Tag Archives: News

Live Action ‘Star Wars’ Series Still In The Works

Posted on by

You can be forgiven if you’ve written off the live-action Star Wars television series.

Rick McCallum says that the project is still on the table and scripts have been written. The issue remains the cost of production. There’s an incredible amount of visual effects they want to work in, more than any of the films they’ve done in the past. Sadly, I think that this series just isn’t going to happen unless Lucasfilm is willing to scale back on the effects. Fans aren’t looking for a visual masterpiece in a television series, they’re looking for regular  installments of story and characters. You don’t have to squeeze blockbuster-grade visuals into a 45 minute television episode.

Perhaps the showrunners should call up Ron Moore for a consultation.

Via Club Jade

Avengers Sinks Universal’s Battleship

Posted on by

(Shane insisted we use that title)

Marvel’s The Avengers is still flying high at the box office, claiming the top spot for a third straight week and smashing all challengers into a fine pulp. This week, it seems, it didn’t have to work very hard.

Rotten buzz and superheroic competition sunk Universal’s “Battleship” over the weekend. Costing over $300 million to make and market, Peter Berg’s “Battleship” managed to sell about $25.4 million in tickets in its first weekend in North American theaters – a second-place finish behind “Marvel’s The Avengers” (Disney), which took in an estimated $55 million for a three-week domestic total of $457 million.

While it’s been a year of incredible blockbuster successes (Hunger Games, Avengers), it’s also been a year of embarrassing flops. Battleship joins John Carter as an expensive film that has not only stumbled, but faceplanted and rolled straight off a cliff in its domestic opening. At least John Carter can claim horrific marketing as part of its problem, though it was still a mediocre film. Battleship was marketed heavily to court the summer popcorn crowd. Unfortunately, moviegoers decided that they would rather see the eye-popping and well-written Avengers for a second or third time rather than another critically panned film based off of a Hasbro product.

‘Harry Potter’ Will Be Free in Amazon’s Kindle Lending Library

Posted on by

For those of you who have Amazon Prime, your Kindle just got a little bit more magical. Time Online reports that Harry Potter will soon be available for for free as part of the Kindle Lending Library, a service offered to Prime customers that allows them to one book per month.

Today Amazon announced that it’s adding all seven of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books to the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library.

That means if you have an Amazon Prime membership (available for an annual fee of $79) you can “borrow” any of the Harry Potter books for free. Amazon Prime members can borrow one book per month with no due dates, plus they get free two-day shipping on most products sold directly by Amazon and the ability to stream certain movies and TV shows for free.

As if the free two-day shipping wasn’t enough to entice you to the Amazon Prime service (I swear my account pays for itself every Christmas thanks to that). The books will be available in the lending library starting June 19th.

Allston, Zahn, Stackpole, Young, and Spendlove Team Up For Origins Exclusive Anthology

Posted on by

Heading to the Origins Game Fair in Columbus this month? You may want to check out a nifty little project Expanded Universe author Aaron Allston announced yesterday.

Time-Traveled Tales is an experiment by GAMA, the organization that runs Origins — it’s the first fiction anthology produced as a souvenir for that convention. Similar anthologies produced for events like the World Fantasy Convention tend to become collector’s items. We’re hoping that the same will come true of this book, and that it will persuade GAMA to produce more in the future.

You can help them with that decision, of course, by buying one…

Time-Traveled Tales is being produced in a limited print run. In the event that the print run does not sell out at the convention, individual authors may have copies for sale in the future. But picking up a copy early at the Origins Game Fair, or asking a friend to pick one up for you, is the only way to be sure of getting a copy. At this moment, we have no idea whether the anthology will be reissued in the future.

Wish us luck with this experiment, and I look forward to seeing you at Origins.

Just who is involved with this project? There’s Allston, of course. Authors and all around cool people Janine Spendlove and Bryan Young have entries in the paperback. Then there’s Tim Zahn and Mike Stackpole, who you just might be familiar with.

I’ll definitely be looking out for a copy when I head down to Columbus later this month. For more information, visit Aaron’s blog.

Maurice Sendak Passes Away

Posted on by

Beloved children’s author Maurice Sendak passed away today at 83.

