Ridley Scott is directing the new Alien prequel

This is excellent news. The original Alien wrangler going back to the source and with todays technology. Should be something special methinks.

Variety are reporting that Twentieth Century Fox has hired Jon Spaihts to write a prequel that has Ridley Scott attached to return as director.

Spaihts got the job after pitching the studio and Scott Free (Isn't that the name of DC Comics Mr Miracle?), which will produce the film.

The film is set up to be a prequel to the groundbreaking 1979 film that Scott directed. It will precede that film, in which the crew of a commercial towing ship returning to Earth is awakened and sent to respond to a distress signal from a nearby planetoid. The crew discovers too late that the signal generated by an empty ship was meant to warn them.

The deal gives Fox another chance to keep the "Alien" franchise alive. There were three sequels to Scott's original, but it is the first time the director has set his mind on directing one.

Spaihts has become a go-to-guy for space thrillers. After Keanu Reeves became attached to his Warner Bros. sci-fi script "Shadow 19," Reeves hired Spaihts to write the space journey epic "Passengers," which is berthed at Morgan Creek. That script got Spaihts the meeting with Fox and Scott Free, and he won the job with an "Alien" reboot take that the studio and Scott loved.

How to you feel about the news?

HOME

District 9 - The Aliens arrival, their diet and what MNU is all about

HOME

Trilogy Meter

Source: Dan Meth


HOME

Timeline of Sci-Fi movies

Dan Meth put together this brilliant chart putting futuristic films into their chronological order. He should have put Star Wars on A long time ago, but apart from that he seems to have got all the major movies.

Has he missed any classics?



Discuss in the forum or leave a comment below.

HOME

Tony Scott talks about The Hunger sequel, Alien and Hunter S Thompson

ComingSoon.net spoke to The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 director Tony Scott about his upcoming projects, one of which is a sequel to his 1983 vampire horror movie, The Hunger, which starred Catherine Deneuve, David Bowie and Susan Sarandon. That's the film that had the saucy scene when Deneuve seduces Sarandon..yeah, you remember it now.

Scott remained mum about whether or not any of the original cast would make it into the sequel--many of them are vampires after all--and how they'd accomplish that, but he did give a few tidbits: "I'm not going to tell you how we're doing it, but I'm controlling it and it's gone to the next level. It's not a reinvention or reinterpretation, it starts in New York and it ends up in Sao Paulo, so it's a very different movie, but it springboards off the original. We're writing it right now and we've got a great writer, Erin Wilson."

"My dance card is so full, I'm so lucky," he said before listing off some of the projects that are at the front of his mind. "I've got 'The Warriors,' I've got 'Hell's Angels' - I've owned the Hunter Thompson book for 12 years and Steve Gaghan is writing the script right now. I own all these great titles. Another one called 'Lucky Strike' about guys who repro aircraft. 'Potsdamer Platz,' which is by the guys who wrote 'Sexy Beast.' Now with all these movies that are ready to go. They're scripted, they're budgeted, and now I've gotta make them before I die. I'm getting old."

He was also asked about the recent rumor that director Carl Rinsch, who Scott said was attached to direct the Alien prequel, was not who 20th Century Fox wanted. The studio reportedly want his brother, Ridley, to direct instead."I'm going to call a time out on that one," he said, though he still seemed optimistic things would work out. "I don't want to get caught in the middle. We're in process on that, but I don't have enough information to bring it to this table, but we're going to make it."

At this point, it seems like Unstoppable may be next for Scott, although he was tentative listing that as his 5th movie with Denzel Washington as his lead despite Washington having been attached for some time. The plot involves a runaway train containing toxic chemicals being chased by an engineer and a conductor. Chris Pine (Star Trek) is also rumoured to star in it.

Discuss in the forum or leave a comment below.

HOME

The Random - Bond 23, Inglourious Basterds, Ghostbusters 3, The Jetsons, In Praise of Shadows, Alien, Funhouse,

- UK Newspaper The Guardian speculates that the 23rd James Bond film will feature “the poppy fields and drug barons of Afghanistan.”

- Harvey Weinstein is attempting to get his hands on Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds and cut out 40 minutes of it, according to The Wrap.

