Thursday, September 13, 2012

'300' prequel & 'Star Trek' sequel get a name; We'll get 'Rim' in 3D as well



The 300 prequel, which up until recently was called 300: Battle of Artemisia, will now be dumbed further down and from this point on will be known as 300: Rise of an Empire. I’m guessing the simpler title was designed for the American audience; their depth and breadth of history study being limited to the last 50 or 70 years.

Meanwhile, people who’ve become obsessed with finding and reporting news before anyone else, has come up with what looks like the title for J.J. Abrams sequel to his reboot of Star Trek. Someone, trolling the sites where domain names are registered by movie studios, has informed entertainment websites that the film will be titled Star Trek Into Darkness. Yeah, no semicolons, no numbers, not even an ellipse. 

DreamWorks has acquired the rights to Leigh Bardugo’s young adult novel series The Grisha Trilogy. The first book, Shadow and Bone was released in June. Harry Potter producer David Heyman will produce alongside Jeffrey Clifford. The plot follows a young woman who must learn to control her newly discovered power in order to save her country from the Shadow Fold, a creature-filled darkness that threatens to overrun the land. Books two and three are due in 2013 and 2014.

During post-production on The Avengers, director Joss Whedon and many actors that have appeared in his TV shows –Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly and Dollhouse- filmed an updated version of William Shakespeare’s comedy Much Ado About Nothing. The film stars Amy Acker, Alexis Denisof, Nathan Fillion, Fran Kranz, Jillian Morgese, Sean Maher, Clark Gregg, and Reed Diamond and was lensed at Whedon’s own house in Malibu over a two-week period. Now Lionsgate, which released his and Drew Goddard’s Cabin in the Woods this past Spring, has acquired the film. “I’m thrilled to be working with my cronies at Lionsgate again, and with The Roadside team,” Whedon said. “That they all embrace a Shakespearean romance with the same enthusiasm they had for Cabin in the Woods shows that they’re exactly the mad fools we want to be partying – I mean working – with.”

Cartoon Network has greenlighted two new animated series, one called Steven Universe, from Adventure Time writer-artist Rebecca Sugar, and is a coming-of-age story told from the perspective of Steven, the youngest member of a team of magical Guardians of the Universe. The other is Uncle Grandpa, from Pete Browngardt, is based upon an Emmy-nominated short and follows the exploits of everyone in the world’s “magical” uncle and grandpa. Both will premier in 2013.

A&E has greenlighted a new drama from Transformer director Michael Bay and former The X Files writer James Wong. Occult centers on a FBI agent who returns from administrative leave after going off the deep end while investigating his wife’s disappearance. Eager to be back on the job, he is paired with an agent with her own complicated life who specializes in the occult. Together, they will solve cases for the newly formed occult crimes task force. 

ABC is developing another fantasy series called A Kingdom Far Away. It is described as a fantasy adventure about a quirky family surviving together on a lawless frontier…a magical land where monsters are real, and one young woman’s unlikely destiny is about to change their lives forever.

Much to director Guillermo del Toro mortification, his upcoming Pacific Rim will be post-converted into 3D. The director has said in interviews that he did not want to convert the movie –and did not film it in 3D- because of the sheer size of the robots and kaiju monsters that battle each other. But money rules everything, and Warner Bros no doubt couldn't resist the higher ticket prices for a 3D release.

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