Known for breaking children’s books norms by incorporating somewhat dark illustrations and tone into his works, Sendak was considered by many to be the most important children’s book artist of the 20th century. Many of us are familiar with perhaps his most famous work, Where the Wild Things Are.

I loved this book growing up, but I admit this isn’t my fondest memory of Sendak’s work. For me, it was December every year when my family would go to Benaroya Hall to watch the Pacific Northwest Ballet’s world-class production of The Nutcracker. It was Sendak’s costumes and sets that transformed the classic production into an extraordinarily visceral event.

The Avengers Appeal

Posted on by

And continuing our Avengers post-mortem, The Wall Street Journal dug up a pretty interesting little tidbit today in a piece examining why Marvel’s newest film is pretty much printing money.

3) Multi-Generational Appeal: Characters like Captain America have been around since the 1940s; Thor, The Hulk, and Iron Man have been around since the 1960s. “The Avengers” felt fresh to kids, and was comfort food to adults. Half the attendees were over twenty five years old. 40 percent of the audience was female, so the film didn’t just appeal to boys.

I should say so. As I was sitting in the theater on Thursday night waiting for the movie, I couldn’t help but notice just how evenly split the gender ratio was. Good on you, Marvel. You’ve got yourselves a franchise we all can enjoy.

‘Avengers’ Obliterates Box Office Record

Posted on by

I think we all expected Marvel’s The Avengers to do pretty well on its opening weekend. I don’t think we expected it to do quite this well.

Hulk, smash.

That’s what Captain America tells the Incredible Hulk to do in “The Avengers,” and that’s what the Marvel Comics superhero mash-up did at the box office, smashing the domestic revenue record with a $200.3 million debut.

It’s by far the biggest opening ever, shooting past the previous record of $169.2 million for the debut of last year’s “Harry Potter” finale.

If these numbers hold, it would be the first time in cinema history a film has opened north of $200 million domestically. That’s not even factoring what it made in overseas gross. It’s two-week run beyond the US brings the film to a staggering $641.8 million worldwide.

Kneel before Joss, The Avengers is a winner.

Via CBS

‘Lost Tribe of the Sith’ is Back. In Comic Form!

Posted on by

USA Today with the news that Dark Horse heavy hitter John Jackson Miller will be bringing the Lost Tribe onto the pages of a five-issue comic series.

Writer John Jackson Miller is just one of many guys who digs that galaxy far, far away, and he’s going way, way back in it for his new five-issue Dark Horse Comics series Star Wars: The Lost Tribe of the Sith, launching Aug. 8.

The comic removes three aspects that are some of the most essential of the Star Wars films — technology, starships and Jedi knights — and focuses on the Tribe, an ancient group of Sith believers stranded on a remote planet for 5,000 years. (The Sith, by the way, tap into the dark side of the Force.)

The Lost Tribe of the Sith project began three years ago with the Fate of the Jedi novel series, which found this group escaping their prison in the time of Star Wars hero Luke Skywalker and threatening the galaxy.

For more, head over to USA Today.

Star Wars Official Site Releases ‘Scoundrels,’ Other Expanded Universe Goodies

Posted on by

May the Fourth be with you indeed.

The official site has gotten their hands on a whole boatload of Expanded Universe shininess including a nifty Essential Guide to Warfare art timelapse video, an essay from the Fate of the Jedi authors, and a cover and preview from the new Darth Maul: Death Sentence comic from Dark Horse.

Most importantly, however, is the entire second chapter from one of the year’s most anticipated novels: Timothy Zahn’s Scoundrels.

For more, head on over to the official site.

Carrie Fisher, Jeremy Bulloch, Daniel Logan Confirmed for Celebration VI

Posted on by

Brace yourselves, the news drought appears to be ending today.

The official Celebration VI website has confirmed that Princess Leia herself will be in attendance this year. Also in the fold are two incarnations of Boba Fett, Jeremy Bulloch and Daniel Logan.

Expect more news to drop, as today is the Somewhat Randomly Selected Day of Star Wars Celebration That Has Been Highly Influenced by a Pretty Awful Pun.