No $ For Southland VFX, A CG Whip For Indy, & VES Awards Photos...

London VFX Companies Get Busy For Narnia Sequel

(comingsoon.net)              The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, the second live-action/CGI motion picture adaptation of C.S. Lewis' beloved series of literary classics, began principal photography on location in Auckland, New Zealand, on February 12, 2007. The production, once again a joint venture between the Walt Disney Pictures and Walden Media, continues the franchise which commenced with the spectacular, Oscar-winning 2005 release, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, which went on to earn over $745 million dollars in its worldwide theatrical release, making it one of the most successful movies ever made and one of the biggest successes in the annals of the Walt Disney Studios.

Following the tremendous success of "The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe," the filmmakers immediately began their planning and pre-production efforts on "Prince Caspian" in early 2006. The new project's production schedule encompasses another six-month live-action shoot followed by a post-production schedule leading to its May 16, 2008, global release through Disney's distribution divisions of Buena Vista Pictures Distribution and Buena Vista International. Filming locations include both the north and south islands of New Zealand, Prague's Barrandov Studios, the Czech Republic, as well as locales in Poland and Slovenia.

Once again toplining the new film as the Pevensie children are the four young British talents discovered by Adamson for the first film — Georgie Henley as Lucy, Skandar Keynes as Edmund, William Moseley as Peter, and Anna Popplewell as Susan.

The film's title character will be played by Ben Barnes, a 25-year-old British actor, a veteran of the stage who is currently best known for his recent role in "The History Boys" for London's National Theatre Company. His upcoming feature film roles include the independent feature Bigga Than Ben and a featured role in Matthew Vaughn's fantasy film Stardust for Paramount Pictures.

Also co-starring in the new film are a pair of diminutive actors whose talents have loomed large on the motion picture screen — Peter Dinklage (The Station Agent, Find Me Guilty) as the Red Dwarf Trumpkin, who accompanies the Pevensie children on their new journey and unites Narnia's two kings, Peter and Caspian; and Warwick Davis (Willow, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy) as the suspicious Black Dwarf, Nikabrik. The film also features veteran Flemish actor Vincent Grass (Vatel, Londinium) as the wise old sage, Doctor Cornelius, Prince Caspian's tutor who educates the future Narnian king in the history of his land. Veteran Scottish actor Ken Stott (Casanova, King Arthur) will lend his vocal talents to the role of Trufflehunter, the faithful badger who believes the former Kings and Queens of Narnia will return to assist Caspian in his quest.

Inspired by Lewis' imaginative creations, the story's human cast will once again be complemented by a gallery of original creatures portrayed onscreen in the combined efforts of live-action and CGI animation under the supervision of visual effects supervisor Dean Wright, who will also collaborate this time with VFX veteran Wendy Rogers (Shrek, Flushed Away), and the movie magicians at London's Moving Picture Company, Framestore/CFC and Weta Digital in New Zealand. Five-time Academy Award®-winning visualist Richard Taylor ("Lord of the Rings" trilogy, King Kong) and the wizards from his Weta Workshop will also design the film's armor and weaponry for Narnia's new inhabitants, the Telmarines.

Howard Berger and Tami Lane will also reprise their efforts for the film's makeup effects, and will manufacture and apply hundreds of special makeup prosthetics for many of the unique characters in the story.

Ghost Rider Shoots For $20M Weekend

(reuters.com)                 Between Valentine's Day and the Presidents Day holiday weekend, Hollywood is throwing a lot of product at moviegoers, hoping that some will stick.

The studios might have gotten it right this time, scheduling five new wide releases that target five different audiences.

After a cold streak with films such as "The Weather Man" and "The Wicker Man," Nicolas Cage is poised to take pole position with the Marvel Comics adaptation "Ghost Rider."

The long-gestating film is set for a huge start along the lines of writer-director Mark Steven Johnson's previous Marvel outing "Daredevil," which opened to $45 million during the 2003 Presidents Day weekend.

Cage plays a former motorcycle stuntman who, in order to secure the safety of his true love (Eva Mendes), makes a deal with the devil. Wes Bentley, Sam Elliott and Peter Fonda co-star in the PG-13 film, which Sony opens on Friday.

It's possible that three of the other new wide releases could edge into the $20 million range for the four-day frame.

