Sci-Fi Storm

After a construction project begins digging in their neighborhood, best friends Tuck, Munch and Alex inexplicably begin to receive strange, encoded messages on their cell phones. Convinced something bigger is going on, they go to their parents and the authorities. When everyone around them refuses to take the messages seriously, the three embark on a secret adventure to crack the code and follow it to its source. But taking matters into their own hands gets the trio in way over their heads when they discover a mysterious being from another world who desperately needs their help. The epic, suspenseful and exciting journey that follows will change all of their lives forever.

Earth to Echo releases on April 25th, 2014

This movie has me intrigued…at first blush, it seems part Groundhog Day, part Starship Troopers, but I sense an interesting plot line somehow…

Edge of Tomorrow is based on the Japanese light novel [asin=1421527618]All You Need Is Kill[/asin] by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. It stars Tom Cruise as Lt. Col. Bill Cage, a non-combat officer pressed into combat in a losing battle to fight off an alien attack on Earth. Undertrained and killed quickly, he suddenly awakes back at training, and relives it all again, and dies again, only to wake back up, for some reason in a time loop. He finds Special Forces soldier Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt), who experiences the same thing. The two of them take advantage of the loop to increase training, becoming better and better…possibly enough to change the results of the battle…

In a further consolidation of distribution and marketing rights from studios it has acquired in recent years, Disney has reached an agreement with Paramount to acquire the rights for any future Indiana Jones films – not that they’ve announced any plans for them.

Paramount retains the distribution rights for the existing films and will receive a cut of future ones.

Disney and Paramount reached similar agreements over Iron Man 3 and The Avengers after Disney acquired Marvel.

Now with Lucasfilm, Disney will produce, distribute and market all future Star Wars and Indiana Jones films. Does this mean we will see more Indy? Well, right now Disney seems to have all of the Lucasfilm guns aimed at Star Wars Episode VII as well as a couple ancillary Star Wars films and a new upcoming animated series, Star Wars: Rebels, and they haven’t announced anything for the future of Indy, but it seems an unusual deal if Disney didn’t plan on doing something, since it only applies to future productions. So it seems likely we’ll be hearing something in the near future…

We know Henry Cavill will be back as Superman. And we know that Ben Affleck has been tapped for the Caped Crusader…but now we know who is playing Wonder Woman – not that we knew Wonder Woman was going to be in Batman vs. Superman – well, at least I didn’t.

Warner Bros. has decided on Gal Gadot, who has starred in three of the Fast & Furious films and Knight and Day, to play the top female comic book hero in the film. It is felt that the appearance of Wonder Woman is helping plant additional characters for the future Justice League film, trying to compete with The Avengers for superhero organization supremacy.

Now that The Mark Gordon Company is looking to continue the Narnia franchise, they’ve signed Life of Pi writer David Magee to pen the script for The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Silver Chair, the fourth movie in the franchise, after Disney/Walden Media produced The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe in 2005 and Prince Caspian in 2008, and Fox/Walden Media produced The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in 2010.

Magee has two Oscar nominations for his screenplays already: last year’s Life of Pi, which he adapted from the novel, and 2004’s Finding Neverland, about Peter Pan creator J.M. Barrie.

“I have always loved The Chronicles Of Narnia,” Magee said, “And I endlessly imagined myself finding my own passage into Narnia someday. All these years later, I’m getting to fulfill that wish just a little bit by writing the film adaptation of The Silver Chair and could not be more excited about it.”

As for any concerns over the age of the children – fans of the series know that the Pevensie children actually do not appear (at least as children) in three of the books, including The Silver Chair, and make a cameo in The Final Battle. This book continues with their cousin Eustace Scrubb, and introduces his classmate, Jill Pole.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 swings into theaters May 2nd, 2014…
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Here be dragons…
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Colin Wilson’s novel The Space Vampires, which was adapted into the 1985 movie Lifeforce starring Steve Railsback and Mathilda May (along with a pre-Picard Patrick Stewart), may get another adaptation – but this time, for the small screen. Ringleader Studios has acquired the rights to produce an episodic series based on the book, to also be titled Lifeforce, as well as plans for a whole multi-media release.

The novel is set in the late 21st century, when a crew from Earth discovers a huge derelict spacecraft in the asteroid belt. Among many dessicated bat-like corpses they find three humanoids in suspended animation, which they bring back to Earth. The aliens turn out to be vampires, of a sort – they drain the life force energy from the humans, and Commander Carlsen, responsible for bringing them to Earth, attempts to stop them.

The movie adaptation is similar, but set in the present day with a hypothetical nuclear-powered shuttle doing a fly-by of Halley’s Comet, where they find the spacecraft. It also adds a more frightening zombie-like contagion to the story. It was a box office disappointment, but has a cult following. The British production received a heavy edit for release in the U.S. including some American voice dubbing, but [asin=B00AWWX6XY]recent DVD/Blu-ray releases[/asin] are of the original 116-minute U.K. release (or both).

Perhaps not exactly shocking that R2-D2 will be returning to appear in Star Wars Episode VII…but perhaps more surprising is that he is the first one actually confirmed, after months of rumors of the “big three”.

Let me go out on a limb…C-3PO will be in it as well. 🙂

What is a LOT more surprising is who build the droid for the upcoming film(s): Lee Towersey and Oliver Steeples, two German fans and members of the R2-D2 Builders Club. During Celebration Europe this past summer, Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy toured the Builders area and saw all the droids they had built and was amazed. Steeples half-jokingly said that the Builders were available if needed…and it looks like they were…

Here are a couple of neat items for your Hunger Games appetite: First, tonight is the Red Carpet Premiere for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire in Los Angeles, but that doesn’t mean you can’t watch the red carpet – you can watch it live right here, starting at 9PM ET/6PM PT!
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