Report 12A. This is a digest of recent Sci-Fi- and genre-related news as of 21 November 2000.

News & Notes

Group News:

Happy Thanksgiving to All Our US Clients

And to those who don't know what the hell we are talking about, this is a holiday designed to celebrate the establishment of the first colonies. We eat turkey and pumpkin pie until we groan and become generally unruly over a long weekend. It's sort of a rehearsal for Christmas.

The upshot of it is that we will be mailing out during this week as we go, but from Thursday until Sunday we will be out of touch while we recover. You can still e-mail us, but you may not get a response until after the weekend.

The "Life is Stranger than Fiction" Spot - First Real 'Holodeck' Created

A company in Southern California has invented a virtual reality system to train soldiers that is described as "version .0001 of the holodeck" seen on Star Trek. "It's going to take a long time to get from here to a holodeck. But it's a beginning," said Richard Lindheim, executive director of the Institute for Creative Technologies in Marina del Rey. One of the principal designers of the interactive system is Herman Zimmerman, who helped create the holodeck concept for Star Trek: The Next Generation.

The "Experience Learning System," which was commissioned by the U.S. Army, immerses the occupant in a digital sight-and-sound environment that simulates war-torn Bosnia and situations that soldiers could encounter there, such as enemy fire and dealings with local citizens. The simulation involves characters Lindheim described as "artificial intelligent virtual humans, who react to what the soldier here in the room is saying to them and what he's doing. And that's the first step towards creating those virtual humans like you see on the holodeck." ICT plans to eventually add smells, temperature and humidity to the environment to make it even more realistic, and sees a day when such systems will be available to everyone.

Alternative Payment Methods - Another Way to use Credit Cards

Thanks to Capt. Joe Gregory for the information that PayPal, an on-line payment service, now accepts International Credit Cards. We have used this service within the US on several occasions, and it does have advantages over Bidpay. First, it is not restricted to auction items, so they are not interested in what you are sending the money for, making the process a lot simpler, and second, there is no fixed charge, so it may work out cheaper than Bidpay.

From our viewpoint, there are a couple of small disadvantages. Their e-mail warning system is not as good as Bidpay's, and they do not send on the money until we ask for it, but those are minor considerations.

If you are looking for a way to use a credit card and you have had trouble with Bidpay, or you would like to save a few dollars, try:

www.paypal.com

Don't forget that if you use any on-line payment method, you must tell us what you want by e-mail. We have had several payments over the last few weeks that were not followed up on, and we have had to chase up for a list.

Problems Persist with QoS

Although UPN were extremely apologetic when I complained about the silent episode of Queen of Swords, it didn't stop them cutting out the sound for about a minute during episode 6 "Duel with a Stranger". However, it's not at an important part of the story, so we just ignored it. Hopefully, everything should be OK from here on, as we intend to tape the show from another station that is airing them during the night.

 

TV News:

Lawless Misty about Xena End

Lucy Lawless told E! Magazine that she has mixed feelings about ending her run as the star of Xena: Warrior Princess, which wraps next summer after six years in syndication. "There are going to be days when I just break down and cry, because these are my best friends whom I've been hanging out with for so long," Lawless said in response to fan questions.

Lawless added, "As for Renee [O'Connor] and I, we will always be close. We've been together longer than a lot of marriages, and she's like my sister. I'll always be there for her, come what may." O'Connor plays Xena's faithful sidekick, Gabrielle.

Lawless also had ideas about how the show should end. "I want to see Xena and Gabrielle walking off into the sunset or going out in a burst of glory," she said. "Either way, there should be a blazing final shot."

Editor's Note: We have discussed Lucy's various outbursts (floods of tears on The Rosie O'Donnel show, etc) and statements to the entertainment press with a number of Xenophyles, so we do not propose to go into detail about our views in this forum. Suffice it to say that we consider any statements about being sad or sorry to see the series go by Lucy Lawless to be somewhat cynical, as she was in part responsible for pricing the series off the air.

