Sci-Fi Storm

Liam Neeson (in his first signing since the death of his actress wife, Natasha Richardson) will play Zeus, and Ralph Fiennes will play Hades in the upcoming remake of Clash Of The Titans. Hades did not appear in the original movie, but in this one he plots to take over Olympus…

Eventually they have to run out of things to remake as well…this time they are after Freddie Krueger. Being prepped for an April 2010 opening, the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street now has its Freddie – in the form of Jackie Earle Haley (Watchmen). The original became a star vehicle for Robert Englund – who seemed to be cast against type after appearing as the ultra-meek Visitor Willie in the original V productions. In the meantime, producer Brad Fuller is talking about Freddie’s make-up on his official blog.

Three new images from Star Trek have been released. Click to view: Eric Bana as Nero; Kirk on ice; Kirk and Spock. In the meantime, the MPAA has officially given Star Trek a PG-13 rating. I wonder what the original would have gotten by today’s standards.

It is still more than a month away before we REALLY get to see what J.J. has done to the franchise, but apparently a sequel is already moving forward. It is still in the early phases, with only the writing team ( Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof) and the producing team (J.J. Abrams and Bryan Burk) and an “embryonic” story line, but they expect to be able to turn in a script by Christmas with an anticipated Summer 2011 release. This doesn’t mean that production can’t be stopped if the movie tanks…

A new TV spot debuted last night, but if you missed it (or want to see it again), you can see the Flash version here by clicking on Read More!

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The citizens of Vulcan (the town in Canada, not the planet) apparently aren’t getting their own premiere of the upcoming Star Trek, but Leonard Nimoy is trying to change that. Keeping somewhat in character, he is “disappointed” but not sad “because to say I’m sad would be too emotional,” Nimoy said. As for the residents, “I think they should get emotional about it.” It doesn’t help that the town doesn’t have a theater – they’d have to set something up in the gymnasium.

Building on the 10 month old report from Lee Zlotoff about a possible big-screen adventure for MacGyver, apparently the production team is in place, with Raffaella De Laurentiis (Dune) producing with Zlotoff and her stepmother Martha De Laurentiis, and father Dino De Laurentiis executive producing, under Raffaella’s Raffaella Prods. and New Line Cinema. No writer or director has been named yet. And I’m probably the only one that didn’t make a “duct tape and twine” reference in the headline…

Marvel Entertaiment is rescheduling some of its releases, pushing back both Thor (now scheduled for June 17, 2011) and Avengers (May 4, 2012) by about a year from their previous dates. According to Marvel they’ll concentrate their single character films in 2011 with Thor, Captain America (also pushed back a few months to spread them out) and Spider-Man (with Iron Man 2 still scheduled for 2010), and giving a “runway” leading up to the cross-franchise Avengers. It also gives Marvel a major tentpole release in 2012, which it did not have before. There is also a hint of a lot more cross-pollination between the franchises coming…

A new extended trailer, which reveals a bit more of the plot points of the movie, is now available at the Apple trailer site in a variety of different resolutions all the way up to 1080p. Update: For the Quicktime-challenged, Read More for the Flash version.

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J. Michael Straczynski posted on rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated really early this morning that due to all the leaks on the Internet about his Forbidden Planet script, he and Warner Bros. have decided to throw the script away and start completely from scratch. “So to the sites that say, “Where’s the harm, it’s not like they’re gonna toss out the script because we blew the contents of same all
over the nets,” well, yes, that’s exactly what it’s like, and it’s
precisely your responsibility that a year’s worth of work was
destroyed.” It seems some leaks need plugging…in the head. Updated 3/11: Because the post for some reason never ended up on jmsnews.com, Read More for the actual post. This link should get you the post via Google Groups.

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