Sci-Fi Storm

Shock: Guillermo del Toro has officially announced his departure from The Hobbit as director. “In light of ongoing delays in the setting of a start date for filming ‘The Hobbit,’ I am faced with the hardest decision of my life”, Guillermo said. At this point he will continue co-writing the screenplay. Update 6/1: Peter Jackson says that he might direct instead.

When will The Hobbit go before the cameras? Director Guillermo del Toro doesn’t know. “You know, there cannot be any start date, really, until the MGM situation gets resolved, because they do hold a considerable portion of the rights,” del Toro said in a conference call, referring to MGM’s financial troubles, with the studio looking for a buyer to avoid bankruptcy. He also states unequivocally that “It’s not green-lit. That’s categorical. It is not green-lit.”

Just got wind of this…the long languishing remake of William F. Nolan’s Logan’s Run (last to surface in 2007) appears to have gotten yet another director in Carl Rinsch, known for directing commercials (as was his predecessor on the project). But Rinsch is already involved in two projects – Creature From The Black Lagoon and 47 Ronin, so it will likely be some time before it really gets traction.

After about a decade of development, production, post production, and a long search for distribution, Hyper Image is releasing their debut feature on DVD on May 25th.

Distributed by Phase 4 Films, the computer animated sci-fi action film follows the renegade Team Earth, as they struggle to compete in the high speed Star Car 5000 racing circuit.
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So the shock should be over now. No surprise that the finale of Lost had the highest ratings for the night and was the highest rated episode in two years – but it may not have been as high as some expected. Perhaps some of the thunder was lost by the finale of Celebrity Apprentice given that Brett Michaels’ medical problems have been big news. But anyways, there is much to talk about, and I’ll start off some discussion points below. Feel free to chime in. But BEWARE – there are spoilers below, so if you haven’t watched yet, what are you waiting for?!? Come back later…
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I was thinking about something recently, and a discussion on a mailing list provoked my mind to come up with a new term. “Unrealitivity” – A merger of “unreal” and “relativity” (as in Einstein’s theories of…). It is any sort of SF technology or phenomenon that allows for incredible speeds without regards for relativity, speed of light, acceleration forces, etc. without any sort of basis in other potential theories or at least a technical explanation – like warp drive, hyperspace, etc. For instance: “The nuclear waste dump that exploded on the dark side of the moon thrust it out of Earth’s orbit at unrealitivistic speeds across the universe…” Or, “The spaceship’s unrealitivity drive brought them to Tau Ceti in two days…”

A Google search at least seems to indicate that it is fairly unique, with only a handful of hits and nothings to indicate usage other than a mistyped word…

Hopefully our calendar feature reminded you, but the finale of Lost is on at 9pm ET tonight – and I understand Europe is getting it around 5:00am BST, so you better get up real early…

Move over MacGruber, even your grandma Betty White knows the real thing…Jason Richman (Bad Company, Bangkok Dangerous) has been tapped to work on a MacGyver feature film for New Line, to run under Raffaella De Laurentiis’ Raffaella Productions, with Martha De Laurentiis and Lee Zlotoff also producing and Dino De Laurentiis as exec.

Despite a lot of excitement that he was in discussions with producers Jon Landau and James Cameron on a remake of Fantastic Voyage, Bourne trilogy director Paul Greengrass has opted to focus on a Treasure Island project for Lionel Wigram (Sherlock Holmes) instead.

Heroes creator Tim Kring, while taking a polite swipe at NBC for canceling his program watched by “45 million TV viewers around the world” each week, hinted at plans to keep the Heroes universe alive in some form, perhaps in the alternate media forms where it has helped gather its following. Read on for his complete statement.
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