Walt Disney Pictures has finally released the teaser trailer for Tron Legacy, which originally screened as a surprise at last year’s Comic-Con. Joseph Kosinski originally shot the footage as a test to prove his vision for the long-in-development sequel to the mouse house. The studio executives were impressed enough to screen the test trailer to fans at the 2008 Comic-Con, which became the surprise hit of the convention.
Disney’s Head of Production Oren Aviv tells ComingSoon that the fourth installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise is gearing up to begin shooting early 2010
Will Torchwood: Children of Earth director Euros Lyn be the man in charge of the much-rumored Doctor Who movie? Rumors say yes, and also suggest that the movie is only two years away.
It's official - Little-known director Nimrod Antal is going to be directing Robert Rodriguez's sequel/reboot to Predator, Predators. But is the name a worrying omen for how much this film will echo James Cameron's Aliens? Rodriguez teases the answer.
A new era of Doctor Who will bring with it an old convention, as eleventh Doctor Matt Smith's face will reportedly be featured in the opening titles. Is it possible to be nostalgic for something that hasn't happened yet?
Columbia Pictures has hired Equilibrium and Ultraviolet scribe Kurt Wimmer to pen a remake of Total Recall (which was first announced in February). Wimmer recently worked with the studio on the Angelina Jolie spy thriller Salt, and co-wrote the F. Gary Gray-directed Law Abiding Citizen.
Joss Whedon works fast: now that Summer Glau is no longer busy with Terminator, he's already talking to her about showing up on Dollhouse. But she won't be playing the role you might expect. Possible spoilers below.
Whedon tells EW that he pounced on Glau even before Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles was officially canceled:
If anybody thinks [bringing Summer onto Dollhouse] hasn't occurred to me already then they have not met me. I mentioned it to her before [SCC] was canceled. I was like, 'You know, we should get you in the 'house.' But first we have to come up with something that works.
The first official concept art from Avatar is out, giving us a glimpse at what could be an alien species from planet Pandora — and it reminds us slightly of the Pitch Black beasties, which apparently you can ride like Falcor.
Thanks to MarketSaw for finding these official, yet exotic, pictures from the book The Art of Avatar. I'm actually slightly more excited about motion-capture now, if the world is as lush and intricate as it's being depicted below.
In one picture, you can clearly see the power suit mentioned before and that certainly looks like Sam Worthington steering the suit. You could even go as far as to guess that behind him is his downed space ship and this is how he will be getting around on planet Pandora.
The additional piece of concept art shows some local wildlife racing(?) a robotic-flying machine. Flying animals you can ride are usually a big win for epic movies. The landscape looks lush with green and blue, hopefully it will continue to look as real on screen.
Here's our first look at Alice, the co-ed with a secret, in Transformers 2. After a whole summer of wannabe Michael Bay films, we're finally going to get the work of Bay himself. It'll be ludicrous, fiery, splodey, car-crazy and slapsticky. In short, the perfect film. Spoilers and pics below.
I never expected to be saying this, but I'm actually sort of eager to see Transformers: Revenge OF the Fallen. I actually liked the first one, which was a fun, silly romp as long as you took it on its own terms. But I held fairly low expectations for TF2, whose script Michael Bay allegedly worked on during the writers' strike. It's like the first one, only sequel-ier. So I wasn't that pumped.
Warner Bros has released five new photos from The Hughes Brothers‘ The Book of Eli in Wednesday’s edition of USA Today. Described as a post-apocalyptic western, the film tells the story of a lone man (Denzel Washington) who fights his way across America in order to protect a mysterious sacred book that holds the secrets to saving humankind. The film is set in the future after the sun has exploded, leaving earth to rot.
Terminator Salvation took in an estimated $13.37 million on Thursday, including $3 million from midnight screenings. Steve Mason was predicting that the film would make around $70 million for the first five days of release, and these first day numbers fall in line with that estimate.
As expected, ABC picked up the sci-fi drama Flash Forward for a series late Friday, giving a green light to the fall series, Variety reported.
The news wasn't a surprise: The network has already been teasing the show via a series of viral marketing spots during Lost.Sam Worthington, who stars in James Cameron's secretive sci-fi film Avatar, told a group of reporters on Friday that the movie will deal with basic questions about what it means to be human. Cameron's first narrative film since Titanic combines motion capture, computer animation and live action in 3-D.
