Film Industry News

Toy Story 3 Becomes the Highest Grossing Pixar Film

(slashfilm.com)                Pixar’s Toy Story 3 has grossed over $895 million worldwide, surpassing Finding Nemo’s $867.8 million to become the highest grossing film in Pixar history.

Of course, the movie got the bump in 3D price increases that wasn’t available for many of the earlier Pixar films (aside from last year’s Up). It should also be mentioned that Toy Story 3 has only been in theaters for 7 weeks. Pixar films usually remain in some theaters around 30 weeks after the opening weekend. This means there is at least $30 or $40 million more to Toy Story’s domestic tally, and who knows how much worldwide. After the jump I’ve included a chart showing all of the Pixar theatrical releases, along with worldwide box office totals and estimated budget numbers.

Film (Year)        Worldwide BO    Budget
Toy Story (1995)    $361,948,825      $30M
A Bug's Life (1998)    $363,109,485     $45M
Toy Story 2 (1999)     $484,966,906     $90M
Monsters, Inc. (2001)     $526,864,330     $115M
Finding Nemo (2003)     $867,894,287     $94M
The Incredibles (2004)    $632,882,184     $92M
Cars (2006)         $461,923,762     $70M
Ratatouille (2007)     $620,495,432     $150M
WALL-E (2008)        $532,743,103     $180M
Up (2009)         $731,304,609     $175M
Toy Story 3 (2010)     $895,087,342     $200M




'Die Hard 5' is Imminent

(cinematical.com)                      Bruce Willis was at Comic-Con Thursday, promoting his role in Sly Stallone's upcoming action flick The Expendables. When he was done with that, Mr. John McClane sauntered over to MTV where he dished on a few things -- the most impressive of which was a proposed fifth installment in the Die Hard series. Yippie ki yay.

Willis told MTV that "It's imminent. The coin is about to drop." The actor didn't offer much more than that, which is unusual since he's been pretty vocal in his demand that director Len Wiseman return to helm the next film for awhile now. The real question is, who can McClane fight this time around? No one's ever going to top Hans Gruber, but I could totally see McClane running around to thwart a terrorist attack by an Al Quaeda sleeper cell on US soil. That may seem a little cliche at this point, but it's not the story that really matters -- it's the idea of an iconic action hero like McClane stopping it that would put my butt in a theater seat on opening night.




Entertainment Layoffs Slow Down

(.indiantelevision.com)             According to data released recently, layoffs in entertainment jobs seems to have slowed down significantly.

In July, just 125 layoffs at media companies were announced compared to 708 in June. This shows that July has recorded the lowest number of layoffs so far this year, according to the data.

It may be noted that in the past six years, the media sector recorded lower number of job losses in March 2005 when 111 layoffs were announced. There was as much as 2,853 layoffs in July 2009 and 2,168 layoffs in July 2008.

 * Disney, which shut down its Zemeckis Studio and laid off 450 workers, got rid of 400 jobs at ABC News and closed most of its ESPN Zone restaurants, causing another 294 layoffs.
    * Sony Pictures, which laid off 450 people in a restructuring.
    * Time Warner Cable, which laid off 350 in a restructuring.
    * Netflix, which cut 160 jobs in a consolidation.
    * Cinram, which cut 482 jobs in cust-cutting measures.

All 25 categories combined lost 41,676 jobs in July, bringing the total to 339,353 so far this year, 64% fewer jobs lost than in the same seven months last year. California is No. 1 in jobs lost, with 55,122 so far this year, and New York, at 52,481, is second worst.

Combining the categories of media, entertainment/leisure and telecommunications, 2001 was the worst year this decade, when 317,777 jobs were lost. Last year, a comparatively small 44,068 jobs were lost in those three categories combined and so far this year just 17,204 jobs were shed.




William Shatner Praises Avatar

(showbizspy.com)                  WILLIAM Shatner says Avatar is the Lawrence of Arabia of sci fi movies.

The actor, 79, admits to being stunned by James Cameron’s blockbuster epic and predicts all movies must now be compared to it.

“Avatar is a watershed movie. It think we’ll always refer to Avatar in the same way we think of Lawrence of Arabia in the same way.

“We’ll always look at Avatar and say, ‘That’s as good as, that’s not as good as’. Avatar is an enormous advance in every way, shape and form of movie making.”




The Avengers to Start Filming in February

(SuperHeroHype)                   Paramount Pictures and Marvel Studios are planning to start shooting The Avengers in February, 2011 for a May 4, 2012 release.

Directed by Joss Whedon, the anticipated film stars Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, Chris Evans as Captain America, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, Mark Ruffalo as Hulk, Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow and Clark Gregg as Agent Phil Coulson.

The February start is just a few months after Sony's untitled Spider-Man reboot gets underway this December. Both films are expected to shoot in Los Angeles.





Digital Modeling Firm Ciespace Corp. Lands $4 Million in Funding

(post-gazette.com)                    Carnegie Mellon University spinoff Ciespace Corp. has secured $4 million that will be used to hire workers and expand the company into more commercial sectors, the company announced Monday.

Founded by CMU engineering professor Kenji Shimada, the digital modeling firm in Oakland markets technology that helps companies build virtual prototypes. Chicago-based Arch Venture Partners and Tokyo-based University of Tokyo Edge Capital led the Series A funding round.

Ciespace plans to use the money for work on the company's 3-D digital modeling platform. It also will push the technology into additional commercial marketplaces such as computer animation, medical imaging and metrology, or the study of measurement.

Ciespace already works with the automotive, aerospace and computer-aided design sectors. Its BubbleMesh simulation technology has been used by companies such as IBM and NASA.

Kevin Kerns, a former consultant and entrepreneur-in-residence at Arch Venture Partners, replaces Dr. Shimada as Ciespace's CEO. He was CEO of communications software firm Apropos Technology Inc. of Chicago from 1996 to 2004.

Dr. Shimada will stay on with Ciespace as the chief science officer while teaching at CMU. Company research and development will remain in Pittsburgh while a finance and marketing site opens in Chicago. Mr. Kerns said a headquarters location had not been decided.

Ciespace's roster of 10 employees is expected to grow by about 25 workers per year over the next several years.

"We hope to bring our first end-user product to market within 12 months," Mr. Kerns said.




'The Other Guys': How They Pulled Off the Motion-Capture Bar Scene

(mtv.com)                  The film's most visually stunning scene is one that even James Cameron might applaud. It's a freeze-frame, continuous-shot bar scene in which Ferrell and Wahlberg are caught mid-action in a series of drunken incidents. The scene honestly defies easy explanation, which is why we waited until now to reveal how McKay captured it.

"My DP, Oliver Wood, and I had seen this Phillips short film with cops fighting clowns," he explained. "We loved it, but I think that cost $4 million to shoot. At first we were going to do digital camera stills, and I just thought that was boring and we kind of did that already on 'Talladega Nights.' Then Oliver said, 'I think we can do the Phillips thing,' and in four days we came up with the plan.

"We got this motion-capture camera that you program so the camera moves exactly the same every time," he added. "It was similar to what they did in 'The Matrix' with the flying bullets. They weren't wearing motion-capture suits. I wish I had thought of that. I would have made Will wear one for no reason. We just wrote joke scenarios of a night gone horribly wrong. We went to this bar on the Upper West Side [of Manhattan] and shot it in half a day. We cast stuntmen and women who could hold poses. Our special effects company, Evil Eye, added all these funny elements."





Pixar announces RenderMan for Maya 4.0 and RenderMan Studio 3.0

(forums.cgsociety.org)               EMERYVILLE, CA – (July 27th, 2010) Pixar Animation Studios today disclosed full details of the upcoming versions of its RenderMan Studio and RenderMan for Maya products at SIGGRAPH 2010.

Targeted for release in the fall of 2010, RenderMan for Maya 4.0 is Pixar’s RenderMan® plug-in for Autodesk’s Maya®, optimized to provide fast and easy access to the photorealistic rendering technology used to create the stunning visual effects in the majority of today’s feature films. This latest version provides accelerated performance via the addition of unlimited threading and significant acceleration and memory efficiencies from core optimizations to the internal renderer. Additionally RenderMan for Maya 4.0 brings support for Maya Fluids, Maya 2011 compatibility, and the addition of a new unified interface for RenderMan Controls.

Also targeted for release in the fall of 2010, RenderMan Studio 3.0 includes all of the above new features and adds enhanced Slim integration, a new production-quality shader library, a relighting GUI built on PRMan’s re-rendering API, enhanced co-shader support, PSets, Ptex compatibility, and more. In addition, RenderMan Studio now includes Tractor 1.0, Pixar’s recently released distributed render management solution built on an innovative new architecture designed to manage both small and large multi-core render farms.




