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10-31-2006, 04:39 AM
NEWS OF THE WEEK FOR OCT. 30, 2006
Serenity's Fillion On Lost
Serenity star Nathan Fillion guest-stars on the Nov. 8 episode of ABC's hit series Lost, "I Do," which also marks the decision by Kate (Evangeline Lilly) to hook up with either Jack (Matthew Fox) or Sawyer (Josh Holloway). Fillion will play a character named Kevin in the episode, which is the last new one for a while as the series takes a 13-week hiatus, returning in February.
In "I Do," Jack makes a decision regarding Ben's (Michael Emerson) offer, Kate feels helpless when it looks like an angry Pickett (Michael Bowen) is going to make good on his threat to kill Sawyer, and Locke (Terry O'Quinn) discovers a hidden message that may guide him through the next steps on his journey to unlocking the secrets of the island.
"I Do" was written by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse and directed by Tucker Gates. It airs at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
Lost Returns In February
ABC's hit series Lost will return for the second half of its third season on Feb. 7, after a 13-week hiatus; it will then run without repeats until the end of the season, Zap2it.com reported.
Lost is currently airing six original episodes and will then take a break after the Nov. 8 episode, to be replaced by the SF series Day Break in the Wednesday 9 p.m. timeslot, starting Nov. 15. The two-part season is designed to avoid last season's midseason reruns.
When Lost returns in February, it will have 16 weeks of uninterrupted episodes.
Microsoft Comments On Halo
Undaunted by the pullout of Universal Pictures and 20th Century Fox, Microsoft vowed to pursue the production of a movie based on its Halo video-game franchise, according to a report on the official Web site of Bungie (http://www.bungie.net/News/TopStory.aspx?link=filmateleven), the developer of the games. "We are disappointed that Universal and Fox wanted to significantly renegotiate the financial points of the deal," Microsoft said in a statement. "But the Halo franchise is hugely popular, and our goal remains the same—to find a partner that shares our passion and will creatively collaborate with us to best represent the story and spirit of the Halo franchise."
Universal and Fox abruptly pulled out of the project last week after reportedly failing to get the filmmakers and Microsoft to reduce their profit participation.
Microsoft added: "[Executive producers] Peter Jackson [and] Fran Walsh and the rest of the creative team are dedicated to ensuring the Halo movie becomes a reality. We are already in discussions with potential partners who recognize the value of the Halo brand and its appeal to consumers worldwide."
Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Serkis: Beowulf Is The Future
Andy Serkis, who co-stars in Robert Zemeckis' upcoming Beowulf film, told SCI FI Wire that the movie's computer animation is a glimpse of things to come. "I think that more motion capture is used in film, and it's becoming part of the mainstream and used in a mainstream way," Serkis (King Kong) said in an interview. "It is ... especially [true] with video games and the convergence of video games and film. It's actually a really interesting time for actors. Robert Zemeckis has just made Beowulf with Anthony Hopkins and John Malkovich, Ray Winstone and all kinds of high-profile and serious actors creating these characters. They are creating the movements. They are creating the personalities, and it's the manifestation of those characters which is being handed over."
Beowulf, based on the 12th-century Anglo-Saxon epic poem, will make use of the motion-capture animation technology Zemeckis previously employed in films such as The Polar Express. It also stars Crispin Glover, Brendan Gleeson, Angelina Jolie, Robin Penn Wright and Alison Lohman.
"I do believe that in five or 10 years' time that actors will come out of drama school, and they will do theater, and they'll do film, and they'll do TV, and then they'll be doing video games," Serkis said. "I believe that it'll be considered a much, much more dramatic art. Playing characters in video games and [motion-capture] stories will be received through video games more than they are now. I mean, I've never ever drawn a distinction in the process of creating a character in a CG role and in a conventional role. For me there is no difference."
Serkis currently appears in The Prestige and the upcoming Flushed Away and Stormbreaker. —Mike Szymanski
[b]Beowulf Gets 3-D Release
Robert Zemeckis' upcoming computer-animated Beowulf will be projected in 3-D at more than 1,000 theaters when it's released in November 2007, Variety reported.
The film, making use of 3-D motion-capture digital technology, will be released through Paramount and Warner Brothers and will take advantage of digital 3-D projection technology used recently on Monster House, Chicken Little and last weekend's re-release of Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas.
The 3-D release will take place on the same day as the Beowulf release in 35mm.
Zemeckis' Polar Express, which was shot with similar motion-capture technology, was a hit in IMAX 3-D in 2004 and in a re-release during last year's holiday season.
Beowulf is based on the 12th-century Anglo-Saxon epic poem.
Pan Was Fantasy For Star
Ivana Baquero, the 12-year-old Spanish star of Guillermo del Toro's upcoming fantasy film Pan's Labyrinth, told SCI FI Wire that it was both difficult and easy to shoot the many scenes featuring computer-animated fairies and also those scenes with actor Doug Jones as a creature called Faun. Baquero stars in the movie as Ofelia, a young girl whose fantasy world allows her to cope with the harsh realities of post-civil-war Spain.
"It was hard, because they told me, 'You have to imagine a fairy here, and then it goes there, and then it goes there,'" Baquero said in an interview. "So I had to imagine it. But then it was easy, because Guillermo helped me a lot, and the whole crew told me, 'There's the fairy.' And before filming, they told me exactly where the fairy was. And I ended up loving it, because I had to use my imagination."
Creature actor Jones (Hellboy), meanwhile, was quite real and rather vivid in his Faun makeup and costume. The actor also played another character, the Pale Man, a ghostly white figure who terrorizes Ofelia. "Before every day of filming I [talked] with Jones about the scene we were going to do, and we practiced it," Baquero said. "Then I had to get used to working with a [faun], because out of four months of filming I filmed with him two months. So I really had to get used to seeing a two-meter man dressed in a [faun] suit in front of me. He's a great actor, too, and when he was in the scene, he acted scary. So he was definitely scary, but I wasn’t scared, because I had the crew surrounding me." Pan's Labyrinth, a Spanish-Mexican co-production, opens in limited release on Dec. 29 and goes wide in January. —Ian Spelling
Pan Star Dug Deep For Role
Ivana Baquero, the 12-year-old Spanish star of Guillermo del Toro's upcoming fantasy film Pan's Labyrinth, told SCI FI Wire that director del Toro worked closely with her as she prepared for the emotional rigors of the film. Pan's Labyrinth tells the story of Ofelia (Baquero), a young girl whose fantasy world allows her to cope with the harsh realities of post-civil-war Spain.
"I think Guillermo did help me a lot to use my feelings, to be able to [use] my fears and my sadness," Baquero said in an interview. "There's not a specific thing that made me cry, but the whole atmosphere that was surrounding Ofelia, the whole sad atmosphere, really helped me get into character and be able to shout or cry or be happy."
Asked what made her weep in the moment, Baquero offered a spoiler-filled response, saying: "For example, let's say the moment where her mother dies, Guillermo told me, 'Imagine how Ofelia felt when the only person she loved and the only person who loved her died. How would she feel? How bad would she feel? And how would she [feel at] that moment?' So I really got into the character, and I thought of all these sad events that were happening to Ofelia. So I was really sad, and I did cry."
