Posts Tagged ‘Fox’
Posted by dominie in Films, News on November 12th, 2008
It looks like The Asylum’s The Day The Earth Stopped, a spoof of Fox’s upcoming big budget The Day The Earth Stood Still remake starring Keanu Reeves and Jennifer Connelly, is running into some legal problems reports Yahoo! News and Dread Central.
“This week, [Fox] quietly took action against The Asylum, firing off a lengthy cease-and-desist letter and hiring attorneys to go after the prolific purveyor of high-end, low-budget knockoffs of Hollywood blockbusters.”
The article’s summation of The Asylum’s game plan?—“[To] produce a movie with themes similar to an upcoming blockbuster, then borrow a trick from the porn industry and title it something comically derivative, create parallel marketing materials and take advantage of the millions the studios spend to promote their hits.” The result is hardly a high-end film. The Asylum is the production responsible for the knockoffs Snakes on a Train after new Line’s Snakes on a Plane, Street Racer after Warner Bros.’ Speed Racer, and Transmorphers after DreamWorks’ Transformers. The article proceeds to go into a name game and citation of ancient film title issues from various studios.
“Then there’s the question of whether the new title causes a ‘likelihood of confusion’ in the marketplace or competes unfairly with the original. That’s where marketing materials — especially those featuring nearly identical typefaces and spherical blobs — might raise copyright and trademark eyebrows.” (more…)
Posted by dominie in Films, News on November 11th, 2008
X-Men Origins: Magneto is now back in action. The project first got the greenlight in April 2007 with a script by David Goyer who was also attached to direct. Put on hold due to the writer’s strike however, Goyer went on to direct The Unborn and The Invisible. Fox is now ready again to take on the mutant origin story and is waiting on Goyer to complete his current projects. Development is underway and the current issue of Production Weekly featured a new plot synopsis for Goyer’s X-Men Origins: Magneto.
“The original X-Men film began with a prologue that showed the character as a child being led to a concentration camp by Nazis and that is the period in which the Magneto film will take place. This setup will allow a future villain to at least flirt with the designation of protagonist since the character will be seen almost exclusively in his formative years. The storyline will heavily involve Professor X, the wheelchair-using X-Men leader. That character was a soldier in the allied force that liberated the concentration camps. The professor meets Magneto after the war and while they bond over the realization that they are alike in their special powers, their differences soon turn them into enemies.”
Sir Ian McKellen who starred in all three of the X-Men films is said to be involved only as the bookend to Origins. As the synopsis reveals, the studio will need to cast a youthful Magneto for the story—where he started, where he got his powers, the very beginning.
Posted by bob in Films, News on July 27th, 2008
The show won’t be on the air until January at the earliest but that didn’t stop rabid fans from filling Hall H to hear Joss Whedon, Eliza Dushku and Tahmoh Penikett hold forth on their Fox series Dollhouse.
Whedon opened the talk by admitting to a long-standing man-crush on Penikett. The Battlestar Galactica star now will play an FBI agent who gets close to Dushku’s character, Echo, but the distance grows each time she portrays a new character.
Dushku recounted, again, the origins of the series, which has a seven episode commitment from the network. She then said Whedon “makes the words party on the page.” Whedon “fully puts me at ease and its fun work and fun livin’.” (more…)
Posted by bob in News on July 23rd, 2008
Joss Whedon has posted a lengthy piece over at Whedonesque where he talked with Rutherford D. Actualperson about why he felt it necessary to shoot a new inaugural episode to his Fox series Dollhouse.
“The fact is, I’m very proud of the ep we shot and the series is making me crazy with the excitement,” he admitted to himself. “But I tend to come at things sideways, and there were a few clarity issues for some viewers. There were also some slight issues with tone – I was in a dark, noir kind of place (where, as many of you know, I make my home), and didn’t bring the visceral pop the network had expected from the script. The network was cool about it, but not sure how to come out of the gate with the ep.” (more…)
Posted by bob in News on July 8th, 2008
There’s a handful of genre programming coming to the major networks this fall and the prognosticators are starting to handicap the season. J.J. Abrams’ thriller Fringe is hands down the consensus choice for bets new series. Right behind it in the estimates is ABC’s Americanization of Life on Mars. The new version of Knight Rider is expected to perform poorly.
Horizon Media suspects Selma Blair’s NBC comedy Kath & Kim to be the network’s turkey.
Posted by bob in News on July 6th, 2008
With the second season currently in production, the cast of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles spoke with E!’s Kristin Veitch about what’s in store. First, despite the horrific explosion at the end of the first season, of course Summer Glau returns as the Terminator. After all, she nabbed the Saturn Award for best supporting actress and is too much fun to leave out.
Glau mentioned that “Cameron definitely has some issues after the explosion. And everybody changes after the first episode.”
News includes the fact that Garret Dillahunt and his Cromartie character have been upgraded to series regular status. “I like him,” the actor said of his T-888 alter ego. “They’re really not bad guys—they’re doing their job. He has no hate in him. He’s like: ‘Look, it’s my job, sorry…Gotta snap your neck.’ ” (more…)
Posted by bob in News on June 30th, 2008
Clea Du Vall (Heroes), Erik Jensen (Black Knight), and Jose Pablo Cantillo (Disturbia) have been added to the cast of Fox’s series from Ronald D. Moore, Virtuality. She will be playing the co-pilot and engineer with Jensen as the navigator of the starship Phaeton, and Cantillo a mathematician.
Posted by bob in News on June 24th, 2008
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (New Amsterdam) has been named the lead performer in Ronald D. Moore’s Fox science fiction pilot Virtuality. He plays Frank Pike, the mission commander.
Bai Ling (Southland Tales) and Robert Davi have been added to the cast of Magic Man, alongside Billy Zane (Demon Knight), Richard Tyson (Flight of the Living Dead), Estelle Raskin, Jed Allan and Andrew Divoff (Wishmaster).
Posted by bob in News on June 17th, 2008
The Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles will be rerun as a Fox marathon starting on Sunday, August 10 at 9 p.m. Then the other episodes air at 9 p.m. on August 11, 12, 13, 17, 18, 19, 20, and 24. The two-hour second season premiere then airs on September 8 at 8 p.m.
Torchwood fans can expect a season-long story for the show’s third season. However, word from England is that the season will be just five episodes long. How they will refill the ranks after the devastation at the end of season two remains unannounced. Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) will be seen in the final episodes of the current season of Doctor Who, now airing on the Sci-Fi Channel.
Paul Campbell (Battlestar Galactica) has been cast as the head research tech on NBC’s new Knight Rider series.
Posted by bob in News on June 13th, 2008
Fox’s Fringe will have a prequel story revealed exclusively in a comic book coming August 26 from DC Comics. Story, creators and details remain underwraps but keep an eye out since it’s intended to be a part of the overall mythology.
Warner Bros. has purchased a new fantasy pitch and assigned it to screenwriters Bryan Schulz and Neil Uliano (Imaginary Friends). The story, set in Central Park, is the brainchild of Warner senior vice-president Jon Berg. It postulates an unseen world within the sprawling park, endangered by something and it falls to two brothers who learn of the problem through the grandfather they have come to visit. (more…)
It looks like The Asylum’s The Day The Earth Stopped, a spoof of Fox’s upcoming big budget The Day The Earth Stood Still remake starring Keanu Reeves and Jennifer Connelly, is running into some legal problems reports Yahoo! News and Dread Central.