- According to Harold Ramis through Coming Soon and HorrorMovies.ca, the Ghostbusters 3 is far from complete and no one has actually signed up to it. "I wrote the story for the new movie with them, and Dan and I've been consulting. We're just waiting to see a first draft and where we are...Everyone says they'll do it, they've all said they'll do it. No one has signed anything yet--we haven't signed anything either--but there's the spirit of willingness in the air."

- Robert Rodriguez tells MTV News that his live-action adaptation of classic sci-fi cartoon The Jetsons could go into production sooner than you think. "I've been developing [The Jetsons] for awhile," Rodriguez says and hopes to start shooting "next year" and confirmed the film will be live-action. Story wise "We're writing the script right now" says Rodriguez.

- James Franco has signed on to star in the indie drama In Praise of Shadows reports Variety. The drama tells the story of William Vincent (Franco), and recounts his eccentric and curious journey that brought him back to New York City after four years in exile to rescue the woman he loves from a crime syndicate.

- Sources at Fox tell EW that the studio is not interested in greenlighting an Alien prequel unless Ridley Scott himself directs.

- Eli Roth wants to remake Tobe Hooper's Funhouse. "It should be about the kids getting killed in horrible ways, put in different contraptions in the funhouse and the final girl being strapped into the ride and sent into the tunnels to be confronted by terrifying tableaux of her dead friends," Roth says. "A smart remake could be so much fun. Kill the kids in fabulous ways and continually reuse the bodies by making them freaks in the freak museum, sew their eyes shut, waxworks... That's the stuff I want to do in a remake of The Funhouse."

Discuss in the forum or leave a comment below.

HOME

New Alien film will be a prequel

Collider was able to confirm the fact that the new Alien film will be a prequel from producer Tony Scott, who also confirmed that Carl Rinsch will be directing. Here's an excerpt of what the producer had to say.

Collider: 20th Century Fox is talking about remaking or redoing the original Alien. What's going on with that?

Tony Scott: Yes, Carl Rinsch is going to do the prequel to Alien. He's one of our directors at our company.

Collider: I'm going to be blunt about this. Fox has not been doing a great job recently with their movies. They haven't been an artist friendly studio. Are you guys going to have some creative control and make this a kick-ass film?

Tony: Yes! But Fox is our home. They finance our production company.

I'm glad it will be a prequel and not a remake of the first film. What do you want to see in an Alien prequel?

Discuss in the forum or leave a comment below.

HOME

One Eyed Monster - Trailer

In a darkly comic homage to "Alien" and "The Thing", the cast and crew of an adult film, stranded in a blizzard, must band together against a mysterious and deadly alien, which has possessed the actor with the biggest part--Ron Jeremy (naturally). Now, with the monster on a killing spree, the race is on to trap and destroy it before there are more victims of its peculiar skills.

Starring Amber Benson ("Buffy The Vampire Slayer"), Charles Napier ("Silence of the Lambs", "Rambo") and Ron Jeremy

Check out the official site.


Leave a comment on this post below.

HOME

Alien Western - James Marsters will hang 'em high!

I've always liked James Marsters as an actor. He was brilliant as Spike in Buffy. Now it looks as if he is trying to get over the Dragonball film and is starring in a Western with sci-fi trappings. Alien Western - That's a poor name to be honest but I do like the design of the alien and I'm a big fan of Westerns.

With this show and Cowboys & Aliens in development it looks as if the genre mash-up will be around for a while. Marsters stars as Sam Danville, a prisoner who's about to be executed, but his day of reckoning is interrupted by an alien attack.

James Marsters (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Smallville, Torchwood) and Cindy Sampson (Supernatural) star in this action-packed World Premiere thriller from RHI Entertainment, a small town in the untamed West comes under attack by a full-scale alien invasion. No one invited them, but nothing can stop them!

Alien Western premieres on the Syfy Channel on June 1st and there are a few trailers and clips below.

Source: io9

Will you be watching this?

HOME

Ridley Scott is toying with an Alien prequel

IESB recently spoke to Fox Co-Chairman, Tom Rothman about a whole host of things.

Regarding a possible Alien prequel, "There's been some talk. Ridley Scott, Ridley is right now working on Robin Hood, but I think he's toying with the idea and that would be great for us. I mean, it's always been a matter of, really, if you can get the originator to do it that would be the greatest thing, so I've got my fingers crossed, all of them."