"Jim's very in touch with personal relationships, what it means to be, especially with Avatar, what it means to be a man," Worthington said in a group interview in Beverly Hills, Calif., where he was promoting Terminator Salvation. "I can take that from it. How people were affected by bullies, all those kind of themes and a sense of hope, if you settle that and then surround it with great technology and f--kin' whiz-bang explosions, then you're on the path to making something that people remember when they leave the cinema and not kind of go, 'What did we just see?'"May 1, 2009, 01:20 PM | by Dan Snierson
Categories: Television
Fringe fans are bracing for a Spock: Leonard Nimoy will guest-star in the May 12 finale of J.J. Abrams' Fox drama as...William Bell. That's right -- we will finally meet the mysterious founder of Massive Dynamic. (He'll return next season for at least two
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You worked with J.J. on Trek. Is that how this role came about?
LEONARD NIMOY: Yeah, he called me and said: "We have this character that's been referred to but never seen." He gave me some backstory on the guy and sent me some episodes to look at. I think the show's extremely well done. And there's enough intrigue about the guy to make it interesting.
Want a piece of those incredible technologies from Star Trek? You've already got it. Those automatically opening doors existed when the first Star Trek episode aired 43 years ago. Cellphones (think Motorola StarTAC) and smartphones blow away the capabilities of the communicators of Kirk, Picard, Janeway and Archer. Bluetooth earpieces make Lt. Uhura's look primitive by a parsec and a half, and today's speech recognition could easily hold its own against the Enterprise computer's.
Still, Kirk and Co. have plenty of stuff that we can only dream about at this point. When you start talking about traveling many times the speed of light, holographic simulations that are indistinguishable from reality, replicating food inside an everyday appliance and beaming quintillions of atoms from one place to another... those are a ways off.
George Lucas wants to build a new state of the art digital film production studio in Northern California. Lucas has asked Marin County to consider plans to build a 262,728-square-foot building that would house a maxim of 340 employees at the former Grady Ranch in Lucas Valley.
Director McG tells SciFi that he only cut one shot in Terminator Salvation to earn the PG-13 rating. The quick cut involved featuring Sam Worthington’s character Marcus “stabbing a screwdriver through the shoulder” of a thug. You might be wondering, what about that much talked about topless scene featuring Moon Bloodgood? McG claims that in the end “it felt more like a gratuitous moment of a girl taking her top off in an action picture, and I didn’t want that to convolute the story or the characters.” Sure… sure…
Sony has released the first teaser trailer for District 9, the film produced by Peter Jackson, which takes place in a South African refugee camp for extraterrestrials, which you can view at Apple.com and after the jump.
Star Trek director J.J. Abrams and his producing partner, Damon Lindelof (Lost), told IGN.com that they have been working on a film adaptation of Stephen King's classic novel series The Dark Tower, according to a report on MTV.com.
"Damon Lindelof and I talked to Mr. King," Abrams told IGN. "We got the rights for [Dark Tower] as a film. Damon is obviously still on Lost, and we've been working on Star Trek together. As soon as Lost is done, hopefully we'll begin tackling that."
Paramount just released its entire gallery of promotional images for next week's Star Trek movie, including this great shot of Spock (and another alien) at Starfleet Academy. Plus Captain Pike's away-mission uniform, and Uhura's workstation.
USA Today has posted the first look at Robert Downey Jr. in Iron Man 2 (above), as well as director Jon Favreau's comments on the sequel's themes.
The sequel began shooting three weeks ago in and around Los Angeles and opens May 7, 2010. It takes place six months after Stark revealed his identity as Iron Man, Favreau told the newspaper.
"How many superheroes are open about their true identities?" he asks. "We wanted to play with that idea. But it obviously has consequences—in his relationships, on the team. There are a lot of areas we can explore."
J.J. Abrams' Star Trek takes your familiar crewmembers places they've never been before - including one love story that will forever alter the crew's dynamic. We asked writers Orci and Kurtzman about it. Beware spoilers!
Universal Pictures will remake the 1983 David Cronenberg-directed thriller Videodrome, with Ehren Kruger (Scream 3) set to write the script and produce with partner Daniel Bobker (The Brothers Grimm), Variety reported.
