Leonard Nimoy says his 'Fringe' experiment may be coming to an end

 

Leonard Nimoy, who was coaxed out of retirement for "Star Trek" and then lingered in order to portray the mysterious William Bell on "Fringe," says it may be the logical time to say farewell to acting for good -- especially since the Bell role hasn't been a compelling one for him.

"I have such a great life," the 78-year-old actor said at his home last week. "I'm not looking for work."

Nimoy had invited me over to talk about his Halloween night photography exhibit at the Santa Monica Museum of Art (watch for a full story on that event and his photography career here tomorrow), which is just one of the many pursuits that Nimoy would rather focus on these days. "As an actor you're always wondering when you're going to work again, who you're going to work with, what it will be. I don't have that consuming drive," he said. Then he nodded toward an image that will be on display at the exhibit. "This is my creative outlet. This is what I do."

Nimoy was fresh from a trip to the Vancouver set of "Fringe," where he had shot an upcoming episode. He made it sound as if it might have been his final one in the role of Bell, a rarely seen character on the show but one that is, by all appearances, at the very core of the series' mythology. 

"I've done three appearances for them. I don't know if I will do a fourth..."

 

"They've asked me to do more, but we have to talk about where the character is going. So far my character, William Bell, and my appearances have been used to lay in information about this alternate universe and the experience of being in this other world. And that's OK, but I don't know yet what plans they have for really developing a dramatic story for the character. I'm waiting for a conversation about that."

Nimoy said that conversation will be "some with J.J. Abrams" but more so with show runner Jeff Pinkner and series creators Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, the same tandem that came up with the script for "Star Trek," which was good enough to coax Nimoy back into Starfleet service despite his initial resistance to the idea. Nimoy said Orci and Kurtzman are "just terrific, very talented and very smart" but it was quite clear that the actor's goodwill posture toward "Fringe" was earned entirely by the "Trek" experience and that it has its limitations.

"I think they're talking amongst themselves now so they can present some kind of plan, a story arc of some kind."

The sci-fi icon surprised me when he said he signed up for the "Fringe" first-season finale without much knowledge of the series at all.

"I never paid much attention until I was asked to work on it and even then I didn't know a lot. I got the [home video] collection of the first season and [my wife] Susan and I were up in Lake Tahoe and last week we sat there about four or five hours at a time and watched them. And, wow, that show is something. They do a great production job. They have great story hooks, terrific production values and very interesting performances."

He mentioned in particular the work of John Noble, who portrays the wonderfully eccentric Walter Bishop, Bell's onetime colleague in the business of mad science.

"We just met for the first time and it was very enjoyable," Nimoy said, although he was careful not to say whether that encounter was on-screen or off.

For those of you in Southern California, you have a chance to meet Nimoy yourself and even have him shoot your portrait during a photo session. On Halloween, the Santa Monica Museum of Art will be displaying selected works from Nimoy's project "Who Do You Think You Are?" (which will be an exhibit at Mass MoCA next summer); the collection is a series of portraits where Nimoy asked strangers to reveal their secret selves. That "secret self" theme will carry into a costume contest at the Oct. 31 event and there a different price-level tickets. For more details on the event and the possibility of a photo shoot with Nimoy, go right here. 

-- Geoff Boucher

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PHOTOS: Top, Leonard Nimoy on "Fringe" (Fox) Middle: Nimoy at his home. (Christina House / For The Times)

U2 show at the Rose Bowl has a fanboy backbeat? [UPDATED]

The U2 show at the Rose Bowl may have been billed as the concert of the century but this is also the "decade of the fanboy" and I couldn't help but notice some overlap between the massive music event and the universe we cover here at the Hero Complex.

I was only inside the venue for 10 minutes when I saw a familiar face in the churning crowd of the stadium's outer ring. I called out to J.J. Abrams and he smiled, waved and paused but really there was no way to stop and talk amid the crowd current. "See you inside," he said.

My son, Ben, who is 8, was attending his very first concert and he recognized Abrams but not as the creative brand behind "Lost," "Star Trek" and "Fringe": "Hey, he's the guy who played keyboards in that video 'Cool Guys Don't Look at Explosions,' right?" Um, wow, yeah, son, that is him.

