SFFWorld News – 9/28/08

SFFWorld News – 9/28/08

1) Author and Tor consulting editor Brian M. Thomsen passed away recently due to a sudden heart attack. Thomsen wrote numerous short stories, several fantasy novels, and many non-fiction books and articles, including a great deal on the SFF field. He also edited many SFF anthologies. His two most recent publications were the non-fiction book Oval Office Occult: A Book of White House Weirdness, a collection of essays about U.S. presidents and the occult, and a humor book, Pasta Fazool for the Wiseguy’s Soul. Thomsen was one of the founding editors of Warner’s Questar Science Fiction & Fantasy line and ran the fantasy imprints at TSR. He was nominated for a Hugo and served as a World Fantasy Award judge. Visit Tor’s home page for information about memorials and condolences. He will be greatly missed.

2) Walt Disney Studios announced an ambitious, re-make/sequel heavy slate of up-coming films, with a generous helping of actor Johnny Depp. Depp will team with director Tim Burton once again for a live-action/CG mix adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, in which Depp will play the Mad Hatter, for release in 2010. Depp will also reprise the character of Captain Jack Sparrow in a fourth Pirates of the Carribean film, as well as play Tonto in an up-coming remake of The Lone Ranger. Other live action SFF films include Disney’s Race to Witch Mountain, starring Dwayne Johnson, a remake of their famous Escape to Witch Mountain, about two kids with strange mental powers trying to find their father, and the new sequel to their ground-breaking special effects film Tron, entitled Tron 2 or TR2N, in which a real person is sucked into a computer game system. Word is Jeff Bridges has a cameo in it.

Disney’s successful partner Pixar will release next year the animated film Up about a balloon-powered flying house. It is their first venture into 3-D animation. Their sequel to Cars, Cars 2, will come out in 2011, and the long-awaited Toy Story 3 will also come out in 3-D, telling the story of how the toys deal with their owner Andy going off to college. Disney will also be putting out the animated fairytale animated The Princess and the Frog, set in New Orleans, and featuring songs from Randy Newman. Jim Carrey will star in Robert Zemeckis’ performance capture animated version of A Christmas Carol, playing not only Ebeneezer Scrooge, but the three Ghosts of Christmas who visit him. 

Disney producer Jerry Bruckheimer will also be on hand with the bells and whistles by re-teaming with Nicolas Cage for National Treasure 3, and again with the actor for a live-action version of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, inspired by part of Disney’s animated film Fantasia. Cage will play the sorceror. Bruckheimer is also in charge of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, based on the video games and starring Jake Gyllenhaal.

3) Nicolas Cage will also reteam with his Gone in Sixty Seconds director Dominic Sena for the supernatural thriller Season of the Witch for Relativity Media. The film concerns the journey of 14th century knights transporting a girl suspected of being the witch responsible for spreading the Black Plague. Bragi Schut Jr. is the screenwriter.

4) Warner Brothers announced plans to create a prequel film to its SF hit I Am Legend, starring Will Smith. The first film, based on the novel by Richard Matheson, showed Smith’s character, Doctor Robert Neville, being possibly the last man on Earth after a man-made virus has turned humanity into zombie-vampire type creatures and civilization is destroyed. The prequel would center on Dr. Neville’s experiments which lead to the virus and the destruction of humanity from the disease. Smith’s character was killed off in the film version, so a prequel allows the actor, who is also a producer on the film, to recreate the role beyond the flashbacks in the first film. Director Francis Lawrence would helm the project. The original film grossed $584 million worldwide. Matheson fans groaned, then bucked up when they realized it would help sales of his books.

5) Filmwriter-director Guillermo del Toro has taken time off of his busy schedule filming The Hobbit and other projects to co-write with Chuck Hogan a trilogy of vampire thrillers for William Morrow and Rayo in the U.S., and HarperCollins UK in Great Britain. The first book, The Strain, due in summer 2009, will chronicle the invasion of New York City – they always get hit – by a vampire-making virus. Yes, another vampire-making virus. No word on whether film versions of the books are in the works, or how del Toro plans to ever sleep again.