Fox to Produce Superhero Film Chronicle

(Heat Vision)                  John Landis, the director of classics like Animal House and An American Werewolf in London, has teamed with his son, Max, for an original script called Chronicle, reports Heat Vision.

The film, to be shot in faux-documentary style with a handheld camera, tells the story of three Portland teenagers who develop superpowers. First time director Josh Trank (editor of Big Fan) is attached to direct.

John Landis' most recent directorial effort, Burke and Hare, stars Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis and, though currently unscheduled, should see release in the near future.




Stan Winston Creatures Mined For New Movies, TV, Comics and More

(bleedingcool.com)                The legacy of Stan Winston, special effects master and animatronics designer, is about to get even richer with a new wave of movies, TV shows, comics and video games going into development under the Stan Winston’s Creatures banner.

The basis for all of these properties will be plot outlines and character designs that Winston had worked on before his death. Many of them, such as Trakk the time-travelling hunter, have already been seen as action figures.

Variety line up the various potential franchises like this:

    Nine seperate properties, with their own worlds, mythologies and characters, such as Extreme Gargoyles, Mutant Earth,Realm of the Claw, Robot Revolt, Four Horsemen, Morgoolum, Alien Universe, Dark World and Blood Wolves.

And give some more details on Robot Revolt in particular:

    A group of teenagers… work as a mining team on an asteroid belt, controlling large robots with their minds. When an evil dictator takes over their universe, their minds are melded into the robot bodies and the group leads a revolt against the enemy.

There was a lot of work done on a Japanese TV show being developed from this particular idea, but it never appears to have made it to air. Indeed, even the toys derived from many of Winston’s designs and concepts went unreleased.




India's Digikore Studios Launches VFX Division

(India PRwire)               Digikore Studios Limited (www.digikore.com), one of India's leading Creative Services Companies, has recently launched its Visual Effects division (www.digikore.com/vfx.html). Located in Pune, India, Digikore VFX will enable the company to extend its services to encompass Visual Effects, Design, Pre-Visualisation and Post on Theatrical Features, Short Films, Television Series, Television Commercials, Documentaries and Video Clips.

Digikore will start with services like Rotoscopy, Paint / Cleanup and Chroma Keying jobs as an overflow partner for larger Visual Effects houses. Since we are based in India, we can offer our services at a very affordable price, thus leading to a substantial saving for the companies we work for.

"At Digikore VFX, we have a unique skill set that spans the visual effects industry," said Abhishek More, founder of Digikore Studios Limited. "We understand the unique challenges of post production and are committed to delivering the best digital effects in the business. Our new roles will allow us to use our combined experience and produce some of our most dynamic visual effects work yet."

"An impressive collection of talent has been brought together to launch the VFX division. Taking into account the experienced and highly talented team we have onboard, we believe we are a new company with a lot of experience", said Abhishek.

The new division includes state of the art infrastructure including, high end machines, render farms, over 20 TB of data storage capacity, high speed internet connectivity and FTP.




Sheep Take Over The Lord of The Rings Movie Set

(digitalspy.com)                 A flock of sheep has reportedly moved into the empty Hobbit homes constructed in Matamata, New Zealand for the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy.

Images from various social networking sites reposted on Kuriositas show the creatures moving in and around the Hobbit holes, 17 of the original 37 of which have been preserved as a tourist attraction.

The homes themselves are empty, as all internal shots of Hobbiton in Peter Jackson's award-winning trilogy were filmed in studios.

 

What modern directors can learn from Hitchcock’s Psycho

from Movies - Den of Geek

Fifty years old this year, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is as suspenseful as ever. And, Ryan argues, modern directors could learn a lot from its maker’s back-to-basic approach...
Few mainstream directors have been as influential or well-regarded as Alfred Hitchcock. In a succession of suspense thrillers, including  Rope, Vertigo, Rear Window and Dial M For Murder, the director forged a filmmaking language that was both distinctive and personal, which would go on to have a profound effect on the output of an entire generation of filmmakers, including Brian De Palma, William Friedkin and Steven Spielberg.
For a director whose work began in pre-war England, quietly crafting black-and-white classics such as The Man Who Knew Too Much and The 39 Steps, his later rise to colossal fame in Hollywood was unprecedented. Within the space of a few decades, he was one of America's most bankable filmmakers and, for a time, each one of his productions topped the last in spectacle and scope.

After the big budget blockbuster North By Northwest (if you haven't seen it, think Knight And Day, but far, far less rubbish), Hitchcock, to Paramount's chagrin, decided to try something completely different.
Setting himself a budget of $1 million, Hitchcock employed the TV crew from his series Alfred Hitchcock Presents and, over the comparatively brief period of just over three months, made Psycho.
Compared to many features of the era, particularly Z-grade, drive-in fare such as The Wasp Woman or The Angry Red Planet, Hitchcock's budget was hardly small, but his self-imposed creative boundaries (in a period when he had virtually none) were arguably the cardinal reason for the film's pared back, still shocking power.












And while the conventions and rules of filmmaking have changed considerably in the fifty years following Psycho's production, there are some constants in Hollywood that still remain.
For most directors, their dealings with Tinseltown's studio system is one of steadily diminishing returns. As their fame, stature and the budgets they're afforded increase, so does their creative daring. While this isn't always true (Christopher Nolan is one director who continues to thrive creatively in Hollywood), there are plenty of other big names that prove the point.

As an example, take a look at the career of James Cameron. From humble beginnings as a production designer on low budget sci-fi schlockfest Galaxy Of Terror, Cameron steadily rose through the Hollywood ranks, carving out a name for himself with The Terminator and Aliens, before going on to direct the most financially successful movies of all time with Titanic and Avatar.
But as impressive as Avatar was from a technical standpoint, the movie lacks the economical, aggressive narrative drive of The Terminator, a film that refuses to stand still for a single frame of its 108 minute running time, and whose ambition far outstripped its tiny budget.

Within the financial and technical constraints he was saddled with, Cameron created a film with an urgency that has ebbed away as his career has progressed. As the budgets for his subsequent pictures increased, so did their running time and creative verve. 2009's Avatar weighed in at a flabby 168 minutes, and even its biggest fans would surely admit that it's not in the same league as Cameron's earlier ventures into sci-fi.
If Cameron followed Hitchcock's lead, and packed away his expensive motion capture equipment, restricted his budget and shot a film in a few weeks, could he regain the same desire to tell a concise, urgent story he so clearly had while making The Terminator?

The same question could be asked of most big Hollywood directors, both young and old. If George Lucas dared to put aside the increasingly ridiculous Star Wars franchise, assembled a small crew and went back to making films along the lines of American Graffiti or, better yet, THX 1138, perhaps he could regain the creative promise he displayed early on in his career.
Hitchcock was sixty when he shot Psycho, and yet his desire to tell concise, often dark stories was as strong as it was when he began his career. After the financial success of North By Northwest, he could have continued making huge studio pictures with big name stars and watched the paycheques flow in.
Instead, he chose to make a low-key, black-and-white film in which the lead was killed within the first half-hour, a daring plot twist at the time, and one that has since been borrowed by William Friedkin in To Live And Die In LA, and Eli Roth in Hostel.

Psycho's (mostly implied) violence pushed the boundaries of mainstream filmmaking, and its moments of pitch black comedy bear all the hallmarks of Hitchcock's impish sense of humour. When Mrs. Bates turns to confront the camera at the film's conclusion, her teeth exposed in a lipless jeer, it could just as easily be Hitchcock's face, laughing heartily at his horrified audience.
Modern filmmakers continue to be fascinated by the fluent visual language of Hitchcock, by his bravura camera sweeps and editing tricks. But Psycho provides, potentially, the most important lesson: that budgets and gimmicks can only take your career as a director so far.
So, filmmakers of Hollywood - Cameron, Spielberg, Lucas, the brothers Wachowski - forget 3D, CGI and interminable, three-hour narratives. Go back to basics. Reconnect with your audience. Find an original, startling story worth telling, and tell it cheaply, quickly, and urgently.

The Avengers set for February start

from Movies - Den of Geek

Joss Whedon will be calling all the heroes early next year, as The Avengers gets set to go before the cameras…
Jobs we'd hate: the person who has to co-ordinate the shooting schedule for Marvel's upcoming superhero opus, The Avengers.
Under the directorship of Joss Whedon, the movie is bringing together a sizeable cast of actors, each of whose schedules have to fall into place for the production. Given that these actors include Robert Downey Jr, Samuel L Jackson, Scarlett Johansson and Chris Evans, amongst others, it's a cast that's full of people who are hardly overburdened with spare time, too.
Still, things are slotting into place, and Marvel is scheduling production of The Avengers to begin once the shoots of its 2011 blockbusters, Thor and Captain America, are tied up. Both will be in post-production by early next year, and thus The Avengers will be heading before the cameras in February 2011.
SuperHeroHype reports that The Avengers is set to film in Los Angeles, where it'll be in production at the same time as the new Spider-Man movie. More on that here.
The Avengers, meanwhile, will be heading to cinemas on May 4th 2012. We suspect many of you will be quite keen to see it.

