Sci-Fi Storm

Caught this on Coming Attractions – Dimension Films has obtained the rights for a movie based on Opus the Penguin, star of Berkeley Breathed’s Bloom County and Outland comic strips. “Opus and the great folks at Dimension Films are made for each other,” said Breathed in a company press release. “Think of it: Opus is sweet, funny, smart and doesn’t wear any pants at work.” I loved Bloom County – I even had a stuffed Opus – lost, unfortunately, on the highway…

Seems Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer) has a plan for an “anti-Trek” series that Fox is finalizing a deal on. Tentatively titled “Firefly”, it’s about the crew of a very small, fast spaceship “whose aft end lights up,” Whedon said. No regular aliens or anything, but he promises “There’ll be scary-ass humans…I can make people that are scarier than anything you can put in latex.”

On New Years Day, [asin=B00005JKEX]The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai: Across the 8th Dimension DVD[/asin] will be released. Producer/Director W.D. Richter said in an interview that the DVD fixes some flaws, and “We’ve done our best to jam a lot of strange special features in there. We’ve gone to Buckaroo lengths to keep this conceit going that Buckaroo’s real, and that the [Banzai] Institute is authorizing the DVD.” [asin=B00005JKEX]Pre-order yours today[/asin].

JMS told SCI FI Wire he thinks “Warner [Brothers] to some degree wants to test the waters to determine if there was enough interest in the show to release it on DVD,” but [asin=B00005NTNP]In the Beginning/The Gathering[/asin] were not his first choices. Follow the link for more…