In addition to talking at length with Baquero, del Toro also offered suggestions on how she should breathe during key moments. "We considered—Guillermo and I—that breathing is very important, because it can help you shout, it can help you laugh, cry," Baquero said. "It can help you do anything, when you breathe. So he made me do exercises of breathing, such as, he first said, 'Breathe suddenly, breathe normal, then go really quickly, and then normal again. Quickly, normal, slow.' ... So it really helped, because when I had to do a crying scene, he told me, 'Now the rhythm you have to take is normal to kind of up.' So I really understood what he was talking about, which really helped me a lot." Pan's Labyrinth, a Spanish-Mexican co-production, opens in limited release on Dec. 29 and goes wide in January. —Ian Spelling
Pan Images Tell Story
Guillermo Navarro, the cinematographer on the upcoming fantasy film Pan's Labyrinth, told SCI FI Wire that he has served in the same capacity on many of writer-director Guillermo del Toro's films, and the two have become close friends and collaborators. So much so, they hardly need to say a word to each other on set, Navarro said in an interview. He and del Toro, who both hail from Mexico, have worked together on Cronos, The Devil's Backbone, Hellboy and Pan.
"It's sort of an ongoing relationship with him," Navarro said in an interview. "First of all, we're compadres. We have a very particular, I think, organic way of working. It's not like a normal schedule that we address. We have a very good understanding of what we like to do and what we're able to do. I think we have learned that through the years. It is a very particular channel of communication that I have with him, that I don't have with other directors. It's something very particular that has developed from our friendship. In a way, we've grown together. We've done things in our lives that are very complementary."
Navarro added: "Having said that, I think that the process has to do very much with finding or seeing the same movie together before we make it, because once you're in production, everything is an obstacle. Everything is a limitation. It's amazing we can pull off movies like this with this kind of schedule and budget. And I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that we have this relationship, that we can see the same movie. Basically, I don't remember a moment where we have a strong difference. And we take chances. That's the other thing. We're not afraid of taking chances."
Pan's Labyrinth tells the story of 10-year-old Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), who retreats into a fantasy world amid the strife of post-civil-war Spain.
Navarro—whose other credits include Spy Kids, Zathura and the upcoming Night at the Museum—added that he and del Toro work well together because he understands that the image has to be at the service of the story. "I'm not on my side doing my images or my precious notes on what is good or what the recipe is," he said. "None of that. I completely place the image at the feet of the story, and in that way he's a very visual director in his way of finding the form in the content. There's also a content in the form, but it's not necessarily like the language of music videos, etc., where the form is just the form. Here, we're dealing [with] very profound issues, and the form is the grammar. The images are the grammar to the story. It's not a story told by titles. It's not a story told by dialogue. This succession of images allows you to be there, to belong there. If this was treated in just a, let's say, Hollywood fashion, this story would never fly. It would be absurd."
Pan's Labyrinth, a Spanish-Mexican co-production, opens in limited release on Dec. 29 and goes wide in January. —Ian Spelling
Pan Creatures Push Limits
Guillermo del Toro, writer-director of the upcoming fantasy film Pan's Labyrinth, told SCI FI Wire that his aim was to create monsters the likes of which audiences hadn't before seen. Pan's Labyrinth tells the story of a girl (Ivana Baquero) whose fantasy world allows her to cope with the harsh realities of post-civil-war Spain. The young girl interacts with a variety of creatures and insects, including a faun, a ghostly white figure called the Pale Man, fairies and a huge frog.
"I wanted to have more a painterly or illustrator influence on the creatures," del Toro said in an interview. "For example, I knew that the frog was a very emblematic figure in all fairy tales, so he was created to look like a natural frog, but it was created with a huge animatronic puppet, mostly, and then we replicated that puppet digitally, which is something I'd been experimenting with on Hellboy and Blade II, as a technique, and it worked very well."
For starters on Pan's Labyrinth, del Toro drew characters and jotted down notes in his "little diary of ideas," which he creates for each of his films. "For Pan I drew a leg system for Pan [the faun], and the system is you have the real actor's legs and the goat's legs behind it, and it's a thing that I took from a Japanese technique called bunraku, where the actor puppeteers the puppet, but it's an extension of his own limbs," del Toro said. "So I have the actor [Doug Jones] himself bunraku his legs and I erase the leg. This movie is 13 million euros, but my ambition was to make a movie that looked like 44 million euros, so I knew I could spend money erasing the legs, but not creating them from scratch. The blinks on Pan, we packed all the servos in the head in the horn, and I knew I could not have any room for blinking, so the blinking is digital."
Del Toro added that the inches-high flying fairies are completely digital creations, "as are the insects. And the Pale Man was a creation I wanted to make originally as an old man who has eaten nothing. I wanted him to be a perversion of power, like the Church or the government, and I put stigmatas on his hands, not very subtle. I received a sculpture of the old man's beautifully rendered face from the FX company, and I did this drawing, and I erased the features because I felt that it needed to be the imagination of a little girl. I remembered when I was a kid I used to draw my hands with a crayon, and I'd put a mouth or an eye. So I thought, 'Well, if he has stigmatas, I'm sticking the eyes in there.' That's the way my logic works. But I really liked the idea of this creature being something that you could easily find in a child's book, drawing book. ... A very disturbed child. There was something primal about it. And we did the eyes digitally." Pan's Labyrinth, a Spanish-Mexican co-production, opens in limited release on Dec. 29 and goes wide in January. —Ian Spelling
Del Toro Breathes Life Into Pan
Guillermo del Toro, the Mexican-born writer and director of the upcoming fantasy film Pan's Labyrinth, told SCI FI Wire that he takes tremendous pride in the soundscapes of his films and that he personally provided the sound of many of the characters and creatures in the film. "I create the soundscape with even more care than I can create anything else in the film," del Toro (Hellboy) said in an interview. "So, from Cronos to now, I really, really take pride in the fact that all of the movies I've made have very, very detailed soundscapes. For example, I am the voice of the monsters in most of my movies. I am the voice of the insects in Cronos. I am the voice of the giant roaches in Mimic. I am the voice of ... the ghost in Devil's Backbone, that wheezing sound."
Pan's Labyrinth tells the story of a girl (Ivana Baquero) whose fantasy world allows her to cope with the harsh realities of post-civil-war Spain. The young girl interacts with a variety of creatures and insects, including a faun, a ghostly white figure called the Pale Man and fairies and a huge frog, all of which are "played" by del Toro. "I am the Pale Man," del Toro said, laughing. "Sounds like a Beatles song. Coo-coo-ca-choo. I am the Pale Man. I am the fairies. I am the giant frog. I remember one of the most beautiful moments in my life was when I was able to do the sound of bird wings with a piece of [paper] against the fabric of my shirt. I said, 'That's how they do it!'"
Del Toro added: "I go in and I work with [sound designer] Martin Hernandez, who created the soundscape for 21 Grams, Amores Perros and City of God, and we created over 850 tracks for the movie. What I do then is I conduct them, sort of, in the mixing room, very, very carefully. I use low frequency, because there was a study in the '70s that shows that mammals, all of them, including us, we react very strongly to low frequencies, even if we don't hear them. We heard them in earthquakes and volcanoes, so they're in our genetic memory as sounds of distress. So I use low-frequency [sounds] in all the moments where tension happens."
Del Toro said that he applied the same philosophy to the sounds in Pan's Labyrinth that he did to the cinematography, which is to say that he sought to differentiate the fantasy world from the real world in every way possible. "Until it gets infected by the fantasy world, [the real world] is a very straight world," he said. "The battle scenes have no music, for example. And the sound of the bullets and all that is created to be very active and [to] surround, but [to be] realistic. In the fantasy world, the Pale Man's room, for example, is always breathing. And it's me breathing, of course. I do this sort of 900-number phone-call breathing, and we filter it and create the [sound]scape."