Also, for anyone interested, after a request from several Xena fans, we taped the recent E! Celebrity Profile on Lucy. This is episode length after editing, and is available to anyone who wants it, but please don't ask us to break up the 4-episode blocks of Xena Season 6 to include this item. We will not do that. The show will still be available when the season ends, so if you only want it as a curiosity, it will make a good filler for Xena 6:6 which at the moment is only scheduled to have 2 episodes. If there are any specials or retrospectives at the end of the series, we will tape those and they also can be sued as fillers.

Several Items of News on "Dune"

Harrison Commissioned to Write Dune Sequel

The Sci-Fi Channel has given the go ahead for John Harrison to write a sequel to the upcoming TV minis series. It is not yet clear whether or not this will follow on directly, as in Frank Herbert's 2nd novel Dune Messiah. >From earlier statements by Harrison, he may take a slightly broader view and combine elements from Messiah and later novels. He has however, suggested that there could be a continuing series of TV minis based on the Dune series, which would make it more likely that he will take the books in turn and stick to the chronology.

Dune 'Thopters Were Hard

John Harrison said that he struggled to get the book's trademark ornithopter airships just right. "Creating the ornithopters has been one of my most difficult tasks during Dune," Harrison said in response to a fan question.

Harrison added, "Unfortunately, those of you who know the book well understand that Frank Herbert's descriptions tended more toward the poetic than the practical, and our challenge was to devise something that would seem aerodynamic and represent what he suggested at the same time. As I surveyed all the artists who have taken a shot over the years designing what they thought a 'thopter should look like, I realized there was no consensus to draw upon. But I would say, on the whole, we've succeeded."

New 'Weirding Way' In Dune

Harrison told fans to expect a new take on the "Weirding Way" described in the novel. "I'm not sure the Weirding Way was described so definitively in the book." He added, "The Weirding Way is an important element of the story as part of Paul's Bene Gesserit training. And when the Fremen takes him in, he makes it his mission to train the young men of the tribes with it to create the Fedaykin. This will be explicitly dramatized in the movie, and I believe we've created the proper visual representation of what this form of fighting is. As much as I love films like Matrix, it will definitely not be effects-driven like that. It will be much more Zen-like, more of a reliance on strict Para Bindu training and mind/muscle control than on superhuman physical stunts."

Dune will air in widescreen format Dec. 3-5.

SCI-FI Preps Rex, Riverworld

 The Sci-Fi Channel confirmed the deal with Alliance Atlantis for two new original series for late 2001: Riverworld, based on Philip Jose Farmer's SF novel series of the same name, and Anonymous Rex. The deal is the most recent in a string of original series announcements from Sci-Fi.

Riverworld will be executive produced by writer/director Alex Proyas (The Crow, Dark City). Stuart Hazeldine will write the two-hour pilot. Based on Farmer's five-book adventure series, Riverworld explores a time between life and death, where dead people from every era of humanity have been reborn young and healthy and set about to learn the truth about the Riverworld they inhabit.

Anonymous Rex, based on the 1999 book of the same name by Eric Garcia, tells the story of a secret society of dinosaurs living in the modern world disguised as humans.

Fox Develops "None Of The Above "

Comic book writer Scott Lobdell has made a deal with Twentieth Century Fox Television to develop None of the Above, a proposed SF TV series for Fox, Variety reported. It's Lobdell's third television project; he's already developing a game show and a comedic drama based on his comic series Ball and Chain.

None of the Above tells the story of four youths from the future who come back in time to stop an ecological disaster. Lobdell will write the pilot with Chuck Rosin and Liz Heldens, who will run the new show if Fox picks it up. The title refers to the box each ethnically mixed character checks, since such things are irrelevant in the future, the trade paper reported.

Ball and Chain is a pilot by Howard Gordon and Molly Newman about a married couple of superheroes who want to split, except that their powers work only when they're together, Variety reported. Todd Holland, who directed the pilot of Fox's Freakylinks (Editor's Note: Oh! My God!), will direct the Ball and Chain pilot.

HBO Readies Creature Features

HBO will produce and air a series of five television films based on Samuel Z. Arkoff's Creature Features SF movies of the 1950s, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Special-effects guru Stan Winston, Colleen Camp and Lou Arkoff will produce the series, with each project budgeted in the $3 million range.