Sci-Fi Southland Seeks VFX Funding

(scifi.com)                   Richard Kelly, director of the long-delayed SF apocalyptic movie Southland Tales, wrote on his MySpace.com blog that he is still seeking funding to finish the epic film's visual effects.

"We are still in the process of getting the budget approved to finish all of the additional visual effects in the final cut," Kelly wrote on Feb. 12. "There were many missing and incomplete visual effects in the Cannes version, so expect lots of improvements! Fingers crossed that we get the additional money."

Southland Tales, a futuristic movie starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Sarah Michelle Gellar, has been held up since a disastrous screening at the Cannes Film Festival last year. The film still has no distributor or release date.

"We are in advanced negotiations for a soundtrack deal for Southland Tales, but until there is a locked release date, ... we won't know for sure," Kelly added. But he said that a series of three prequel graphic novels has been completed.

In the meantime, Kelly said that Fox has hired him to write a big action movie with an unnamed "famous director" that is a remake of an unidentified 1971 movie.

Arnett Toplines Space Invader

(scifi.com)               Fox Atomic has snapped up the SF comedy spec script Space Invader, with Will Arnett attached to star and produce, Variety reported. Peter Principato and Paul Young, through their Principato Young Entertainment company, will also produce.

The movie, set on a space station, was written by Mike Lisbe and Nate Reger and centers on a love triangle. The writing team, who developed the script with Arnett, began working on the script months before the recent arrest of astronaut Lisa Nowak on charges that she tried to murder a woman she believed was her rival for a space-shuttle pilot.

Stop-Motion VFX In 1979: Imperial Walkers

(talbotsite.com)               How long does it take to animated something like the Imperial Walkers from The Empire Strikes Back?  This time lapse film shows the crew doing just that.  For the record, One of the guys in the foreground is my boss... Phil Tippett - Along with Doug Beswick, Jon Berg and Dennis Muren. Also, one of the guys who built the walkers was Tom St. Amand, who I had the pleasure of working with for a few months when I first started here...

Take a look at one shot:   http://www.talbotsite.com/talblog/archives/000845.html

Ford Threatens To Exit Indy 4 Over Digital Whip

Harrison Ford says, "No, no, you can't have my whip."

Harrison Ford has stated that he will pull out of the new Indiana Jones movie if he is not allowed to use a real whip. The sixty-four-year-old actor who plays the heroic archaeologist was told that "weapons" like whips are no longer used in films because of the danger they pose and that he must pretend to use a whip which will then be digitally imposed after shooting.

Ford is having none of this and has called the rule "ridiculous," and that he wouldn't be playing Indiana if the rule was enforced.

Indiana Jones 4 is due for release next year.

Animated Johnny Depp Loves The Dead

(ropeofsilicon.com)                   Amidst many rumored roles that Johnny Depp will be taking (many of which I have not even reported on such as him playing Freddie Mercury) yet another one pops up on the radar as rumor mill TMZ is reporting Depp has boarded a new animated film that mines four short stories from the hard-living poet and quintessentially L.A. novelist, Charles Bukowski.

The feature is titled How the Dead Love and Bridge to Terabithia helmer Gabor Csupo is aboard to direct.

Depp would voice the main character in the film, which is said to be much more for grown ups rather than the Saturday morning cartoon audience. However, I don't even think they show cartoons on Saturday mornings anymore... do they?

Of course after all my ranting above this film does sound like it is a good fit for Depp since it isn't your stereotypical animated film, just as Corpse Bride wasn't, but I just wish he would leave us wanting a little more. Also I am hoping he stears clear of Tim Burton after Sweeney Todd, I am starting to think Burton will have a hard time getting the greenlight without Depp attached, which might force him to make some better movies. At least movies we want to watch over and over again. Yeah, Big Fish was good, but watching it more than once is rough.

Stan Lee To Appear On "Heroes"

(sliceofscifi.com)                One of the people that help to create the superhero frenzy that has existed in American and world pop culture for the last 50 years, Stan Lee (Spider Man, The Hulk, The Fantastic Four), is scheduled to appear in an upcoming episode of NBC’s hit SF series “Heroes.”

Lee will make his presence known in a cameo as a bus driver and will be seen with fan-favorite character Hiro Nakamura (Masi Oka). The episode, titled “Unexpected,” will air this Monday 9/8C on February 19th.