 

Quantum Leap to jump into cinemas

from Movies - Den of Geek

Are you one of the many who still salutes late-80s TV classic Quantum Leap? Scott Bakula confirms that a cinema adaptation is on the way…
The San Diego Comic-Con may have been and gone, but the veritable landslide of information and rumour is still being processed. And one little tidbit of information to come from the convention was that a movie of Quantum Leap is now in the works.
For those too young to remember it (not us, you'll be surprised to hear), Quantum Leap was a late-80s/early-90s sci-fi series starring Scott Bakula as a scientist whose time travelling experiments saw him appear in the bodies of different characters in each episode.
Arriving in each timeframe with no clue as to whose body he'd ‘leaped' into or how he could get back out of it again, helpful advice was imparted every week by the holographic Al (Dean Stockwell), and it was the pairing's amiable chemistry that formed the show's good-natured core.
Almost two decades after the final episode aired, and following years of rumours, Bakula has revealed that a Quantum Leap movie is finally in the works, and that a script is currently produced by the original series' creator Donald P. Bellisario.
''The good news is that Don is working on the film script and has a big time Hollywood producer who wants to do it," Bakula said, before adding, "It's about time.''
And while Bakula admitted that both he and Stockwell are now too old to play the leads again, he suggested that both actors would be making appearances in the film "somehow".
At its best, Quantum Leap was one of the era's classic genre shows, with the best episodes drawing on fateful moments in history to powerful dramatic effect. If the movie version can recreate the memorable tension of episodes such as Lee Harvey Oswald, then the premise's leap to the cinema could be a highly successful one.
More news on the Quantum Leap movie as we get it.
Moviehole

 

 Batman 3 to shoot in New Orleans, new rumours round-up

from Movies - Den of Geek

A little round-up of the latest happenings with the next Batman movie…

With Inception now firmly dominating the box office charts right across the planet, it's inevitable that we're looking firmly in the direction of Christopher Nolan now to get cracking on his third and final Batman adventure.
Nolan, who hasn't officially signed up for The Dark Knight follow-up from what we can tell, is certain to direct the film, which is set to go before the cameras in March or April of next year.
Currently, the wise money is on Joseph Gordon-Levitt to play The Riddler in the film (Jackson Rathbone has said that he'd like to play the role, but we don't see that happening), although recent rumours have suggested that Selina Kyle aka Catwoman might be making an appearance. Tilda Swinton remains our favoured choice for the role should that happen.
Elsewhere, an IMDB page for a young actor called Cody Sousa popped up last week, that had on his list of forthcoming credits that he was due to play Robin in the next Batman movie (we're indebted to Screen Rant for spotting this). It's clearly nonsense and worth nipping in the bud, and it once again highlights how easy it is to edit an IMDB listing and put together something that looks more substantive than it is. Check out our recent interview with director James Mangold for more on the problem of getting a project removed from IMDB once it's been listed!
More likely news is that the production of the next Batman film is to move away from its Chicago home for the last two films to New Orleans. According to Comic Book Movie, a deal is being done to shoot around half of the next film in New Orleans, taking advantage of the big tax breaks that have incentivised the recent production of The Green Lantern to be located there.
That said, Nolan isn't likely to be leaving Chicago altogether if this deal does come off, and given the man's talent for shooting movies of such scale, it's hardly likely to have a detrimental effect on Batman 3 anyway.
More news on the film as we get it...
Screen Rant
Comic Book Movie

Tom Cruise to do Mission Impossible 4 for scale rates

from Movies - Den of Geek

Mission Impossible 4 pushes forward, but Tom Cruise is taking a massive up-front pay cut to get it made, in the light of his apparently-waning star pulling power…

It's not been the best couple of years for Tom Cruise at the US box office, as his last couple of films, Valkyrie and Knight And Day, have both failed to crack the $100m mark in the States. In fact, Knight And Day is still languishing at $75m, an unthinkable figure once upon a time for a big budget Tom Cruise action movie.
To call the film a flop, however, would be wrong. As we noted in our piece last week, the star power of Tom Cruise is likely to turn the domestic disappointment of Knight And Day into a decent hit elsewhere in the world, and already, $127m has been brought in outside of the States, taking the film's gross above $200m.
We're still talking less than would have been expected for a Tom Cruise movie, but the man still has star pulling power.
But not, it appears, in the States. The last film of his to hit expectations in the US was War Of The Worlds back in 2005, and as such, there have been many stories surrounding Paramount Pictures' reported discomfort with Cruise as sole star of its upcoming Mission: Impossible 4. As such, it was already revealed earlier this year that Cruise would be getting a co-star in the next movie. And now it's also been suggested that his salary package is getting a big restructure in the light of Knight And Day's US performance.
The suggestion is that Paramount doesn't have the necessary confidence in Cruise headlining the film (in terms of his box office pulling power), and NYMag is now reporting that he'll be taking a scale salary for the film, with a big back-end once the movie hits profit.
The upshot of this is that he'll be taking the minimum pay allowed by the Screen Actors Guild up front for Mission: Impossible 4, and basically sharing the risk of the film.
As someone who's really enjoyed the Mission: Impossible movies - especially Brian De Palma's outstanding 1996 take on the material - I'm more than happy to see Cruise back as Ethan Hunt, and the idea of Brad Bird on board as director has long since piqued my interest.
Meanwhile, both Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg are set to return too, and this is good news.
For more on Mr Cruise's salary joys, head over to NYMag here...

 

Release dates for Frankenweenie and John Carter Of Mars

from Movies - Den of Geek

Two big Disney films for 2012, including the next stop-motion project from Tim Burton, get firm release dates…
A pair of new release date announcements have arrived from Disney, and they're for two films that are both very firmly on our radar.
First up, there's Frankenweenie, Tim Burton's latest full-length stop-motion project, which he's currently in the midst of putting together. It's based, in case you've not had the pleasure of seeing it, on one of his acclaimed early short films, and we've got until March 9th 2012 to wait until we can see it.
Given that physical production began just a month or two ago, that's a reasonably compact amount of time he's got to turn the finished project round, even appreciating that stop motion animation can be one of the quickest forms.
Next up is John Carter Of Mars, which was shooting earlier this year in the UK, with Mark Strong and Willem Dafoe starring. What's particularly interesting about this is that Andrew Stanton will be directing.
Stanton's background is in animation, and he helmed the hugely acclaimed Wall-E for Pixar. He's one of two Pixar alumni directing big budget projects at the moment, with Brad Bird set to call shots on Mission: Impossible IV later this year.
ERC Box Office

J.J. Abrams "Super 8" To Shoot In September

(cinemablend.com)   
      Comic Con: J.J. Abrams Says Super 8 Shoots In September, Won't Be 3D Notoriously tight-lipped J.J. Abrams isn't likely to be slipping any details about his secret upcoming projects during today's Visionaries panel in Hall H, but he was convinced to talk a little bit about Super 8, the Spielberg-inspired project he's set to make next. He said it was far too early to talk details, and he doesn't have a cast in place yet, but that filming will start in September. Oh, and it won't be in 3D.

It was really more of a joke to ask if Super 8 would be in 3D-- after all, it's inspired by old-school films and home movies-- but the news still got a cheer from the audience. Abrams went on to explain a little of his aversion to 3D as a moviegoer: "Everything gets dim. It all gets a little gray and muted. You get into it, my brain adjusts to it after a while, but for the first few minutes, it seems less than the experience." Sounds like somebody saw Clash of the Titans and got burned like the rest of it.

The Visionaries panel is ongoing and fascinating, so hopefully there will be more to bring you shortly.



Spielberg's Terra Nova to Shoot in Queensland

(The Hollywood Reporter)                   Steven Spielberg's time travel TV series "Terra Nova" will shoot in Queensland, where state premier Anna Bligh on Monday said that production is expected to begin in October.

"Fox Broadcasting has today confirmed Queensland as the location of choice for 'Terra Nova'... and once again shows Queensland's ability to attract first rate productions to the state," Bligh said.

"My government provided considerable incentives through Screen Queensland to secure this production which, in turn, will generate in excess of AUS$54 million ($50 million) in economic activity and create thousands of jobs," she added.

Bligh said that around 80% of the cast and crew will be Queenslanders.

Production will be centered on locations around southeastern Queensland and at the Warner Roadshow Studios on the Gold Coast.

"We wanted this ambitious series to look like no other on television and Queensland provided the best of all possible worlds," executive vice president of production, Jim Sharp added.