Del Toro added: "What I do—and I don't care if it's Hellboy or if it's Cronos or if it's this—I ultimately make what I call handcrafted films, because there is no second unit, no insert unit, no effects unit. I remember the old Queen albums: no synthesizers. I shoot everything, and I try to do every sound that appears in the movies." Pan's Labyrinth, a Spanish-Mexican co-production, opens in limited release on Dec. 29 and goes wide in January. —Ian Spelling
Hellboy Toon Faithful To Comic
Tad Stones, director of Cartoon Network's animated film Hellboy: Sword of Storms, told SCI FI Wire that the movie takes its story cues from Mike Mignola's Hellboy comics universe, though it also features the voices of actors from Guillermo del Toro's live-action 2004 Hellboy movie. "Our animated films are much closer to the comic," Stones said in an interview. "Basically, every [medium] has its own Hellboy universe, and Hellboy's creator, Mike Mignola, is very careful to keep his universe separate. In our case, our goal was to get [the characters], certainly, and the tone of the story to be as close to the comic as possible. So in the comics, [Hellboy and Liz Sherman aren't in love, as they were in the live-action movie,] and so we're much closer to that. And yet I don't think anybody will be confused."
In Hellboy: Sword of Storms, a university professor reads aloud from a forbidden scroll and is possessed by the demons of thunder and lightning, who attempt to awaken dragons hidden around the world. The film is "kind of like a trip to Alice in Wonderland, but instead of seeing the Mad Hatter, Hellboy [voiced by Ron Perlman] falls into the world of Japanese folklore," Stones said.
Stones added: "Hellboy doesn't know much of that, because he picks up this sword and is transported into this world of Japanese folklore and has these varied adventures, everything from floating vampire heads to strange talking foxes. We find stories within stories, and he's trying to figure out what he has to do to return back to our world." Meanwhile, Liz (voiced by Selma Blair) and Abe Sapien (voiced by Doug Jones) find themselves dealing with some of the dragons on Earth. The film was directed by Stones and Phil Weinstein and co-written by Mignola. Del Toro and Mignola are the creative producers.
Hellboy: Sword of Storms is the first of two animated Hellboy features to come from the mind of Mignola. "These movies are written [to be]—and the Hellboy comics themselves are—PG, PG-13 at most," Stones said. "These shows are like an animated X-Files, which has scares in it, has certainly suspense, has moments where you don't know what's going on, and that's OK. You don't have to be overly clear, and certain things are left unsaid. It's been more of a challenge to me to push the storytelling and artistically looking at trying some art direction that is inspired by what Mike does in the comics."
Stones admitted that he defers to Mignola when it comes to the storytelling. "My job is to keep the uniqueness of Hellboy, which makes him different from any other comic character, and that's the point," he said. "There’s no point in taking Hellboy and turning him into the next mutant in line." Hellboy: Sword of Storms premiered on Cartoon Network Oct. 28 at 9:30 p.m. ET/PT, during the network's Toonami programming block. —Kathie Huddleston
Ford: I'm Fit For Indy IV
Harrison Ford, speaking to the press at the Rome Film Festival last week, said that he feels "fit to continue" to play Indiana Jones, despite growing older, the Associated Press reported. Ford, 64, said that he was delighted to team up again with director Steven Spielberg and producer George Lucas for the film.
"We did three films that stay within the same block of time," Ford told reporters. "We need to move on for artistic reasons and obvious physical reasons. I feel fit to continue and bring the same physical action."
Indiana Jones IV has been in development for more than a decade. Lucas has said he and Spielberg are working on a script, though no details have been disclosed.
Ford added that Sean Connery, who played Indy's father, Henry Jones, in 1989's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, might also appear in the planned fourth feature. "He's part of the emotional fabric of these films," Ford said. "I think there may be an opportunity, I believe that Sean is still willing, and I'd be delighted if he joined us." For his part, Connery has said previously that he's received no offer about the movie.
MGM: T4 Won't Have Arnold
MGM will package a fourth Terminator movie, but without original Terminator star and current California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the studio's chief operating officer, Rick Sands, told theater owners at the annual ShowEast conference in Orlando, Fla., according to The Hollywood Reporter.
"It will be titled Terminator blah blah, not four," Sands told the gathering. As for the film's new star, he said: "It's like the Batman or Superman franchise in that it lends itself to having different actors in the roles."
Sands is also in discussions with New Line Cinema to get the rights to produce two prequel films to the Lord of the Rings series, based on J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, he said.
Horror Courts Controversy
Mick Garris, executive producer of Showtime's anthology series Masters of Horror, told SCI FI Wire that last season's controversial episode "Homecoming"—in which war veterans return from the dead to vote the president out of office—inspired filmmakers to push the envelope even further this time around. "I think John Landis put it really well last year, when he was interviewed," Garris said in a conference-call interview on Oct. 25. "He said, 'When we were told we could do whatever we wanted, Joe [Dante] did something important, and I did something silly with "Deer Woman."' And this year, I think other people thought it would be interesting to tackle social and political issues, but never at the sacrifice of the story."
Episodes in the upcoming second season will tackle hot-button issues such as abortion, in John Carpenter's "Pro-Life"; euthanasia, in Rob Schmidt's "Right to Die"; and political corruption, in Peter Medak's "The Washingtonians." "'Right to Die' is a definite horror story," Garris said. "It's a ghost story that is set in that field. 'Pro-Life' is a monster movie, but it has that theme at the heart of it. So, yeah. And 'The Washingtonians' is something that is also politically relevant right now. So I think the filmmakers felt free, because of what happened with 'Homecoming,' to tell stories that would straddle issues." The second season of Masters of Horror premiered with "The Damned Thing" on Oct. 27 at 10 p.m. ET/PT. —Cindy White
The Keep Heads For Film
StillKing Films has acquired film rights to Jennifer Egan's supernatural novel The Keep, with Ehren Kruger (The Ring) set to adapt, Variety reported.
The Keep, published by Knopf in August, is a supernatural thriller set in a haunted castle in which a woman is seduced by a mysterious prisoner.
StillKing is a Prague-based financing and production outfit that's served as co-producer on projects including the latest James Bond movie, Casino Royale, as well as The Illusionist, Van Helsing and other films.
Kruger and Daniel Bobker will produce the project, along with StillKing's Matthew Stillman; the banner's production president, David Minkowski, executive-produces.
Flushed Makers Tackle CG
The creators of the new animated feature Flushed Away told SCI FI Wire that it was a difficult decision to give up their characteristic plasticine stop-motion-animation techniques and do a completely computer-generated film for the first time. "DreamWorks and Aardman features have been doing some successful collaboration, so it was a tough decision to go completely CG," said co-director David Bowers, who worked on the past two studio collaborations, the stop-motion-animated movies Chicken Run and Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which won the best animated feature Academy Award.
"Our stories took us to a more expansive world. The amount of water and the underground world we would have to build would have been difficult to create [in reality]," said co-director Sam Fell. "So, although we built models of the characters, we never used them for filming. They were all made on a computer."
It would have been difficult to use stop-motion animation to make some of Flushed Away's characters, such as Ian McKellen's Toad. "With the spindly legs and big body, it would have been a nightmare," Fell said. "The story led us to the computers, and it was a new canvas for us to work with."
The biggest problem for the U.S. animators at DreamWorks to deal with was the "unibrow" characteristic of Aardman characters. "That one brow that goes across some of the faces of the characters provides some incredible expressions, and we wanted to keep the style of it, that was [one of] the hardest things for the DreamWorks guys to understand," Fell said. "A lot of people were very upset about it."
Andy Serkis, who voices the character of Spike the rat in Flushed Away, said it's his first animated role, even though he has done motion-capture roles such as Gollum and King Kong in the past. "It was very unusual doing this CG work, and the only thing I can liken it to is that I remember doing a puppet show once, years back," Serkis said. "I did some voices for a puppet show in London, and I remember it was a technical rehearsal, and I remember that one of my puppeteers was late on the stage, and I was sweating. I was thinking, 'Come on. Where is he?' You get that sense of not being in control. It's like being late on in a play. It was really odd. It was a little like that doing Spike."