Remembering David Allen:  Puppet Master

(aboyd.com)            David Allen contributed stop-motion animation sequences to more feature films than anyone else in the history of the cinema.  His professional career in puppet animation spanned more than 35 years and he was one of the few who kept the flame of this esoteric art-form burning while others turned to computer-generated imagery. In David Allen, fans of old-time fantasy films could see the visions of Ray Harryhausen and Willis O'Brien still kept alive. In fact, right up until his death Allen was working on THE PRIMEVALS, a film straight out of the traditions of old stop-motion classics like KING KONG and 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD.

Allen never achieved the status of stop-motion maestro Ray Harryhausen, nor did he enjoy the creative control which Harryhausen exercised over his films. But all that was due to change with THE PRIMEVALS, a production which would have demonstrated the full potential of stop-motion as a medium for depicting fantasy and adventure situations. David Allen's legion of fans are holding their breaths and hoping that THE PRIMEVALS will still be completed.

More:  http://www.aboyd.com/kong/allen.html

Interview with Dave:  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/specialfx/kingkong/born.html

Smith's Aliens Due On DVD

(scifi.com)                       The last movie made by the late Anna Nicole Smith, the SF comedy Illegal Aliens, will be released on DVD in May, its distributor told the Reuters news service. The film stars Smith, the celebrity who died last week in Florida, as one of three aliens who transform themselves into "super-hot babes and arrive to protect the Earth from intergalactic forces of evil," according to press materials from MTI Home Video, which will distribute the movie through DVD outlets.

MTI spokesman Ed Baran described Illegal Aliens, which is unrated, as a low-budget, deliberately "high-camp" production in which Smith lampoons her own ditsy sex-bomb image, Reuters reported.

Smith invested her own money in the project and even took part in scripting her role. Her son, Daniel, who died in the Bahamas in September at age 20, three days after Smith gave birth to her daughter, was credited as an associate producer on the film, Baran said.

Date Dreamworks Anim,  Marry Pixar,  Kill Nickelodeon

(msnbc.msn.com)                 Is there money to be made in rendering your way into the hearts of children? The logical answer is yes, even though shares of DreamWorks Animation  and Nickelodeon parent Viacom (NYSE: VIA) are trading lower over the past year. Disney (NYSE: DIS) has held up better, but that may be attributable to having the top box office draw last year as well as the recent turnaround at ABC.

How is each company faring when it comes to theatrical animation? Should you invest in potential winners?

Those questions can be answered by bringing back the "date, marry, kill" game one last time this week. We can date just one stock for short-term gains. We can marry just one stock as a long-term investment. The third stock gets rubbed out.

I made my choices. Let's see if you agree.

Date DreamWorks Animation
If the recent headlines out of DreamWorks Animation don't feel particularly inspiring, you're missing the bigger picture. Sure, the company had a rough year in 2006. Flushed Away was a disaster, ringing up just $64 million in domestic ticket sales. DreamWorks fared better with Over the Hedge, but it still had to take a charge to write down the value of Flushed Away.

So why is the computer animation studio worth snuggling up to in the near-term? Well, the pipeline is potent. Shrek the Third hits a multiplex near you in May. That's about as close as you can get to a sure thing in Tinseltown. The second installment generated $441 million in domestic ticket sales. That is more than any other animated film, including the rich legacies of Disney and Pixar.

A few months later, the studio will be back with Bee Movie. This one could be a sleeper hit. It's Jerry Seinfeld's project and it's loaded with comedic voice talent. Don't' worry about it, as shareholders will still be giddy counting all of the Shrek money at that point.

The real key to DreamWorks Animation will come next year. Madagascar 2 will come out, and so will Kung Fu Panda. With a fourth Shrek sequel in the works, it would be great if the company had two more franchises that could spit out a blockbuster sequel every third year. Madagascar may be one. Will Kung Fu Panda be the other? It could be. The promising feature already has good industry buzz and a television show in the works.

If DreamWorks Animation is able to put out a popular sequel while taking a chance on a potential new franchise every year, it would be sitting pretty as it continues to build up its vault of marketable characters and films.

Marry Pixar
Pixar didn't come cheap, but it restored faith in Disney's storied animation department overnight. Disney had been struggling on its own to get it right. Can you name a single in-house animated feature put out by Disney in recent years beyond Lilo & Stitch?