"Queensland had the right look, climate and terrain, a vibrant production community and attractive economic incentives. We are very excited to be shooting our first production there."

Starring Jason O'Mara, "Terra Nova" tells a group of scientists from 2149 who travel back 85 million years to prehistoric Earth to try to save the planet that is dying from development and overcrowding.

Fox will preview the first episode of "Terra Nova" in May and then launch the 13 episode series in the fall of 2011.





Disney Sets John Carter of Mars Release Date

(Walt Disney Pictures)                 On June 8, 2012, the studio will release the Andrew Stanton-directed John Carter of Mars, starring Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins, Samantha Morton, Mark Strong, Ciaran Hinds, Dominic West, James Purefoy, Daryl Sabara, Polly Walker, Bryan Cranston, Thomas Hayden Church and Willem Dafoe.

Based on the first of Edgar Rice Burroughs' "Barsoom Series," the film chronicles the journey of Civil-War veteran John Carter (Kitsch), who finds himself battling a new and mysterious war amidst a host of strange Martian inhabitants, including Tars Tarkas (Dafoe) and Dejah Thoris (Collins).





Could A Labor Organization Save VFX Facilities?

(vfxsoldier.wordpress.com)                     When I was working at a facility that had a bargaining agreement with IATSE local 839, The Animation Guild, I found the benefits to be in abundance:

    * Individual Account Plan – A retirement account completely employer funded.
    * Defined Benefit Plan – A traditional pension plan that was also employer funded.
    * 401k – No vesting periods, funded by employee.
    * PPO health insurance – No deductibles , no co-pays.

As I explained in previous posts, I was able to keep my health insurance almost 2 years after voluntarily leaving for a non-guild facility. Benefits were also portable if you go to another guild facility and there are no extra costs to include family members. When I explain to my fellow co-workers that I paid about $400 a year in dues for such great benefits their response is the same:

    It must be too good to be true.

For a while my sentiments were the same and that my employer was probably paying through the roof for my guild negotiated benefits. However, after doing some research in how those benefits are funded, a strong case could be made that organization of VFX Facilities could actually save them money. If anything, it would probably be wash since the health and retirement benefits the guild provides would replace employer-provided benefits.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the national average employers pay for benefits on top of employees’ salaries is about 30%. According to industry sources, that’s about in line with what VFX facilities pay on top of artist salaries. One commenter on my blog claims it to be 50%!

So how much would organization actually cost? Well according to sources in the IATSE, the national labor organization that The Animation Guild is a part of, a guild employer would have to pay the following for each worker:

    * about $4 per hour worked plus about a 6% contribution into the IAP (Individual Account Plan).

I estimate the IAP contribution to be about $6000 a year. If you want to see how that number is calculated go here but lets make an assumption and calculate the amount based on an artist’s salary.

    * Assume an artist works 40 hours per week for a total of 2080 hours a year.
    * Assume that artist makes $48 an hour for a nice even salary total of about $100,000 per year.

The total amount an employer would probably have to pay to the guild would calculate to be about $14,500 per year. (*Correction – this amount isn’t paid to the guild, it is paid into the health and pension benefits. The only money paid to the guild are the dues paid by workers.) That’s far less than the national average of 30% employers pay to administer benefits.

How is it possible for the guild to provide better benefits at a more competitive price? The answer is in residuals and the economics of scale.

Residuals

This is the biggest discovery that many of us fail to make. Members of the IATSE earn residuals from the big 6 studios that directly fund the health, retirement, and pension benefits they recieve. Everytime a theater ticket, DVD, or re-run of a movie or television show is sold, a percentage of that money goes to fund benefits for IATSE members.

You are probably thinking that would amount to a lot of money and it is.

In 2008, residual income for benefits amounted to $378 million dollars! For 2009 that number is projected to be $365 million. This is why the IATSE is able to provide such great benefits at a low cost to employers and members. 55-60% of the costs for those benefits are paid for by the big 6 studios with residuals earned from sales of movies and television shows worldwide.

Economics of Scale

If you were to purchase health insurance individually, you’ll find that it’s really expensive. Part of the reason why is that it’s costly to adminster a plan just for you. Also, as an individual you have very little bargaining power with large insurance companies. However, if you join a group of people that need health insurance, you would have more bargaining power and the costs can be spread across the group making it cheaper. Like many employers, some VFX houses are able to get health insurance for their workers at a less expensive price because they can employ 200-1000 workers and bargain a bit.

The same can be said for the IATSE on a much larger scale. They sign collective bargaining agreements with hundreds of employers in the US and Canada which employ almost 120,000 members. When you combine the shear scale of the number of members and the residuals that pay into those benefits, you begin to realize how such good benefits are provided at a good price.

It’s important to note that the costs of healthcare have been rising throughout the world. The same can be said of the guild benefits. However, they have the organization to keep costs down and make sure that the rise in health care costs are slower than the national and worldwide average. They are able to accomplish this by offering their own set of clinics members can choose to visit at a lower cost and they recently increased the number of qualifying hours per year from 400 to 450.

I believe as more VFX artists become educated about organization, the more likely it will happen. We need portable benefits as we move from facility to facility, project to project. The guild has already been providing that for almost the last 50 years to thousands of workers. The question is whether we will choose to organize sooner or 40-50 years later down the line.

Eventually we will look back on this time and history will ask this question: In the midst of one of our industry’s darkest hours, did we stand up to answer the call?




Animated Tarzan Planned for 3D

(Variety)                 Tarzan will be making a return to the world of animation thanks to Constantin Films, reports Variety. Robert Kulzer and Reinhard Klooss will produce the CGI film for release in 3D.

Constantin, best known for films in the Resident Evil and Fantastic Four franchises, is also developing a live-action 3D adaptation of a classic literature in the form of The Three Musketeers, to be directed by Paul W.S. Anderson.

Tarzan himself has been the focus of dozens of adaptations in both film and television since his first appearance in Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan of the Apes in 1912. In 1999, Disney released a theatrical animated version (later spawning a cartoon series) as is currently at work adapting another Burroughs property for live action, John Carter of Mars, set for release in 2012.



 
Special-Effects Legend Unleashes His 'Creature Corps'

(fearnet.com)                   File this under "Very Cool Indeed". Next week, on Friday the 13th, special-effects legend Robert Kurtzman is launching a new web reality show, titled Creature Corps, which will take viewers into the world of horror filmmaking at its finest. More after the jump, including an advance video look.

Creature Corps 2010 Digital FX Reel from Creature Corps on Vimeo.

According to the official press release, "Robert Kurtzman's Creature Corps begins airing next week on Friday the 13th (August) exclusively on Robert's official website, creaturecorps.net. This innovative new weekly series dares to let you peek behind the curtain to see just how the magic of Hollywood is made, featuring backstage access only footage following the amazing Creature Corps artists as they create fantastic creatures, special make-up F/X and visual effects for various film and music video productions."

"Upcoming episodes show you the true insanity, gore and hilarity that permeate the day to day activities at the Creature Corps effects facility, as well as provide behind the scenes footage of Midnight Syndicates debut film THE DEAD MATTER and the shooting of their first music video Dark Legacy, Mushroomhead's latest music video productions for 12 Hundred and Your Soul Is Mine, extensive coverage of the creation of the monsters and F/X for the upcoming Jennifer Lynch fright flick HISSS as well as original projects and creations from the Creature Corps elite team of artists.

"ROBERT KURTZMAN'S CREATURE CORPS will also be featuring various contests and giveaways, with prizes including props, masks, autographed items and more!  Watch the web series for more info."





Frankenweenie 3D Sets Release Date

(Walt Disney Pictures)                Walt Disney Pictures is targeting a March 9, 2012 release for the Tim Burton-produced Frankenweenie, written by John August. The film is based on Burton's 1984 short about a pet dog brought back to life by his loyal owner. While the original "Frankenweenie" was a live-action project, the new one will be made using stop-motion animation and be in 3D.




A Complete Guide to Special Effects Makeup - Yours For $976.98

(babesjunction.com)                 Created by some of Japan's most talented and up-and-coming special effects make-up artists, this is the first Japanese language Special Effects Make-Up "how-to" guide! From easy "scar" make-ups to basic techniques to masks and full-scale prosthetics, each process is covered in a fully illustrated, step-by-step process.

Order today:    http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Guide-Special-Effects-Makeup/dp/4766118332%3FSubscriptionId%3DAKIAJZGS6YKFPMU5FUVA%26tag%3Dmegaebookmall-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D4766118332




Disney Wraps up Mars Movie Shooting in Utah

(standard.net)                     SALT LAKE CITY - Principal photography is now completed in Utah for The Walt Disney Studios' upcoming feature film, "John Carter of Mars," being directed by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo, WallâàôE), and produced by Colin Wilson (Avatar).

