of the films, and they're both morality plays," Henriksen said in an interview. "And in our search for morality in the world that we're in today—since we don't trust politicians and don't trust what's being told to us in the news—when somebody screws up, somebody has to be accountable. That was the theme of Pumpkinhead, and it's the theme of Pumpkinhead III and IV. I feel they captured it again. It was there in the script, and what we did on set seemed to capture it. These kinds of films, sci-fi and horror, can put across a really good morality tale when they're done well. And I think these are both done well and will appeal to people who like these kinds of films." Pumpkinhead: Ashes to Ashes, which also stars Doug Bradley of the Hellraiser films, debuts Oct. 28 at 9 p.m. ET/PT. —Ian Spelling
Henriksen Up For New Dark
Lance Henriksen, one of the original stars of the cult 1987 vampire film Near Dark, reacted with glee when SCI FI Wire informed him that director Michael Bay's production company, Platinum Dunes, had secured the rights and was planning a remake. "Oh, man, I hadn't heard that," Henriksen said in an interview. "It's one of my favorites, Near Dark. If they were smart, what they would do is get ahold of [Henriksen's co-stars] Bill Paxton, Jenette Goldstein and me, and do something that starts as a prequel to Near Dark. They need to have a conversation with us, because, man, Billy Paxton and I have been talking about this, about what we would do, if we did a prequel. And really great stuff came up. So it would be very wise of them to connect with us."
Near Dark, co-written and directed by Kathryn Bigelow, was a vampire western that starred Adrian Pasdar as Caleb, a freshly turned vampire who doesn't fit in with his new clan of hillbilly bloodsuckers, which included Henriksen as Jesse, Paxton as Severen, Jenny Wright as Mae and Goldstein as Diamondback.
Henriksen said that he and Paxton are "as hot as ever to work on it. We all had so much fun doing Near Dark. We really created a lot of it, right there on the set. So put out a message, man. Tell them we're sitting by the side of the road, waiting for them to drive by, if you know what I mean."
Henriksen's credits include 50-plus horror and SF films, television movies and television series, including Aliens and Millennium.
Platinum Dunes will also produce remakes of The Changeling and The Birds as part of a three-year, first-look deal with Rogue Pictures, the genre division of Universal-based Focus Features. Universal, Rogue and Focus are all owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM. —Ian Spelling