(Industry Gamers) Irrational Games creative director Ken Levine talked to Industry Gamers and asked if there has been any progress on the BioShock movie that was originally going to be directed by Gore Verbinski.
He last said that a movie was "definitely still in the conversation," but that doesn't look like its the case anymore.
"[F]or us there's no burning [desire] to have a movie made just to get it made," he said in the new interview. "For us and for Take-Two, it's really got to be something that will a) give the fans something that they want, and b) for those who don't know BioShock, really introduce them to something that is consistent with the game, and is it going to be a good representation of the game."
He added, "There are differences between games and movies, no doubt, but the movie has to draw from the same DNA in terms of the world and the story beats. But you know, we don't have a need to get it made."
Universal Pictures Buys Paris Animation Unit
(deadline.com) After Chris Meledandri’s Illumination Entertainment established itself as a reliable provider of family films for Universal Pictures chairman Adam Fogelson and co-chairman Donna Langley, the studio has expanded its commitment to the division by acquiring the French animation unit of Mac Guff Ligne. That’s the Paris-based concern that has animated such Illumination films as Despicable Me and Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax. The animators there will work full time on Illumination fare and Universal has also taken a long term lease on the the 35,000 square foot animation facility–housed above an Aston Martin dealership right near the Eiffel Tower–where the staff works. The animation unit is being renamed Illumination Mac Guff. The move gives Meledandri a dedicated staff and the equipment needed to grow its family film output. It is somewhat reminiscent of the strategy used by Fox and Meledandri when he was president of Fox Animation and the studio acquired Blue Sky Studios, the Connecticut-based generator of Fox’s CG animated films like Ice Age.
“In acquiring an animation studio located half way around the world, we are evolving our filmmaking model; one that is creating entertainment despite borders, boundaries and languages,” Meledandri said in a statement. “This is possible because of the exceptional leadership provided by Janet Healy in running our films and by Jacques Bled in having been one of the key founders of MGL. Above all, this acquisition is a tribute to extraordinary artistic, production and technical talent that is constantly walking the halls of Mac Guff. Universal has once again shown its incredible support of our company by this purchase.”
Universal brought Meledandri over in 2007 from Fox Animation to start its first family film unit. During that formation, Meledandri forged the relationship with Mac Guff and its president, Jacques Bled. With Bled and Healy (the Despicable Me producer who spends most of her time in Paris), they recruited animators whose mostly worked on Illumination fare. At the height of a film’s production, as many as 350 artists work on the films. Bled and Healy will be co-presidents of Illumination Mac Guffe, reporting to Meledandri, and Robert Taylor and Barbara Zipperman are also part of the brain trust.
Bled and his partners separately have a vfx component that has worked for such films as Splice and Columbiana. Bled and his partners will continue to own that business, and Universal isn’t involved in it.
Illumination next releases Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax on March 2, and is working on features that include a Despicable Me sequel, a feature based on Ricky Gervais Flanimals books, a film based on the Uglydoll toy line, and a Tim Burton-directed stop motion animation project based on Charles Addams’ original Addams Family drawings.
David Yates Develops "Doctor Who" Movie
(darkhorizons.com)
David Yates, the director of the last four "Harry Potter" movies, is turning his attentions to another British cultural institution - "Doctor Who". Yates and the BBC are teaming up to turn the sci-fi TV series into a big budget feature film franchise.
Since wrapping work on "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part Two", Yates has been developing numerous other projects as his potential next feature including a film adaptation of Stephen King's "The Stand". The new 'Who' film however looks to have joined the fray but will be a while off as he admits it's going to take time to get things right.
"We're looking at writers now. We're going to spend two to three years to get it right. It needs quite a radical transformation to take it into the bigger arena" Yates tells Variety as he and BBC Worldwide Productions head Jane Tranter are teaming to develop the feature.
Framestore Opens VFX Facility in Bournemouth - Staffs With Graduates
(televisual.com)Framestore is opening a regional outpost in Bournemouth, to be used for prepping vfx shots, after teaming up with Arts University College Bournemouth (pictured).
The new facility, which opens tomorrow in the Enterprise Pavillion on campus at the Arts University College Bournemouth, is staffed by recent Bournemouth graduates who have been trained up to do preparatory work. Framestore’s office will also act as a “support satellite” for overflow work including tracking and paint/rotoscope on features.
Framestore is employing 29 vfx artists at the facility, including 26 graduate recruits.