Larry Clark, George Huang, Sebastian Gutierrez and Terence Gross are among the filmmakers who will direct the features, the trade paper reported. Randy Quaid and Nastassja Kinski will star in the series' first movie, The Day the World Ended, which Gross will direct from Max Enscoe and Annie DeYoung's script. Shooting is scheduled to start Nov. 28 in Los Angeles.

Clark will helm Teenage Cave Man, Gutierrez will direct War of the Colossal Beast, and Huang will helm How to Make a Monster. No director is attached yet for the fifth installment, The Spider, according to the Reporter.

 

Movie News: 

Lillard May Be Shaggy Opposite Buffy

Matthew Lillard (Scream) is in talks to star as Shaggy in Warner Brothers' live-action feature-film version of the animated Scooby-Doo television series for director Raja Gosnell, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Andrew Gunn and John August are writing Scooby-Doo.

If Lillard signs on, he could reteam with his Wing Commander co-star Freddie Prinze Jr., who is in talks to play the role of Fred opposite his real-life paramour, Buffy the Vampire Slayer star Sarah Michelle Gellar, who is in talks to play Daphne.

Lillard will also appear in 13 Ghosts, producer Joel Silver's remake of William Castle's 1960 schlock horror classic.

She'll Be Back In T3

Arnold Schwarzenegger told the New York Post that his upcoming Terminator 3 will feature a new villain: a female terminator cyborg. "She can disappear, she can mold into someone else, and she is sometimes just energy," Schwarzenegger told the tabloid newspaper. The role has yet to be cast.

Schwarzenegger--who will re-team with Edward Furlong in the sequel--added that he had ordered rewrites of the Terminator 3 script. "The two drafts I read were so big that it would have cost $300 million to make it," he said. "So now they're toning it down, because I don't think we need to see a 747 crash-land into all those buildings in downtown L.A. I think we can do it on a football field somewhere so that it doesn't cost that much."

Terminator 3 is slated to begin filming in the spring, if it's not derailed by impending writers' and actors' union strikes. No director has been hired yet, and Terminator franchise creator James Cameron has declined to take part.

Editor's Note: A rumor is going around that Red Planet star Carrie-Anne Moss is the favorite to fill the role of the female. Moss, who is best known as Trinity in The Matrix--would supposedly join Schwarzenegger and Edward Furlong in the cast of the third installment in the Terminator franchise. However, it is unclear whether Moss would be able to take on the role. She has already begun training for her role in the upcoming two Matrix sequels, which will be shot back-to-back starting in March 2001 in Australia and San Francisco. The demands of those two films could tie her up through much of 2001, depending on the effects of impending writers' and actors' strikes next spring.

Blade 2 Will Shoot In Prague

David Goyer, writer and producer of the upcoming sequel Blade: Bloodhunt, told the Comics Continuum Web site that the movie will shoot in Prague. "Yep, it's official," Goyer told the site. "[Director] Guillermo [del Toro] is there right now location scouting. And I'm in New York City. ... [It] should be crazy." The filmmakers were considering shooting in Toronto.

Pre-production began on the movie last month. Filming will begin on Feb. 23, 2001. Bloodhunt is the sequel to Wesley Snipes' 1998 hit, Blade, which was based on the Marvel Comics series Blade the Vampire Hunter.

Pearce Rides 'Time Machine'

Guy Pearce (The Count of Monte Cristo, L.A. Confidential) has joined the cast of DreamWorks and Warner Bros.' remake of The Time Machine, according to the trades. It is assumed that Pearce will take the film's lead role in the film based on H.G. Wells' classic book. That book tells the story of a man who invents a time machine that allows him to travel into the far future where he discovers a docile humanity being used as food by the evil, subterranean Morlocks.

The film will be directed by H.G. Wells' great-grandson, Simon Wells (Prince of Egypt) with a script by John Logan (Star Trek X, Gladiator). Production is scheduled to start in February.