But even with all the computer work, some of Aardman's trademark thumbprints can be seen in Flushed Away. When Spike gets an electric shock, the skeleton that shows up is the actual stop-frame model built for the character. "You'll see in some rare spots some of the characters even have a few thumbprints on them," Bowers said. Flushed Away opens Nov. 3. —Mike Szymanski
[b]Soap Opera Introduces A Superhero
Marvel Comics has partnered with CBS' daytime soap opera Guiding Light to produce an episode in which a character is zapped by an electrical current and becomes infused with superpowers, including the ability to levitate and to conduct electricity, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The episode, set to air Nov. 1, involves the show's Harley Davidson Cooper character, played by Beth Ehlers. As part of the deal, Marvel will produce an eight-page insert for some of its top comic titles that involves Marvel characters descending on Light's fictional town of Springfield to determine whether the new superhero is friend or foe.
O'Bannon Develops Blur
Veteran writer-producer Rockne S. O'Bannon has teamed with producer Warren Littlefield and reality wizards Magical Elves for Blur, a fantasy drama project set up at ABC and Touchstone TV, according to The Hollywood Reporter. O'Bannon (SCI FI Channel's The Triangle (http://www.scifi.com/triangle/)) has also sold a one-hour spec script titled Prince, about a malevolent but intelligent dog, to Showtime.
Blur is set behind the scenes of a company that specializes in creating elaborate fantasies for its clients. It is inspired by the real-life company Vascorp, whose executives are expected to receive executive-consultant credits on the show.
Prince is described as the "anti-Lassie," about a family with a brilliant but evil dog. In addition to picking up the O'Bannon spec, Showtime has ordered a second script of the project, which O'Bannon is writing and executive-producing.
O'Bannon wrote the 1988 feature Alien Nation, which spawned a slew of TV movies and a TV series. He also created SCI FI's Farscape.
FEARnet Launches On Halloween
FEARnet, a multimedia horror movie service, launches appropriately enough this coming Halloween. Called "the first multiplatform horror network," FEARnet will offer more than 1,000 horror movies from the Sony and Lionsgate libraries as video on demand, online and over mobile devices.
Among the network's offerings: Bram Stoker's Dracula, Flatliners, Night of the Living Dead, Swamp Thing, Texas Chainsaw: The Next Generation, Single White Female, Children of the Living Dead and The Blob.
FEARnet On Demand will feature about 200 titles a year, with more than 70 hours of programming a month.
Online, FEARnet.com will offer a video-rich environment packed with free movies, interactive community features and fresh original content. FEARnet.com will also offer nine free feature-length films and 200 shorts for free streaming, as well as more than 50 downloadable movies to buy or rent a month.
On mobile devices, users can visit mobile.FEARnet.com or wap.FEARnet.com, a WAP-enabled Web site for mobile access, which includes news, reviews and real-time polling.
Green Indicts Big Oil
Multiple award-winning SF author Ben Bova told SCI FI Wire that his latest novel, The Green Trap, is a thriller based on the idea that anyone who comes up with a real, practical alternative to petroleum is going to be attacked by the energy industry. "A scientist finds a way to make hydrogen fuel cheaply. He is murdered. His brother tries to track down the murderer, and his own life becomes endangered. The story moves from Arizona to California to Boston and back again," Bova said in an interview.
The Green Trap came out of the research Bova did for his nonfiction book on astrobiology, Faint Echoes, Distant Stars, he said. "One of the scientific studies being done on the earliest forms of life on Earth led me to the possibility of generating hydrogen fuels more efficiently and cheaply than anyone envisions today," Bova said.
Bova said that the characters come mainly from people he knows—including the exotic and beautiful industrial spy who is in the center of all the intrigue. "Paul Cochrane is a scientist who has fled from Massachusetts to Arizona to get away from the memories of the auto crash that killed his wife," Bova said. "When his brother is murdered, he wants to find out who killed him and why. This leads him into a web of murder and intrigue; his own life is in danger from those who killed his brother. He's on the run to escape those who want to kill him, but he's also trying desperately to find out what his brother discovered that led to his murder. A beautiful industrial spy tries to help him, but Paul suspects she's really after the scientific breakthrough for which his brother was murdered. He's torn between his desire for her and his fears that she's really in league with the enemy."
The Green Trap uses fictionalized news stories to give the reader a feel for the background against which the story unreels, Bova said. "The science is real; the characters are as realistic as I could make them," he said. "The key to it all is that Paul Cochrane is a scientist and thinks like a scientist. When the story's climax comes, he behaves like a scientist—which costs him the woman he has come to love, and more."
Bova is currently working on his third and most likely final Mars novel, which has the tentative title of Mars Life. In spring 2007, Tor will publish The Sam Gunn Omnibus: Featuring Every Story Ever Written About Sam Gunn, and Then Some. "I'm reading the page proofs now," Bova said. "And if I say so myself, the stories are great fun." —John Joseph Adams
New Guild Title In Stores
Guild Wars Nightfall (http://www.guildwars.com/), a PC-based online role-playing game, is on its way to retailers and will hit store shelves in North America and Europe on Oct. 27. Nightfall is the latest campaign release in the award-winning Guild Wars series, created by ArenaNet and published by NCsoft.
Set in the land of Elona, where an evil ruler is attempting to summon her outcast god, Nightfall will ask the stout of heart to answer the rallying cry of the Sunspears—the protectors of the realm—to fight back the looming darkness descending upon the land.
Nightfall introduces several new features, including customizable "Hero" companions that level up, use weapons and skills of the player's choosing and go forth with him or her into battle. "Hero Battles" are one-on-one challenges that allow two players and their hero companions to compete against one another in new player-vs.-player gameplay. New templates will let players save, store and exchange hero builds, providing countless combinations to create the ultimate team of heroes.
Nightfall also provides 20 new missions, hundreds of new skills, new armor, two fierce new professions and endless replayability. Guild Wars Nightfall will be available in both standard and collectors' editions.
Hooper Kicks Off Horror 2
Mick Garris, executive producer of Showtime's anthology series Masters of Horror, told SCI FI Wire that he chose Tobe Hooper's "The Damned Thing" to open the second season because it sets the tone for the rest of the episodes. "Tobe is such a grand master of the genre, we wanted to start with one of the real major names," Garris said in a conference-call interview on Oct. 25. "It has a lot of classic elements that, I think, are what we want to represent the show with. There's a lot of tension in it. There's a lot of mystery in it. And it's a true Tobe Hooper film. It's very Texan in its outlook. And we just felt that it was a really great way to start the series."
"The Damned Thing" was adapted for the series from a short story by Ambrose Bierce. Sean Patrick Flanery (The Dead Zone) stars as a small-town Texas sheriff who must overcome his rage and keep the peace when a mysterious force descends on the town and causes the citizens to turn on each other. Ted Raimi (Spider-Man) and Marisa Coughlan (Boston Legal) also star.
Hooper (the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Poltergeist) returns to Masters of Horror after contributing the season-one episode "Dance of the Dead." Garris said that Hooper's effort this time around is even more ambitious. "I really liked 'Dance of the Dead,' but I think the script is even stronger for 'Damned Thing,'" Garris said. "Both of them are incredibly moody, but this one, I think there's more story there. And I think the cast is wonderful. I think Sean Patrick Flanery did an amazing job with it."
