The Muppets will be first returning to television before the Big Screen.  NBC has announced the production of Letters to Santa — A Muppets Christmas for this holiday season. This will be the third holiday themed special following a 1970s hour with John Denver and a 1980s effort. They also adapted Charles Dickens’ immortal tale in A Muppet Christmas Carol in 1992.

This one will be set once again on Christmas Eve as Kermit and company discover three errant letters to Santa.  They take it upon themselves to handle the requests so the writers don’t have a spoiled Christmas. Joining in on the fun will be Whoopi Goldberg, Tony Sirico and Steve Schirripa from The Sopranos, Richard Griffiths and Madison Pettis.

Paul Williams will supply news songs according to The Hollywood Reporter.  No airdate has been provided.

As for their feature film careers, Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller are at work on a script which Stoller would direct.  Their story has the Muppets rally to save an old theatre from a greedy oilman. While announced in March, no further details have emerged.
 

Though Star Wars fandom is full of disagreements and divisions, most of us fanboys are in agreement about a few things: Jedi, lightsabers and force powers are awesome. Anything Timothy Zahn writes is going to be better than anything Kevin J. Anderson writes. And Lucas probably would have had a better script for The Phantom Menace if he’d hired a seven-year-old to write it.

Enter the Comic Irregulars (Andrew Coker, Andrew Shellshear, David Karlov, David McLeish, David Morgan-Mar, Ian Boreham, Loki Patrick, and Steven Irrgang), who you might recall from their work on the action figure/photo capture comic Irregular Webcomic. Inspired by Shamus Young’s work on DM of the Rings, they ask the question, “What if Star Wars was a roleplaying campaign that went far, far away from what the Game Master intended?”

And thus was born Darths & Droids.

The comic is set in a universe where Star Wars never existed, and the unnamed game master/narrator has designed the world from scratch for his game. Before the game begins, the players don’t know anything at all about Jedi, or Tatooine, the Skywalker family, because they only exist in the GM’s mind. The setting is built up over the course of the story in response to what the players do, and what they do is never what the GM expects, in a classic roleplaying maneuver known as “going off the rails.”

The plot follows Jim (playing Qui-Gon), Ben (playing Obi-Wan), and three other players who join later as they demonstrate why you shouldn’t make laser swords the cheapest available weapons, why you shouldn’t bring your little sister to roleplaying group, and how much more sense the plot of Episode I makes when filtered through the chaotic lens of a roleplaying game. (more…)

Something for the New York area comic fans:

Andrew D. Cooke, director of the full-length feature film documentary Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist, and his brother Jon B. Cooke, writer/co-producer of that movie and editor of the award-winning Comic Book Artist magazine, will be guests of New York City’s acclaimed improv comedy group the Comic Book Club this coming Tuesday, Sept. 9, at 8:00 p.m., at the Peoples Improv Theatre on 154 West 29th St., in Manhattan! Tickets are five bucks each.

The Comic Book Club is a weekly comic book talk show featuring the best comedians in New York talking shop with industry professionals from all corners of the comic book world. Hosted by Justin Tyler, Pete LePage, and Alex Zalben, Tuesday’s episode will feature an excerpt from the Cookes’ documentary, which debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival and is about the life and career of one of comics’ most gifted artists, who not only created The Spirit (adapted as a major motion picture this coming Christmas by legendary Frank Miller) but was a seminal influence on the field up to his death at 87 in 2005. The brothers will be on hand to discuss the film, which showcases interviews with Eisner, Jules Feiffer, Stan Lee, Kurt Vonnegut, Art Spiegelman, Frank Miller, Michael Chabon, and many, many others, and no doubt the boys will also take a razzing from the CBC hosts.

For more information — and a look at the trailer — regarding Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist, please visit www.montillapictures.com

To check out Comic Book Artist magazine, go to www.topshelfcomix.com

Comic Book Club can be found online at http://popcultureshock.com/cbclub/ and is spotlighted in a spiffy New York Times article at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/theater/18comics.html (or on my Facebook page)

The Peoples Improv Theatre Web site is www.thepit-nyc.com

Comic Book Club is every Tuesday night at 8:00 p.m. at the Peoples Improv Theater, 154 W 29th St., New York City. (212) 563-7488
 

Torso, the film adaptation of Brian Michael Bendis’ graphic novel, is looking to start shooting in early 2009.  The movie, set to star Matt Damon as the famed Elliot Ness, is looking to film in Cleveland but is seeking tax breaks to make extended shooting financially reasonable.

As reported in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, producer Bill Mechanic is seeking tax breaks or will lens interior scenes in Michigan, with its 40% tax incentives, and only shoot on location for exteriors.

"It all comes down to what’s the best place to get our movie shot for the least money," Mechanic said. "We want to shoot the entire movie, the interior and exterior shots, in Cleveland because that’s where the action takes place and so we wouldn’t have to relocate the crew. But without incentives, it doesn’t look like we can afford it."

The state’s legislation is stalled at the capitol.

Torso tells the story of the grisly Kingsbury Run murders where 13 people died between 1934 and 1938.  Ness, then the city’s safety director, never found the killer. It inspired Bendis and Marc Andreyko (Manhunter) to cowrite the graphic novel version of other story with Bendis providing the artwork. The six issue miniseries was later collected by Image Comics as Torso: A True Crime Graphic Novel, releasing it in 2001. The miniseries won the 1999 Eisner Award for "Comic Book Excellence, Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition".

The film rights were sold in January 2006 with screenwriter Ehren Kruger handling the adaptation for director David Fincher.  Mechanic is set to produce alongside Don Murphy, Todd McFarlane and Terry Fitzgerald.

Alysse Soll, formerly the Vice President of Marketing of the National Hockey League, joins the DC Comics staff as Vice President, Ad Sales & Custom Publishing, it was announced by DC Comics President and Publisher, Paul Levitz. In this position, Soll will develop and manage new advertising initiatives, oversee DC’s innovative custom publishing program, identify cross-platform opportunities with other media companies and supervise the advertising sales team.

Normally we wouldn’t make reference to this sort of a hire, except that Ms. Soll used to work for the NHL. Which is a perfect excuse for us to run this Mike Grell artwork from a hockey superhero comic book project that never materialized… hockey stars by day, superheroes by night!