Disney hasn't wasted any time in cashing in on the goodwill of Pixar's beloved characters. If Disney's troubled California Adventure park can be saved, it will be mostly due to next year's addition of Toy Story Mania, the likely rollout of Carland Radiator Springs in a few years, and the Monsters Inc. dark ride that replaced one of the lamest attractions in the park.

The Pixar influence isn't just a California Adventure savior. A new Finding Nemo musical just opened at Florida's Animal Kingdom. Nemo has also inspired new additions at EPCOT in Florida and Disneyland in California.

Now that Pixar has the resources to release at least one animated film a year, it will be interesting to see the influence of Pixar's proven storytellers on what's left of Disney's own animation studio.

We're living in exciting times. Great full-length features can garner global licensing riches and unlimited digital opportunities. The future is margin-rich and incremental. If you don't see the logic of buying into the leader in family entertainment, the child in you has been asleep for way too long.

Kill Nickelodeon
Is it wrong to gang up on Viacom? Since last year's split with CBS (NYSE: CBS), the MTV and Nickelodeon parent company has struggled. Its animated releases, like last summer's Barnyard or titles based on its popular Nick shows, have rarely generated any kind of box office buzz.

You also have the seemingly incomprehensible move of having CBS sell off the Paramount Parks that used to aggressively market the Nickelodeon characters. Yes, Cedar Fair (NYSE: FUN) isn't likely to scrap SpongeBob and pals from the former Paramount Parks. It may even license the characters itself. Still, it's a mistake from a marketing perspective to let someone else control the flow of the character-driven experience.

Viacom just hasn't been able to cash in on its captive cable audience. Of the 30 most successful animated features of all time, how many were Viacom's handiwork? None. The only one to top the $100 million mark for Paramount is The Rugrats Movie, and that came out nine years ago!

Even companies that aren't traditional animated powerhouses like Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) and News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) FOX have scored well with Happy Feet and Ice Age, respectively.

A contrarian would argue that Viacom's missed opportunities represent upside potential. I'd love to see it that way but maybe that ship has passed. Last year's winning new kid-friendly properties came from the Disney Channel. Rugrats: Thirtysomethings? It hasn't happened yet, but Viacom is sure feeling stale these days.

Canadian Game Development Studios Take Center Stage In The Industry

(canada.com)               About six years ago, the powers that be at French video game development company Ubisoft Entertainment made the gutsy decision to hand control of a top secret Tom Clancy character to a small design studio it had set up in Montreal.

The developers working at the Montreal studio were young and most were relatively inexperienced.

Until then, the studio had mainly made children's titles such as Disney Corp.'s Dinosaur and Donald Duck Goin' Quackers.

But the Canadian developers were hungry for more complex games and storylines. They wanted an opportunity to prove themselves.

"We knew if we succeeded doing these games, they would keep sending us more," said Mathieu Ferland, senior producer and team leader on the Tom Clancy Splinter Cell series of games. "The team was highly motivated to change the type of game we were doing."

When Splinter Cell was presented, the team eagerly took on the responsibility, building a video game around a secret agent that would live and work in a world defined by renowned author Tom Clancy. They researched futuristic weaponry, global political upheaval and got to work on software to better create the lighting and effects expected of a spy thriller.

Then they had to create the character himself.

"Sam Fisher, the way he ended up in the game, was like the 30th draft of the character," said Ferland.

His crew built Sam Fisher by stealing bits and pieces from Hollywood stars. "Eyes of one well-known actor, chin of another well-known actor. The hair is George Clooney, with the grey. There is some Bruce Willis in there," he said. "At the end you are not sure what you ended up with."

The character was a global success. The initial Splinter Cell game sold millions of units. The series now includes four different titles that have sold more than 17 million copies. A fifth installment of the Splinter Cell series is due out by the end of this year.

More:   http://www.canada.com/topics/technology/story.html?id=ef231b48-3775-49e6-82d0-984c5ebfb810&k=23745

The Ruins Comes To Screen

(scifi.com)                    DreamWorks Pictures and Red Hour Films have tapped music-video director Carter Smith to helm the horror film The Ruins, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Red Hour is run by Ben Stiller and Stuart Cornfeld.

