Sci-Fi Storm

I haven’t done one of these in a few years, but I thought I’d put together a small holiday buying guide for SF lovers – at least some of the items I think readers of this site would like…

To start, I cannot say enough about Ashley Eckstein’s Her Universe – except that I am jealous as the merchandise is for females of the species. My loss appears to be my wife and daughters gain – they love their shirts, and they might just be finding a few more delivered by Santa this year…just this week there are two new Doctor Who shirts – “Whovian” and “The Girl Who Waited”, while on the Star Wars side there are new “Cute Vader” pajamas and a Japanese-style V-neck. And the Ahsoka Tano hoodie, representing Ashley’s alter ego, is now available in adult sizes due to demand.
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We already know Michael Arndt is penning the first of three planned Star Wars sequels – now it appears that Disney is reaching back to the past and asking Lawrence Kasdan to write on of the others, according to Deadline.

Kadsan wrote the scripts for both The Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The Jedi along with Raiders Of The Lost Ark, so this could harken back to the “glory days” of the franchise.

Disney is eager to get moving on the franchise, so they appear to be approaching the writers early to get the ball rolling.

Deadline also says that Simon Kinberg, who wrote X-Men: The Last Stand and Sherlock Holmes and is currently working on X-Men: Days Of Future Past has been approached for the other script.

When it rains…it seems the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien is upset over an online slot machine game using the Lord Of The Rings property – so much so that they’ve sued Warner Bros, New Line, and Saul Zentz Co. (the long-time movie rights holder Lord Of The Rings) for $80 million.

Apparently the estate’s lawyers received a spam email about the game, and looked into the rights. In the lawsuit they claim, “The original contracting parties thus contemplated a limited grant of the right to sell consumer products of the type regularly merchandised at the time such as figurines, tableware, stationery items, clothing and the like. They did not include any grant of exploitations such as electronic or digital rights, rights in media yet to be devised or other intangibles such as rights in services.” The estate also learned that a physical slot machine game was also planned.

There are video games, etc. based on the movies, so it seems odd that this particular claim is made, as it seems to imply that those rights were not granted to the defendants.

Surprise, surprise – less than a month before the opening of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, PETA decided to level charges of animal abuse on the production, claiming that 27 animals died during the making of the films, saying that “death traps” where they were stabled caused the deaths, and a horse was “hobbled”. But apparently, the allegations come from two particular wranglers who were dismissed by the production for their care of animals not being up to the production’s standards. Other agencies have already stated that no evidence of any of the claims has been found, and even the owner of the horse in question says he is fine.

Here is a full statement from Peter Jackson himself from Facebook:
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See the motion poster below…
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Paramount has confirmed that 9 minutes of Star Trek: Into Darkness, which thus far has been shrouded in secrecy aside from a handful of frames shown by J.J. Abrams on late-nite TV, will premiere exclusively in IMAX3D theaters on December 14th – which happens to be the opening day of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

With a May 17th, 2013 release it will be nice to actually see something about the movie… 🙂

Can’t wait…
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Michael Arndt, who won the Oscar for the screenplay for 2007’s Little Miss Sunshine and was nominated last year for Toy Story 3, wrote extensive treatments for the three proposed Star Wars sequels and will write the Episode VII screenplay that is now moving forward after Disney acquired Lucasfilm last week. The treatments were apparently written several months ago, well before the acquisition.

Arndt also wrote the upcoming Hunger Games: Catching Fire screenplay.

Disney hopes to release Episode VII in 2015.

Francis Lawrence, who directed I Am Legend and stepped in to direct the second film of The Hunger Games franchise, Catching Fire, after Gary Ross elected not to do the sequel, has officially signed to stay on and direct the two-film split of the final novel, Mockingjay, as well. This will hopefully give stability for the remaining films, although it remains to be seen how well Lawrence does with it.

Disney’s Bob Iger confirmed during a conference call that Disney, with it’s acquisition of Lucasfilm today, have already for treatments for three new Star Wars films, with the first planned for a 2015 release (a little aggressive I think) and the next two at two- to three-year intervals – and possibly more beyond that. But Iger also says they plan to make use of the franchise in other areas, including their theme parks (Disney/SW fans have been wanting a Star Wars “land” expansion for years), games, and other initiatives. Speculation is that some television will be involved as well, although it still seems unlikely that that live action series that everyone was all a-Twitter about thinking they had already filmed it will be made, unless Disney has figured out something…

He didn’t elaborate on the treatments for the movies, but everyone seems to think this is the fabled “sequel trilogy”. A bit of history – back after the original Star Wars became a blockbuster hit, and the second run was modified to include “Episode IV” in the opening crawl, Lucas explained that he had plans for nine (to as many as twelve!) stories, and since the original was actually the fourth story he titled it as such. He then said that after making episodes V and VI, then visit the first three, and after that he would see.

Over time, however, Lucas began to disavow that he ever had plans beyond Episode VI, and that anything after that would be “made up”. However, his desire to not revisit the idea seemed like him being tired of the process of planning and filming a whole trilogy, which he said takes about 9 years of his life, as well as the poor feedback he got from doing the prequels. And he insisted no one else would make them either. It could be that since he won’t be directly involved now (he’d be credited at least as a “creative consultant”, but that could be an honorary credit) he handed over his treatments for them to develop more.

Now the BIG question – who will take the reins? The first word that came to my mind? Whedon. Joss is already at Disney playing in the Marvel universe…