Interesting indeed. How cool would that be to have Scott back on the Alien universe. Would we finally get to find out some more about the Space Jockey and how his ship crashed.

He also talked about Robert Rodriguez' Predators (and the fact that he has been given total control of the franchise), Daredevil, Avatar at Comic Con, Fan Four and the new Wolverine film.

Check out the full interview over on IESB.

Do you want another Ridley Scott Alien film? What would you like to see in a prequel? Should there be a definitive origin to the Alien?

Leave a comment on this post below.

HOME

Robert Rodriguez is Rebooting Predator

In a recent news conference at Troublemaker Studios, several Texas state politicians were in attendance to sign HB 873, the long-awaited reform of the Texas film incentive program. All well and good, but IESB had this cool piece of news.

Rodriguez talked to the audience of press members and revealed his upcoming film slate.

"I'm going to be able to shoot my upcoming Machete here, a sci-fi action film called Nervewrackers, a re-boot of the Predator series called Predators, and a couple of smaller movies called Sin City 2 and The Jetsons."

There is lots of news in that one statement. Machete is a full film from the trailer that featured in Grind House, Sin City 2 will be cool and I just don't know about The Jetsons.

The big news to me is the reboot of Predator. I love the first two films and the whole concept of the Predator is just great. I even liked the Mr Wolf style Predator in the recent AvP2 so to see more of the dreadlocked hunter will be fantastic.

However, I am a little concerned about Rodriguez directing it. Don't get me wrong I loved Sin City, Desperado etc, but he just seems to have become obsessed with the whole green screen thing. Hopefully, he'll lay off that a little for the new Predator as he can do some brilliant action scenes.

What are your views on Rodriguez directing the new Predator film? Where should it be set? What do you want to see in it?


Leave a comment on this post below.

HOME

UPDATED: Deathtroopers - Star Wars meets Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Looks like this is to be the first Star Wars horror novel and it looks pretty cool judging by the cover...oh book, cover, judge, never...damn! It's by Joe Schreiber if that helps. According to StarWars.com the text for the back cover is still to come, but this front cover art by Indika.

Anyone know anything more about the story? Or anyone want to take a guess about the story?

UPDATE: Here is a bit more on it from the authorJoe Schreiber's blog.

I had the time of my life on this one, I have to say. I’m doing the final edits
now, and I’ve tried to make it into exactly the kind of book you’d want to read
if you were a child of the 70s who grew up with the original Star Wars trilogy
and really digs horror in the vein of The Shining and Alien, with a little dose
of William Gibson mixed in.

Home / Forum / Guestbook

Outlander - New poster which tells you nothing about the film except Jesus is in it

As an age old battle rages amongst the stars, Kainan’s ship burns brightly as it crashes into the Nordic coast. As his space craft comes to rest in the fjords of ancient Norway, it’s with dismay that Kainan realizes that he wasn’t the only survivor. A second passenger, a Moorwen also emerges from the wreckage. A Fierce and animal-like creature, the Moorwen is intent on causing harm to those it perceives have wronged it. As the Moorwen kills everything in its path, Kainan must work together with the Vikings to destroy the beast before it destroys them all. Starring James Caviezel, Sophia Myles, Jack Huston, John Hurt, and Ron Perlman.

I've been looking forward to this film since I first heard about it ages ago and the synopsis above sounds cool. Kind of like Beowulf meets Predator. Vikings and aliens are cool concepts in their own right and when they meet it should be shouted from the rooftops. Therefore, I have to ask the question why is The Weinstein Co once again hiding away one of their films by not really pushing it and releasing it in the nothing movie month of January?

Also if you knew nothing about the film and saw the new poster (above) you would still know nothing about it apart from the fact it could be the second coming of Jesus Christ or just his giant head about to crush Earth. Honestly, where are the vikings? Where is the big alien beastie? Come on poster people, play the game!
Home / Forum / Guestbook

Alien Square by Tom "Strongstuff" Whalen

alien square by *strongstuff on deviantART
HOME / FORUM.

7 Cut Moments in Cult Film

In Hollywoodland, that missing scene can make the difference between PG13 and R. Between classic and hysteric...

Article by Martin Anderson @ Den of Geeks.