Filmed throughout Southern Utah in the areas of Big Water, Kanab, Hanksville, Delta and Moab, the production created 300 jobs over a 120-day period, and brought $21 million into several rural Utah economies.

"As Governor, I am particularly happy that Utah has been host to the recently completed production of 'John Carter of Mars' during the past year. The book series was a favorite of mine when I was young, and I can't wait to see the finished film," Governor Gary R. Herbert said.

"This project has stimulated the state's local economies at a critical time and provided hundreds of jobs for Utah's film professionals."

The film's producers were considering Utah when Senate Bill 14 (Financial Incentives for Motion Pictures) was passed in March 2009. SB 14, in addition to the quality filming locations and the availability of professional crews, helped Utah win the starring role as the double for Mars.

"The collaboration between the Utah Film Commission, the Motion Picture Association of Utah and the State's robust film industry has yielded tremendous results," said Spencer Eccles, executive director of the Governor's Office of Economic Development. "We are anxious to welcome the next studio production to Utah, our message to Hollywood is, welcome home."

"This was an ideal project for Utah because of the unique landscapes we have within our borders," said Marshall Moore, director of the Utah Film Commission. Lockheed Martin had also recently used Utah as a double for Mars during an industrial shoot in 2009.

Various locations of the state were used in the production, among them Kane County and Moab City which felt a large economic benefit. "The film provided employment for extras, framers, carpenters and landscapers. Many local businesses including grocery, lumber, hardware, lodging and restaurants benefitted from the film," said Kay Giles, director of the Kane County Office of Tourism and Film Commission. The City of Moab was pleased with the economic impact the film had on their community. "This was a win-win situation for the City of Moab business owners and our citizens," said Dave Sakrison, Mayor of Moab, Utah.

The production of "John Carter of Mars," represents the largest economic impact of any movie made in Utah. Based on the first of Edgar Rice Burroughs' "Barsoom Series," the film chronicles the journey of Civil-War veteran John Carter (TAYLOR KITSCH), who finds himself battling a new and mysterious war amidst a host of strange Martian inhabitants, including Tars Tarkas (WILLEM DAFOE) and Dejah Thoris (LYNN COLLINS). The film is scheduled to be released in 2012.




‘Tron: Legacy’ To Become lElecTRONica Dance Party

(travel.latimes.com)                A nighttime street party debuting this fall at Disney California Adventure will be tied to the upcoming “Tron: Legacy“ film and will feature sci-fi themed music, dancers and cocktails.

An open call by Disney Auditions looking for hip-hop dancers with martial arts experience, said rehearsals would begin in early September for the new “Tron” nighttime event in the Hollywood Pictures Backlot and the Sun Plaza entrance hub.

The nightly party, with the working title ElecTRONica, would run through the Christmas 2010 release of the much-anticipated movie, reported MiceAge columnist Al Lutz.

ElecTRONica replaces the surprise hit Glow Fest, a booze-fueled dance party scheduled to run through Aug. 22 at DCA. A Disney-fied version of a psychedelic rave, Glow Fest was designed to keep visitors entertained this summer while they waited for the Anaheim theme park’s popular new World of Color nighttime water show to begin.

As part of the ElecTRONica event, the former “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” soundstage may be converted into a neon-illuminated Flynn’s Arcade modeled on the video arcade in “Tron: Legacy” while the former Hollywood & Dine food court could receive an End of the Line Club makeover based on the futuristic nightclub in the film, according to Screamscape.

Spider-Man villain speculation: Christoph Waltz to play The Lizard?

from Movies - Den of Geek

Could Spider-Man finally be going head to head with The Lizard on the big screen? And is Christoph Waltz the man to play him?
Over the past week or two, I've sat back and re-watched Sam Raimi's trilogy of Spider-Man movies, and not for the first time, it left me thinking that the great loss of Raimi's cancelled Spider-Man 4 was the chance to see Dylan Baker's character reach fruition.
Baker, in Spider-Man 2 and 3, played Dr Curt Connors, whose long-term destiny was to turn into The Lizard. And there were rumours - although there was never confirmation - that Spider-Man 4 would have seen him do just that.
However, with Sony now rebooting the whole Spider-Man franchise, with Andrew Garfield in the title role and Marc Webb directing, Baker has left the franchise. And he's done so at a time when Sony is believed to be considering making The Lizard the principle villain of its new Spider-Man movie.
According to Production Weekly, Sony has someone in mind for the role, too. It's put the name of Inglourious Basterds' Christoph Waltz forward as a potential contender for the role, which sounds like a decent call from where we're sitting.
However, we should note that there's no word from Sony on this, and nor is there a sniff of confirmation that The Lizard is set to be the primary villain in the next Spider-Man movie. At this stage, that's just where the rumour mill happens to be.
Given that Spider-Man starts shooting at the end of this year, however, we'd expect details to be forthcoming sooner rather than later...

 

Total Recall: 20 years on

from Movies - Den of Geek

Get your ass to Mars. It’s twenty years since Paul Verhoeven directed Total Recall. Ryan looks back at an action sci-fi classic…
Arnold Schwarzenegger at his brawny best. Sharon Stone divorced with a bullet. Martian hookers with three breasts. Paul Verhoeven isn't a director known for his subtlety or restraint, and 1990's Total Recall saw the Dutchman at the height of his trashy, wryly intelligent powers.
Because, while his trio of truly classic science fiction movies, RoboCop, Total Recall and Starship Troopers, is risibly, gloriously violent, there beats a deliciously cynical, satirical heart beneath all the blood and mayhem.
And yet, Total Recall could have easily been a very different film.
Floating around the offices of Hollywood for years, the rights to Philip K. Dick's original short story, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, were originally purchased by Alien screenwriter Ron Shusett in the early 80s. Renamed Total Recall, the property was developed by Dino De Laurentiis, with David Cronenberg set to direct and numerous actorsincluding Richard Dreyfuss, William Hurt and Patrick Swayze attached to the lead role over the next few years.

When Cronenberg's drafts of the script failed to impress Shusett ("No, no, we want to do Raiders Of The Lost Ark goes to Mars" was how the frustrated director Shussett reacted at the time), another director, Bruce Beresford, was hastily drafted in as a replacement. Then, just as set builders began turning a corner of Australia into a miniature version of Mars, De Laurentiis' production company went belly up.
At the behest of man-mountain Arnold Schwarzenegger (he'd wanted to star in De Laurentiis' version of the film, but was turned down in favour of Swayze) Carolco Pictures bought up the Total Recall rights for $3 million. Paul Verhoeven was hired as director (again, at Schwarzenegger's insistence), and writer Gary Goldman was brought in to help Ronald Shusett finish off the screenplay, which by now had gone through more than forty drafts.

But while the movie's pre-production had been a fraught one, those difficulties didn't carry over to the big screen. Through its successive drafts, Dick's slight, curious tale had mutated into sprawling space opera, a mutation that resulted in a brash, undeniably exciting film that nevertheless retained faint, tantalising hints of the original story's themes.
Set in 2084, Schwarzenegger plays hulking construction worker Douglas Quaid, whose visit to Rekall, a company that specialises in implanting false experiences into customers' minds, inadvertently uncovers his apparently wiped true identity. Far from the blue collar underling he initially thought himself to be, Quaid is, in fact, a secret agent with mysterious links to a colony on Mars.
In a brilliant big screen synthesis of Dickian paranoia, Quaid returns home from Rekall to find that everyone he knows is arrayed against him in some massive conspiracy. His ice maiden wife Lori (Sharon Stone) isn't really his wife, but the deadly, high-kicking girlfriend of Richter (Michael Ironside, excellent, as always), and even his once-friendly co-workers are actually gun-wielding assassins.

Escaping to Mars, Quaid discovers his real name is Hauser, a one-time pawn of the colony's evil administrator Vilos Cohaagen (Ronny Cox, cast in the same nefarious bureaucrat role he played in RoboCop), and that his mind is the repository for secret information that could alter the Martian landscape forever.
Seldom concerned with logic, Verhoeven keeps Total Recall moving at an extraordinary pace, lurching from one ludicrously violent over-the-top set piece to another.
The film's most memorable moment, however, is a quiet yet remarkably tense sequence in which Quaid/Hauser is confronted by his estranged wife and a doctor, who claim that Quaid isn't really on Mars at all, but still strapped to a chair at Rekall and in the middle of a psychotic episode. By swallowing a pill, the doctor says, Quaid can save himself, and restore his life to its former balance.