We were lucky enough to get bracelets for the pre-show party at the Round Room, a swanky (but sweltering) VIP tent, and one of the first people we saw when we walked in was Ewan MacGregor, who was posing for pictures with some people. Ben was properly awed by the presence of Obi-Wan Kenobi and he was searching faces in the rest of the room in hopes, I suspect, that Chewbacca might be in some corner debating the merits of "Joshua Tree" with General Grievous.

The room was dotted with Hollywood execs (Tom Freston, Jimmy Iovine, Jeffrey Katzenberg) and glossy-magazine faces (Cindy Crawford, Paris Hilton) but they held zero interest for Ben. I ran into a friend, Nancy Sullivan, who said Chris O'Donnell, the former Boy Wonder of "Batman & Robin," was walking around, and not long after Colin Farrell, who probably doesn't put "Daredevil" at the top of his resume, sauntered in wearing a jaunty hat. I saw Michael Bay arrive with his statuesque date and walked over to say hello. I congratulated him on the commercial success of "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" (which still stands as the highest-grossing film of 2009) and got him to promise I could visit the set of the third robot film. Ben, hoping he might get to tag along, smiled like the Boucher family had just won the lottery.

It was time to head for our seats so I assumed the fanboy subplots were over but I was wrong. The startling set for the show, the cosmic claw, looks like something that Jack Kirby would have dreamed up. Bono mentioned Scarlett Johansson, star of "Iron Man 2" and "The Spirit," at one point but that was just a footnote. The great line came midway through the show (a show, by the way, that was absolutely astounding) when Bono began a tongue-in-cheek introduction of the band members. He described the Edge as a mad scientist and an alien visitor, whose mission has "gone where no other guitarist has gone before." I wondered if, somewhere in the crowd of 97,000, Abrams fell out of his seat at that line. Bono added, "He's Mr. Spock to us, he's the Edge to you."

Lovely. Live long and prosper, rock fans.

-- Geoff Boucher

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Photos: Bono performs at U2's Rose Bowl show in Pasadena. Credit: Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times.

UPDATED: Fixed a misspelled name. And, no, it wasn't Bonno or Beno and Bobo.

Akiva Goldsman on 'Lobo,' 'Jonah Hex' and the new 'Swamp Thing'

This is a significantly longer version of an article I wrote on Akiva Goldsman that ran Sunday in the Los Angeles Times Calendar section. Goldsman is one of the busiest Hollywood figures in comics and sci-fi projects with four adaptations coming based on DC characters and his new role as a key figure for the Fox series "Fringe." He's also a figure of controversy for fans who have not forgotten the sight of a Bat-suit with nipples. 

Akiva Goldsman arrived at the door of producer Brian Grazer in 1998 with one purpose. "I went there," the screenwriter says, "to beg."

Goldsman, who had enjoyed a steady ascension in Hollywood for years, was coming off a string of films that had badly battered his reputation. He had produced and written the forgettable dud "Lost in Space" -- and far worse, he had written the screenplay that would become the 1997 bomb "Batman & Robin," one of the most savagely disliked movies of the decade.

Given that history of burnt popcorn, Goldsman seemed like the least qualified writer in Hollywood to take on the task of adapting Sylvia Nasar's "A Beautiful Mind" for the screen, but that's the job he sought when he visited Grazer at the offices of Imagine Films. Shockingly, he got the gig, and the eventual film, about physicist John Nash and his slippery hold on reality, would win four Academy Awards, including best adapted screenplay for Goldsman, best director for Ron Howard and best picture.

"It was a profound experience for all of us involved," Goldsman recently recalled. "And I cannot overestimate what it meant for my career at that point."

The breakthrough put Goldsman in a lofty strata in Hollywood, and his screenwriting credits would include blockbusters such as "The Da Vinci Code," "Angels & Demons," "I Am Legend" and "I, Robot." And now, a decade after seeking a bit of largesse from Grazer, Goldsman is undertaking a new career path behind the camera.

He recently directed the season premiere of the Fox series "Fringe" and is now lining up his feature-film directorial debut. And despite having written what is perhaps the most reviled comic-book movie adaptation of all time, he's aggressively pursuing his childhood love of superheroes as the producer of five movies based on Marvel or DC comic books, including the Guy Ritchie adaptaion of "Lobo," the popular anti-hero show in the image on the right.

