On tonight’s episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the dreaded Jar Jar Binks makes a return appearance. In “Bombad Jedi”, Jar Jar Binks and C-3PO team up to save Padme Amidala from the evil Viceroy Nute Gunray, which is made more complicated when the Separatists assume that the Gungan is a Jedi.
You have been warned.
Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects) remains one very busy screenwriter with his work on Valkyrie about to be finally seen on December 31. Up next will be two new films which he will both write and produce according to IESB, The Monster of Florence and The Champions. The latter is a feature film based on the short-lived BBC series that he is co-writing with Guillermo del Toro who has been most vocal in his passion for the show which ComicMix also recalls most fondly.
The series lasted all of one season, 1968-1969, and was syndicated in America a few years later. It featured “the adventures of a team of secret government agents who are rescued from a Himalayan plane crash by an advanced civilization and given superhuman abilities.”
United Artists President of Production, Don Granger, told the site, "The Champions is not just a strong concept with serious franchise potential, we believe that with Chris and Guillermo’s combined creative vision it can be an incredibly original film."
"Champions is a great premise with fascinating potential,” McQuarrie added. “I wanted to be involved from the moment Guillermo and I first discussed it."
"So there are two stories, so basically, I don’t know what I’m supposed to give away, but obviously the world is sort of in peril," actress Amanda Peet (Studio 60) told a gaggle of reporters yesterday about 2012. The original science fiction drama from Roland Emmerich’s has been in production this fall for Sony.
"Well, we’re in peril, obviously!" she said. "And some people know that we’re in peril, and some people don’t. Like some people in the government. So there are a few different stories. And I’m with a family that doesn’t know. So we’re in a survival story, basically. … I’m a civilian."
Given that the Mayan calendar predicted that the world will end on December 21, 2012, Emmerich launched his story, which was first announced in May. Sony anticipates a July 10, 2009 release for the feature which also stars John Cusack, Thandie Newton, Danny Glover and Thomas McCarthy.
She addressed the blue screen acting process given the apocalypse taking the form for floods, volcanic eruptions and typhoons. "You watch playback, and you realize that you look like you’re on a Saturday Night Live skit, and you have to take it down a little bit. Or, luckily if John Cusack is around … he sets the level. Tom McCarthy and I always make jokes, because we’re not used to dealing with this kind of thing. And John is like an old pro. So whenever John was there, it was much better. … When John was there, we’d be like, ‘Oh, s–t, we’ve totally been overplaying this. … Are we in a silent movie, from a different era?’"
When asked point blank of Harrison Ford thought there would be a fifth film featuring Indiana Jones, the actor told MTV, “I don’t know. If we come up with a good idea…”
And who would come up with the idea? George Lucas, who has conceived most of the previous stories, is charged with coming up with the next idea. “That’s the process,” he said. “With some general input he goes off and searches for the MacGuffin and then stumbles into a story. And at some point we have a chance to take a look at and give some input.”
Given that Jones has married Marion Ravenwood and is getting to know his adult son Mutt, it would suggest new areas to explore. With luck, something fresh will suggest itself improving on this year’s installment.
At the Screenwriters Expo in Los Angeles, Heroes’ creator Tim Kring addressed the criticism heaped on not only the second but the current third season of the NBC series.
“The problem is you run into a whole series of issues,” he said. “Where show and business run into each other. The network falls in love with characters, the audience falls in love with characters, the press falls in love with characters. And it’s contractually hard to get people onboard for a brief period… You find yourself writing for characters you thought would be gone.”
As a result, characters intended to be short-lived have gained prolong life. He does like having a large cast of characters to work with since it allows storytelling flexibility. “An hour of television should have the vibe as a day of your life,” he said.
He assured fans that the oft-used time travel elements would be dropped after the current volume, “Villains”, concludes next month. Kring called the serialized format, which he was working with the first time an “absolute bear of a thing. The serialized story is so Writers Room-intensive and requires an ‘all hands on deck’ quality to it; you’re often just carrying the water for the next storyline.”
After discussions with NBC and the dismissal of Jesse Alexander and Jeph Loeb, Kring said the series would continue to break the season into volumes to ensure compact storytelling and allowing different characters to be spotlighted. As a result, viewers who might have found the mythos off-putting can sample each new arc.
“You can hop on the train and you won’t have missed too much."
Jeffrey Katzenberg firmly believes in 3-D and told the audience at the inaugural 3DX Film and Entertainment Technology Festival, "In five to seven years, all films, regardless of budgets or type, will be made in 3-D."
