Sci-Fi Storm

Check out the U.S. trailer for A Wrinkle In Time, Disney’s new adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s 1962 novel about a 13 year old girl, her 5 year old prodigy brother, and her classmate as they are transported through time and space…

In theaters March 9th, 2018

I’m guessing that Disney likes what it sees in Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi – the Mouse House announced today that Johnson will develop a new trilogy in the Star Wars universe, separate from the existing Skywalker saga, where he will “introduce new characters from a corner of the galaxy that Star Wars lore has never before explored.”

Johnson will work with long-time collaborator Ram Bergman.

“We all loved working with Rian on The Last Jedi,” said Kathleen Kennedy, president of Lucasfilm. “He’s a creative force, and watching him craft The Last Jedi from start to finish was one of the great joys of my career. Rian will do amazing things with the blank canvas of this new trilogy.”

“We had the time of our lives collaborating with Lucasfilm and Disney on The Last Jedi,” Johnson and Bergman said in a joint statement. “Star Wars is the greatest modern mythology and we feel very lucky to have contributed to it. We can’t wait to continue with this new series of films.”

I was curious as to what would happen when they finally conclude the Skywalker saga – now we have our answer!

This is interesting…we hear that the Tolkien estate, which manages all the rights to J.R.R. Tolkien’s works, is shopping around the rights to a TV series based on Lord Of The Rings to various outlets. Even more interesting is the huge price tag they are placing on it, which is said to be $200-250 million – just for the rights.

Such a project would be hugely ambitious and likely expensive to produce properly, which limits the outlets that could potentially take it on. HBO seems like a natural choice, having already done Game Of Thrones, and with it concluding in its upcoming eighth season that may be looking to fill the void it will leave behind (spinoffs notwithstanding.) Another possibility is Amazon, which is looking for its own GoT franchise and has some ambitious projects already in the works. I’d expect any such production to have to run for quite a few years just in order to break even for the rights purchase, which could make it very hard to pull the trigger.

In addition, they would probably have to lengthen to story significantly in order to stretch it long enough, perhaps by integrating a number of other stories of Middle-earth (as flashback storytelling or something like that), but I understand the rights are very limited as well.

At any rate, I think it would be tough to score big with a production that has to live up to and even surpass three great films in order to be deemed a success.

So the young Han Solo Star Wars anthology film finally has its official name. And I think everyone guessed what it would be, given its similarity to it’s predecessor, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

Solo: A Star Wars Story

Yup, that’s it. But director Ron Howard had fun with it…

Hey #Twitterville we just wrapped production so here's a special message #StarWars pic.twitter.com/8QJqN5BGxr

— Ron Howard (@RealRonHoward) October 17, 2017

Actor Roy Dotrice passed away peacefully today at the age of 94 in his London home surrounded by his three daughters, grandchildren and great grandson, his family confirmed in a statement.

Probably most know recently for playing Hallyne the Pyromancer in a couple episodes of Game of Thrones in 2012, his acting career spans many years on stage, small and large screen, and he won a Tony Award in 2000 for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his role in A Moon for the Misbegotten, and held the Guinness World Record in 2004 for most voiced characters in an audio book for his reading of A Song of Ice and Fire. He was also awarded the Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2008.

Dotrice was no stranger to genre roles either. He was originally set to play Grand Maester Pycelle in Games of Thrones but withdrew for medical reasons (the role went to Julian Glover.) He made two memorable guest appearances in Space: 1999 as Commissioner Simmonds, which sticks in my head for the horrible death he (presumably) suffered. He also had a starring role in the Beauty and the Beast series in the 80s. He had other guest appearances in Babylon 5, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (as Zeus, no less!), Earth 2, and Sliders among many, many roles. He also had a starring role in one of my favorite Olympics-based movies as the Russian skating coach Anton Pamchenko in The Cutting Edge.