6) And because we can never have enough vampires, Cloverfield director Matt Reeves will write and direct the vampire tale Let the Right One In for Overture Films and HS Media. The movie is a re-make of Tomas Alfredson’s Swedish film Lat Den Ratte Komma In, based on the best-selling novel by Swedish author John Ajvide Lindqvist. It’s a dark story about a young boy who befriends an unusual girl who moves in next door. The U.S. version is tentatively scheduled for release in 2009.

7) The estate of author J.R.R. Tolkein and publisher HarperCollins have been refused by the Los Angeles Superior Court the right to seek punitive damages in their lawsuit against New Line Cinema for failure to pay royalties for the film versions of Tolkein’s definitive work, The Lord of the Rings. The estate had claimed that New Line was guilty of breach of contract and fraud, that the studio had diverted monies from the 6 billion the movies generated worldwide for false expenses, including money paid to Warner’s Inc. AOL for advertising and money used to build production offices and facilities in New Zealand that were then used for other projects, so as to reduce net profits and pay out less in royalties. The defendents sought $150 million in punative damages, but the L.A. court decided that they had not presented enough evidence of intentional wrong-doing. The defendents are pursuing their lawsuit, based on the 1969 agreement made with United Artists governing the movie rights to both The Lord of the Rings and its prequel The Hobbit. The lawsuit also seeks a court order to terminate New Line’s rights to make two films based on The Hobbit. If a settlement of royalties cannot be reached, a trial is scheduled for October 2009. New Line was absorbed into Warner Brothers Entertainment in February of this year.   

8) The 2008 Emmy Awards for American television once again mostly ignored sci-fi programs. However, ABC’s Pushing Daisies took home an Emmy for directing for a comedy series, given to Barry Sonnenfeld for the show’s pilot episode, “Pie-Lette.” In the Creative Arts Prime-Time Emmys, genre shows faired slightly better. Pushing Daisies won two technical awards for picture editing in a comedy and music composition for a series. Sci-Fi Channel’s Battlestar Galactica won two for special visual effects and for special class, short-format live-action programs for the Razor featurette #4. Sci-Fi’s Alice in Wonderland inspired miniseries Tin Man won an Emmy for make-up for a miniseries or a movie. NBC’s Chuck won an Emmy for stunt coordination, ABC’s Lost won for sound mixing and the CW’s Smallville won for sound editing.

9) Boom! Studios will be launching a Farscape comic book series, to be written by the SF television series’ creator Rockne S. O’Bannon for the Jim Hensen Company. Farscape, the series, was about the adventures of John Crichton, an Earth astronaut/scientist who is transported by a wormhole into a different part of the universe teeming with alien life and interstellar wars. The comics will continue the story of the series-ending movie Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars, focusing on Crichton, his alien love Aeryn, and their newborn son, as well as other characters aboard the live ship Moya.

10) A Delhi, India court has rejected a lawsuit by lawsuit-happy Hollywood studio Warner Brothers against the makers of a Bollywood film entitled Hari Puttar: A Comedy of Terrors. Warner Brothers claimed the title was too similar to their mega-selling Harry Potter films, based on the novels of J.K. Rowling, and thus constituted a copyright infringement. Mirichi Movies, which made Hari Puttar, claimed their movie had nothing to do with the films about a boy wizard. Hari is a common Indian first name and Puttar means “son” in Hindi. In the Indian film, a ten-year-old boy who moves from India to England must defend his house from thieves who want to steal a secret formula his father invented. The court ruled that potential viewers should be easily able to distinguish between the films, that there were not substantial similarities between the Bollywood movie and the Harry Potter films, and that Warner had waited too long before filing a complaint. The release of Hari Puttar had been delayed by the lawsuit, but is now coming out in Indian theaters.

11) Because they have discovered that nearly anything can be made into a Broadway theater musical, Spider-Man: The Musical is headed for the Great White Way. Backed by Broadway veteran Julie Taymor and Marvel Studios, the musical is scheduled for launch as early possibly as 2009. The score was written by musicians Bono and The Edge from the rock group U2. In addition to Spider-Man and Mary Jane, the musical may include a Greek-style chorus.