Fan Rants

As a fan of the Philip Jose Farmer book series Riverworld I am pretty stoked about the upcoming mini-series on Syfy. The four-hour event will be broadcast over two nights, April 18th and 19th and will showcase Tahmoh Penikett (Dollhouse) and Laura Vandervoort (V).

For those not familiar with the Riverworld book series, the story takes place on an Earth like planet where humans are resurected after some catastrophy on Earth. The planet is essentially one long river valley with the river starting at the polar north. Everyone resurected here are all approximately 25 years of age and in perfect health. They also encompass the whole of humanity, so there are people from the 20th century intermingling with people from 2500 BC.

The story line is vast and could easily be spun off into a regular series if Syfy gets good ratings. Here’s hoping they do!

MTV Movie News interviewed Avatar producer Jon Landau and he had a juicy bit of gossip about an Avatar prequel.

According to Jon, the prequel will be written by James Cameron and will answer a lot of questions left unanswered in the film, such as:

“It would be something that would lead up to telling the story of the movie, but it would go into much more depth about all the stories that we didn’t have time to deal with — like the schoolhouse and Sigourney [Weaver's character] teaching at the schoolhouse; Jake on Earth and his backstory and how he came here; [the death of] Tommy, Jake’s brother; and Colonel Quaritch, how he ended up there and all that,” Landau explained.

The novel will be Cameron’s first foray into books. And if it turns out well, it could open the universe for other writers to flesh out later. Expect it by years end.

The hugely popular book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a mash-up written by Seth Grahame-Smith, is heading to the small screen as a mini-series.

According to the books official twitter feed “Deadline Productions will make Pride Prejudice and Zombies into a 6 part television series”.

While I have not read this cult hit yet, I have several friends that have and they rant on and on about how great it is. The concept is simple enough, take a classic piece of literature and insert zombies and ninjas. Sounds like a win win to me!

Well, actually the script for the first movie is complete, and the second movie is about half way done.

So for those that haven’t been following the news, we should see The Hobbit, prequel to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, on the big screen in the next couple of years. Because there is so much good literature in this book, it is being broken up into two films (I am sure that Hollywood is wanting it to be monitized that way also).

It is being produced by Peter Jackson, same great guy that gave us the LotR trilogy, and directed by Guillermo del Toro. The adaptation of the book is being handled by Jackson, Toro, Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh. Philippa and Fran co-adapted the LotR trilogy with Jackson for the big screen.

Latino Review reports that:
“At a recent press conference for his new film The Lovely Bones, director Peter Jackson revealed that the script for the first of the two Hobbit films had been finished and handed off to the studio.”

Frankly I am quite excited about these two films coming up after being blown away by the LotR triology. Now if we could only get more source matieral from Tolkien!

According to an article at Variety.com, Steven Spielberg will be teaming up with Stephen King to bring his newest novel, Under the Dome, to the small screen. It seems that DreamWorks TV has optioned the property and will be distributing it somewhere on cable.  Unsure if this will be a maxi or mini-series but I am thinking HBO will pick it up.

The book looks good and I am planning on picking it up this weekend. Here is the blurb from the publisher:
On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester’s Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into it and fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener’s hand is severed as “the dome” comes down on it, people running errands in the neighboring town are divided from their families, and cars explode on impact. No one can fathom what this barrier is, where it came from, and when — or if — it will go away.