20th Century Fox has decided to postpone the Mexico City premiere of X-Men Origins: Wolverine due to the Swine Flu. The premiere was scheduled to take place on Wednesday, but the studio has decided not to risk sending “anyone into harm’s way”. [People]
Last Friday's Dollhouse pushed the show's messed-up preoccupations one step further: now not only can your life be erased at the push of a button, but select, wealthy people can have eternal life. Spoilers ahead!
Friday's new episode was most interesting at the margins. The main plot was riveting for as long as Dollhouse madam Adelle DeWitt was a part of it. The "B" plot showed hints of giving Topher an actual soul, and pandered to our geeky obsessions shamelessly. And then the handful of scenes we got with Paul Ballard (Tahmoh Penikett) spun his storyline in several fascinating new directions.
SCI FI announced a July 10 premiere date for the second half of Eureka's season three and said the show will move to Fridays at 9 p.m. ET/PT from its previous Tuesday timeslot.
SCI FI also unveiled its slate of Saturday-night summer movies, starring Jason Gedrick, James Marsters and Peta Wilson.
The channel previously announced the July 7 premiere of its new series Warehouse 13, which will debut with a two-hour premiere starting at 9 p.m.
Gavin Hood, director of the upcoming X-Men Origins: Wolverine, told reporters on Friday that the film would feature not one but two different easter eggs at the end of the film's credits. (Spoilers ahead!)
Introducing the film at a press screening in Los Angeles, Hood talked briefly about the differences between the finished version and the workprint that was leaked onto the Internet several weeks ago, and then revealed that different prints of Wolverine would feature different easter eggs hinting at possible future films and plot lines.
Marvel adaptations have established a tradition of including easter eggs, or small scenes or references to other characters within the comic-book universe. The end of X-Men: The Last Stand featured scenes hinting at the future of Professor X and Magneto. More recently, Iron Man prints were released that included scenes after the end credits featuring Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, and The Incredible Hulk added a scene in which Robert Downey Jr. appears as Tony Stark.
Paramount Pictures will be premiering the new trailer for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen in 20 select markets on April 29th, attached to a one-time screening of Michael Bay’s 2007 film Transformers.
Better yet, the movie will be presented in IMAX in the five top markets: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Toronto. No word on if the new trailer will also be presented in IMAX at the selected theaters, but if it is, it might be the first time we see Transformers footage, shot in IMAX, on the IMAX screen.
I know what you’re thinking: “Not another blog post about Rodriguez’s new Predator movie?!” I said it so you don’t have to. Lets move on.
We're getting space madness waiting for details on the creepy "stranded in the big black" flick Pandorum. Thankfully, world champion fighter and Pandorum actor Cung Le explained how we should all be afraid, very afraid.
Cung Le, who just so happens to be a Strikeforce World Middleweight Champion with a no-nonsense scissor kick, plays Manh in Christian Alvart's new spooky space flick alongside Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster. We caught up with him exclusively while promoting Fighting and managed to find out a few juicy details about his character.
What can you tell me about your character in Pandorum?It's been a long hard winter, but spring is finally here bringing with it budding flowers, warm weather and the national pastime of trying to figure out which television pilots might be picked up by the networks next month.
The broadcast television networks will announce their fall 2009 television schedules soon, and we'll then have an entire summer to stew about it, hoping another Lost or Heroes will invade our homes.
Among the potential new series are plenty of sci-fi and fantasy possibilities. While 71 pilots are being developed, only a few will make it onto the fall schedule. After the jump, our list of the hopefuls and how they stack up. (This is part one of a two-part article covering pilots from ABC, CBS and NBC. Part two on Fox and the CW's pilots will run tomorrow.)
Some of the biggest icons in science fiction are battling for your dollars this summer, including Star Trek, Terminator and Transformers. Who's going to lose?
Note: As with last year's similar poll, I'm not listing every summer movie. Just the ones which seem to have a high expectation of making bucketloads of your money. Which of these movies will have a shocking shortfall?
SCI FI Wire will be posting exclusive preview video blogs over the next few days from the upcoming DVD release of Caprica, the prequel series to Battlestar Galactica.