Garris added that Hooper is also a good representative for the series, because he's remained a devotee of the horror genre throughout his career. "One of the great things about Tobe Hooper is that he still directs like he's in his 20s," Garris said. "He's still trying to find new ways to tell a story cinematically. And he's still energized every time out. And not everybody has that with them when they've made movies for 30, 35 years, as Tobe has. It's really fantastic to see." The second season of Masters of Horror premiered with "The Damned Thing" on Oct. 27 at 10 p.m. ET/PT. —Cindy White
Serenity's Fillion On Lost
Serenity star Nathan Fillion guest-stars on the Nov. 8 episode of ABC's hit series Lost, "I Do," which also marks the decision by Kate (Evangeline Lilly) to hook up with either Jack (Matthew Fox) or Sawyer (Josh Holloway). Fillion will play a character named Kevin in the episode, which is the last new one for a while as the series takes a 13-week hiatus, returning in February.
In "I Do," Jack makes a decision regarding Ben's (Michael Emerson) offer, Kate feels helpless when it looks like an angry Pickett (Michael Bowen) is going to make good on his threat to kill Sawyer, and Locke (Terry O'Quinn) discovers a hidden message that may guide him through the next steps on his journey to unlocking the secrets of the island.
"I Do" was written by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse and directed by Tucker Gates. It airs at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
Lost Returns In February
ABC's hit series Lost will return for the second half of its third season on Feb. 7, after a 13-week hiatus; it will then run without repeats until the end of the season, Zap2it.com reported.
Lost is currently airing six original episodes and will then take a break after the Nov. 8 episode, to be replaced by the SF series Day Break in the Wednesday 9 p.m. timeslot, starting Nov. 15. The two-part season is designed to avoid last season's midseason reruns.
When Lost returns in February, it will have 16 weeks of uninterrupted episodes.
Microsoft Comments On Halo
Undaunted by the pullout of Universal Pictures and 20th Century Fox, Microsoft vowed to pursue the production of a movie based on its Halo video-game franchise, according to a report on the official Web site of Bungie (http://www.bungie.net/News/TopStory.aspx?link=filmateleven), the developer of the games. "We are disappointed that Universal and Fox wanted to significantly renegotiate the financial points of the deal," Microsoft said in a statement. "But the Halo franchise is hugely popular, and our goal remains the same—to find a partner that shares our passion and will creatively collaborate with us to best represent the story and spirit of the Halo franchise."
Universal and Fox abruptly pulled out of the project last week after reportedly failing to get the filmmakers and Microsoft to reduce their profit participation.
Microsoft added: "[Executive producers] Peter Jackson [and] Fran Walsh and the rest of the creative team are dedicated to ensuring the Halo movie becomes a reality. We are already in discussions with potential partners who recognize the value of the Halo brand and its appeal to consumers worldwide."
Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Serkis: Beowulf Is The Future
Andy Serkis, who co-stars in Robert Zemeckis' upcoming Beowulf film, told SCI FI Wire that the movie's computer animation is a glimpse of things to come. "I think that more motion capture is used in film, and it's becoming part of the mainstream and used in a mainstream way," Serkis (King Kong) said in an interview. "It is ... especially [true] with video games and the convergence of video games and film. It's actually a really interesting time for actors. Robert Zemeckis has just made Beowulf with Anthony Hopkins and John Malkovich, Ray Winstone and all kinds of high-profile and serious actors creating these characters. They are creating the movements. They are creating the personalities, and it's the manifestation of those characters which is being handed over."
Beowulf, based on the 12th-century Anglo-Saxon epic poem, will make use of the motion-capture animation technology Zemeckis previously employed in films such as The Polar Express. It also stars Crispin Glover, Brendan Gleeson, Angelina Jolie, Robin Penn Wright and Alison Lohman.
"I do believe that in five or 10 years' time that actors will come out of drama school, and they will do theater, and they'll do film, and they'll do TV, and then they'll be doing video games," Serkis said. "I believe that it'll be considered a much, much more dramatic art. Playing characters in video games and [motion-capture] stories will be received through video games more than they are now. I mean, I've never ever drawn a distinction in the process of creating a character in a CG role and in a conventional role. For me there is no difference."
Serkis currently appears in The Prestige and the upcoming Flushed Away and Stormbreaker. —Mike Szymanski
[b]Beowulf Gets 3-D Release
Robert Zemeckis' upcoming computer-animated Beowulf will be projected in 3-D at more than 1,000 theaters when it's released in November 2007, Variety reported.
The film, making use of 3-D motion-capture digital technology, will be released through Paramount and Warner Brothers and will take advantage of digital 3-D projection technology used recently on Monster House, Chicken Little and last weekend's re-release of Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas.
The 3-D release will take place on the same day as the Beowulf release in 35mm.
Zemeckis' Polar Express, which was shot with similar motion-capture technology, was a hit in IMAX 3-D in 2004 and in a re-release during last year's holiday season.
Beowulf is based on the 12th-century Anglo-Saxon epic poem.
Pan Was Fantasy For Star
Ivana Baquero, the 12-year-old Spanish star of Guillermo del Toro's upcoming fantasy film Pan's Labyrinth, told SCI FI Wire that it was both difficult and easy to shoot the many scenes featuring computer-animated fairies and also those scenes with actor Doug Jones as a creature called Faun. Baquero stars in the movie as Ofelia, a young girl whose fantasy world allows her to cope with the harsh realities of post-civil-war Spain.
"It was hard, because they told me, 'You have to imagine a fairy here, and then it goes there, and then it goes there,'" Baquero said in an interview. "So I had to imagine it. But then it was easy, because Guillermo helped me a lot, and the whole crew told me, 'There's the fairy.' And before filming, they told me exactly where the fairy was. And I ended up loving it, because I had to use my imagination."
Creature actor Jones (Hellboy), meanwhile, was quite real and rather vivid in his Faun makeup and costume. The actor also played another character, the Pale Man, a ghostly white figure who terrorizes Ofelia. "Before every day of filming I [talked] with Jones about the scene we were going to do, and we practiced it," Baquero said. "Then I had to get used to working with a [faun], because out of four months of filming I filmed with him two months. So I really had to get used to seeing a two-meter man dressed in a [faun] suit in front of me. He's a great actor, too, and when he was in the scene, he acted scary. So he was definitely scary, but I wasn’t scared, because I had the crew surrounding me." Pan's Labyrinth, a Spanish-Mexican co-production, opens in limited release on Dec. 29 and goes wide in January. —Ian Spelling
Pan Star Dug Deep For Role
Ivana Baquero, the 12-year-old Spanish star of Guillermo del Toro's upcoming fantasy film Pan's Labyrinth, told SCI FI Wire that director del Toro worked closely with her as she prepared for the emotional rigors of the film. Pan's Labyrinth tells the story of Ofelia (Baquero), a young girl whose fantasy world allows her to cope with the harsh realities of post-civil-war Spain.
"I think Guillermo did help me a lot to use my feelings, to be able to [use] my fears and my sadness," Baquero said in an interview. "There's not a specific thing that made me cry, but the whole atmosphere that was surrounding Ofelia, the whole sad atmosphere, really helped me get into character and be able to shout or cry or be happy."
Asked what made her weep in the moment, Baquero offered a spoiler-filled response, saying: "For example, let's say the moment where her mother dies, Guillermo told me, 'Imagine how Ofelia felt when the only person she loved and the only person who loved her died. How would she feel? How bad would she feel? And how would she [feel at] that moment?' So I really got into the character, and I thought of all these sad events that were happening to Ofelia. So I was really sad, and I did cry."
In addition to talking at length with Baquero, del Toro also offered suggestions on how she should breathe during key moments. "We considered—Guillermo and I—that breathing is very important, because it can help you shout, it can help you laugh, cry," Baquero said. "It can help you do anything, when you breathe. So he made me do exercises of breathing, such as, he first said, 'Breathe suddenly, breathe normal, then go really quickly, and then normal again. Quickly, normal, slow.' ... So it really helped, because when I had to do a crying scene, he told me, 'Now the rhythm you have to take is normal to kind of up.' So I really understood what he was talking about, which really helped me a lot." Pan's Labyrinth, a Spanish-Mexican co-production, opens in limited release on Dec. 29 and goes wide in January. —Ian Spelling
Pan Images Tell Story
Guillermo Navarro, the cinematographer on the upcoming fantasy film Pan's Labyrinth, told SCI FI Wire that he has served in the same capacity on many of writer-director Guillermo del Toro's films, and the two have become close friends and collaborators. So much so, they hardly need to say a word to each other on set, Navarro said in an interview. He and del Toro, who both hail from Mexico, have worked together on Cronos, The Devil's Backbone, Hellboy and Pan.