Ruins, based on the best-selling novel by Scott Smith (A Simple Plan), is set in the jungles of the Yucatan, where something evil lives among the ruins. Scott Smith also wrote the screenplay.

Red Hour optioned the then-unpublished book in May 2004 based on a few chapters. Shooting is scheduled to begin in late May in Australia.

Carter Smith co-directed the Jane's Addiction documentary Three Days with Kevon Ford.

In Photos:  VES Awards 2007

(xsibase.com)               On February 11th, achievements in visual effects were honored at the Grand Ballroom of the Kodak Theater in Hollywood, CA. The fifth annual VES Awards and the 10th anniversary of the Visual Effect Society were celebrated. The evening was highlighted with the presentation of the VES lifetime achievement award to eight time Academy Award winner Dennis Muren by none other than his boss, George Lucas. 

Lots of photos:  http://www.xsibase.com/articles.php?detail=129

Next Generation Movie Poster: A Demo

While George Lucas and James Cameron continue to work on making 3-D projectors the standard medium for their films, somebody has jumped the gun and created 3D, wait for it, posters!

Though I thought we'd be in Back to the Future 2 before seeing anything like this, XYZ RGB has figured out how to put eight seconds (eight seconds!) of video into a single three-dimensional poster. Here is a snippet on the technology from PosterWire:

The film industry is the first target for what XYZ RGB bills as the next-generation movie poster. The company can place a short clip right in the poster, giving people a chance to view a scene without going into the theatre.

The technology is turning heads around the world. When he heard about it, Titanic director James Cameron couldn\u2019t believe the 3-D posters were possible.

He said to me, "if you have discovered imbedded video in plastic, you have discovered the holy grail of advertising,"said Jan-Erik Nyhuus, vice-president of business development for XYZ RGB Inc.

Demonstration video is available to show off the new holographic posters that will hopefully hit theatres sooner than later.

Sample Video Of Working Poster:  http://www.xyzrgb.com/holos/soccer.html

The Future Is James Cameron, Talking urinals and IMAX Movies?

(mainecampus.com)            Jasper, the old man from "The Simpsons," once said: "MoonPies. What a time to be alive." Jasper clearly saw something in this modern day that many people don't see - the astonishing nature of technology.

Many believe that just because we don't have flying cars readily available, the present has let us down. According to "The Jetsons" and other science fiction shows or movies, we were supposed to have flying cars by now. Thanks for the false hopes Ridley Scott, with your portrayal of the year 2019 in "Blade Runner."

The closest thing that we have to a futuristic form of transportation is the Segway Human Transporter - which isn't quite a flying car.

Sure, we have robots, but again, it's not quite like we had imagined. Honda's ASIMO, though it's a nice little invention, is not even close to what Fritz Lang had imagined in "Metropolis." We don't want sleek, cute little bubble-headed robots, we want wrecking machines: Huge, skyscraper-sized robots that can protect the world - or turn against it - if Earth is ever invaded by aliens. We definitely don't have these "wrecking machines" - yet.

It may seem that if we had the ability to time travel and brought back a person from the 1950s or earlier, they would be disappointed with the advancements that civilization has made. They would look at our ASIMOs and Segways and laugh at them. Even people who lived and grew up in a more modern setting are disappointed with the way technology has progressed.

I tend to side with Jasper on this one, and I say, "What a time to be alive." Not only do we still have MoonPies, we have talking urinal cakes. The Wizmark Urinal Communicator was created to give alerts, messages or advertisements to its users. Now, I'm not a scientist, but this seems strikingly similar to Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey." The future is here ladies and gentlemen, be wary of it.

We live in a world with IMAX movies that could blow away any audience from any generation before. With dimensions and picture quality so grand, people from the past would find our modern day technology simply irresistible.

Above all else, we've got James Cameron. That's right, filmmaker James Cameron is bringing the future to the present. James Cameron is on the cutting edge of not only filmmaking, but technology in general. He has single-handedly created a rise of the machines in his Terminator franchise and sunk the Titanic 85 years after the actual incident. On top of all of that, Cameron stays on top of technological advances.

Between James Cameron, talking urinals and IMAX movies, it seems as though we are presently in the future. Let's follow James Cameron and others into the future and maybe, just maybe, we might discover time travel - or not.