The move to open a UK-based facility rather than another office abroad helps support the domestic vfx industry in two ways, believes Framestore: “Firstly, by bucking the trend of outsourcing junior-end work to cheaper offshore markets, and secondly, by fostering a new generation of home-grown talent.”
“As we already recruit Bournemouth graduates it seemed an ideal place to pilot this initiative,” explains Framestore's head of production for film visual effects Matt Fox. “By ensuring our work stays in the UK, we are nurturing the next generation of visual effects artists in a way that will help them to become ‘employment ready’ (and trained in Framestore workflow).”
'The Dark Knight Rises' Finishes Filming
(latinoreview.com)The onslaught of unexpected leaks from the various sets of 'The Dark Knight Rises' have made the wait until the film hits theaters a little more bearable. In a way, it's sad to report that all of the voyeurism is over, but it's time to look forward to the future. Through his hitRECordjoe Tumblr account, actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt spread the word today that filming has wrapped. Gordon-Levitt plays John Blake in the film, a Gotham City police officer who is said to have a strong enough backbone to stand up to Bane. (Tom Hardy)
It's now official that the prologue of the film will play in front of the IMAX version of 'Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol' next month on December 16. Just because the photos are obviously going to dry up doesn't mean that the always fun rumors have to cease. Comic Book Movie has come across what may be a transcript of how the entire prologue plays out. Sifting through it, it's about as unlikely as it is possible. It's a little too long to post here. It would be kind of an eyesore, so if you're interested, hit the link. The commenters over there think that the line, "I AM BANE, AND I CAN KILL YOU" seals the deal that it's fake. Another thing is the back-breaking bit. You'd think that Christopher Nolan would have more of his own spin as opposed to such an obvious 'Knightfall' homage.
Whether the "leaked" description of the prologue is correct or not, the certainty here is that 'The Dark Knight Rises' is on the road to post-production and arriving in theaters next summer on July 20, 2012.
Makeup Master Greg Nicotero Leaps From Effects to Director's Chair
(winnipegfreepress.com)Nightmare Factory Director Donna Davies talks with The Walking Dead comic book creator Robert Kirkman, while crew member Dan Stewart sets up a shot. THE CANADIAN PRESS/ho-Robert Zimmerman
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Nightmare Factory Director Donna Davies talks with The Walking Dead comic book creator Robert Kirkman, while crew member Dan Stewart sets up a shot. THE CANADIAN PRESS/ho-Robert Zimmerman
TORONTO - Transforming ordinary humans into flesh-eating, mindless zombies for AMC's monster hit "The Walking Dead" involves a fair bit of Hollywood magic, to be sure. But makeup master Greg Nicotero orchestrated his own remarkable transformation with a leap to the director's chair for the show's second season.
The special effects wizard — whose diverse slate of movie projects include "Inglourious Basterds," "The Green Mile," "Sin City," "The Pacific" and the "Kill Bill" series — helms an upcoming episode that marks a new benchmark in his gruesome career.
The broadening appeal of horror and fantasy fare is helping gross-out geeks like him find notoriety in the mainstream, and even snag high-profile projects of their own, he says.
"I think what's interesting about it is (we're in) a situation where guys who love and respected the genre when they were younger are now well-placed in the industry," Nicotero says in a recent interview from the set of "The Walking Dead."
"Between (directors) Sam Raimi and Frank Darabont and Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez — we all had the same diet when we grew up, and that diet was loving to watch old Ray Harryhausen movies and reading Famous Monsters Magazine. It was just this kind of weird shared existence we all had when we were younger."
Nicotero and his prolific effects company KNB EFX Group are featured in a new documentary from Canadian filmmaker Donna Davies called "Nightmare Factory." It profiles a group of craftsmen who pour their hearts and souls into detailed prosthetics, even as much of the industry is increasingly turning to computer-generated spectacles.
"They can sometimes take six months to build an effect that will be on screen for three seconds," Davies says of Nicotero and his partners.
"These are sculptors, painters, artists, line craftsmen — it's not just about sitting down and hitting a button and there it is. And I think you can feel that when you watch the shows."
Davies, whose other TV docs have included "Zombiemania" and "Pretty Bloody: The Women of Horror," was fascinated by the reverence effects artists have for filmmakers who came before them. She notes Nicotero learned his craft from '80s splatter wizard Tom Savini ("Friday the 13th," "Day of the Living Dead").
"I loved the idea that there's a lineage going from the first makeup effects guy way back from the very beginning of film," she says. "It's a process where you learn under the direction of another master and that doesn't exist in the film industry very much, or in any other industry in the arts as much."
