It seems that long awaited sequel to Jim Henson’s 1982 dark muppet fantasy The Dark Crystal will be less amitious than it had been hoped.

Cinemablend has revealed that The Power of the Dark Crystal will now be a direct-to-DVD feature slated for release in the last quarter of 2008.

In an interview with Wizard Universe (which makes no mention of the D2DVD release),  the late Henson’s daughter says ‘The first few times it came up we thought it would be impossible because the first movie was such a huge production in its day. How could we even do something like that because it was such a huge undertaking the first time around But then we started talking about a very interesting hybrid of puppets and CGI, and we realized it was doable and we got very excited about it.’

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Posted in Movies •

The Dominion Post writes that physical effects studio WETA has been recruited to design and fabricate the costumes for George Miller’s Justice League movie.

The news doesn’t really come as a great surprise as Barrie Osborne, the production’s Wellington-based American producer produced Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings. ‘They are doing all the costumes and they’re doing a brilliant job,’ he told The Dominion Post from Sydney, adding ‘A lot of people thought it would be too hard, that you can only make those things in Hollywood.‘

Weta Workshop specialises in physical effects including costumes, props, models and movie sets, whilst the better known WETA Digital arm of the FX house produces computer-generated visuals.  The involvement of WETA digital in Justice League has yet to be confirmed.

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Posted in Batman, Movies •

The nominations have been announced for the sixth annual Visual Effects Society Awards.

Leading the field is Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End with seven nominations followed by Transformers with five nods.  The FX for both pictures was handled by ILM.  I Am Legend, Spider-Man 3, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Ratatouille and Surf’s Up each earned three noms.

In four of the past five years writes the Hollywood Reporter,  the winner of the VES’ top prize went on to win the Oscar category. The exception was in 2004, when the VES recognized Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and the Academy honored Spider-Man 2.

The nominees in the main categories for the 6th Annual VES Awards are as follows:

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Posted in Awards, Movies •

Variety reports that Marlon Wayans has signed on to play Ripcord, leader of the military unit in Paramount’s G.I. Joe.

Also attached is 3rd Rock from the Sun star and more recently indy flick favourite Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Brick, The Lookout).

The war-themed story is set 10 years in the future.  Stuart Beattie wrote the screenplay, while Paul Lovett & David Elliot and Skip Woods contributed earlier drafts.  The Stephen Sommers-directed film is set to start shooting next month in Los Angeles. Rachel Nichols, Sienna Miller, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje and Said Taghmaoui have already joined the cast. Lorenzo di Bonaventura, who produced the Hasbro-based hit Transformers, is producing G.I. Joe. alongside the toy giant’s Brian Goldner.

G.I. Joe is scheduled for release August 7th 2009.

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Posted in Movies •

Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins associate producer James Middleton has told SCI FI Wire what we can expect from the first installment of the planned big budget trilogy -

‘It’s post-apocalyptic,’ explains Middleton ‘It’s set after the events of [Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines], where we see the nuclear exchange at the end of the movie, and we show what the world is like after this event, and we show how people try to deal in a post-apocalyptic world, and we introduce a new character, who becomes very important to the resistance and to John Connor, a new hero. It’s really about the birth of a new hero.’

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Posted in Movies, Terminator Salvation •