SFF World News – 11/16/08

 
SFF World News – 11/16/08

1) Marvel Pictures has hired director Joe Johnston to helm their Captain America movie, The First Avenger: Captain America, tentatively scheduled for release in 2011. Marvel plans to put its superhero team-up movie, The Avengers, in production simultaneously, also for release in Summer 2011. No word on casting yet for the star role of Steve Rogers, the soldier who is turned into a superhero fighting for the American way, and who teams up with Iron Man, the Hulk and others as the Avengers.

2) Australian actor Sam Worthington will take the star role in Warner Brothers’ remake of Clash of the Titans, to be directed by The Incredible Hulk director Louis Leterrier. Worthington will be appearing opposite Christian Bale in McG’s Terminator Salvation, the newest incarnation of the Terminator franchise, due in May 2009, and in James Cameron’s long awaited SF movie Avatar in December 2009. In Clash of the Titans, Worthington will play Perseus, half-mortal son of the ancient Greek god Zeus, who must face monsters to rescue his true love, Andromeda. Titans is tentatively scheduled for a 2010 release.
 
3) Jack Black is set to star in a contemporary version of Jonathan Swift’s classic satirical novel Gulliver’s Travels for 20th Century Fox as Lemuel Gulliver, a free-spirited travel writer who, while on assignment in the Bermuda Triangle, gets washed ashore on the undiscovered island of Lilliput, where he finds himself a giant among a population of tiny people. Animation director Rob Letterman will helm his first live-action project, working from a script by Nicholas Stoller and Joe Stillman. John Davis and Black's company Electric Dynamite will produce.

4) In a surprising move, NBC’s Heroes has fired co-executive producers Jeph Loeb and Jesse Alexander, apparently due to network pressure about Heroes’ lagging ratings and complaining critics. The superhero drama is down to an average of 9 million viewers in its third season. Loeb and Alexander are highly respected in comics and sci-fi television circles and have been major figures in the development of the series. Series creator/executive producer Tim Kring will probably be taking a more active role in the series again. There are rumors that if Bryan Fuller’s acclaimed t.v. series Pushing Daisies, which has suffered ratings setbacks also this season in the wake of the writers’ strike, gets canceled by ABC, Fuller might return to the Heroes’ producing/writing fold.

5) After leaving it in development limbo for two years, HBO will film a pilot for the television adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s best-selling Song of Ice and Fire series. The original plan to film each season as one book in the series, starting with A Game of Thrones, appears to be going forward. However, even if the pilot is produced, there’s no guarantee that HBO will actually put what will certainly be an ambitious and expensive show on its regular schedule. Martin, an accomplished screenwriter himself, has given his approval to the script for the pilot and assures fans that it is very faithful to his novel. No word yet on when exactly the pilot might be in production or air.

6) NBC has cancelled the new sci-fi series My Own Worst Enemy, starring Christian Slater as a spy whose brain has been split into two separate identities, with his cover identity as a mild suburban dad running smack into his life as a super agent. The series, which debuted only a few weeks ago, is ranked #61 in the ratings, with just under 5 million viewers each week. It was given a decent promotional push, but not much time to get audiences hooked. Nine remaining episodes of the show have been shot, but it is not clear whether NBC intends to air them or not.

7) New Regency Studios, which is on the comeback trail, has acquired the rights to Isaac Asimov’s The End of Eternity, first published in 1955, for a film that would be co-financed and distributed by Fox Studios. The time travel story is set in a future where humanity is controlled by a ruling class called Eternity, whose members can manipulate time to alter history, change disasters, and take out whoever they don’t like. A time cop in this society falls for a woman in another time period, which is against the rules and puts him on the wrong side of the law. The End of Eternity has been out of print for some time, but has been in development for a film version at various studios, including with Ridley Scott for Paramount. The new deal was brokered by Asimov’s estate through Vince Geradis’ production company Created By.

8) Nigerian-born Chicago writer Nnedi Okorafor has won the Wole Soyinka Prize for literature in Africa (deemed the pan-African Nobel,) for her YA fantasy novel Zahrah the Windseeker. (The award is named after Nobel Prize-winning African author Wole Soyinka.) The novel features a 13-year-old heroine Zahrah Tsami, who is destined to have special powers that make her an outcast in an Africa where magic is commonplace, and who must try to save her best friend’s life.

9) Comics legend and television producer Stan Lee will be adapting Perry Moore’s YA novel Hero for a one-hour t.v. series on the Lifetime cable network in the U.S. Hero tells the story of Tom Creed, a closeted gay teenager whose father is a fallen, embittered superhero. Creed, a star basketball player at his high school, starts to discover his own superpowers and is eventually invited to join a League of superheroes. When his secrets are revealed and superheroes start dying off, Creed must try to solve the mystery and resolve the conflicts in his life. The novel won the 2008 Lambda Literary Award in the children’s/YA category.

10) The children’s fantasy movie Nanny McPhee, written by and starring the Oscar-winning British actress Emma Thompson, will be getting a sequel, possibly for 2010. The first film was an adaptation of Christianna Brand’s Nurse Matilda books, about a crusty magical nanny who grows gradually prettier as the children under her care learn about the important things in life. The sequel is said to involve a baby elephant and will be directed by Susanna White.

11) The SCI-FI Channel in the U.S. has ordered a second season of its new show Sanctuary, about a group that investigates and sometimes constrains or protects different creatures and races dubbed the Abnormals who live hidden among regular humans. The new season will start in 2009. The show’s premiere scored 3 million viewers for the cable channel, making it their highest-rated original series premiere. The show stars Amanda Tapping, who is also an executive producer, and Robin Dunne, Ryan Robbins, Emilie Ullerup and Christopher Heyerdahl.

12) Not to be left out by Marvel and DC Comics’ successes in the film department, Dark Horse Comics has struck a deal with Universal Pictures to develop a slate of movie adaptations of its comics series and graphic novels. Having had a big hit with the Hellboy movies, Dark Horse is next up working on the adaptation for popular series R.I.P.D. A graphic novel by Peter Lenkov, R.I.P.D. stands for Rest in Peace Department, a division of cops who died in the line of duty and are sent back to Earth to track down and bring back those spirits who don’t want to come over to the afterlife peacefully. The film version will be directed by David Dobkin. Additional film projects for Dark Horse include the titles Emily Strange and Freaks of the Heartland.

12) Actor-writers Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have a new genre tribute film to follow their acclaimed comedies Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. This one is called Paul, and it will be executive produced by Edgar Wright, who directed the previous two films, and directed by Greg Mottola, for Working Title and Universal Pictures. Pegg and Frost, who wrote Paul, will also star in the film as two British slackers who, after visiting Comic-Con International, go on a road trip to Area 51 in New Mexico, where they encounter a small alien named Paul, who enlists them to help him find his way home.