Today: "What the Frak Is Caprica?" in which the creators of the show discuss its world and the relation of the new story to the Battlestar universe.The BBC's Doctor Who has tapped a new production team as it gears up for its fifth season, Variety reported. Matt Smith takes over from the departing David Tennant as the 11th Doctor.
The new team includes Tracie Simpson, who produced the recent Doctor Who special "Planet of the Dead," and Peter Bennett, whose credits include Torchwood, created by Russell T. Davies, the British screenwriter responsible for the successful revival of Doctor Who four years ago.
Also on board is Beth Willis, who produced the high-profile British sci-fi series Ashes to Ashes, the sequel to the time-jumping Life on Mars.
They join the program's new show runner, Stephen Moffat, who is stepping into Davies' shoes, and Piers Wenger, head of drama at BBC Wales, where Doctor Who is made.
Preproduction on the new season starts in May, with filming scheduled to start this summer around the Welsh capital city of Cardiff.
Artists at Industrial Light & Magic, who worked with Star Trek director J.J. Abrams to come up with the new design for the iconic starship Enterprise, said that Abrams' directive was simple.
"He wanted a hot-rod type of vehicle, but they also wanted to preserve the Enterprise kind of look," model maker John Goodson said in a presentation at ILM's San Francisco headquarters earlier this month.
"J.J. Abrams kept saying, 'Make it a bigger movie. Make it a bigger shot,'" creative director David Nakabayashi added. "I think that's one thing you see in this film, at least: The stuff I've seen is just everything is big."
Following is an edited version of the designers' talk. Star Trek opens May 8.
Crank 2: High Voltage was not screened for the press, much like the first film. So I decided to do a round up of all the fast and dirty reactions from the moviegoers that caught the midnight showing of the Neveldine/Taylor sequel. So far the consensus is that if you loved the first film, you’ll probably enjoy the second one. If you disliked the first film, you’ll probably hate the sequel.
When a fourth Terminator film was first announced, it was revealed that the film would be the first of a planned three-film story arc, or trilogy. Halcyon has already announced the development of Terminator 5. All that is needed before they get the official green light is a nice opening weekend box office, which at this point, is pretty much expected.
Joss Whedon told reporters he still has hope for a second Dollhouse season (and explained about that post-apocalyptic finale.) And Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles producers debunked their show's cancellation rumor. Plus season three details!
Every year about this time we look back at the wreckage that started out as a promising television season. This year had a bit more carnage than usual as SCI FI's Battlestar Galactica went out with power and grace, while NBC's My Own Worst Enemy imploded and The CW's Valentine faded away.
Several shows stand on the precipice of cancellation. Many of them are fighting for their lives, with hopes they won't end up like Pushing Daisies, Eli Stone, Stargate Atlantis, Life on Mars, Kyle XY or The Ex-List. Some of them have had multiple seasons to make their case, while others are brand-spanking-new and discovering that getting viewers to tune in isn't always easy.
SCI FI Wire got a sneak peak at the upcoming video game based on Michael Bay's upcoming Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen movie late last month in San Francisco and saw gameplay and graphics on the Xbox 360. We also spoke with the team from Luxoflux, the game's developers.
You can play as either an Autobot or a Decepticon, and designers have completely overhauled the mission system from an earlier incarnation. Gameplay is nonlinear, and you can jump into any mission at any time. All the characters from the upcoming film are here, and for the most part you can pick your favorite and play as that Transformer for the entire game. (Spoilers for both game and film ahead!)
Could Disney really be spending $300 million on the Tron sequel? Buried in a recently published article in the Vancouver Sun is the following paragraph:
You've heard Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles has approached Battlestar Galactica levels of awesomeness, but you're hopelessly behind. No worries! Here's everything you need to know to watch tomorrow's season finale, with exclusive behind-the-scenes pics.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles started out as a continuation of the first two Terminator movies, but it's developed into a complex story about divided loyalties and compromised humanity. Season one picked up after Terminator 2, with Sarah and John Connor on the run after destroying Cyberdyne Systems and (they thought) averting the robot apocalypse.
David Tennant, who is wrapping up his tenure as the 10th Doctor in Doctor Who, told the BBC that he got emotional while reading his final moments in the show।
Fox announced that it will air the season finale of Joss Whedon's Fox sci-fi series Dollhouse at 9 p.m. ET/PT on May 8, the 12th episode, titled "Omega." Which is raising questions among fans about the status of a supposed 13th episode, titled "Epitaph One."
