Author: Robert Greenberger

Plastic Man’s Animated Adventures Coming to DVD

  • News
  • October 28, 2008

Warner Home Video is apparently readying the Plastic Man Comedy Adventure Hour for a DVD release. On Friday, Mark Evanier mentioned on his News from Me blog, “This afternoon, I had to go out to the Warner Brothers lot to be interviewed for little behind-the-scenes videos that will appear on two upcoming DVDs of cartoon shows. One is of the 1979 Saturday morning Plastic Man series, which I worked on for one season. The other is of the 1985 syndicated Jetsons revival, which I worked on for about an hour.”

TV Shows on DVD notes that when they surveyed people in 2007, the series topped their charts. When a Warner exec was asked during a chat earlier this year, hey replied, "We are looking at all of these, and hope to have news for you in 2009."

The Plastic Man Comedy/Adventure Show ran from 1979 to 1981 on ABC. Produced by Ruby-Spears, it aired right after Super Friends and was either 90 minutes or two hours and was comprised of segments featuring Plastic Man (voiced by Michael Bell), Baby Plas, Plastic Family, Mighty Man & Yukk, Fangface and Fangpuss and Rickety Rocket.

On this series, Plastic Man had Penny as a girl friend who became his wife, voiced by Melendy Britt and their child, Baby Plas, had his own escapades. Woozy Winks was unfortunately replaced by Hula Hula, a Hawaiian sidekick.
 

Sample ‘Legend of the Seeker’ for Free

legend-of-the-seeker-2188635Legend of the Seeker debuts on Saturday as a first-run syndicated series.  To let people sample the series, an extended preview is available as a free download at Apple’s iTunes store. Legend of the Seeker: A First Look is actually the first 30 minutes of the two-hour first episode.

The series is from executive producers Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert, who gained fame for their work on Hercules and Xena.

"Fans have been clamoring to get a first look at the series and based on the early response from the clips released on the Legend of the Seeker website, we knew this would be a huge success with audiences," Janice Marinelli, President, Disney-ABC Domestic Television said in a release.

Craig Horner (Blue Water High) and Bridget Regan (The Black Donnellys) star in the series originally entitled Wizard’s First Rule. The 22 episodes are being shot in New Zealand. Horner is Richard Cypher, a simple woodsman who becomes the magical leader who partners with Kahlan to put an end to a tyrant’s reign.

The book series launched in 1994 and the complex story has played out through eleven novels and one novella. Each volume is largely self-contained but the threads continue from book to book. Confessor, out last year, is said to end the current story cycle but Goodkind intends to revisit the world in future works.

For times and channels in your area, consult the show’s website.

Neil Gaiman Talks ‘Coraline’

  • News
  • October 28, 2008

Neil Gaiman’s Coraline has been turned into an animated film by Henry Selick and the popular author spoke with Premiere about the film, which opens in February. Much of the material is familiar to connoisseurs of the man’s career but he did fill in some gaps.

He discussed how he had the book sent to the director 18 months prior to publication. “That’s true. I mean, Henry didn’t even get the final draft. But the moment I finished it, I gave it to my agent, the redoubtable Jon Levin at CAA, and I said… ‘Well, I want it with Henry Selick and I quite like it with Tim Burton, ’cause I love The Nightmare Before Christmas, and they were the two people who did that, and I think, if it’s gonna be a film, it should be something like that.’ And I don’t know if it ever made it through the ranks to actually land on Tim Burton’s desk and get read, [but] it was really a moot point, because by the end of the week, Henry had read it, said that he wanted to do it, and had put the mechanisms in place. You know, the contract negotiations had already started.”

Gaiman was very pleased with Selick’s fidelity to the source material but clearly things had to be modified between print and screen. “He wrote a first draft that was incredibly faithful,” Gaiman said. “And I think I actually wound up saying to him, ‘Look, I think it’s a bit too faithful,’ because it didn’t feel like a movie, it felt like you were just reading the book. And I sort of encouraged him to expand it into a film a bit more. And the next one he rather nervously added a character and added events, but now the script read like a movie script. And then it was just a matter of him having another six years to find a studio that would give him the money to make the ultimate stop-motion movie.”

He remained uninvolved in the production but remained curious. “I’d go about my life and then I’d sit up one day and think, You know I haven’t seen anything for three or four months now, and I’d phone Henry and I’d say, ‘Have you got anything for me to see?’ And he’d say, ‘Yeah, I’ll get you off a DVD.’ And I’d get a DVD with another 10 minutes of footage on it! [laughs] What’s actually been fun is, because they’re pretty much shooting it exactly in order, the DVDs have been getting scarier and scarier. They started off [and I thought], ‘Well this is rather sweet and rather friendly,’ and the last one that I got I could actually say, ‘No, this is scary, this is really scary.’