Having reviewed the excellent new Wings Of Desire special edition yesterday, I was shocked to find that Wim Wenders’ classic and esoteric tale of angels in Berlin was at one point set to end with a pie fight. All the footage – and I mean the footage from all four cameras covering the slapstick fight between Bruno Ganz, Otto Sander and Solveig Donmartin – is included in the 30 minutes of deleted scenes, and Wenders himself is offering a prize to whoever can edit it back into the film on Final Cut Pro (or whatever) most effectively.

Thank God, he recognises it was a mad end-of-shoot idea, and constitutes more the beginning of the wrap party for Wings Of Desire than the end of principal photography, but...blimey, he was close there, for a while.

It set me thinking of the other near-misses from cult film…

7: HOURS of incomprehensible shit - Fire Walks With Me (1992)
As a lover of Eraserhead, The Elephant Man and Dune, and a big respecter of Wild At Heart, Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks, I have to date the release of FWwM as the point where the last of David Lynch’s very useful anti-psychotics left his system. I hear that drugs can be stored in body fat and release their effects in later years, when the fat becomes metabolised for sustenance; therefore a rigorous diet must have kept ‘Out To Lunch’ Lynch balanced enough to make the delightful The Straight Story (1999), before getting utterly lost again in Mulholland Drive (1992).

Anyway, this is a director who makes legendarily lengthy cuts of his movies (see Dune below), and FWwM/Peaks fans are still clamouring for the missing three hours of Lynch’s cinematic outing for his Twin Peaks retinue. ?yhW

Maybe it’s an Alien 3 deal, where the restoration of essential footage will suddenly make sense of the whole thing. But if it takes three hours extra for that to happen, it does suggest a certain want of narrative economy.

6: Jessica and Logan pose for ice-sculpture – Logan’s Run (1976) My motives for wanting to see this, though not the purest, are mixed up with annoyance at how close this scene came to being in the movie. After Roscoe Lee Brown’s robot guardian ‘Box’ has welcomed our heroes to his ice-cave, but before he lets slip the fact that he has flash-frozen all the other ‘runners’ who came there looking for Sanctuary, the eccentric cyborg asks the stunning couple if they will pose nude for an ice-sculpture. Being good guests, they agree…

That scene was refused as too provocative for the rating that Logan’s Run was going for, but annoyingly it is rendered in the Marvel comics adaptation! Arghhh. So close.

Since I can’t really put Logan’s Run in twice, I’ll have to also mention the other legendarily missing scene, which is the bawdier original cut of Michael York and Jenny Agutter’s slightly-hilarious slow-motion escape from Rihcard Jordan through the ‘Love Shop’, which is basically a cross between Starbucks and a 70s orgy. Michael Anderson’s racier edit also fell victim to the MGM blue pencil, and the director admits on the commentary that the bowdlerised version familiar to audiences is only a shadow of it.

5: Kurt Russell gets the all-clear – The Thing (1982)
John Carpenter makes clear in the extras on The Thing (R1 release) DVD that Universal wanted coverage of a happier ending to his nihilistic cult shocker. Being a practical man and not committed to using it, Carpenter quickly threw together a set-up at the end of shooting where Kurt Russell is in a hospital, having been recovered from the arctic pyrotechnics that now close the movie, and being given a test that proves he is not infected. Russell gives a sigh of relief and that’s it.

I don’t know if the test given is the rather dramatic ‘hot metal’ one that proved a hallmark of the film, but Carpenter’s decision not to include this scene in the otherwise very comprehensive extras on the laserdisc/DVD Thing was the right one, in my opinion. This was not something I needed to see, and it was never part of the reality of the film. Apparently the scene was cut into the movie at certain test screenings; since it proved to have no discernible effect on general audience reaction, Carpenter was allowed to keep the finale bleak and bereft of comfort.

4: James Remar as Hicks – Aliens (1986) Yup, Dexter’s dead dad shot a full two weeks on James Cameron’s sci-fi horror classic as Ripley’s squeeze before being replaced by stalwart Cameronite Michael Biehn. Reports at the time cited a family emergency, though Remar is said to have since admitted that it was due to his excessive drug-use at the time. In the same period Cameron was forced to replace an obstreperous director of photography, and was as plagued by British working practises as LV426 was by xenomorphs, legendarily having to stop work every three minutes for a round of bad sandwiches and greasy tea.