Update: Tim Minear, consulting producer of Dollhouse, clarifies that the season finale of Fox's Dollhouse was always intended to be "Omega," the 12th of the original episodes ordered (not counting the original pilot, which was scrapped and cannibalized for parts). "Epitaph One," meanwhile, was a stand-alone episode that was never intended to be part of the original 13, but rather was created to fulfill the DVD deal for 13 episodes once the pilot was no longer useable.
Nothing is off-limits to Eminem in "We Made You," the first video to be released from his upcoming album Relapse—not Sarah Palin, not Amy Winehouse, and certainly not sci-fi.
In addition to recreating scenes form Rain Man and Bret Michaels' Rock of Love, the rapper also tackles Transformers and Star Trek. That's Eminem above trying (and ultimately failing) to successfully apply the Vulcan nerve pinch to Dr. Dre.
You can watch the full video after the jump.
And let the overexposure of Star Trek clips begin! Paramount Pictures has given MTV the first clip from the new JJ Abrams reboot, which features Chris Pine as James T Kirk hitting on Uhura (Zoe Saldana) in a local bar.
Kung Fu Cyborg is the latest batch of crazy coming our way from Hong Kong. See if you can glean from Jeffrey Lau's trailer this new movie's storyline about love and robots.
Apparently director Jeffrey Lau got 14 million bucks, and he spent it all on these Samurai Transformers, plus one robot's wig. This movie is crazy-pants, judging from this early trailer, created for Hong Kong's Film Mart. I think it's about love, and one guy imitating Jude Law's character from AI. Oh, and Transformers.
Says Lau:
Whoever leaked a workprint of X-Men Origins: Wolverine online did Fox a favor. Maybe the bad buzz from this brain-dead (and incomplete) print will spur the studio to make some last-minute fixes. Spoilers definitely ahead...
So first of all, let's just say that if you're not one of the estimated 75,000 people who've already downloaded this film from the Internet, you really shouldn't. For one thing, it's clear from watching the "workprint" that this film will look superb on the big screen - the action sequences really are widescreen and amazing, and there's plenty of dementedly awesome stunts. But also, this incomplete print is still missing a lot of the finished special effects, and some scenes are lacking, purely because the last elements haven't been slotted in yet. By all accounts, it's also an early cut, missing some scenes and without the final edits. You'll have much richer viewing experience if you see this film in the theater.
Robert Downey Jr has been making the press rounds as of late, and has been sharing some teaserish details for Iron Man 2. The actor tells Splash that the infamous fan-favorite, critically acclaimed, yet ultimately less marketable “Demon in a Bottle” storyline is not explored in the sequel. The controversial character arc involved Tony Stark battling alcoholism, while trying to balance his superhero responsibilities.
Michelle Rodriguez has three films set for release before the end of 2009, and in one simple sentence she issued a major spoiler for each of them. Good going, Michelle. The films in question are Fast and Furious, Tropico de Sangre and James Cameron’s actually still pretty darn secret Avatar.
Tuesday was the tenth anniversary of The Matrix, and Joel Silver made a surprise appearance tonight at ShoWest to announce that Warner Bros has officially greenlit a fourth Matrix Film. Produced by Silver, based on a treatment from The Wachowski Brothers, and directed by James McTeigue, The Matrix: Resurrection will be written by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci.
Sony Pictures Entertainment president Rory Bruer mentioned during the introduction of the Sony ShoWest presentation that they have a lot of interesting films in the works for 2011. He brought up Spider-Man 4, which had already been announced, and then quickly mentioned that they have some surprises up their sleaves like Men in Black 3 and a new Ghostbusters movie, both of which are in active development.
Talk of a third Men in Black film began to circulate after producer Walter Parkes mentioned that it would be a possibility. But at the time, no script was in development. Also, this confirms that Sony is serious about producing a third Ghostbusters film.
Paramount Pictures has released the full listing of Autobots and Decepticons in the upcoming Transformers sequel, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen on Yahoo and USA Today. I have compiled all the details and a few new photos after the jump.
Universal has bought the film rights to The Strange Adventures of H.P. Lovecraft, Image Comics' graphic novel, created by Mac Carter and Jeff Blitz, Variety reported.