It's a rare pause in the action, and made all the more mesmerising by the gory headshots and other grizzly slayings that bookend it. For the first time, the audience is given a moment to question the strange dream-logic of everything it's seen thus far. Are the colourful inhabitants of Mars, the dim-witted goons who insist on using machine guns in a glass dome, and Quaid's new love interest Melina (Rachel Ticotin) all constructs of his slumbering mind?
No matter. With another bullet through the skull, Verhoeven's off again, embarking on another half hour or so of chases, fights and gleefully nasty deaths. It's only as the final credits are set to roll, and a vast subterranean network of alien technology transforms the Martian surface, that Quaid, and the audience, have one final chance to wonder whether everything the protagonist has experienced is simply a fantasy.
Briefly the most expensive film of all time (knocked off its perch one year later by the groundbreaking Terminator 2), Total Recall looks like the product of a bygone age. Pre-CGI model effects aside, it's hard to imagine, in 2010, a big budget, mainstream movie getting away with the R-rated level of violence displayed here. With studios now more anxious than ever to pull in big audiences, executives would probably demand the film be cut for a PG-13/12A certificate.

It's unlikely, for example, that Inception or Avatar would have been granted such enormous budgets had they been as wilfully bloody as Total Recall was.
Nevertheless, Total Recall is, in its own way, a hugely entertaining movie. As a piece of action cinema or hyperactive space opera, it's a kinetic, brash rollercoaster ride, made all the better by Rob Bottin's squishy make-up effects.
And while it's not to hard to wonder just what David Cronenberg's take on Dick's premise would have looked like (though his reality-bending 1999 movie eXistenZ gives a partial answer), there's no denying that, between them, Schwarzenegger and Verhoeven created a bloody popcorn classic that, beneath the violent divorces and tri-breasted ladies, still contains distant echoes of the original short story's infectious paranoia.

GREEN LANTERN Wraps, Sequel Work Underway

(mania.com)      
    Over on Twitter, DC Entertainment Chief Creative Officer and Green Lantern guru Geoff Johns tells fans, " GREEN LANTERN IS WRAPPED!!!! Finished the last shot today!!! Celebrating in New Orleans. :)"

He goes on to tweet, "As co-producer of the film, I am very, very proud of what we've got in store. Much more to come. Martin Campbell FTW."

As an added bonus, Johns also published a photo of a Red Lantern he discovered in New Orleans.

With the release of the first movie still about 11 months away, Variety reports that Warner Bros. have already gotten started with work on Green Lantern 2.

Greg Berlanti, Michael Green and Marc Guggenheim, the writers of the current movie's screenplay were commissioned to outline their treatment for the sequel a few months back. Now Warner has hired Michael Goldenberg (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) to write the script from their treatment.

Presumably the story will see Sinestro (played my actor Mark Strong) rise up as a nemesis for Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds). In keeping with
















Cloverfield Sequel Still a Priority

(MTV)                  MTV talked to Cloverfield director Matt Reeves, whose Let Me In opens October 1st, about the possibility of a sequel to the 2008 monster film.

He said that, while himself and producer J.J. Abrams are concentrating on other things right now, there's definitely still interest in returning to that universe.

"It really isn't the moment for [the sequel] to go any further than it has, but it continues to be a priority for both of us," Reeves said. "J.J. is very immersed in putting together 'Super 8.' He's... in pre-production and really, really passionately getting that together. And I'm passionately finishing 'Let Me In.'"

He also assured there's no connection between Cloverfield and Super 8.

"There literally is no connection whatsoever," he added. "It's just a really cool idea for a film. I know what [J.J. is] doing and it's amazing."

Cloverfield cost just $25 million to make and earned $170 million worldwide.





 







Tony Scott to Direct Nemesis for Fox

(Bleeding Cool)               20th Century Fox has acquired the film rights to writer Mark Millar ("Wanted," "Kick-Ass") and artist Steve McNiven's graphic novel "Nemesis," with Tony Scott attached to direct and Scott Free producing. Marvel describes the title as follows:

CIVIL WAR? Nothing. KICK-ASS? A warmup. What if the smartest, toughest costumed bad ass in the world was totally evil? Meet Nemesis. He's systematically been destroying the lives of every police chief in Asia, and he's now set his sights on Washington, DC. Between you and me, the police don't have a chance. Do not miss the book that EVERYONE will be talking about by the creative team that made CIVIL WAR the biggest book of the decade.

Millar commented on the announcement on his official site:

Oh, man. It's so good to finally be able to talk about this:

The man who shot Maverick in Top Gun, Bruce in the Last Boy Scout, yelled action for Will Smith in Enemy of the State, directed Denzel in Man on Fire (one of the finest revenge movies ever made), had Tarantino rework Hackman's dialogue in Crimson Tide and gave me Deneuve's naughtiest performance in The Hunger is directing our movie. Oh, AND he did True Romance, for my money the best of all the Tarantino flicks. Tony Scott: I can't even pretend to be cool about this.

Bryan Hitch and I would reference Tony on a weekly basis when we were doing The Ultimates. Our dream was an Ultimates movie with Scott directing because he can do the character work and the intensity, but also handle scale and action like practically no other. The idea of a him helming a superhero movie had us giddy and here he is directing the one Steve McNiven and I created. We found out last Friday night and managed to keep a secret from all but a few of our closest friends and family. But this is the call I had a couple of weeks back, which I described as the most exciting of my career; Tony on the blower chatting about how he wanted to shoot certain scenes if we gave him the rights. He was buzzing about it, describing Steve as the best comic book artist he's seen in over twenty years. We talked casting, we talked budget (and we're talking way more than Wanted and Kick-Ass put together here in terms of money for him to play with) and we talked with Fox about making this into a major franchise, something they're really going to invest their time and energy into.




Cameron Updates "Avatar" Sequels

(darkhorizons.com)                In a lengthy interview with MTV News, filmmaker James Cameron says he's working on the "Avatar" sequel, though something else in that universe is currently drawing most of his attention.

"'Avatar 2'... we're still working on deals. We don't start the movie until we get the deals worked out. I'm making notes. I'm not sitting idle... But really, what I'm working on primarily is the novel."

Cameron's held back on releasing an "Avatar" novel tie-in as "I didn't want to do a cheesy novelization, where some hack comes in and kind of makes s--t up. I wanted to do something that was a legitimate novel that was inside the characters' heads and didn't have the wrong culture stuff, the wrong language stuff, all that."

There's also talk of doing the next two "Avatar" films back-to-back, something that's not as strenuous as it sounds due to the style of the production - "We're actually talking about that. That's not a decision yet. That is something that makes a lot of sense, given the nature of these productions, because we can bank all the [motion] capture and then go back and do cameras over a period of time."




'Star Trek' Sequel Inspired By 'Cowboys And Aliens'

(airlockalpha.com)                  Space always has been the final frontier, but the sequel to J.J. Abrams' "Star Trek" will take some cues from the old Western frontier thanks to the latest Hollywood genre mash-up, "Cowboys and Aliens."

    Details on the plot of the new movie are being carefully kept under wraps (although that hasn't stopped wild speculation swirling the web) and the script hasn't even been finished, but writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman insist the follow-up will remain immensely loyal to the original canon and bring the series back to the very origins of the franchise.

    "['Cowboys and Aliens'] inspires it a little bit," Orci said. "'Star Trek' was 'Wagon Train [to] the Stars.' Isn’t that how Gene Roddenberry pitched it? So right now we’re just doing 'Stars Come to the Wagon Train' and now we start turning. Once we start relaxing about what we’re doing here, I’m hoping that being out in the woods a little bit will kind of inspire the right decisions hopefully."

    How far are the duo in scripting? Right now, they are about half complete, but events are still subject to change ... and change they might once fellow scribe Damon Lindelof returns from his vacation. The "Lost" co-creator, who has been consulting via e-mail, is enjoying a break from Hollywood following his six-year odyssey on a mysterious tropical island.

    "I’d say we’re halfway through the story," Orci said. "Halfway through all of us going back over what we’ve talked about and seeing if it really sticks. We’ve built a little Jenga castle storywise, and now we’re going to go pick at it and pull at it and if it stays standing. We know what we have."




Oscar Winner to Direct Digital Production Arts at Clemson

(clemson.edu)                   CLEMSON — Jerry Tessendorf, winner of the Academy Award for Technical Achievement in 2008, has been named director of the Digital Production Arts program at Clemson University, a graduate program for professionals in the film, video and gaming industries.

"Jerry will take the lead in implementing our five-year plan to achieve recognition as the lead institution in the training of technical directors and technical artists for the film and electronic games industries," said Esin Gulari, dean of Clemson's College of Engineering and Science. "We're excited to have his knowledge, experience and enthusiasm at the forefront of this important program."

Tessendorf will be a professor of visual computing in Clemson's School of Computing. In addition to directing the Digital Production Arts program, he will teach and perform research in animation and rendering for visual effects production.