One shot of Remar’s work as Hicks remains in Aliens – as the camera pans down from the alien-encrusted walls to the marines approaching the reactor core, the Hicks walking away from shot is Remar. This was an early SFX shot using a hanging miniature that had just been trashed, and would have been prohibitively expensive to re-shoot. Luckily Remar looks away from camera as soon as it lights on him, and there’s really no telling anyway who is who with all that grungy military get-up.

3: Ripley slapped by Lambert – Alien (1979)
This minor deep-space cat-fight has actually surfaced in recent years, but was quite a curiosity until the Quadrilogy edition; the more so because, as with the Logan’s Run ‘box sculpture’ (see above), the scene was removed after the film had been turned into a graphic novel. So again, this was one that I got to see only in comic form.

Outraged that cool-as-ice Ripley wouldn’t let Dallas and her back on board with the infected Kane (a pretty fucking wise move foiled by the traitormatic Ash), Veronica Cartwright’s character lays into Ripley as soon as she arrives at the infirmary to see how Kane is getting on, but Parker (Yaphet Kotto) quickly intervenes.

Ridley Scott recounts on one of his several commentaries for various versions of Alien that he wasn’t getting the energy and conviction out of the conflict, and told Cartwright to really ‘go for it’ with the slap. Used to the feints, Weaver burst into tears when taking the full force of the blow and remonstrated with herself – so she recounts in Quadrilogy – because Ripley ‘would never have cried’.

Since I can’t mention Alien twice, I will also add that I would love to see more of John Finch’s takes as Kane, before John Hurt was called in to replace the very ill actor, who was subsequently diagnosed with diabetes. That said, the one shot of Finch in the role on the bridge of the Nostromo, which is available on the Quadrilogy edition, finds the actor clearly on the point of passing out. As this was one of his first shots for the film, there may be no more of Finch to see in the role.

2: The ‘star child’ blows up Earth’s nuclear arsenal – 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) The evolved Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) was originally to not merely go into orbit and gaze fawn-like at the camera but detonate the entire arsenal of Earth’s nuclear weapons. It would have been a ‘nuking from orbit’ that predated Aliens by nearly twenty years, and Kubrick is said to have avoided the idea ultimately because of its similarity to the conclusion of Doctor Strangelove. Since such an aggressive act would possibly mean the end of all life on Earth, this alternate ending paints 2001 in a shockingly different light…

Having spent millions of years growing a civilised race from a bunch of vegetarian monkeys, why punish the very war-like behaviour that you instilled in them yourself with your big black monoliths at the dawn of time? All the space-borne remnants of the human race were clearly dependent on Earth and a long way from any real colonisation, so in effect it would have been kaput for mankind. Perhaps the Star Child was intending to jettison Earth and its people like a second-stage rocket, and continue a new and better race via parthenogenesis?

Apparently special effects for the nuclear wipe-out were actually done – though not finished – by Douglas Trumbull. Again, as with Kurt’s miraculous escape in The Thing (see above), I’m not sure I ever want to really see it…

1: The ‘Little maker’ – Dune (1984) This was for a long time a mystery to all but those who watched the ‘Alan Smithee’ version on network TV in the 1980s, which – in a typical ‘network-cut’ deal with the devil – traded off censorious snips for extended and non-controversial footage that never made it into the cinematic version. One of those cut scenes was an elaborate ritual where the Fremen show Paul how spice is extracted from the baby worms. It’s pretty disgusting, actually, and is found or found absent in various of the five known versions of Dune, but the Smithee abomination – a bloat-out at 177 minutes – definitely has it, and that has been released on DVD after many years of curiosity by fans.

In a side-note, an early script treatment of the adaptation, by Rudolph Wurlitzer (a writer on Sam Peckinpah´s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid) would have had the fugitive Paul Atreides and his Bene Gesserit mum, the Lady Jessica, in an incestuous tryst after the death of husband/father Duke Leto. Ridley Scott was behind the idea during his involvement on the project before David Lynch was invited to the helm, and the oedipal strand was then firmly nixed. Ten years later, Lynch would probably have done it…

Discuss in the forum.