As seen this year and reported yesterday, more and more animated films and concert films are being shot for 3-D using improved technology. Katzenberg, according to The Hollywood Reporter, continued to say, "3-D is how we see, how we take things in. It’s natural. This is not a gimmick; it’s an opportunity to immerse the audience, to heighten the experience."
The DreamWorks co-founder and former Disney executive foresees a day when 3-D technology will be available on mobile phones and laptops. "This is not my father’s 3-D," he said. "There’s no ghosting, no eye strain and best of all, you don’t throw up. Throwing up is not good for anyone’s business."
Producer John Landau added that 3-D would "do for cinema what stereo did for the audio industry." He says the immediate challenge is to get movie audiences to see 3-D as something other than a gimmick from B-films and the 1950s. Once accepted, he says the sky’s the limit.
"Consumers clearly prefer 3-D if they have a choice," Katzenberg said. 3-D films are estimated as being able to earn two to three times the business of a standard 2-D release.
Disney leads the pack with eleven films currently scheduled for release between 2009 and 2010. DreamWorks’ next 3-D offering will be March’s Monsters vs. Aliens and Katzenberg estimates nearly 40% of the ticket sales will come from 3-D fans. He predicts the percentage will jump to over 80 for Shrek 4 in 2010.
Stressing the technical advances that made the latest incarnation of 3-D different from past efforts, Katzenberg said 3-D "will bring people back to the movies who have stopped going."
Arnold Schwarzenegger may well have shot a cameo for McG’s Terminator Salvation film according to Total FIlm.
“We’re trying to synthesize a human character with a CGI character and that may or may not have something to do with the T800,” McG told the site. “At the moment it’s not good enough,” he said. “And we’re running out of time.”
The synthesis being attempted by Industrial Light & Magic have not been deemed successful.
Meantime, Moviehole says that McG took advantage of the film’s ending being leaked to alter so there will be surprises. “That is not the ending. John Connor is not the machine. We did discuss that idea, but that is not the ending, I can say that right now.”
More than likely you or someone you know would love to make a film, but those first steps are the hardest. Meet Yasmine Zapp who got her horror film, Darksound, on the screen and she shares the secrets here, plus:
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It’s a good day for Monty Python fans. First, Amazon is offering the just-released box set of the entire pioneering television deeply discounted for 24 hours. The normal $99.99 list price is down to a mere $39.99 until midnight.
Meantime, the Monty Python troupe now has a YouTube channel featuring about 24 collections of clips, outtakes and interviews with the gang. And instead of pretending its all about getting to know its audience, the group admits the channel is a direct ploy to sell Monty Python DVDs and merchandise, utilizing YouTube’s new partnership with Amazon (see above).
Marvel’s David Gabriel and Cory Sedlmeier spoke with the Marvel Masterworks fansite about their collected editions plans for 2009, as Marvel kicks off its 70th anniversary plans. The biggest news is that the 20 year old Masterwork program will add softcover editions beginning in January.
Gabriel explained, “They will be issued one per month in the original running order of release. There will be a regular edition and a variant that resembles the marble hardcover variants. The first edition is listed in the January previews, and we’re just putting February together now.” The first Masterwork was Amazing Spider-Man volume one and will retail at $24.99.
These softcovers will be added to the 16 new volumes planned for 2009, which will push Marvel’s Masterworks library to 126 volumes. DC’s similar Archives library, in comparison, has only a handful of titles planned for 2009 and have reformatted the hardcovers as their Chronicles line.
Sedlmeier added, “As readers know, the softcover Masterworks will be mirroring the release order of the hardcover line begun all the way back in 1987. The approach taken back then was not to restore the original comics’ coloring, but to recolor the books in what was then a modern style. When the program was reignited with new editions in 2004, I felt historical accuracy was something readers valued above a bells-and-whistles reinterpretation.
“That approach is now law, so the softcovers will be seeing restoration to bring any material not restored to match the original comics’ coloring to up the level of quality and historical accuracy readers see in our new hardcovers each and every month.
“A lot has already been accomplished through the Omnibus line and the new printings the Masterworks hardcovers have seen over the course of 2007 and 2008, so there’s a lot less restoration work cut out for us than there would be if we were starting from scratch.”
The trade dress for the Masterworks evolved through the years from the original “marble” look to an interim design from Comicraft until the line was spruced up in 2002. Currently, the current trade dress is available as the standard format while the marble look is offered as an alternative at a higher price to cover manufacturing costs. The look of the softcover line will be a modification. (more…)
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