/Film: “We mentioned last week that Stephen King mentioned that his new book, Under The Dome, might end up as an HBO miniseries. Well, Variety now has word that Steven Spielberg and DreamWorks TV have optioned the book and are looking to set it up as a mini series, likely for cable. Spielberg will executive produce. The story is set in a small vacation town in Maine which becomes covered by an invisible force field which causes the residents to fight for survival, in two warring factions.
Here is the official plot description from the book:
On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester’s Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into it and fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener’s hand is severed as “the dome” comes down on it, people running errands in the neighboring town are divided from their families, and cars explode on impact. No one can fathom what this barrier is, where it came from, and when — or if — it will go away. Dale Barbara, Iraq vet and now a short-order cook, finds himself teamed with a few intrepid citizens — town newspaper owner Julia Shumway, a physician’s assistant at the hospital, a select-woman, and three brave kids. Against them stands Big Jim Rennie, a politician who will stop at nothing — even murder — to hold the reins of power, and his son, who is keeping a horrible secret in a dark pantry. But their main adversary is the Dome itself. Because time isn’t just short. It’s running out.
The front of the book features an elaborate town map and list of characters, even including “Dogs of Note”. USA Today called the book “Propulsively intriguing… Staggeringly addictive”, and The New York Times said it was “Tight and energetic from start to finish… Hard as this thing is to hoist, it’s even harder to put down.” And author Neil Gaiman called it one of his “favourite books of the year so far.” The 1088-page book was released on November 10th, and is available on Amazon for $14.50.
Dreamworks is on the search for writers, and will probably begin shopping the project to prospective buyers after the creative details are nailed down.
Spielberg has been trying to be involved in a King production for years. Steven purchased the rights to King’s book The Talisman shortly after the book was published in 1984. The project went through many incarnations, but never went into production. Most recently, Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy announced plans to produce a six-part mini-series based on the book for TNT. The project fell back into development hell due to budgetary concerns.”
“Netflix has become the savior of home entertainment for many, but recently Netflix has been in talks with major studios about delaying new release movies by a month or more. Why? The major studios are willing to drop the price of the DVDs it sells to Netflix with the understanding that all new release movies wouldn’t be accessible to its customers for up to a full month after release date—presumably in hopes that more people would buy their stupid DVDs. It would cut Netflix’s costs by almost half, but there’s no word yet on if that savings would be passed on to its loyal customers.
So we’re wondering: Would you cancel your subscription if this was the direction your trusty red envelope movie service went? Let’s here it in the comments. Photo by jc.westbrook.”
Scifi Wire: “At his recent keynote speech at the New York Television Festival, former Star Trek writer and creator of the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica Ron Moore revealed the secret formula to writing for Trek.
He described how the writers would just insert “tech” into the scripts whenever they needed to resolve a story or plot line, then they’d have consultants fill in the appropriate words (aka technobabble) later.
“It became the solution to so many plot lines and so many stories,” Moore said. “It was so mechanical that we had science consultants who would just come up with the words for us and we’d just write ‘tech’ in the script. You know, Picard would say ‘Commander La Forge, tech the tech to the warp drive.’ I’m serious. If you look at those scripts, you’ll see that.”
Moore then went on to describe how a typical script might read before the science consultants did their thing:
La Forge: “Captain, the tech is overteching.”
Picard: “Well, route the auxiliary tech to the tech, Mr. La Forge.”
La Forge: “No, Captain. Captain, I’ve tried to tech the tech, and it won’t work.”
Picard: “Well, then we’re doomed.”
“And then Data pops up and says, ‘Captain, there is a theory that if you tech the other tech … ‘” Moore said. “It’s a rhythm and it’s a structure, and the words are meaningless. It’s not about anything except just sort of going through this dance of how they tech their way out of it.”
Moore said the retro-technology he used in Battlestar “was really a reaction against Star Trek.” He added, “I just decided from the outset that I wanted a phone to look like a phone.”
You can watch a video of the complete speech here.”
This Brit mental magician / showman is possibly my favorite ever…and now this…
Boing Boing: Earlier this week, UK mentalist Derren Brown predicted the winning lottery numbers on live television. It was a neat trick, and people are still trying to figure it out.
Later today, Brown is going on TV to show how he really did it.
“Frank Darabont, the writer/director of such films as The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile and The Mist, is in final talks to write and direct a small screen adaptation of the Image Comics series The Walking Dead. Darabont pitched the concept to AMC and several other outlets, with Gale Anne Hurd, who is attached to exec produce. The black and white comic book series was created by writer Robert Kirkman and artist Tony Moore in 2003, and is considered to be the definitive zombie graphic novel ever created.