The American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences bestowed Tessendorf and three colleagues an Oscar for technical achievement in 2008 in recognition of their development of custom fluid dynamics tools. The tools allow artists to create realistic animation of liquids and gases. The system also included a unique scripting language for working with volumetric data.

Tessendorf's film credits include "Titanic," "Waterworld," the "X-Men" series, "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe," the "Night at the Museum" series and "Superman Returns." Most recently he was principal graphics scientist at Rhythm & Hues Studios.





NSW Boosts Support for Visual Effects

(news.smh.com.au)                   Television and film post production companies specialising in digital effects will find it easier to get financial support in NSW.

The threshold for the state government's Film and Television Industry Attraction Fund has been lowered from $3 million to $500,000 for post digital visual effects, to reflect recent changes at a federal level, it said on Friday.

NSW Treasurer Eric Roozendaal said the lower threshold for projects would help attract high-technology post production to NSW.




Hobbit Delays Crushed Guillermo del Toro's Disney Animation Deal

(slashfilm.com)             In the Deadline interview, del Toro makes it sound like the delays with The Hobbit were to blame for the quick demise of his deal with Disney to set up some animated films that have a slightly darker tone than most Disney fare. So if you’ve been looking for information on animated films from Disney Double Dare You, might be time to stop.

del Toro says,

    Some of those big deals I’d made, with Disney and Universal, I had to dance really fast to be able to get a period of grace to shoot those Hobbit movies, and then be able to make those deals active again. That period came and went, and we were not shooting. That Disney Double Dare You deal is gone.  I am developing a relationship with DreamWorks that’s still to be defined, but it’s not as it was going to be at Disney. Disney was a beautiful opportunity, but with the timing and the delays and everything, I couldn’t activate it.




US Image Metrics Buys Facepro to Improve Animation Efficiency

(tmcnet.com)             US facial animation software firm Image Metrics (OTC:IMGX) has acquired lip synchronisation technology company Facepro in a move to enhance animation efficiency, Image Metrics said Thursday without giving price details.

Embedding Facepro's audio-based facial animation technology in Image Metrics' software will improve the product's quality and will also make it more cost effective. As a result, the cost of facial animation will be reduced to USD12 per second, Facepro president Rod Stafford said.





Little Old Lady Talks "VFX Assault & Battery"

(theunion.com)                   Movie special effects have simply gotten out of hand. Lately, while attending two or three blockbuster movies in a row, I have felt like a victim of assault and battery. To begin with, Dolby surround sound is jolting enough to destroy brain tissue, and prolonged exposure to it must certainly result in acoustic trauma.

Secondly, putting on 3D glasses becomes the prelude to experiencing a kind of guided missile attack. The movie theater becomes a war zone. When I have dared to look around, I have expected to see dead bodies lying in the aisles. And I wonder if the next innovation will be to install explosive devices under the theater seats.

I am one of a trio of little old ladies who look forward to enjoying lunch together, and then attending an afternoon matinee. Of late, we have attended some highly rated, three or four- star movies, and have emerged from the theater feeling lucky to have survived. Then we ask each other, “Now exactly what was that whole thing about?”

As long-time movie fans, we are certainly not averse to innovation and excitement. We buy tickets because we want to be fascinated, enriched, amused or entertained, and, above all, to become involved in what we're looking at. What we do not want is “sound and fury signifying nothing.”

It used to be that film stars were the ones who carried a movie. Sometimes their sheer glamour or force of personality could make the ordinary seem wonderful, poignant, sinister or funny.

They were the main attraction. They may have been seriously flawed people in real life, but on screen they embodied the ideal. The acting of the great stars left us a legacy of splendid and memorable performances.

However, it seems to me that in present day films, the stars may become mere adjuncts to spectacular special effects which are undoubtedly impressive as purely technical achievements but do little to enrich the plot or augment our understanding of the motivations of the characters.

Of course, old-time movies were padded with some simple special effects, too. (Hours of dialog are hard to write!) Early on, the familiar car chase, which is still with us, became routine in any action movie.

However, in olden days it was merely a short diversion and although it might end in a crash, it was never grisly in the sense of having severed body parts flying through the air.

The first time I ever saw anything akin to a car chase was in a “picture show” I attended 80 years ago (the word “movie” may not yet have been invented!).

I forget the title of this opus, but I know it starred the Oklahoma humorist, Will Rogers, paired with a timid comedienne named Zazu Pitts.

Her talent lay in her sad-sack portrayals of characters who were the blameless victims of life, lost souls absolutely resigned to suffering every conceivable kind of mischance.

In the scene I remember, these two simple, lovable characters are in an open touring sedan, free-wheeling down a steep, one-way mountain road.

He is valiantly trying to steer the run-away car around hairpin turns as their speed relentlessly accelerates. She is haplessly hanging on to her hat, caught as usual, in circumstances beyond her control, with no happy ending in sight.

The sequence was scary but at the same time hilarious. Furthermore, what the actors seemed to be experiencing was something the audience could relate to.

We saw the actors as people just like us. We were riding along with them; the outcome concerned all of us. Probably that is why this scene has lingered in my memory and still makes me smile when I think about it.

As I get older, one of the matters I tend to ponder is the possibility that human beings may become redundant in an automated and technologically sophisticated world.

Scientists are now seriously discussing the matter of singularity which as I understand it is the real possibility that technology (robots?) could turn on us and eventually usurp control of our lives.

Can it be that my concern over this prospect has morphed into a neurosis? Am I crazy to worry about cinema special effects producing “reel” people who are not “real” people anymore?

Like Zazu Pitts, maybe the only thing I can do is just hang on to my hat and await developments, hair-raising though they may be.

Kevin Smith’s Red State gets going next month

The cast falls into place for Kevin Smith’s long-mooted horror film Red State, as its shooting start date is confirmed…
It's been a long time coming, but the Kevin Smith project that many of us are keenest to see - Red State - will be going before the cameras next month.
Red State is the supposedly-uncommercial horror movie that long-time Smith collaborators, the Weinstein brothers, opted not to invest in, and over the past couple of years, it's been a battle to put the funding together for the film. At one stage, Smith was considering a fan-funding mechanism, but logistical and tax problems brought that idea to a close.
However, the funding for the film has now fallen back into place, and off the back of his most commercially successful film to date, Cop Out, Smith is set to roll cameras.
As promised, he's put together a cast for the film that eschews star names. Michael Parks is in the lead role of Reverend Fred Phelps, with the likes of Stephen Root, Michael Angarano, Kyle Gallner, Melissa Leo and Dermot Mulroney all rumoured to be in the cast.
Smith is set to start shooting on 22nd September, he's confirmed via his Twitter feed, although compared to his usual openness about his productions, this one looks set to be a little quieter.
As soon as we have details of a release date, or more information on the movie, we'll gladly pass it on. This is one movie we're really, really looking forward to seeing...

The Thing 100% CGI, Dark Crystal in 2011, & Snowman Still Frozen...

(collider.com)               While I’m not sure that many would argue the previous Fantastic Four films were anything but disappointing from a sheer cinematic perspective (on the bright side, I’m sure they sold tons of merch to my nephews), 20th Century Fox still has future plans for the franchise with Fantastic Four Reborn. That said, Screen Rant is reporting today that the studio has made two announcements regarding the film’s status:
- The Thing will be 100% CGI rather than using a practical effect suit like the one worn by Michael Chiklis in the previous installments.
- The reboot itself is on hold pending the completion of X-Men: First Class.






"Monsters, Inc. 2"  Blinks - Moves Release Away From Twilight Sequeul
(Columbia Pictures, Walt Disney Pictures)                   With yesterday's announcement that Summit Entertainment will release The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2 on November 16, 2012, both Disney•Pixar and DreamWorks Animation have moved their animated films into new spots that same month.
Disney•Pixar has announced that Monsters, Inc. 2 has been moved up from Nov. 16 to Nov. 2, 2012, while DreamWorks Animation has moved Leonardo DiCaprio-voiced The Guardians back from Nov. 2 to Nov. 21, 2012.
Disney also announced that the 3D version of Beauty and the Beast has been removed from the studio's release schedule along with Disney•Pixar's newt. It has been rumored for a while that newt was cancelled, but it looks like we got confirmation today.
In other release date news, Columbia Pictures has set a Nov. 11, 2011 release for the Adam Sandler comedy Jack and Jill. Sandler will play both characters in the film that will face Immortals on that same day.

The Henson Company to Release a "Dark Crystal" Sequel in 2011
(albertam.com) 
   In 1982, The Henson Company took a chance and created an all puppet fantasy film that many claim was a flop. Except that its fan base grew and grew, turning it into a cult classic loved by many all over the world. Fans know what we’re talking about: The Dark Crystal. Now, all these years later, we have amazing technology and the ability to create very real animation. So, the Henson Company is at it again, this time using our technology to create a sequel to The Dark Crystal.