"It's sort of an ongoing relationship with him," Navarro said in an interview. "First of all, we're compadres. We have a very particular, I think, organic way of working. It's not like a normal schedule that we address. We have a very good understanding of what we like to do and what we're able to do. I think we have learned that through the years. It is a very particular channel of communication that I have with him, that I don't have with other directors. It's something very particular that has developed from our friendship. In a way, we've grown together. We've done things in our lives that are very complementary."
Navarro added: "Having said that, I think that the process has to do very much with finding or seeing the same movie together before we make it, because once you're in production, everything is an obstacle. Everything is a limitation. It's amazing we can pull off movies like this with this kind of schedule and budget. And I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that we have this relationship, that we can see the same movie. Basically, I don't remember a moment where we have a strong difference. And we take chances. That's the other thing. We're not afraid of taking chances."
Pan's Labyrinth tells the story of 10-year-old Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), who retreats into a fantasy world amid the strife of post-civil-war Spain.
Navarro—whose other credits include Spy Kids, Zathura and the upcoming Night at the Museum—added that he and del Toro work well together because he understands that the image has to be at the service of the story. "I'm not on my side doing my images or my precious notes on what is good or what the recipe is," he said. "None of that. I completely place the image at the feet of the story, and in that way he's a very visual director in his way of finding the form in the content. There's also a content in the form, but it's not necessarily like the language of music videos, etc., where the form is just the form. Here, we're dealing [with] very profound issues, and the form is the grammar. The images are the grammar to the story. It's not a story told by titles. It's not a story told by dialogue. This succession of images allows you to be there, to belong there. If this was treated in just a, let's say, Hollywood fashion, this story would never fly. It would be absurd."
Pan's Labyrinth, a Spanish-Mexican co-production, opens in limited release on Dec. 29 and goes wide in January. —Ian Spelling
Pan Creatures Push Limits
Guillermo del Toro, writer-director of the upcoming fantasy film Pan's Labyrinth, told SCI FI Wire that his aim was to create monsters the likes of which audiences hadn't before seen. Pan's Labyrinth tells the story of a girl (Ivana Baquero) whose fantasy world allows her to cope with the harsh realities of post-civil-war Spain. The young girl interacts with a variety of creatures and insects, including a faun, a ghostly white figure called the Pale Man, fairies and a huge frog.
"I wanted to have more a painterly or illustrator influence on the creatures," del Toro said in an interview. "For example, I knew that the frog was a very emblematic figure in all fairy tales, so he was created to look like a natural frog, but it was created with a huge animatronic puppet, mostly, and then we replicated that puppet digitally, which is something I'd been experimenting with on Hellboy and Blade II, as a technique, and it worked very well."
For starters on Pan's Labyrinth, del Toro drew characters and jotted down notes in his "little diary of ideas," which he creates for each of his films. "For Pan I drew a leg system for Pan [the faun], and the system is you have the real actor's legs and the goat's legs behind it, and it's a thing that I took from a Japanese technique called bunraku, where the actor puppeteers the puppet, but it's an extension of his own limbs," del Toro said. "So I have the actor [Doug Jones] himself bunraku his legs and I erase the leg. This movie is 13 million euros, but my ambition was to make a movie that looked like 44 million euros, so I knew I could spend money erasing the legs, but not creating them from scratch. The blinks on Pan, we packed all the servos in the head in the horn, and I knew I could not have any room for blinking, so the blinking is digital."
Del Toro added that the inches-high flying fairies are completely digital creations, "as are the insects. And the Pale Man was a creation I wanted to make originally as an old man who has eaten nothing. I wanted him to be a perversion of power, like the Church or the government, and I put stigmatas on his hands, not very subtle. I received a sculpture of the old man's beautifully rendered face from the FX company, and I did this drawing, and I erased the features because I felt that it needed to be the imagination of a little girl. I remembered when I was a kid I used to draw my hands with a crayon, and I'd put a mouth or an eye. So I thought, 'Well, if he has stigmatas, I'm sticking the eyes in there.' That's the way my logic works. But I really liked the idea of this creature being something that you could easily find in a child's book, drawing book. ... A very disturbed child. There was something primal about it. And we did the eyes digitally." Pan's Labyrinth, a Spanish-Mexican co-production, opens in limited release on Dec. 29 and goes wide in January. —Ian Spelling
Del Toro Breathes Life Into Pan
Guillermo del Toro, the Mexican-born writer and director of the upcoming fantasy film Pan's Labyrinth, told SCI FI Wire that he takes tremendous pride in the soundscapes of his films and that he personally provided the sound of many of the characters and creatures in the film. "I create the soundscape with even more care than I can create anything else in the film," del Toro (Hellboy) said in an interview. "So, from Cronos to now, I really, really take pride in the fact that all of the movies I've made have very, very detailed soundscapes. For example, I am the voice of the monsters in most of my movies. I am the voice of the insects in Cronos. I am the voice of the giant roaches in Mimic. I am the voice of ... the ghost in Devil's Backbone, that wheezing sound."
Pan's Labyrinth tells the story of a girl (Ivana Baquero) whose fantasy world allows her to cope with the harsh realities of post-civil-war Spain. The young girl interacts with a variety of creatures and insects, including a faun, a ghostly white figure called the Pale Man and fairies and a huge frog, all of which are "played" by del Toro. "I am the Pale Man," del Toro said, laughing. "Sounds like a Beatles song. Coo-coo-ca-choo. I am the Pale Man. I am the fairies. I am the giant frog. I remember one of the most beautiful moments in my life was when I was able to do the sound of bird wings with a piece of [paper] against the fabric of my shirt. I said, 'That's how they do it!'"
Del Toro added: "I go in and I work with [sound designer] Martin Hernandez, who created the soundscape for 21 Grams, Amores Perros and City of God, and we created over 850 tracks for the movie. What I do then is I conduct them, sort of, in the mixing room, very, very carefully. I use low frequency, because there was a study in the '70s that shows that mammals, all of them, including us, we react very strongly to low frequencies, even if we don't hear them. We heard them in earthquakes and volcanoes, so they're in our genetic memory as sounds of distress. So I use low-frequency [sounds] in all the moments where tension happens."
Del Toro said that he applied the same philosophy to the sounds in Pan's Labyrinth that he did to the cinematography, which is to say that he sought to differentiate the fantasy world from the real world in every way possible. "Until it gets infected by the fantasy world, [the real world] is a very straight world," he said. "The battle scenes have no music, for example. And the sound of the bullets and all that is created to be very active and [to] surround, but [to be] realistic. In the fantasy world, the Pale Man's room, for example, is always breathing. And it's me breathing, of course. I do this sort of 900-number phone-call breathing, and we filter it and create the [sound]scape."
