Yearly Archive: 2008

Another animation company has been formed as Marvin Gleicher, co-founder and former CEO of Worldwide Operations for Manga Entertainment, has opened Marvin Media. His first effort will be adapting Paul Kanter’s Floating Moon as a feature-length animated film.  It will be directed by Keiichi Sato (Wolf’s Rain) from Manabu Ishikawa’s screen adaptation. The movie can be expected in 2010. Kanter, founder of the Jefferson Airplane, wrote the ecological tale.

Marvin Media is also producing High Def, a comedy from Island Def Jam Music Group, which will be 26 half-hour episodes expected in late 2009.

Gleicher co-founded Manga Entertainment in 1994 and is behind the domestic success of Ghost in the Shell.
 

James Marsters has quite the fan following as an actor but also an equally loyal following as a reader of audio books.  The latter fans will be delighted to know that he has signed on to read the remaining six Harry Dresden novels by Jim Butcher.  These titles include Death Masks, Blood Rites, Dead Beat, Proven Guilty, White Night, and Turn Coat (to be released simultaneously with the hardcover due out in April 2009).

Death Masks will be released when Roc re-releases the book as a hardcover in November 2009. Blood Rites and Dead Beat can be expected when the hardcover reissue of Blood Rites is released in July 2010.

Butcher’s series about Dresden,  freelance wizrd/private investigator has been running for a decade or so now and was adapted as a one season Sci Fi Channel series.  The Dabel Brothers are also producing Dresden comic books and graphic novels, the firstof which will be reviewed here on Wednesday.

As a performer, he will next be seen in 2009’s Dragonball, the adaptation of the anime Dragonball Z.

Peter Jackson is returning to Middle Earth, but he’s not doing it alone. As previously announced, Pan’s Labyrinth and Hellboy II: The Golden Army filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro will direct The Hobbit and an untitled sequel that leads into the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Jackson will serve as executive producer.

As part of The New Yorker Festival series of talks, Guillermo Del Toro spoke at the Director’s Guild of America regarding his foray into the Tolkien universe. For the director, finding Middle Earth isn’t as easy as a walking into a magical wardrobe. He describes his method:

"I find you have to discipline yourself to write in the morning, and then watch and read in the afternoons stuff that seems relevant, even in a tangential way. For example, reading or watching World War I documentaries or books that I think inform The Hobbit, strangely enough, because I believe it is a book born out of Tolkien’s generation’s experience with World War I and the disappointment of being in that field and seeing all those values kind of collapse. I think it’s a turning point that you need to familiarize yourself with. I’m starting. Peter Jackson is such a fan of that historical moment and obsessive collector of World War I memorabilia, and he owns several genuine, life-size working reproductions of planes, tanks, cannons, ships! He has the perfect obsessive reproductions of uniforms of that time for armies of about 120 soldiers… each. I asked him which books he recommended… because I wouldn’t be watching Krull or The Dark Crystal, I need to find my own way into the story. That’s the same way I did Pan’s Labyrinth or Devil’s Backbone, by watching stuff you wouldn’t think about."

The star of The Hobbit, for Del Toro, is going to be the nefarious dragon Smaug. Literally "The Magnificent," Smaug embodies "greed [and] pride" to Del Toro, who has been interested in dragon lore his entire life. He speaks about Smaug passionately, citing the villain with "some of the most beautiful dialogue" in the film. As for the character’s design, Del Toro is "pretty sure that will be the last design we will sign off on, and the first design we have attempted."

Del Toro is itching to talk more about the project, but insisted that he couldn’t due to something a little less subtle than a gag order.

"Warner Brothers has a sniper right here in the theater," he jokingly warned.

"Listen," he later said, taking a more serious note, "If we were having a drink two years from now I would spill the beans, because I’m a pretty easy guy about spilling the beans, but I can’t in this instance. I can’t because it’s three years from now."

Three years is probably generous, given that Del Toro has a large slate of films on the horizon. Variety reported earlier this year that Del Toro is booked solid through 2017, with films such as Slaughterhouse-Five, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, At the Mountains of Madness and Frankenstein. He spoke briefly about Frankenstein, saying that his vision would be something entirely original.

"I’m not doing Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. I’m doing an adventure story that involves the creature. I cannot say much, but it’s not the central creation story, I’m not worried about that. The fact is I’ve been dreaming of doing a Frankenstein movie since I was a child."

He then promised that "compared to Kenneth Branagh [director and star of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein], I will not appear shirtless in the movie!"

Actor Bill Murray spoke at a New York news conference for City of Ember and repeated his interest in appearing in Ghostbusters 3.

The comedian also said that a script is moving forward at the moment. "There’s two fellows from The Office that are writing a script, but I’ve yet to see it. And I’m more involved with, you know, trying to get the dessert we ordered at lunch than I am with the new Ghostbusters sequel. But it’s possible. It’s a great idea that they hired these two guys to do it, because I think it’ll be a … it could be a fresh look at it. And it could be funny."

If true, he would reprise his role of Dr. Peter Venkman and appear alongside Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson, Jr. more than 20 years after Ghostbusters 2.

Of the latter, he admitted, "We did a sequel, and it was sort of rather unsatisfying for me, because the first one to me was the goods. It was the real thing. And the sequel, you know, was … it was a few years later. There was an idea pitched. And it was like, well, they got us all together in a room. We just laughed for a couple of hours. And then they said, ‘What if we did another one? Here’s an idea.’

"So they had this idea, but it didn’t turn out to be the idea when I arrived on the set. They’d written a whole different movie than the one [initially discussed]. And the special-effects guys got it and got their hands on it. And it was just not the same movie. There were a few great scenes in it, but it wasn’t the same movie. So there’s never been an interest in a third Ghostbusters because the second one was kind of disappointing … for me, anyway."

City of Ember opens this month.