The ongoing series now has over 60 issues, which have been collected in 10 trade paperbacks (but month’s end). You can pick up the first tradepaperback on Amazon for around $10. Brad Ladlee from Examiner said that The Walking Dead “realistically depicts the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse” and is “[m]ore than just a scary story about zombies, it is about how people would physically and mentally handle the dead rising and survive the fall of modern society.”
The story follows a group of people, led by a small-town Kentucky Police Officer named Rick Grimes, trying to survive in a world overrun by zombies. But unlike most zombie films, the books are more character centric. AMC’s senior vp of programing Joel Stillverman says that the tv show will stay faithful to the graphic novels.
“This is not about zombies popping out of closets,” Stillerman told Variety. “This is a story about survival, and the dynamics of what happens when a group is forced to survive under these circumstances. The world is portrayed in a smart, sophisticated way.”
And if you think about it, who better to do a series set in a character survival piece set in a horrific world than Frank Darabont? I have the super duper massive trade paperback which collects the first 8 volumes of the series, but have been unable to find time to begin reading it. That said, I’ve had many conversations in the past with my comic geek friends who have read the series. Most of them agreed that there would be no way to turn this into a film, and that it would work much better as a television series or cable miniseries.”
“Now you too can live like The Old Man, with your own print of the First Cylon War. Take a closer look at the robot-on-human carnage — it’s art, after all.
Think Geek is selling prints of this painting of the First Cylon War, for a mere 14.99:
This painting was painstakingly scanned in archival resolution, and reproduced on 22″ by 17″ 100-pound art-quality paper. Any Battlestar Galactica fan, new and old, can appreciate this fine piece of sci-fi artwork!
Now the only thing left is to decide where to put it? Mine’s going above the bed so every night I’m reminded of the past sacrifices fake humanity had to make in order to survive the machine uprising from the PAST.”
“We’ve got a slew of promo pictures from Ronald D. Moore’s Virtuality
two hour TV premiere, whose release date has moved up. So take a gander
at the faces who will be slipping in and out of their own virtual
worlds, while on a long trip into the black.
The
possible series, which will be airing as a two-hour TV movie on Fox,
follows a crew who is on a 10-year mission, all the while visiting
their own virtual reality dream sequences and having their lives taped
and aired back on Earth for reality TV. I’m actually really excited to
see what Jimmi Simpson and Clea DuVall are going to bring to the table,
since both actors are pretty good at “troubled and disturbed” character
acting.
The crew of the Phaeton is approaching the
go/no-go point of their epic 10-year journey through outer space. With
the fate of Earth in their hands, the pressure is intense. The best bet
for helping the crew members maintain their sanity is the cutting-edge
virtual reality technology installed on the ship. It’s the perfect
stress-reliever until they realize a glitch in the system has unleashed
a virus on to the ship. Tensions mount as the crew decides how to
contain the virus and complete their mission. Meanwhile, their lives
are being taped for a reality show back on Earth
“Here’s
a trivia for all you Trekkers to talk about during the previews of the
new Star Trek movie. Did you know that the Vulcan salute – you know,
the “live long and prosper” hand signal invented by Leonard Nimoy:
Nimoy felt that there should be some kind of
distinctive greeting among Vulcans, analogous to a handshake or a bow.
Alan Dean Foster’s novelization, based on an early script, has Spock
kneeling before the Vulcan matriarch, T’Pau, who places her hands on
his shoulders, like royalty dubbing a knight. But Nimoy didn’t care for
this. Previous episodes had already established that Vulcans are touch
telepaths. Therefore, a touch on the shoulders would be an invasion of
privacy. Instead, Nimoy drew upon his own Jewish background to suggest
the now-familiar salute. Back in the 1960s, hippies who watched “Amok
Time” thought the salute was a variation of the two-fingered peace
sign. But we Jews knew better. The Vulcan salute came not from protest
marches, but from the pulpit of Nimoy’s childhood synagogue.
The Vulcan greeting is based upon a blessing gesture used by the
kohanim (koe-hah-NEEM) during the worship service. The kohanim are the
genealogical descendants of the Jewish priests who served in the
Jerusalem Temple. Modern Jews no longer have priests leading services
as in ancient times, nor do we have animal sacrifices anymore. (Yes,
people really do ask about that!) The sacrificial system ended with the
destruction of the Temple by the Romans in the year 70. C.E. However, a
remnant of the Temple service lives on in the “kohane blessing” ritual
(duchenen in Yiddish) that is performed on certain holy days.”
