Sci-Fi Storm

For those who didn’t watch the awards last night, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring won Best Picture as well as Best Digital Effects and Best Production Design, taking home the most awards of any movie.

After the great success of Shrek and Monsters, Inc., it seems that a lot of studios want to hop on the computer-generated bandwagon, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Fox has their entry, Ice Age, coming out March 15th, and Universal has three movies in development, including a version of Where the Wild Things Are, Sony is working on Astro Boy, and of course DreamWorks has a Shrek sequel aimed at 2003…

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…

Fox has sent out a press release for the upcoming X-Men sequel, and it is to be called X². Everyone should be returning – with the notable exception of Tom DeSanto in the production staff. And a few new mutants will be joining – but no mention of who…see the press release at Coming Attractions.

Seems Universal isn’t going to be writing the check to Arnold’s $30M payday. Variety reports that Universal has dropped out of the bidding for the Cameron-less third installment, estimated to cost about $170M. A number of other studios are still interested.

Update 12/11: And the winner is…Warner Bros., who plans to release July 4th weekend, 2003, bookended by the Matrix sequels.

The tenth Star Trek feature film, Star Trek: Nemesis, got the green light from Paramount to begin production. It has been written by John Logan (Gladiator), and be produced by Rick Berman and directed by Stuart Baird (Executive Decision, U.S. Marshalls). Visual effects will be by Digital Domain (Titanic, The Lord of the Rings). Actually, this is a bit old, but I hadn’t reported it yet…

Apple has made available the new trailer that is attached to the Harry Potter movie. It is entitled “Forbidden Love”, and apparently is something of a plot spoiler, so be warned. I can’t view Quicktime stuff at the moment myself…

Update: Don’t follow the link – they are somehow blocking referring links. Instead, copy the link location into the URL bar in your browser.

According to Celebrity News at IMDb, producer Robert Zanuck has said that they are tossing around ideas for a sequel to Planet of the Apes, but they are in no hurry to push it out and into theaters. “We want to take our time and get it right,” he said. Also, according to him he has a deal with Mark Wahlberg, who starred in the first film, for two films, contrary to previous reports that no one had a sequel clause in their contract.

Picked off of Coming Attractions: Wil Wheaton has confirmed on his website that his character, Wesley Crusher, will appear in Star Trek: Nemesis. This is surprising, even for him, given how he felt about the situation in his interview on Slashdot. He’s glad there can finally be closure with the character.

Dragthor writes “StarWars.com has the official “breathing” trailer online. You have to have a registered version of QuickTime Pro 5 to view the larger resolution one. However, the medium and small versions do not require registration. It is the exact same trailer that was before Monsters, Inc.”