Sci-Fi Storm

After the success of Mortal Kombat: Rebirth, an unauthorized viral video that breathed life back in to the Mortal Kombat franchise, at least from a feature perspective, led to Warner Premiere asking writer Oren Uziel and director Kevin Tancharoen to create a 10-part web series earlier this year. Now, New Line Cinema has approached the duo to create a feature film. Can they take it to the big screen?

Although hardcore fans called for a boycott of the release, it seems that it didn’t stem the tide of fans purchasing [sfs=1098]Star Wars: The Complete Saga[/sfs] on Blu-ray. In the first week, 1 million copies were sold worldwide, setting a new record for a Blu-ray release. And that doesn’t include the individual trilogy releases (which didn’t include the extras).

Not bad for a nearly 35 year old franchise, but when you start marketing 13 months ahead of time, you get results.

Fox, having previously produced I, Robot based on the stories by legendary SF writer Isaac Asimov, will draw from the author again with his novel The Caves of Steel. Relative newcomers Henry Hobson and John Scott 3 (Maggie) will direct and write, respectively, and Simon Kinberg (X-Men: The Last Stand, Elysium) will produce under his Genre Films banner.

The Caves of Steel takes place three millenia in the future, where humans on the overpopulated Earth live in massive enclosed structures (giving the name to the book), and distrust robots to the point of them being completely banned from the planet. Robots aren’t banned on the colonized planets, however, and a “Spacer” ambassador trying to loosen the restrictions on Earth is found murdered. Homicide detective Elijah Bailey is charged to investigate the murder – but he is forced to team up with an investigator provided by the Spacers – R. Daneel Olivaw, who looks human but is in fact a robot.

Disney just announced plans to construct a new land as part of it’s existing Animal Kingdom theme park at Walt Disney World themed to James Cameron’s Avatar franchise. Cameron, producing partner Jon Landau and Lightstorm Entertainment will work closely with Walt Disney Imagineering to develop the plans, and expect construction to start in 2013.

Disneyphiles familiar with the creation of Animal Kingdom park are aware that when it was built, a planned section of the park was never built due to budget cuts, called “Beastly Kingdomme”, an area to be filled with creatures both magical and mystical. In fact, the Dueling Dragons rollercoaster at Universal’s Islands of Adventure park (now called Dragon Challenge as part of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter) was originally designed for Beastly Kingdomme but scrapped with the area. By the sounds of it, this new Avatar land would likely take the still-undeveloped location, and perhaps even incorporate some of the area’s original designs, with new theming.

I’ll definitely provide updates as they come in over the next couple years.

The first sequel to Avatar is scheduled to hit screens on Christmas 2014.

It isn’t just humans waiting for the Blu-ray release of [sfs=1098]Star Wars: The Complete Saga[/sfs] – it seems some rather lost Jawas and a Stormtrooper found themselves in New York City, and did a little exploring…

Harlan Ellison isn’t too pleased with the plot of the upcoming film In Time. In fact, he’s filed a lawsuit against New Regency and director Andrew Niccol, and is attempting to get an injunction against the release and dispose of the film. In Time is scheduled for an October 28th release.

Now fans and detractors are aware of Ellison’s propensity for legal action – and he’s generally been successful, even for seemingly marginal cases, such as The Terminator (he won at least an acknowledgement in the credits.) So, is this another superficial similarity, or is there more?
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With the [sfs=1098]Star Wars: The Complete Saga on Blu-ray[/sfs] out on Friday, and Star Wars: The Clone Wars Season 4 beginning on the same day, how about some Star Wars awesomeness? Check out this LEGO monstrosity, weighing in at 180 pounds, 43,000 pieces, and 8 feet long – it’s the Venator-class Star Destroyer.

Available as a 9 disc set on Blu-ray September 16th
Bring home the adventure and share Star Wars™ with your whole family – when [sfs=1098]STAR WARS: THE COMPLETE SAGA[/sfs] comes to Blu-ray Disc from Lucasfilm Ltd. and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment! To be released beginning on September 12 internationally and on September 16th in North America, the nine-disc collection brings the wonder of the entire Saga direct to your living room, where you can revisit all of your favorite Star Wars moments – in gorgeous high definition and with pristine, 6.1 DTS Surround Sound. Dive deeper into the universe with an unprecedented 40+ hours of special features, highlighted by never-before-seen content sourced from the Lucasfilm archives.

Why Star Wars Stands the Test of Time

It’s been in our lives for nearly 35 years, and yet Star Wars is as great now as it was in 1977, and with the new prequels to boot, still popular with audiences everywhere! This feature looks as why Lucas’ space saga is still on the “most loved” list.

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In honor of the 45th anniversary of Star Trek (it was yesterday, but I was pretty busy), here is a neat infographic that puts the franchise into a timeline with a few other events…
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In an interesting move that involves three separate studios, both Dreamworks and Fox have agreed to co-finance Steven Spielberg’s next directorial effort, Robopocalyse, based on the [asin=0385533853]novel by Daniel H. Wilson[/asin], about the day when our robot servants turn against us. The third studio involved is Disney, who will distribute the film domestically, likely under its Touchstone Pictures banner.