Gaiman also addressed the long-delayed film version of his Death: The High Cost of Living. “Well, I think the latest is that we’re all waiting to see what happens to New Line. Death is a very odd thing because, unlike Coraline or Anansi Boys, which I’m doing for Warners, or The Graveyard Book or any of those kinds of things, I don’t own and control the rights to Death. I’m attached to it, I’ve written a script for it, I’m meant to be directing it… but I don’t control it, and for reasons having to do with corporate relationships between DC Comics and Warner Brothers, it has to be done by a Warner Brothers company, and then you have to find a Warner Brothers studio within Warner Brothers that will be a good fit for that film, and of course New Line was a really good fit for that film, and it remains to be seen right now what New Line is when the dust is settled and whether there is a New Line or not.”
 

‘Secret Invasion’ #8 to be a Week Late

  • News
  • October 28, 2008

Marvel has issued a release indicating the final issue of Secret Invasion will now be in store the first week of December, a week later than anticipated.

“The additional pages in #8 did both Leinil and the schedule in,” explained Executive Editor Tom Brevoort in a press release. “Anybody who pored over the artwork from #7 a week ago can easily see how he and Mark Morales have been putting their all (and then some) into every page and every panel, and that effort has finally caught up with us. Hopefully, retailers and fans will forgive us these extra two weeks as we make sure that everything is in the shape it should be in for the extra-sized climax—and from there, it’ll be smooth sailing straight into Dark Reign.”

David Gabriel, Marvel’s Senior Vice President of Sales, said in the release, “In speaking with retailers, Marvel decided it was more important to preserve the creative integrity of the series, rather than rush out the final issue. This not only creates a stronger product for our loyal readers, but also for our retailer partners, whose support helped make Secret Invasion a huge success.”

A mammoth event like this shipping late is no surprise and keeps the creative team intact as opposed to DC’s Final Crisis that recently announced the final issue will be illustred by Doug Mahnke and not J.G. Jones. (more…)

William the Conqueror Takes His Turn

  • News
  • October 28, 2008

First it was Rob Roy.  Then William Wallace. Now, it’s William the Conqueror’s turn in a new film to be written for Killer Films and GC Corp. by screenwriters Brian Edgar and Derek Wallbank.

Wallbank was a film editor in the 1970s with Hamlet and Devices and Desires to his credit while Edgar is a newcomer to film. Their script, according to Variety, will tell of “the rise of the illegitimate son of the Duke of Normandy to the English crown in 1066 following the Battle of Hastings.”

Killer has previously produced films including Boys Don’t Cry, Far From Heaven and Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Producer John Wells funds the outfit and will receive an Executive Producer credit. GC Corp. is a venture capital fund that specializes in entertainment-related portfolios and is capitalized at $100 million.

"This is a big-budget studio movie. For many years we’ve been interested in a bigger canvas. It was just a matter of finding the right project," Killer Films’ Pamela Koffler told the trade.
 

The Wait for ‘Fanboys’ Continues

  • News
  • October 28, 2008

The Weinstein Company has, according to Slash Film, moved Fanboys from November to open February 6, 2009, another delay. The studio  picked up Fanboy for release some time back and the utterly charming tale of friends trying to get their dying friend to see The Phantom Menace has been hung up ever since.

Clearly they have little faith in the film given it will now open opposite Push, Pink Panther 2, and the Jennifer Aniston’s He’s Just Not That Into You.

When they picked up the movie, it was essentially complete and ready for release but instead, the Weinsteins wanted to tinker with it and the creators and fans were horrified at the notion that the charm might be replaced with something different. They decided to reedit the film their way then test screen both versions before deciding which one to release.
Weinstein decided the cancer subplot was too downbeat and put up $2 million to have four scenes created, under producer Shauna Robertson (The 40 Year Old Virgin) and director Steve Brill (Drillbit Taylor) that changed the story. The Hollywood Reporter noted that the non-cancer version of the film narrowly edged out the original version but well within the margin of error. After much public hemming and hawing, the studio opted to retain the original cut.

Fanboys was conceived in 2003 by Kevin Mann, who produced the love letter fellow geeks with Kyle Newman. The script was from Ernie Cline and it made the Blacklist, the top unproduced scripts circulating in Hollywood. It stars Jay Baruchel (Just Buried), Kristen Bell (Heroes), Seth Rogen (Knocked Up), and Dan Fogler (Good Luck Chuck) and has been eagerly anticipated since footage was shown at various conventions. Release dates of August 17, 2007 and January 18, 2008 came and went without a movie.

Both edited versions are expected to be available on the eventual DVD.
 

Bryan Fuller Stumps for New ‘Star Trek’

  • News
  • October 27, 2008

bryan-fuller-2287329Bryan Fuller has been making it clear he wants a crack at the 23rd Century. In several recent interviews, promoting his ABC series Pushing Daisies, he’s also expressed his desire to make a new Star Trek television series.

Most recently, he told MTV, “I would love to do another Star Trek series,” Fuller said. “One where you could go back to the spirit and color of the original Star Trek, because somehow, it got cold over the years. I love Next Generation, but it’s a little cooler and calmer than the ones from the 60s, which were so dynamic and passionate.”

Fuller is no stranger to Gene Roddenberry’s creation, beginning his media career by writing for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager. “Deep Space Nine was the best of the modern ones,” Fuller told the site, “because it was so emotionally complicated. Enterprise was the most sterile of all of them, when it should have been the most fun.”

His idea is to create a new crew for another starship set during Captain Kirk’s era, feeling the most familiar characters should remain in the films, starting again with J.J. Abram’s reimagined feature due out May 2.

 “Star Trek has to recreate itself,” Fuller said. “Otherwise, all the characters start to feel the same. You always have a captain, a doctor, a security officer, and you have the same arguments based on those perspectives. It starts to feel too familiar. So all those paradigms where it takes place on a starship have to be shaken up.”
 

‘Mad About the Movies Directors’ Cut’ Coming Tomorrow

  • News
  • October 27, 2008

Mad Artist Tom Richmond wrote on his blog about a new Mad book, due out tomorrow.

He wrote, “Back in 1998 Mad published MAD About the Movies, a collection of movie spoofs from over the years. It was in part to celebrate the 75th Anniversary of Warner Bros. (WB owns DC Comics which in turn owns MAD) and all the movies in the book were Warner Bros. films.

“10 years later Mad is coming out with a new version of the book featuring parodies of films from other studios as well as some from WB. MAD About the Movies: Director’s Cut weighs in at a whopping 400 pages and contains not only 60 movie parodies from films of the last 60 plus years, but other goodies as well. Here’s a short list of some of the included parodies:

•    Gone with the Wind
•    Bonnie and Clyde
•    A Clockwork Orange
•    Brokeback Mountain
•    Spider-Man
•    Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
•    The Lord of the Rings (all three films!)

“Obviously there are both black and white and color pages in the book. I was told I have several parodies in it myself, although I don’t have a full list. I’m pretty excited about being in the book, as it will be the first book I really have a presence in. My parody of “Traffic” was in Mad About the Oscars, but I believe that is my only contribution to a Mad book.

“The book is part of an exclusive agreement with Barnes and Noble, so that is the only place you’ll be able to get a copy. It’s dirt cheap at only $9.98 for an online price.
“I have not as yet seen a copy, so I have no idea what kind of stock it’s printed on. It’s listed as a “hardcover” but at less than $10.00 I think that might be a mistake. Still this would make a great stocking stuffer. It’s supposed to be released tomorrow, according to the Barnes and Noble website.”

I am Spartacus!

  • News
  • October 27, 2008

The cry of “I am Spartacus!” will once more resound, this time weekly. Starz will air a new 13-episode series from executive producers Sam Raimi, Rob Tapert and Joshua Donen.

The premium movie channel has already produced Crash, a weekly series based on the Oscar-winning film, which began airing several weeks back. This will be the first in-house production for the channel. Steven S. DeKnight (Smallville) will be the head writer and showrunner.

Raimi, Tapert, and Donen developed the series and intend to produce the series in New Zealand in time for debut next summer. Each episode is likely to have a budget in excess of $2 million, surpassing their other series, Legend of the Seeker.  The world of ancient Rome will be digitally rendered, a first for a weekly TV series.

No casting has been announced as yet.

The real story of the slave who led a rebellion against his Roman captors in 73 A.D. was immortalized in the 1960 movie starring Kirk Douglas which won four Academy Awards. It was most recently retold as a 2004 miniseries starring ER’s Goran Visnjic and Rhona Mitra.

"This is not going to be at all like the 1960s Kirk Douglas film," Starz Entertainment executive vp programming Stephan Shelanski told The Hollywood Reporter. "We didn’t want your typical sword-and-sandals. It’s going to be fun, fast-moving, full of action and interesting characters and have a little more depth to it than the 1960s film."

Shelanski says the channel acknowledges the storytelling has to be done for an audience primed by movies like 300.  Being a premium channel, they can go for R-rated violence and storytelling. "It will bring the younger audience who has grown up on graphic novels and video games this heightened reality; it’s not going to look like anything you’ve seen before, especially on TV," said executive vp original production William Hamm. Hamm has previously worked with Raimi and Tapert at Universal TV to produce the similar Xena: Warrior Princess and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.

BBC Plans New Super-Hero Series

  • News
  • October 27, 2008

The Stage is reporting that the BBC has asked Doctor Who director Joe Ahearne to create Superpower, a fresh take on heroes. Ahearne has previously written episodes of This Life, Ultraviolet and the forthcoming Apparitions.

The Beeb has commissioned stand-alone scripts and turned production chores over to Impossible Pictures, the people behind Primeval.

Ahearne told the paper he is a major fan of Marvel’s line of super-heroes which will no doubt be a heavy influence on the series. Having said that, he stressed the new show will be set apart from NBC’s Heroes or the BBC’s spoof No Heroics.

“It is a new and original super-hero idea which is not a send-up. All the super-hero stuff that is on TV in this country – ITV’s No Heroics, My Hero – British TV is happy to do if it is a send-up, but no one has done it for real. There is a particular gimmick in mine, which I won’t give away, but it means it will be refreshed every episode,” he told the paper.

The BBC is said to be arranging the production schedule to take advantage of the Saturday night prime time slot currently being used by Merlin and then followed by the third season of Robin Hood, meaning the new show would not be running until, most likely, the second half of 2009.

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