Zack Snyder’s Guardians of Ga’Hoole: Lord of the Rings in Scope?
Producer Donald De Line talked to Collider about Zack Snyder’s animated children’s film Guardians of Ga’Hoole, an adaptation of the 14 book bestselling kids series by author Kathryn Lasky and illustrator Richard Cowdry (the film is based on the first three books in the series). De Line described the tone of the film as more “Harry Potter” ”than Happy Feet.”
“It’s a big kind of epic story. There’s 14 books in the series and so it’s more of that feel to it. Lord of the Rings might be another analogy; you know that kind of scope,” De Line told Collider. “It won’t be out until 2010, so he’s been involved in all his spare time ‘quote unquote’ doing character design and working on the screenplay and laying down a scratch track and doing all kinds of stuff.”
The story follows a young barn owl named Soren, who is kidnapped by owls of St. Aggie’s,where owlets are brainwashed into becoming soldiers. He and his new friends escape to the island of Ga’Hoole, to assist its noble, wise owls who fight the army being created by the wicked rulers of St. Aggie’s.
Casting has just begun, so I would look for announcements to happen sooner rather than later.
Venture Brothers 3.x cast photo made public
Jackson Publick (a pseudonym for Christopher McCulloch) has released the cast photo for The Venture Brothers Season 3 on his LiveJournal blog. You have to scroll down a little to see it. It has many old characters in it along with many new ones.
A few characters, such as J.J. Venture and Jonas Venture, Sr., appear twice. I don’t know what that means, but it does come across as foreshadowing. Clones, perhaps? The Venture Brothers has a history with cloning.
Most suspicious is the absence of Dean Venture from picture, one-half of the two Venture Brothers for whom the series is named. Another case of foreshadowing, or just an error on the part of the creator? I wonder.
(Update: On Publick’s blog, he mentions in a comment that Dean wasn’t included because there were no real character design changes for him. So much for my conspiracy theory.)
On the same page are a few screen shots from the coming season. I just caught up on season 2 a week or so ago, so I’m really looking forward to season 3.
[via Ain’t It Cool News]
Kung Fu Panda Movie Trailer #2
DreamWorks Animation has released the second movie trailer for Kung Fu Panda. I had the chance to catch an unfinished print of this film back in March, and had very low expectations as I’ve never really been impressed by DreamWorks Animated films. So when I say I really enjoyed Kung Fu Panda, that means a lot. What the movie lacks in character design, it makes up for in laughs. It’s a fun take on the classic kung fu genre. This new trailer, not so much. Tell me what you think in the comments below.
Official Plot Synopsis: Enthusiastic, big and a little clumsy, Po (Jack Black) is the biggest fan of kung fu around…which doesn’t exactly come in handy while working every day in his family’s noodle shop. Unexpectedly chosen to fulfill an ancient prophecy, Po’s dreams become reality when he joins the world of kung fu and studies alongside his idols, the legendary Furious Five—Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Crane (David Cross), Mantis (Seth Rogen), Viper (Lucy Liu) and Monkey (Jackie Chan)—under the leadership of their guru, Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman). But before they know it, the vengeful and treacherous snow leopard Tai Lung (Ian McShane) is headed their way, and it’s up to Po to defend everyone from the oncoming threat. Can he turn his dreams of becoming a kung fu master into reality? Po puts his heart into the task, and the unlikely hero ultimately finds that his greatest weaknesses turn out to be his greatest strengths.
You can watch the trailer in High Definition on Yahoo. Kung Fu Panda hits theaters on June 6th 2008.
Rumor Killer: James Cameron on Avatar Concept Art
Last week conceptual artwork which was supposedly from James Cameron’s 3D sci-fi epic film Avatar “leaked” online. We hoped and prayed that it wasn’t real, as it wasn’t too impressive (actually it looked a lot like Angelina Jolie as Grendel’s mother in Beowulf). Well Cameron e-mailed the guys at AintItCool to clear the air and dispel the rumor:
“You recently posted some artwork of a supposed Na’vi character. Don’t know where you got it but it’s spurious. I’ve never seen that piece of art. We had a lot of free-ranging conceptual stuff in the early days of design two and a half years ago, and it might be something that was done then but not shown to me, but it is definitely not remotely our actual character design. Aside from two legs, two arms and a tail, it doesn’t have any features in common with our final designs. If I had to guess I’d say it’s a piece of fan art based on the description of the Na’vi from the old treatment which was leaked twelve years ago. That description is obsolete relative to the shooting script, since things have changed a lot over the years.”
Cameron also gave details on a new 3D camera system that he developed specifically for this film:
“The first couple of weeks we were still coming up to speed, figuring out how to control the interocular and convergence for all different types of shooting situations. But we’ve got that dialed in now. We’ve reworked the camera software on the fly, using a set of look-up curves we wrote ourselves, so now the cameras basically go to a default interocular setting automatically based on focal length and subject distance — a kind of “auto-stereo” — which is working really well. I can be hand-holding a shot, and decide to crank in on the zoom in the middle of the shot, completely unrehearsed, and our system compensates instantly. It’s definitely the most advanced stereo camera system in existence. And the result is enveloping stereo with zero eye strain or unwanted viewing artifacts. You feel like you’re there.”
You can read Cameron’s full letter on AICN.