Director Eager For Comet Sequel

Thom Eberhardt, writer and director of the 1984 cult SF movie Night of the Comet, told TV Guide Online that he's eager to do a sequel--if only he can figure out who owns the rights. Comet tells the story of a couple of Valley girls who must combat zombies created when Halley's Comet passes too close to the Earth.

"There was always talk about doing another one--or even a [television] series," Eberhardt told TV Guide Online. "Two years ago, Fox Family Channel--having decided that volcanoes and avalanches were excellent family fare--was running out of disasters. So I pitched them one of the few that they hadn't yet done. But they had a better idea--a remake of Night of the Comet. I asked if its writer-director might have a deal concerning remakes, and they said, 'Whoever he is, we can buy him off.' They were embarrassed when I revealed myself as that very writer-director. However, I assured them that I could be bought off."

But Eberhardt discovered that Fox, which initially launched Comet on video, no longer owned the rights, and he hasn't been able to find out who does. "I've been asked about a sequel by so many people that I wish it could happen for them, if nothing else," Comet star Kelli Maroney told TV Guide. "So many movies are made that nobody ever wanted to see that when an audience requests one, I think it should be provided."

Editor's Note: The original movie co-starred a young Robert Beltran, Voyager's Commander Chakotay.

Dafoe In Green Goblin Talks

Willem Dafoe is in talks to replace John Malkovich as the villainous Green Goblin in Sam Raimi's upcoming Spider-Man movie, Variety reported. The news confirmed a rumor first reported on the SpiderManHype.com fan Web site last week.

Dafoe recently starred opposite Malkovich in the upcoming Shadow of the Vampire, a fictionalized account of the making of the silent vampire film Nosferatu, the trade paper reported.

Malkovich dropped out of Spider-Man in a dispute partly over compensation. In Spider-Man, which is based on the long-running Marvel Comics series of the same name, Dafoe would play industrialist Norman Osborn, who becomes the Green Goblin after an experiment goes wrong.

MIB 2 Start Set For June

Columbia Pictures has planned a June 4, 2001, production start for Men in Black 2, the much-anticipated sequel to 1997's hit SF comedy adventure Men in Black, Variety reported. The sequel, to be produced by Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, would begin filming only weeks before a possible actors' strike on June 30, 2001, the trade paper reported.

Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones will again star for director Barry Sonnenfeld. If a strike occurs, the filmmakers will concentrate on special-effects shots that will be unaffected by the strike, the paper reported.

 

Odds and Ends: Short items not worthy of an article in their own right.

David Hasselhoff told late-night talk show host Conan O'Brien that he plans to adapt his 1980s television series Knight Rider for the big screen, the SFX Network Web site reported. The series featured Hasselhoff as a crime-fighter with a talking super-powered Trans-Am code-named KITT. Hasselhoff said the film would be set in the future but would feature KITT and himself fighting crime.
Fox will develop the fantasy film Marcus Bryant: Ghost Detective, based on a spec script by newcomers Bennett and Steve Schneir. Bennett Schneir is a development executive at Jack Rapke and Bob Zemeckis' DreamWorks-based ImageMovers; Steve Schneir works for Interplay, a computer game company. The film tells the story of a streetwise cop who has a near-death experience and begins seeing ghosts, the trade paper reported.
Christina Applegate will star in Disney's upcoming time-travel movie The Visitors, directed by Jean-Marie Poire, Variety reported. The movie is a remake of Poire's 1993 French film Les Visiteurs.
Here are a few spoilers for upcoming episodes of Star Trek: Voyager. The episodes come later in Voyager's current and last season. In "Q Two," Capt. Janeway must deal with the return of Q and his teen-age son. "Workforce" is a two-part episode in which the crew becomes part of an alien labor gang. "Godhead" features Tuvok, who must solve a logic problem in a holo-program created by Paris. "Author" has The Doctor contemplating his memoirs. "Federation" tells the story of Janeway's efforts to forge an alliance among aliens. And "Human Error" deals with Seven of Nine's fantasy life.
Paramount is considering a mid-2001 release for a special-edition DVD of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, with enhanced special effects. The release could also open the door for more special editions of previously issued Trek films. But the site added that there are currently no plans for a DVD release of Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes.