Author: Robert Greenberger

With a lot of attention focused on Pixar’s attempts to adapt John Carter of Mars to film, the small publisher Paizo has been exploring a different take on the Red Planet.  They announced a release of Otis Adelbert Kline’s The Swordsman of Mars. The 1933 tale was first serialized in Argosy Magazine, which also ran Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Under the Moons of Mars in 1912.

The serial was finally collected in hardcover by Avalon in 1960.  Later that year, Ace published a paperback edition as part of their growing SF line. According to Paizo, though, “entire chapters are missing, key character and location descriptions are completely absent, and the final product cuts a slash across the chest of Kline’s literary reputation that would be totally invisible to readers unable to assemble the original Argosy serial and compare the two texts.”

The publisher, under their Planet Stories imprint, is finally releasing the complete and unabridged tale of swords and monsters on a world not our own this month.
 

20th Century Fox Home Entertainment has announced that the original 1951 The Day the Earth Stood Still will be released in a special edition on December 2 just before the remake opens December 12.

The studio will release a two-disc special edition in addition to a Blu-ray version.,

Directed by two-time Academy Award-winning director Robert Wise (The Sound of Music, West Side Story) and starring Oscar-winner Patricia Neal (Hud) and Michael Rennie (Les Miserables), this classic story of hope and peace is widely acclaimed as one of the most influential and thought-provoking science-fiction films of all time.
 
The Day The Earth Stood Still Special Edition Blu-ray Disc will be available for $34.99 U.S. / $37.99 Canada and the two-disc DVD will be available for a suggested retail price of $19.98 U.S. / $21.98 Canada.   (more…)

Entertainment Weekly is reporting that a script for Lethal Weapon 5 is completed and all the franchise awaits is Mel Gibson’s blessing. Apparently, producer Joel Silver is trying to get a commitment from Gibson to appear once more opposite Danny Glover as the duo of Murtaugh and Riggs.  The script, from Shane Black, would introduce two new and younger cops from New York.  Black would also take over the director’s chair from Richard Donner.

Currently, Gibson is shooting Edge of Darkness in Boston while Glover will be seen next month in the feature Blindness. Black was just signed by Universal earlier this week to write and director Cold Warrior.
 

Disney’s big announcement that Cars 2 would move from 2011 to 2012 garnered a lot of attention but the question has since turned to, what will families be offered in 2012?

The answer turns out to be…newt.  Slash Film is reporting that the project required more development time so the swap actually benefits the new property.

Sound designer Gary Rydstrom makes his directorial debut with the CGI-animated Pixar production.  He previously directed the short film Lifted which audiences saw prior to Ratatouille.

The plot synopsis from the studio: “What happens when the last remaining male and female blue-footed newts on the planet are forced together by science to save the species, and they can’t stand each other? Newt and Brooke embark on a perilous, unpredictable adventure and discover that finding a mate never goes as planned, even when you only have one choice. Love, it turns out, is not a science."