Dotrice was married to his wife, actress Kay Dotrice, for just short of 60 years when she passed away in 2007. His three daughters were also actresses – Michele Dotrice (Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em), Karen Dotrice (best known as the young Jane Banks in Mary Poppins), and Yvette Dotrice (Crossroads).

It’s here! Trailer #2 for Star Wars: The Last Jedi is out now – watch it below! Tickets are on sale now…Opening on December 15th…

New York Comic Con is dropping lots of trailers, teasers and sneak peeks – here are a bunch for your perusal!

Justice League

Replicas

Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency

Marvel’s The Runaways

It’s finally happened…the ambitious Avatar mega-sequel has finally started production!

Simultaneous production on the four Avatar sequels began this past week. This is the most ambitious production ever, tacking four movies at once for release in December 2020, 2021, 2024 and 2025. Previously, The Lord Of The Rings trilogy was filmed as a unit by Peter Jackson, as was The Hobbit trilogy.

The 1981 sci-fi thriller Scanners from David Cronenberg, which starred Michael Ironside and Jennifer O’Neill, is now being adapted as a possible TV series by Media Res and Bron Studios. According to Deadline, they came out as the victors in a competitive bidding war, beating out Lionsgate, Paramount and Skydance.

The movie dealt with people with telepathic and telekinetic powers who are forced to work secretly for a corporation that deals in security and weapons systems – or hunted down if they don’t.

Rights were previously held by Dimension Films where they attempted to develop a new movie and a TV series, but it never resulted in anything.

Put simply, Wonder Woman is a spectacular movie. It is likely the best superhero movie DC and Warner Bros has yet put out. And now it heads to [asin=B0714QRG4Z]Blu-ray[/asin], [asin=B072M856GW]Blu-ray 3D[/asin], [asin=B0714QRG51]Ultra 4K Blu-ray[/asin] and [asin=B074JS9QJB]DVD[/asin] this Tuesday, September 19th! And the Blu-ray releases include a special bonus scene not seen in theaters!

Like any superhero action movie, Wonder Woman is laden with action scenes and visual effects, but they are done so well and don’t detract from the character story, which delves into the origin of Diana, Princess of Themyscira, who we all know as Wonder Woman, although it starts off where Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice had left with Bruce Wayne wondering about where she came from in a photo taken 100 years earlier.

The visual effects were simply amazing. To me, extensive use of “bullet time” effects can get annoying, but their use here was not only not distracting but incredible. Combine that with some of the spectacular location shots, and it makes for a beautiful movie. There were only a couple of visual issues I picked up on, and only on viewing the Blu-ray…the early wide shot of the Amazon training felt composited where it seems like some of the fighters were overlaid on the scene. And the glowing of the lasso rope felt too cartoonish…a light glow only to enhance the color would have been better.

The cast was excellent as well.

Gal Gadot was awesome. Aside from her appearance in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (which as a movie I didn’t care for), this was the first movie I actually saw her in. I think she was perfect in the part as a fish-out-of-water superhero, both fierce and beautiful simultaneously.

Chris Pine as Steve Trevor…Pine for some reason always makes me feel like he’s somehow going to charm his way out of every situation with his smile…and I still like him. His charm I think works for the spy character.
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Deadline reports that writer Jason Fuchs, who co-wrote Wonder Woman and also wrote Pan and Ice Age: Continental Drift, will take on the screenplay for Sony’s Robotech. Andy Muschietti (It) was attached as director in July.

The project is Sony’s attempt at a new franchise based on the 1985 anime series from Harmony Gold USA in partnership with Tatsunoko Production Company, and was actually three separate anime series (“Super Dimension Fortress Macross”, “Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross”, and “Genesis Climber MOSPEADA”), dubbed and edited to have a common plot line, showing three “generations” of characters. The common theme in the series is what is called “robotechnology” (a.k.a. “mecha”) – vehicles and spaceships which could transform into robots, which allowed the humans to take on aliens of immense size. It also spawned a number of direct-to-video movies.