SCI FI Wire reports that Gina Holden (Fantastic Four, Final Destination 3) has been cast opposite Smallville star Eric John as Dale Arden in the upcoming SCI FI Channel television serial Flash Gordon.

In other casting news, Jody Racicot (Night at the Museum) will play Dr. Hans Zarkov, and John Ralston (Earthstorm) will play the villainous Ming.

‘During auditions and rehearsals, we could tell this one was the right Dale, because [Johnson] had such good chemistry with her,’ said Mark Stern, SCI FI’s executive vice president of original programming. ‘We had to find the right actress to work with him, because there’s jealousy and a love triangle and friendship involved, and we did not want to stick him with an actress he couldn’t stand.’

The SCI FI channel has ordered 22 episodes of Flash Gordon, which began shooting this week in Vancouver, Canada, and will debut in August.

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Posted in Television •

Pint-sized Aussie pop superstar Kylie Minogue has confirmed that she has accepted a long rumoured role in British sci-fi television series Doctor Who.

In an interview with  InStyle magazine, the 38-year-old singer and actress, who found fame playing the feisty Charlene in Australian soap Neighbours, said ‘Yes…my gay husband [stylist, William Baker] is so excited about it! But I’m not going to play a villain.’ 

It is believed that Kylie, who has recently recovered from a battle against breast cancer, will feature in the Christmas 2007 episode.

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Posted in Doctor Who, Television •

British soap actress Michelle Ryan has been speaking to Access Hollywood about playing Jamie Sommers in NBC’s reimagining of the Bionic Woman with the article also including a selection of images from the pilot show that you can see in the brand new X-Realms Bionic Woman gallery.

‘I’m a bit of an adrenaline junkie, so I kind of enjoyed it all’ said Ryan, who is best known to British audiences for playing Zoe Slater on the BBC evening soap EastEnders. ‘There is an awful accident’ explained Ryan, ‘and then she [Sommers] wakes up and realizes that both her legs have been removed, and one of her arms. And she has all these implants — and she is bionic’. The young actress added that they want to make the series ‘very real’ and that her character is at first unhappy that her body has been tampered with.

We reported earlier that Battlestar Galactica star Katee Sackhoff will play the original bionic woman and Ryan’s adversary in the series and inflation has certainly upped the value of the character’s cybernetic enhancements, which now total $50 million in the new show.

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Posted in Television •

New Line Cinema has revealed to BridgeToTheStars.net, a fansite covering the His Dark Materials books and upcoming film adaptations, that a new scene has been added to The Golden Compass.

The brand-new original scene is one that does not appear in the book, but was added with the approval of the book’s author Philip Pullman. The scene was revealed to have been the focus of recent additional filming that took place in Switzerland. The studio won’t give more details than that though, since they ‘don’t want to spoil the surprise’ for the fans.

The Golden Compass hits cinemas December 7.

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Posted in His Dark Materials, Movies •

The South Korean pop music star Rain has been tipped for a role in Andy and Larry Wachowski’s upcoming action film Speed Racer, which starts shooting in Germany this summer.

One of his managers told IHT.com that Rain will make his Hollywood debut in the film and added that negotiations are underway, but not yet complete.

Rain (who’s real name is Jung Ji-hoon) starred last year in the Korean film I’m a Cyborg, but that’s OK by director Park Chan-wook.

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Posted in Movies, Speed Racer •

Helena Bonham Carter recently spoke to The Telegraph about her role  in the upcoming Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and delivered disappointing news.

The actress plays Bellatrix Lestrange, Voldemort’s fiercest ally and right hand who breaks out of Azkaban prison - but apparently fans won’t see much of the character in the film: ‘I had five lines in that. I think they cut three of them - and I was there for six weeks. I don’t know quite how, still, to this day, I was there for that long… it’s nice to be part of it, and it’s fun to be a witch.’

The fifth Harry Potter film hits cinemas July 13.

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Posted in Harry Potter, Movies •

Dogville director Lars Von Trier is unsure whether he will be able to begin work on Antichrist, which is scheduled to start filming toward the middle of this year, writes the Hollywood Reporter. The movie, which depicts Satan, rather than God, as the world’s creator, is under threat as the Danish helmer admits that a period of depression has left him unable to work and he has doubts about when he will return to filmmaking.

‘I assume that Antichrist will be my next movie. But right now I don’t know” said Von Trier in an interview for the Politiken newspaper, going on to explain that a bout of depression has left him ‘like a blank sheet of paper‘. 

‘It’s very strange for me’, he added ‘because I’ve always had at least three projects in my head at one time’.  Von Trier was admitted to a Danish hospital at the beginning of 2007 to be treated for depression but since then has lost focus in his career and takes no pleasure in his work.

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Posted in Movies •

Warner Bros. Pictures has launched a teaser website for The Dark Knight featuring a teaser image of the Batman logo. Click here to view the image in the X-Realms gallery.

The Dark Knight is the sequel to the 2005 movie Batman Begins, which effectively rebooted the flagging franchise after an eight year absence from theatres.  The 2008 movie is once again based upon the DC Comics crime-fighting vigilante and the dark universe that he inhabits.

Christopher Nolan, director of Batman Begins, will once again takes the reins as director of the project, which stars Christian Bale again as Batman and Heath Ledger as his arch enemy the Joker. The Dark Knight has a tentative release date of July 18th, 2008 in the United States and July 25th in the United Kingdom.

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Posted in Batman, Movies •

According to MTV.com, Nicholas Cage will star as Al Capone in Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables: Capone Rising.

The film will be a prequel to De Palma’s 1987 classic The Untouchables, which featured Robert De Niro in the role of Al Capone. Cage will play a younger version of the character in the upcoming prequel, which will revolve around the early dealings between Capone and Irish cop Jimmy Malone (a role which won Sean Connery an Oscar in the 1987 film).

De Palma is scheduled to start shooting the film in October.

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Posted in Movies •

Earlier this week rumours on the net suggested that Orlando Bloom and Scarlett Johansson were in talks to topline director Roman Polanski’s upcoming historical epic Pompeii - turns out this won’t happen after all.

ComingSoon.net has now learned that while both stars were in consideration for the film, they won’t be able to do it after production has been postponed to April 2008, when both Bloom and Johansson will be tied up with prior commitments. However, an attachment of A-list actors is still being promised for Pompeii, which is currently scheduled for a 3rd or 4th quarter release in 2009.

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Posted in Movies •