Nicotero says he landed in the director's chair when he found himself with a six-week break between projects including "The Book of Eli," "Inglourious Basterds" and "Piranha." He used the time off to make a comical short about a fictional talent agency that managed movie monsters. AMC liked it so much they put on the network.
"So I think what happened was when 'Walking Dead' came up and we were working on the show they didn't look at me as just an effects person," says Nicotero.
"They were like, 'You know the genre, you understand storytelling and you've seen every zombie movie ever made so it makes sense that we take advantage of the wealth of knowledge that's stored in that brain of yours.'"
Nicotero was made an executive producer for the second season of the series, and inked a deal that would let him develop future TV projects for AMC.
The episode he directs isn't slated to air until 2012, and is actually one of the less gruesome instalments in the series, he notes.
"It was sort of ironic that my episode was much more dramatic than effects-heavy," says Nicotero, who praises Canuck counterparts including Sean Sansom ("Resident Evil: Afterlife," "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World"), Kyle Glencross ("Splice"), Charles Porlier ("The Killing") and Mike Fields ("Chronicles of Narnia," "X-Men: The Last Stand").
"Of course there are some effects in it but it was a great opportunity because it gave me a chance to work with all these great actors and sort of get out of what everybody would expect from me and do something a little different."
"Nightmare Factory" airs Thursday on The Movie Network while "The Walking Dead" airs Sundays on AMC.
Ireland Footballer Bankrolled 'Avatar' Movie
(independent.ie) While the euro may be threatening to implode, Irish footballers are still making a fortune through some extraordinary investments in Hollywood blockbusters.
Republic of Ireland captain Robbie Keane -- who scored two goals in Ireland's 4-0 play-off win against Estonia on Friday-- has emerged as a backer of massively successful Hollywood movies such as Avatar, X-Men, Rise of Planet of the Apes, Night at the Museum and A-Team.
The personal finances of top Irish Premiership footballers are closely guarded from prying eyes by phalanxes of advisers and complex corporate structures. However, the Sunday Independent can reveal Keane's involvement in a number of lucrative film finance partnerships over the past seven years. Keane -- thought to be Ireland's richest footballer -- is not the only member of the national squad to have made hay from backing successful Hollywood movies. John O'Shea, the former Manchester United defender who has 70 caps for Ireland, and Kevin Kilbane are also involved in bankrolling Hollywood's blockbusters.
It has emerged that Keane is a member of the Inside Track 1 llp, Inside Track 2 llp and Phoenix Film Partners llp, which are financial partnerships put together by London based Ingenious Investments. The company declined to comment. Film finance partnerships have major tax benefits as well as generating major returns if movies are successful, according to sources.
The Republic of Ireland striker -- who moved to the MLS team LA Galaxy last summer -- was also a member of three other Ingenious Film Partnerships, which co-produced some of the most successful films in recent years. He stepped down as a member earlier this year.
Ingenious Film helped finance James Cameron's 3D extravaganza Avatar, which became the most successful film ever released after its debut in 2009. It is thought that Avatar's budget was well north of €150m but it grossed more than €2bn worldwide, netting massive profits for its backers. Other production credits for the investment vehicle include the €110m budget X-Men Origins, €81m epic Australia and the Ben Stiller hit movie Night at the Museum, which grossed €422m worldwide.
Keane's fellow investors in the Ingenious Partnerships included his new teammate David Beckham, Manchester United footballer Ryan Giggs, former teammates Wes Brown and Nicky Butt, as well as Borat star Sacha Baron Cohen, musician Gareth Gates, cricketer Marcus Trescothwick, and Anton Ferdinand -- the footballer at the centre of the John Terry race row.
Keane has been an investor in the Phoenix Film Partnership since 2008. The partnership has helped finance the production of the €81m budget A-Team, which was released last year, starring Liam Neeson. The movie underperformed at the box office, bringing in just €56m in the US and €75m in other markets.
"The partnership is well paced to benefit from the future exploitation by the commissioning distributor of the three films . . . as its remuneration for the production of those films is calculated by reference to their respective gross sales receipts," according to Phoenix Film Partners documents.
Phoenix Films was sitting on members' interests of more than €126m at the end of April 2011. Fellow members of the partnership include Ireland full back Kevin Kilbane, controversial footballer Joey Barton and celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall.
Keane has been an investor in the Inside Track Partnerships since 2003, soon after he joined Tottenham Hotspur from Leeds United in a €8.5m deal.
