Producer John Davis spoke openly about how he’d make a film out of the interactive video game The Sims. At a roundtable interview for his latest film, The Express, Davis expounded on hi splans and forthcoming slate of films.

“First of all,” Davis told the press, as reported at Collider, “The Sims, 65 million units have been sold, the most successful video game ever. Right? Ever.

“And Tom Rothman, the Chairman of Fox said to me, ‘How are you going to take this incredible piece of IP and make it into a movie?’ Right? Because most games aren’t movies, so this is the way I did it: The Sims, as you know, you can control your imaginary world, right? And our movie, a young man, a 16 year old kid of a 14 year old kid and his friend get their hands on this thing called the Sims Infinity Pack, right, which kind of this very strange video game store which was there just for that moment, and seemingly wasn’t all that. But what they realize is that they can scan their world in, because this is the most life like, real Sims game ever. And as they are playing this they are all of a sudden realizing is what they are playing on the game is having an effect on the real world. So in effect, through the game, they are able to control their world. It’s wish fulfillment, and obviously it turns against them.

“And definitely there will be somebody coming out of the game into the real world, like Weird Science did.”

In other news, Davis said there are no plans for a third Aliens vs. Predator film but he thinks the Predator is a great monster and would love to make another solo film with Arnold Schwarzenegger once the California governor is out of office.

Davis also confirmed Zak Penn continues on the new version of Jason and the Argonauts and is hoping to land a Big Name director. “I think that a realistic version of Jason, where you basically deal with a guy who’s a doubter in a world were everybody believes, still, in the gods and the gods influencing our world, and starts to become a believer, but very slowly because he can’t explain all this stuff. And it’s at the time were we were going from the idea of many gods to one, so there’s a lot of historical cool things there. You know, Jason was based on a great Greek myth, right, but it’s that great story of . . . You know, all those Greek tragedies have the greatest of human foibles, the greatest of human downfalls embodied in them, and I think this has that. And so it’s a more realistic version of all that.”
 

David Willis, author of Shortpacked! and Joyce and Walky proposed to Maggie Weidner, his girlfriend of four years, using not just a single strip, but a week-long storyline of Shortpacked! Weidner, also an artist accepted in comic form, which was promptly posted to the Shortpacked! news section.

Willis is a long-time webcomic artist, having started Roomies! in 1997, continued with the sequel strip It’s Walky from 1999 to 2005, and continued that with the pay-per-month subscription strip Joyce and Walky. Shortpacked!, a less drama-heavy strip premiered in 2005 and chronicles the misadventures of the employees of a toy store.

Willis isn’t the first webcomic artist to propose in his comic. Mike Krahulik (“Gabe”) of Penny Arcade started the trend in 1999. Greg Dean of Real Life Comics did it in 2005, though he had actually proposed the week before, and the comic follows the (often embellished) events of his life. Eric Burns, also known as the webcomic pundit Websnark gathered a collection of 17 webcomic artists to create his proposal comic for co-blogger Wednesday White. And this past June, Three Panel Soul artist Ian McConville programmed a video game to propose to his girlfriend with.

Congratulations to Willis and Weidner, we wish you many happy returns. That, and we’re thankful you didn’t propose via LOLCat.

It is with great sadness that we have to report of the passing of Brian M. Thomsen, science fiction author and editor, perhaps best known to comics fans as the co-author of Julius Schwartz’s autobiography, Man of Two Worlds: My Life in Science Fiction and Comics.

Brian was an editor at Warner Books during the days of their SF imprint Questar, then an editor at TSR Books, and most recently at Tor Books. He wrote, edited, and contributed to dozens of books. He loved getting down into the pulp origins of the business, and also loved working with history, both straight and alternate.

He will be missed. We’ll post more details as we get them.