The sequel, titled The Power of the Dark Crystal, takes place hundreds of years after the first movie. The world is in darkness, and a young girl made of fire travels through the land with a Gelfing outcast. The film follows their adventure as the young girl tries to get a shard of the Dark Crystal and try to relight the dying sun that rests within the deepest part of the planet.

Plans for The Power of the Dark Crystal have been tossed around for a few years now, but finally some important news has been released and we’re getting a bigger look at what this Dark Crystal sequel will include. Here are some things to expect in The Power of the Dark Crystal:

-The Power of the Crystal will be in 3D. Most people hear this nowadays and just groan. It didn’t take long for 3D to lose its hype. Lucky for us, this is about the only thing in The Dark Crystal sequel that might fail.

-Brian Froud, creative genius behind the puppets from The Dark Crystal is returning to develop the characters in The Power of the Crystal. This is a huge win for the sequel.

-The Power of the Crystal is going to combine live action, puppetry, animatronics and CGI effects. Since the movie isn’t going to rely heavily on CGI, there is a greater chance that the sequel will do the first film justice, and in fact, make it better.

-Australia based Omnilab-affiliated Iloura will do the CGI. Haven’t heard of them? These are the guys that did Where the Wild Things Are. No matter what anyone thinks of that movie, the CGI was right on with the creatures from the beloved book, and looked extremely real. With this group in charge for The Power of the Crystal, our fantasy beings are in great hands.

-Craig Pearce wrote the screenplay. He also wrote the screenplays for Moulin Rouge and Romeo + Juliet. Was it really that hard to write a screenplay for Romeo + Juliet, though? The lines are already written, just add direction. Moulin Rouge is a beloved cult film filled with over-the-top sappiness. So, we will see where Pearce goes with The Power of the Dark Crystal.

-The Spierig Brothers are set to direct The Power of the Crystal. Michael and Peter Spierig are relative newbies to the directing business. They’ve directed only two films. The first was a low budget horror film called Undead that channeled Sam Raimi pretty well. The second, and what probably won them the job for the Dark Crystal sequel, is Daybreakers. It is a vampire film, which has nothing to do with The Dark Crystal, but it has won good reviews for its humor and action. What will make fans happy about the Spierig Brothers taking the helm for The Power of the Dark Crystal is how much they love the movie. Michael Spierig said that this sequel comes with a “tremendous amount of responsibility” and that they want to create the film with the same “meticulous care that Jim Henson and Frank Oz gave the 1982 original”.

-The Power of the Crystal will arrive in theaters at some point in 2011.




Men in Black 3 Shooting in New York

(horror-movies.ca)                  From ComingSoon comes word that Men in Black 3 will begin shooting in New York in September. We have known for awhile that SONY has been working on a Men In Black 3 and that Ethan Cowen who wrote Tropic Thunder was writing the film. Men in Black 3 will be in 3D and released into theaters May 26th 2011. Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones are both slated to return and reprise their roles.








Luc Besson In 'Outer Space Prison'

(darkhorizons.com)                 French filmmaker Luc Besson and actors Guy Pearce and Maggie Grace are set to team for the space prison hostage thriller "Lockout" which is looking likely to be set up at Sony Pictures says Deadline.

Pearce would play a man wrongly convicted of espionage who is offered his freedom if he can rescue the president's daughter (Grace) from an outer space prison which has been overrun by its violent inmates.

Besson co-wrote the script with James Mather and Stephen St. Leger who will direct. Shooting starts September 7th.






"An American Werewolf in London" Reboot Looks For Modern Spin

(slashfilm.com)                 Last year it was announced that the Weinstein brothers had acquired the rights to remake An American Werewolf in London, and my heart sank. Since then, there’s been no news of any progress on the project.

It looks like the remake is starting to kick into gear, with the studio looking to Fernley Phillips, the writer of The Number 23, to tackle the screenplay.

The Los Angeles Times, who reported the news, is saying that The Weinstein Co. is looking to give the movie “a modern spin”. Bloody Disgusting adds that they’ve been told the Weinsteins “are really looking to depart from John Landis’ [film].”

What makes the original 1981 film special is its genre-bending wit and energy, and top notch direction from John Landis (as well as Rick Baker’s special FX work, natch).




'Transformers 3' Casting Extras in Metro Detroit

(mlive.com)                If you're looking to earn some extra cash, get your start in the acting biz, or just want to be part of a blockbuster action flick, take note.

According to Michigan Acting, "Transformers 3" is currently casting extras in Metro Detroit for filming that will take place here at the end of August.

There are virtually no discriminating factors -- males and females of all ethnicities and looks can apply (unlike this film, which was looking for a very particular type of people), they just have to be over the age of 18.

To apply, submit a current picture and your name, phone number, age, height, weight, and sizes to trans3detroit@gmail.com.

"Transformers 3" has been filming Los Angeles and Chicago and will move to Detroit later this month.

There are rumors some filming will take place in the abandoned Packard Plant, and that there will possibly be some "blowing up" of parts inside the building.

According to the Warren, Ohio Tribune Chronicle, Paramount studios execs said "They fell in love with it because they can blow up parts in the movie and it won't matter."




Beauty And The Beast 3D Pushed Back Indefinitely

(cinemablend.com)                 Beauty And The Beast 3D Pushed Back Indefinitely This whole 3D craze has taken the theater-going world by storm, but what about the in-home market? While 3D TVs are available and are being heroically promoted by the biggest 3D enthusiast there is, James Cameron, it’s still going to take a long time to sell people on the idea of spending thousands of dollars on a new TV set that requires they wear glasses to watch it.

The lack of widespread acceptance for 3D TVs helped Disney decide to push back the release of Beauty and the Beast 3D until 2011 or later, according to THR. The entertainment giant already has Toy Story 3D in the hopper after converting the first two Pixar classics for last October’s theatrical re-release, which earned $30mil collectively, just enough to cover the proposed $15mil per movie conversion cost. Right now, Disney isn’t sure that a Beauty and the Beast re-release would have as much success.

To hold people over, the Mouse House has planned a 2D re-release in Blu-ray/DVD combo form of Beauty for October 5th, but with the fate of in-home 3D still in question we may be waiting a while for the added dimension.





Lucas: 'Star Wars TV Series on Hold'

(digitalspy.com)                 Star Wars creator George Lucas has revealed that a live action television series based on the franchise has been put "on hold".

The director originally announced his intention to produce a show set between the events of Revenge Of The Sith and A New Hope back in 2005.

However, at a recent digital screening of The Empire Strikes Back in Chicago, he admitted that the project's future is uncertain.

"The live action TV show is kind of on hold because we have scripts, but we don't know how to do them," he said.

Lucas explained that budget restraints had made it difficult to realize the grand scope of the stories he had planned.

"They literally are Star Wars, only we're going to have to try to do them [at] a tenth the cost," he confirmed. "And it's a huge challenge, [a] lot bigger than what we thought it was gonna be."




'Clash of the Titans' Dominates Video Charts

(hollywoodreporter.com)                "Clash of the Titans," a remake of the 1981 cult classic, was a titan on the video charts the week ending Aug. 1.

The Warner Home Video title, which earned more than $163 million at the boxoffice, easily topped the national sales, Blu-ray sales and rental charts its first week out.

It also scored the second-highest Blu-ray share of total unit sales for a No. 1 new release this year, at 44%. It was second only to blockbuster "Avatar," which scored 49% in Blu-ray sales share its first week of release. "Avatar" managed to come in No. 4 on the Blu-ray sales chart, despite being in release since April.




Tron Legacy 3D & VFX Panel Talk From Siggraph

(vfxworld.com)                  When asked why make Tron Legacy in 3-D, director Kosinski responded: "It's Tron, man! If any film needs to push boundaries and take you into a new world, this was it. Stylistically, what I found interesting about 3-D is you can sit on a master shot and let the scene play out longer like a stage play because it does have depth and there's all this other information you're getting from it. You don't have to cut around as much to keep the energy up. There's really something nice about just sitting with the 3-D image for a while, which I'm really excited about."

Preeg explained that the performance capture process was the reverse of the Oscar-winning Benjamin Button's: "… we had to utilize these mounted cameras and figure out what to do with that data, which meant writing a lot of software internally, and I think one of the big things that has helped us on this show is that our animation team is actually quite small. One of the [other] things that we wanted to do was put this volume process in the hands of the animator so they could run the iterations of the solver and choose parameters for the solve and put it all into a nice interface for them. I think that was a big change for us and they've been very responsive to that process."

Full Press:   http://www.vfxworld.com/articles/3d/siggraph-2010-tron-legacy-and-more/page/2%2C1