Inside Track 1 llp had members' interests of €201m in April of this year, according to company documents. Films backed by the fund include Alien vs Predator and Hotel Rwanda.
Peter Jackson Working On The Adventures Of Tintin Sequel After The Hobbit
(comicbookmovie.com)The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn will open in select countries this weekend and wont premiere in the US until December, but according to Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg they are already to go on the sequel after Jackson finishes The Hobbit.
The Adventures Of Tintin looks to already have a sequel in the works, and the first movie isn't even out yet. The popular comics that were created by Hergé have opened up to mostly positive reviews, which means it looks likely that we could see more of Tintin and his beloved dog Snowy. To add to this speculation Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg were interviewed by The Hollywood Reporter, via /Film, and when asked if the next Tintin movie will be after the Hobbit Jackson simply stated, "yes." Spielberg added to what Jackson said by saying, "[Sony and Paramount] were willing to do one movie with us and then give us the financial werewithal to develop a script, do all the visual storyboards and get it really in launch position. So we can launch pretty quickly on a second movie. The script is already written." The sequel's script was written by Anthony Horowitz and will be based on two of Tintin's stories, Prisoners of the Sun and The Seven Crystal Balls.
Synopsis for The Seven Crystal Balls:
A mysterious illness is afflicting members of an archaeological expedition recently returned from the Andes, where they had unearthed the tomb of the Inca, Rascar Capac. One by one, the expedition members fall into a mysterious coma. The only clue is shards of crystal found near each victim, which are fragments of shattered crystal balls. Concerned, Tintin, Captain Haddock and Professor Calculus go to stay with Calculus's old friend, and expedition member, the ebullient Professor Tarragon, who is keeping Rascar Capac's mummy in his house. But the mummy soon disappears when a lightning storm sends a ball of fire down the chimney, and, after each being visited in their nightmares by the mummy, the three wake to find Tarragon comatose, with the telltale shards of crystal by his bed. How did this happen?
Synopsis for Prisoners of The Sun:
Tintin and Captain Haddock arrive in Peru to look for Professor Calculus, following the events in The Seven Crystal Balls, which ended with Calculus being kidnapped for putting on the bracelet of the mummified Inca, Rascar Capac. Although Tintin and Haddock intercept the ship carrying Calculus, the Pachacamac, near Callao, they are unable to rescue him, and they set off on the trail of the Quechua-speaking natives who have taken him. It leads them to the mountain town of Jauga, where a train is sabotaged in an attempt to kill them. They find both the authorities and the locals extremely unwilling to help them track Calculus' kidnappers.
IATSE VFX Organizing Effort One Year Later
(vfxsoldier.wordpress.com)This week one year ago the IATSE formerly announced an effort to organize VFX artists.
Long story short I believe The Animation Guild should have led the effort to organize VFX artists. They already represent a very large number of VFX artists and were better equipped to handle the process: Organizer Steve Kaplan was a former VFX artist, TAG has had a long running blog and website with all the information you need about joining.
I was asked for a comment which I wrote a while ago for Jeff Heusser. Here it is in it’s entirety:
Without a doubt the last year in organizing vfx workers has been disappointing. We are still seeing colleagues being misclassified as independent contractors and not being paid overtime appropriately.
Even those employed at the good facilities are hampered by the inability to obtain portable health and retirement benefits in a production environment where artists are expected to jump project to project, facility to facility.
These problems affect all kinds of workers in the industry. I met a veteran technical director who has a phd in computer science. The facility he works for does not offer health insurance coverage and because of his pre-existing condition, he is unable to get private health insurance.
Some of the attendees to the union meetings held by Jim Goodman were Oscar winners. In other words, no one is immune to these problems and it’s incredible that such a professional industry is hampered by what I would consider a 3rd world problem.
So one year ago the IATSE leadership responded to the vfx community’s needs with an organization effort. However they refused to conduct interviews to answer questions.
Not even an official website was approved to communicate what they could offer. IA Organizer Jim Goodman was limited to conducting group meetings over the year but with no way to spread word about what they officially were offering, the organization effort quickly fell dormant.
To Jim Goodman’s credit, he has started his own blog to speak about what the IA can offer but is it too late?
Perhaps, but while I can agree that the choice not to speak to the media is absurd as exemplified by a recent online townhall meeting conducted by Variety’s David S Cohen, I still strongly believe in the substance that they offer:
collective bargaining for portable health and retirement benefits and enforcement of labor law.
