“Babylon Five” creator J. Michael Straczynski has taken over the UnBox at Amazon.com to promote the release of the direct-to-DVD release of “Babylon Five: The Lost Tales.”
On the web site, Stracynski talks about the various B5 movies and includes a list of four “essential” episodes that distill what made “Babylon Five” great. He also talks about his various comic book writings and other projects he’s completed.
“Babylon Five: The Lost Tales” debuted on DVD earlier this week. Fans can also catch the 73 minute visit back to the “B5” universe on some cable systems “OnDemand” services.
David Greenwalt stepped down last week as the producer of CBS’s upcoming “Moonlight” due to health reasons.
Replacing him as producer will be Chip Johannessen according to the Hollywood Reporter. Johannessen has experience with genre-realted shows. He’s served as producer for “Milleninum” and “Dark Angel.”
“Moonlight” is a series about a vampire working in L.A. at a detective agency. It is set to debut on CBS this fall. The show has been plagued by behind the scenes changes since it was announced as part of the fall schedule earlier this year. Most of the regular cast from the pilot has been re-cast and now there is this change at producer.
Hopefully these behind-the-scenes issues won’t affect this promising series’ on-screen product.
Source: SCI FI
Neil Gaiman, who produced the upcoming big-screen version of his fairy-tale-and-adventure novel Stardust, told SCI FI Wire that the translation from book to movie was anything but easy.
In the film, a mere mortal (Charlie Cox) and a fallen star (Claire Danes) meet and hate each other, at least until they fall in love. And their path to happiness is further complicated by the star’s enemies, among them a powerful witch (Michelle Pfeiffer) and several ruthless princes (including Rupert Everett, Adam Buxton and Jason Flemyng).
“The toughest nut to crack for something like Stardust, for example, in changing it into a film… there are a few things,” Gaiman said in an interview. “There were the problems that we knew we had going in, because they were the problems that I had in 1998, 1999, when Miramax had the option on it briefly, and I got to do a treatment, and suddenly I came face to face with these things for the first time. The biggest one was if you are completely faithful to the pacing of the book, the hero won’t be born for the first 15 or 20 minutes, and he’s not going to meet the heroine until almost three-quarters of the way through the movie. That’s a problem.”
Also, Gaiman said, there are different pleasures to be had from reading a story versus experiencing it in a movie theater. He explained: “Something I did, that I took enormous joy in doing, and that I think is very pleasurable for readers or, if one can say this without sounding patronizing, the right kind of reader, is the way that when we get to the last few chapters the reader has a bird’s eye view of the action and knows more about what’s going on than any of the characters down at ground level, and there comes a point toward the end of the book where characters are missing each other, things that a character has done earlier wind up dooming them later, and they go past each other, sometimes without any knowledge of quite what’s happened. And we get to the final chapter, and we know just how close our hero and heroine came to not surviving the book, but they don’t, which is kind of fun.”
Read the full Neil Gaiman story at the LINK provided.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
With children spending less time playing with toys and more time consuming media, toy manufacturers have become increasingly involved in the production of entertainment — producing their own DVD content, music CDs and even the occasional TV series.
Now, toy companies are taking entertainment initiatives to the next level, turning toys into live-action movie stars. “Bratz: The Movie,” inspired by the successful fashion doll line from MGA Entertainment, opens Friday, coming on the heels of the blockbuster success of “Transformers,” based on the hit 1980s toy line from Hasbro.
Other toy-inspired movies in production or development include “Kit Kittredge: An American Girl Mystery,” based on Mattel’s American Girl high-end doll line; a second “Bratz” movie scheduled for fall 2008; and a film about the Robosapien animatronic toy line from Wow Wee Ltd. “Bratz” and “Robosapien” are being produced by Avi Arad, the former CEO and chairman of Marvel Studios who turned Spider-Man, Fantastic Four and X-Men into boxoffice gold.
While such companies as Mattel and MGA have produced most of their DVDs in-house in recent years, they are turning to Hollywood talent for their chance on the silver screen. With the success of “Transformers,” which has grossed about $540 million globally since its July 3 release, the drive to make movies about toys has gained speed.
Mattel, which in November said it had no plans to make any feature films, now said it is in talks with top Hollywood talent for theatrical releases about Barbie and Hot Wheels, whose movie option with Sony Pictures expired this year. A movie based on Mattel’s 1980s He-Man and the Masters of the Universe toy line is in development at Warner Bros. Pictures, with Joel Silver attached to produce, sources close to the studio said.
“As a fellow toy company, we’re thrilled with the success of ‘Transformers,’ ” said Richard Dickson, Mattel Brands senior vp marketing, media and entertainment, worldwide. “Its success certainly has added momentum to the discussions that we’ve been having about our own properties being executed as theatrical releases.”
Read the full story at the Link provided above.
Transformers didn’t do well because it was a movie about toys. It did well because it was a really good movie about giant robots from outer space. Yeesh….