Sci-Fi Storm

Could this be a sign of who is really in charge of Disney now? With the purchase of Pixar by Disney, The Independent is reporting that Pixar creative head John Lasseter has asserted authority and cancelled Toy Story 3. It appears that he was adamantly against additional Toy Story movies. Frankly, as long as they come up with good stories I don’t care if they make 10 movies.

Terry Pratchett, perhaps best known for his Discworld series of novels, may finally see one of his books hit the big screen. The BBC is is reporting a rumor that his novel Wee Free Men is going to be produced, with Sam Raimi (Spider-Man films) directing and a big budget. In the meantime, he’s less than thrilled with J.K. Rowling’s success…

With the success of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (which came on second behind Hostel this week, beating King Kong again, and could become Disney’s highest-grossing live-action movie of all time), work is beginning on the next installment, Prince Caspian. It appears they will follow the order generally recommended, as opposed to the “chronological order”, which would have started with The Magician’s Nephew. This makes sense since you’d want to do the stories that deal with the same characters done together so they don’t age too much, and some stories like The Magician’s Nephew and The Horse and His Boy don’t share characters (at least ones where you’d have human actors) to any great extent as they are more separate stories. And C.S. Lewis has already solved the potential casting problems – new kids rotate in for the later stories…

Seems everyone is reporting variations of this, but they all seem to start from here. The latest rumor for the next Trek film would potentially involve several generations of characters, using the Mirror Universe as the plot device. I hear it may also be based on the concept that would have had Shatner guess-star on Enterprise, but never realized. Add it to the stack of things that probably will never be. Updated 12/16: DENIED.

The boy wizard only enjoyed two weeks at number one, thanks to another epic. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe opened in first place this weekend with a $67.1M domestic take, with thriller Syriana taking second. Poor Harry settled for third with $10.3M (totalling $244.1M domestically). Disney has a lot of hope on Narnia, with the option for films for the other books in C.S. Lewis’ bestselling series. Can the magic take on the monkey? Peter Jackson’s remake of King Kong opens Wednesday.

Peter Jackson, who has been working for about 8 years straight on the Lord of the Rings trilogy and then the upcoming King Kong, says he is taking some time off “and write some scripts, basically.” He also plans to “read some books and watch some movies and … then also … think of new ideas.”. But…but…but…what about Bilbo???

The teaser trailer for X-Men 3 should be up soon on the Apple trailers site – a week earlier than planned. In the meantime, USA Today’s web site has images fom the film, including The Beast (played by Kelsey Grammer) and Angel (Ben Foster, Hostage). In the meantime former X-Men director Brian Singer seems to be sending some background noise about another Trek movie. He’s got to get cracking on Logan’s Run first.

Finally got to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire this weekend (which took in almost $55 million more), so here is a mini-review – I don’t like to give a full review as I like to watch the first time for enjoyment, and the second time as a critic. Read More for my impressions. Feel free to add your own.

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The tale of Superman is a long, fascinating tale – and I’m not talking about the story itself. This article talks about the attempts at production from the Salkinds (who did the first three movies) selling the rights, up until about mid-2004, and how practically everyone in Hollywood was involved, or at least rumored to be involved. Don’t know how accurate it is, but it is an interesting read.

The official numbers are in, and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire takes the box-office weekend, grossing $102.3 million and giving the 4th-best three-day weekend opening ever. Second was Walk the Line, about the life of Johnny Cash, at a “paltry” $22.3 million. Update: Updated the numbers and link – the old article still had the estimated numbers from yesterday.