While I applaud the VES’s effort to advocate for these rights, their charter explicity prevents them from collective bargaining and therefore any ability to enforce any agreement on behalf of vfx professionals.
I know many question what the IA can offer but if you remember, Variety’s online townhall was conducted with VFX artist Joe Harkins on the panel. He was vehemently against unionization and even started a blog to advise fellow artists against organization.
While the IA leadership did not allow organizer Jim Goodman to attend the townhall, he was allowed to meet with Joe Harkins a few weeks later and now Mr. Harkins is an advocate for the unionization effort.
When the IA openly communicates with us, everyone wins. However, the IA leaderships’ failure to communicate with us has only led many to become suspicious:
Was the reason for their attempt to organize vfx to stifle the effort by the IBEW? Are they unsure whether they can offer benefits to us? Or is this all a misunderstanding and the IA is waiting to complete current on going negotiations with the studios?
This can all be answered by just communicating to us with a simple and official website or meeting with FXGuide’s Jeff Heusser.
More on this topic: http://effectscorner.blogspot.com/2011/11/visual-effects- union-ia-efforts-one.html
DreamWorks Announce They’ve Found the “Holy Grail” of Digital Animation
(slashgear.com) This week while speaking at this year’s Techonomy conference, DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg told audience members that they’d formulated the solution for real-time rendering of animation for video. Katzenberg told the audience that they’d been working hand-in-hand with Intel in order to rewrite their software to take advantage of scalable multi-core processors, this allowing them to achieve advances that will, for lack of a better term, revolutionize the animation process. While before recently DreamWorks had been considered mostly a story-telling company, Katzenberg now says they’ve becoming “as much a technology company as we are an animation company.”
DreamWorks for those of you unfamiliar is a group responsible for such blockbuster digital animation films as Antz (their first animated film from 1998), Shrek, Madagascar, and more recently both Megamind and Kung Fu Panda. As the group certainly has a bunch more films in development and coming soon, everything from How to Train Your Dragon 2 to The Grimm Legacy to the everloving classic Captain Underpants, they’ve got more than a little incentive to make their animation process streamlined and improved.
What Katzenberg calls the holy grail and is saying they’re on the verge of using is the ability to work in real-time. Where animating just a few seconds of video can take even the most skilled animator a week to make a reality now, a 50 to 70 percent speed increase in the whole process can be expected with the methods DreamWorks and Intel are working on now. Artists will be able to do effects and color work in real time, while the implications Katzenberg says are revolutionary can be seen to be working with any type of high-end rendering, from oil simulations to airplane design to medical imaging.
DreamWorks and Intel are on a four-year effort to make this software re-write a reality and Katzenberg said today that they were just about two-thirds done at the moment, with the product already having been used on a number of products. Real-time digital animation rendering is and has been a goal of any dreamer in the animation industry for more than anyone’s fair share of time sitting around waiting for a scene to fill itself out and the characters to start moving.
If DreamWorks and Intel succeed here, there will be much rejoicing.
What Might A Practical 'The Thing' Prequel Have Looked Like?
(bloody-disgusting.com)People have a lot of understandable beef with The Thing prequel. Fragmented story, Eric Christian Olsen and CGI. Mainly the CGI.
Last month I interviewed Eric Heisserer, one of the film's screenwriters, and he was very forthright that the film was originally intended to be all practical. "I got this job going in with the firm, fervid belief that no CGI should ever be in this movie. That it should be all practical. We are creating a very grounded psychological thriller and part of that paranoia with the monster movie is to have the monsters as real and as grounded as everything else we're making around them"
And now some new images of the practical work by Vincent Guastini, some dating back to when The Thing prequel was a SyFy Channel product under the tutelage of Frank Darabont (before it changed hands to Strike Entertainment/Universal), has gone online.
Per Make Up Mag, "Vincent Guastini's special make-up effects credits include Requiem for a Dream, Dogma and Saturday Night Live; he also contributed to the recent prequel of The Thing, although you wouldn’t know it from watching the film.
Guastini, who describes himself as "a huge fan of The Thing mythos" says he was contacted in 2004 when the Syfy channel was considering an episodic version of The Thing, and later, a made-for-TV feature version penned by Frank Darabont...
Over time, however, concepts for the film and Guastini's original ideas and designs ultimately weren't used in the film. So here is your chance to see Guastini's concept designs and sculptures for the first time."
Take a look: http://makeupmag.com/news/newsID/887/
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