Del Toro added: "What I do—and I don't care if it's Hellboy or if it's Cronos or if it's this—I ultimately make what I call handcrafted films, because there is no second unit, no insert unit, no effects unit. I remember the old Queen albums: no synthesizers. I shoot everything, and I try to do every sound that appears in the movies." Pan's Labyrinth, a Spanish-Mexican co-production, opens in limited release on Dec. 29 and goes wide in January. —Ian Spelling
Hellboy Toon Faithful To Comic
Tad Stones, director of Cartoon Network's animated film Hellboy: Sword of Storms, told SCI FI Wire that the movie takes its story cues from Mike Mignola's Hellboy comics universe, though it also features the voices of actors from Guillermo del Toro's live-action 2004 Hellboy movie. "Our animated films are much closer to the comic," Stones said in an interview. "Basically, every [medium] has its own Hellboy universe, and Hellboy's creator, Mike Mignola, is very careful to keep his universe separate. In our case, our goal was to get [the characters], certainly, and the tone of the story to be as close to the comic as possible. So in the comics, [Hellboy and Liz Sherman aren't in love, as they were in the live-action movie,] and so we're much closer to that. And yet I don't think anybody will be confused."
In Hellboy: Sword of Storms, a university professor reads aloud from a forbidden scroll and is possessed by the demons of thunder and lightning, who attempt to awaken dragons hidden around the world. The film is "kind of like a trip to Alice in Wonderland, but instead of seeing the Mad Hatter, Hellboy [voiced by Ron Perlman] falls into the world of Japanese folklore," Stones said.
Stones added: "Hellboy doesn't know much of that, because he picks up this sword and is transported into this world of Japanese folklore and has these varied adventures, everything from floating vampire heads to strange talking foxes. We find stories within stories, and he's trying to figure out what he has to do to return back to our world." Meanwhile, Liz (voiced by Selma Blair) and Abe Sapien (voiced by Doug Jones) find themselves dealing with some of the dragons on Earth. The film was directed by Stones and Phil Weinstein and co-written by Mignola. Del Toro and Mignola are the creative producers.
Hellboy: Sword of Storms is the first of two animated Hellboy features to come from the mind of Mignola. "These movies are written [to be]—and the Hellboy comics themselves are—PG, PG-13 at most," Stones said. "These shows are like an animated X-Files, which has scares in it, has certainly suspense, has moments where you don't know what's going on, and that's OK. You don't have to be overly clear, and certain things are left unsaid. It's been more of a challenge to me to push the storytelling and artistically looking at trying some art direction that is inspired by what Mike does in the comics."
Stones admitted that he defers to Mignola when it comes to the storytelling. "My job is to keep the uniqueness of Hellboy, which makes him different from any other comic character, and that's the point," he said. "There’s no point in taking Hellboy and turning him into the next mutant in line." Hellboy: Sword of Storms premiered on Cartoon Network Oct. 28 at 9:30 p.m. ET/PT, during the network's Toonami programming block. —Kathie Huddleston
Ford: I'm Fit For Indy IV
Harrison Ford, speaking to the press at the Rome Film Festival last week, said that he feels "fit to continue" to play Indiana Jones, despite growing older, the Associated Press reported. Ford, 64, said that he was delighted to team up again with director Steven Spielberg and producer George Lucas for the film.
"We did three films that stay within the same block of time," Ford told reporters. "We need to move on for artistic reasons and obvious physical reasons. I feel fit to continue and bring the same physical action."
Indiana Jones IV has been in development for more than a decade. Lucas has said he and Spielberg are working on a script, though no details have been disclosed.
Ford added that Sean Connery, who played Indy's father, Henry Jones, in 1989's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, might also appear in the planned fourth feature. "He's part of the emotional fabric of these films," Ford said. "I think there may be an opportunity, I believe that Sean is still willing, and I'd be delighted if he joined us." For his part, Connery has said previously that he's received no offer about the movie.
MGM: T4 Won't Have Arnold
MGM will package a fourth Terminator movie, but without original Terminator star and current California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the studio's chief operating officer, Rick Sands, told theater owners at the annual ShowEast conference in Orlando, Fla., according to The Hollywood Reporter.
"It will be titled Terminator blah blah, not four," Sands told the gathering. As for the film's new star, he said: "It's like the Batman or Superman franchise in that it lends itself to having different actors in the roles."
Sands is also in discussions with New Line Cinema to get the rights to produce two prequel films to the Lord of the Rings series, based on J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, he said.
Horror Courts Controversy
Mick Garris, executive producer of Showtime's anthology series Masters of Horror, told SCI FI Wire that last season's controversial episode "Homecoming"—in which war veterans return from the dead to vote the president out of office—inspired filmmakers to push the envelope even further this time around. "I think John Landis put it really well last year, when he was interviewed," Garris said in a conference-call interview on Oct. 25. "He said, 'When we were told we could do whatever we wanted, Joe [Dante] did something important, and I did something silly with "Deer Woman."' And this year, I think other people thought it would be interesting to tackle social and political issues, but never at the sacrifice of the story."
Episodes in the upcoming second season will tackle hot-button issues such as abortion, in John Carpenter's "Pro-Life"; euthanasia, in Rob Schmidt's "Right to Die"; and political corruption, in Peter Medak's "The Washingtonians." "'Right to Die' is a definite horror story," Garris said. "It's a ghost story that is set in that field. 'Pro-Life' is a monster movie, but it has that theme at the heart of it. So, yeah. And 'The Washingtonians' is something that is also politically relevant right now. So I think the filmmakers felt free, because of what happened with 'Homecoming,' to tell stories that would straddle issues." The second season of Masters of Horror premiered with "The Damned Thing" on Oct. 27 at 10 p.m. ET/PT. —Cindy White
The Keep Heads For Film
StillKing Films has acquired film rights to Jennifer Egan's supernatural novel The Keep, with Ehren Kruger (The Ring) set to adapt, Variety reported.
The Keep, published by Knopf in August, is a supernatural thriller set in a haunted castle in which a woman is seduced by a mysterious prisoner.
StillKing is a Prague-based financing and production outfit that's served as co-producer on projects including the latest James Bond movie, Casino Royale, as well as The Illusionist, Van Helsing and other films.
Kruger and Daniel Bobker will produce the project, along with StillKing's Matthew Stillman; the banner's production president, David Minkowski, executive-produces.
Flushed Makers Tackle CG
The creators of the new animated feature Flushed Away told SCI FI Wire that it was a difficult decision to give up their characteristic plasticine stop-motion-animation techniques and do a completely computer-generated film for the first time. "DreamWorks and Aardman features have been doing some successful collaboration, so it was a tough decision to go completely CG," said co-director David Bowers, who worked on the past two studio collaborations, the stop-motion-animated movies Chicken Run and Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which won the best animated feature Academy Award.
"Our stories took us to a more expansive world. The amount of water and the underground world we would have to build would have been difficult to create [in reality]," said co-director Sam Fell. "So, although we built models of the characters, we never used them for filming. They were all made on a computer."
It would have been difficult to use stop-motion animation to make some of Flushed Away's characters, such as Ian McKellen's Toad. "With the spindly legs and big body, it would have been a nightmare," Fell said. "The story led us to the computers, and it was a new canvas for us to work with."
The biggest problem for the U.S. animators at DreamWorks to deal with was the "unibrow" characteristic of Aardman characters. "That one brow that goes across some of the faces of the characters provides some incredible expressions, and we wanted to keep the style of it, that was [one of] the hardest things for the DreamWorks guys to understand," Fell said. "A lot of people were very upset about it."
Andy Serkis, who voices the character of Spike the rat in Flushed Away, said it's his first animated role, even though he has done motion-capture roles such as Gollum and King Kong in the past. "It was very unusual doing this CG work, and the only thing I can liken it to is that I remember doing a puppet show once, years back," Serkis said. "I did some voices for a puppet show in London, and I remember it was a technical rehearsal, and I remember that one of my puppeteers was late on the stage, and I was sweating. I was thinking, 'Come on. Where is he?' You get that sense of not being in control. It's like being late on in a play. It was really odd. It was a little like that doing Spike."
But even with all the computer work, some of Aardman's trademark thumbprints can be seen in Flushed Away. When Spike gets an electric shock, the skeleton that shows up is the actual stop-frame model built for the character. "You'll see in some rare spots some of the characters even have a few thumbprints on them," Bowers said. Flushed Away opens Nov. 3. —Mike Szymanski
[b]Soap Opera Introduces A Superhero
Marvel Comics has partnered with CBS' daytime soap opera Guiding Light to produce an episode in which a character is zapped by an electrical current and becomes infused with superpowers, including the ability to levitate and to conduct electricity, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The episode, set to air Nov. 1, involves the show's Harley Davidson Cooper character, played by Beth Ehlers. As part of the deal, Marvel will produce an eight-page insert for some of its top comic titles that involves Marvel characters descending on Light's fictional town of Springfield to determine whether the new superhero is friend or foe.
O'Bannon Develops Blur
Veteran writer-producer Rockne S. O'Bannon has teamed with producer Warren Littlefield and reality wizards Magical Elves for Blur, a fantasy drama project set up at ABC and Touchstone TV, according to The Hollywood Reporter. O'Bannon (SCI FI Channel's The Triangle (http://www.scifi.com/triangle/)) has also sold a one-hour spec script titled Prince, about a malevolent but intelligent dog, to Showtime.
Blur is set behind the scenes of a company that specializes in creating elaborate fantasies for its clients. It is inspired by the real-life company Vascorp, whose executives are expected to receive executive-consultant credits on the show.
Prince is described as the "anti-Lassie," about a family with a brilliant but evil dog. In addition to picking up the O'Bannon spec, Showtime has ordered a second script of the project, which O'Bannon is writing and executive-producing.
O'Bannon wrote the 1988 feature Alien Nation, which spawned a slew of TV movies and a TV series. He also created SCI FI's Farscape.
FEARnet Launches On Halloween
FEARnet, a multimedia horror movie service, launches appropriately enough this coming Halloween. Called "the first multiplatform horror network," FEARnet will offer more than 1,000 horror movies from the Sony and Lionsgate libraries as video on demand, online and over mobile devices.
Among the network's offerings: Bram Stoker's Dracula, Flatliners, Night of the Living Dead, Swamp Thing, Texas Chainsaw: The Next Generation, Single White Female, Children of the Living Dead and The Blob.
FEARnet On Demand will feature about 200 titles a year, with more than 70 hours of programming a month.
Online, FEARnet.com will offer a video-rich environment packed with free movies, interactive community features and fresh original content. FEARnet.com will also offer nine free feature-length films and 200 shorts for free streaming, as well as more than 50 downloadable movies to buy or rent a month.
On mobile devices, users can visit mobile.FEARnet.com or wap.FEARnet.com, a WAP-enabled Web site for mobile access, which includes news, reviews and real-time polling.
Green Indicts Big Oil
Multiple award-winning SF author Ben Bova told SCI FI Wire that his latest novel, The Green Trap, is a thriller based on the idea that anyone who comes up with a real, practical alternative to petroleum is going to be attacked by the energy industry. "A scientist finds a way to make hydrogen fuel cheaply. He is murdered. His brother tries to track down the murderer, and his own life becomes endangered. The story moves from Arizona to California to Boston and back again," Bova said in an interview.
The Green Trap came out of the research Bova did for his nonfiction book on astrobiology, Faint Echoes, Distant Stars, he said. "One of the scientific studies being done on the earliest forms of life on Earth led me to the possibility of generating hydrogen fuels more efficiently and cheaply than anyone envisions today," Bova said.
Bova said that the characters come mainly from people he knows—including the exotic and beautiful industrial spy who is in the center of all the intrigue. "Paul Cochrane is a scientist who has fled from Massachusetts to Arizona to get away from the memories of the auto crash that killed his wife," Bova said. "When his brother is murdered, he wants to find out who killed him and why. This leads him into a web of murder and intrigue; his own life is in danger from those who killed his brother. He's on the run to escape those who want to kill him, but he's also trying desperately to find out what his brother discovered that led to his murder. A beautiful industrial spy tries to help him, but Paul suspects she's really after the scientific breakthrough for which his brother was murdered. He's torn between his desire for her and his fears that she's really in league with the enemy."
The Green Trap uses fictionalized news stories to give the reader a feel for the background against which the story unreels, Bova said. "The science is real; the characters are as realistic as I could make them," he said. "The key to it all is that Paul Cochrane is a scientist and thinks like a scientist. When the story's climax comes, he behaves like a scientist—which costs him the woman he has come to love, and more."
Bova is currently working on his third and most likely final Mars novel, which has the tentative title of Mars Life. In spring 2007, Tor will publish The Sam Gunn Omnibus: Featuring Every Story Ever Written About Sam Gunn, and Then Some. "I'm reading the page proofs now," Bova said. "And if I say so myself, the stories are great fun." —John Joseph Adams
New Guild Title In Stores
Guild Wars Nightfall (http://www.guildwars.com/), a PC-based online role-playing game, is on its way to retailers and will hit store shelves in North America and Europe on Oct. 27. Nightfall is the latest campaign release in the award-winning Guild Wars series, created by ArenaNet and published by NCsoft.
Set in the land of Elona, where an evil ruler is attempting to summon her outcast god, Nightfall will ask the stout of heart to answer the rallying cry of the Sunspears—the protectors of the realm—to fight back the looming darkness descending upon the land.
Nightfall introduces several new features, including customizable "Hero" companions that level up, use weapons and skills of the player's choosing and go forth with him or her into battle. "Hero Battles" are one-on-one challenges that allow two players and their hero companions to compete against one another in new player-vs.-player gameplay. New templates will let players save, store and exchange hero builds, providing countless combinations to create the ultimate team of heroes.
Nightfall also provides 20 new missions, hundreds of new skills, new armor, two fierce new professions and endless replayability. Guild Wars Nightfall will be available in both standard and collectors' editions.
Hooper Kicks Off Horror 2
Mick Garris, executive producer of Showtime's anthology series Masters of Horror, told SCI FI Wire that he chose Tobe Hooper's "The Damned Thing" to open the second season because it sets the tone for the rest of the episodes. "Tobe is such a grand master of the genre, we wanted to start with one of the real major names," Garris said in a conference-call interview on Oct. 25. "It has a lot of classic elements that, I think, are what we want to represent the show with. There's a lot of tension in it. There's a lot of mystery in it. And it's a true Tobe Hooper film. It's very Texan in its outlook. And we just felt that it was a really great way to start the series."
"The Damned Thing" was adapted for the series from a short story by Ambrose Bierce. Sean Patrick Flanery (The Dead Zone) stars as a small-town Texas sheriff who must overcome his rage and keep the peace when a mysterious force descends on the town and causes the citizens to turn on each other. Ted Raimi (Spider-Man) and Marisa Coughlan (Boston Legal) also star.
Hooper (the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Poltergeist) returns to Masters of Horror after contributing the season-one episode "Dance of the Dead." Garris said that Hooper's effort this time around is even more ambitious. "I really liked 'Dance of the Dead,' but I think the script is even stronger for 'Damned Thing,'" Garris said. "Both of them are incredibly moody, but this one, I think there's more story there. And I think the cast is wonderful. I think Sean Patrick Flanery did an amazing job with it."
Garris added that Hooper is also a good representative for the series, because he's remained a devotee of the horror genre throughout his career. "One of the great things about Tobe Hooper is that he still directs like he's in his 20s," Garris said. "He's still trying to find new ways to tell a story cinematically. And he's still energized every time out. And not everybody has that with them when they've made movies for 30, 35 years, as Tobe has. It's really fantastic to see." The second season of Masters of Horror premiered with "The Damned Thing" on Oct. 27 at 10 p.m. ET/PT. —Cindy White