On closer inspection, comic-book fantasy and dark psychology are the touchstone themes of Goldsman's career. It's a tandem that might make a therapist smirk or reach for their notepad, and the same goes for the 47-year-old's memories of his childhood. The writer is the son of child psychologists Mira Rothenberg and S. Tev Goldsman, and the nature of his youth was a key reason that Grazer used the writer for "A Beautiful Mind."

"I grew up, essentially, in one of the very first group homes for what was then termed as 'emotionally disturbed children' -- these were days when, unimaginably, childhood schizophrenia and autism were lumped together in the same population," Goldsman said. "My parents founded this home, and I grew up there in this brownstone in Brooklyn Heights and my peers were, um, crazy. My definition of sanity is very labile; it's flexible and open."

Young Goldsman also lost himself in the tales of Batman, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, the Legion of Super-Heroes and all the other gaudy champions who inhabit the wildly intricate mythos of Marvel and DC. He sees his revisitation to his youthful concerns as a common experience in Hollywood. "I think we're all trying to make sense of what happened [in our childhoods] and that's what's startling -- in getting the chance to make stuff, sometimes, when everything is supended correctly, it feels like it makes sense." 

These days, his office at the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank is dotted with comic-book art, superhero statues, sci-fi imagery -- pop-culture signifiers that once would have been viewed as juvenilia but now are as proudly prevalent in Hollywood work spaces as Hitchcock posters and espresso machines.

On a recent afternoon, Goldsman gleefully showed off a personalized drawing that had been given to him years ago by the late Bob Kane, co-creator of Batman, and then debated the finer points of "Days of Future Past," a landmark two-issue X-Men comic-book story from 1981.

None of that, though, changes the fact that Goldsman might be booed off the stage if he were introduced at a comic-book convention. "Batman & Robin," the bloated 1997 movie directed by Joel Schumacher and starring George Clooney and Arnold Schwarzenegger, certainly possesses an odious place in Hollywood history. Times critic Kenneth Turan said the Goldsman script had the "eerie feeling of having no beginning, no middle and no end." That was on the gentle end of the reaction; Goldsman and Schumacher actually received death threats, which suggests that there are a lot of people in the world who take their funny books seriously.

A few months ago, Kevin Feige, the president of production at Marvel Studios, said that "Batman & Robin" was more than a mere failure. "That may be the most important comic-book movie ever made," said Feige, whose studio is now at work on "Iron Man 2" and "Thor." "It was so bad that it demanded a new way of doing things. It created the opportunity to do 'X-Men' and 'Spider-Man,' adaptations that respected the source material and adaptations that were not campy."

Goldsman won't exactly apologize for the film, but he comes pretty close. He said he is proud of the effort put into it and weary of the conversations about its merit. He did learn a lesson from the film. "What got lost in 'Batman & Robin' is the emotions aren't real," Goldsman said, picking his words carefully. "The worst thing to do with a serious comic book is to make it a cartoon. I'm still answering for that movie with some people."

He said honoring the source material is the guiding concept for the projects he has in the pipeline now. Filming recently wrapped on his Warner Bros. project "Jonah Hex," which stars Josh Brolin as the bitter and scarred Old West antihero from DC Comics that dates to the 1970s.

"He's a character that has been described as having one foot on Earth and one foot beyond the grave, that he speaks to the dead . . . at the same time he is very much [like Sergio Leone's] 'The Man With No Name.' "

"Hex," now in post-production, is being  directed by Jimmy Hayward, who is following up his very different directorial debut, last year's "Horton Hears a Who." John Malkovich plays the villain, an evil preacher, while Megan Fox and Will Arnett also star.

After that is a commando film called "The Losers," also a DC adaptation, about a team of CIA operatives who are unwittingly sent on a suicide mission but survive and return to face their superiors.

The film stars Jeffrey Dean Morgan -- who got strong reviews for his black-ops and black-hearted role in "Watchmen" -- as well as Zoe Saldana and Jason Patric and is due in April of next year.

There's also "Lobo," a blue- and gray-skinned, super-powered alien who has a bad attitude and delights in mayhem; the character, for the uninitiated, looks like a buffed-out, biker version of Beetlejuice and acts like a bar-fighting big cousin of the extraterrestrial scamp from "Lilo and Stitch." There's also some common ground with the hero-behaving-badly tale of "Hancock," which Goldsman produced. 

"Lobo" is being directed by Guy Ritchie, which sounds like an odd fit -- he's rarely succeeded in stories that go past London and this one would take him off-planet -- but Goldsman says he's thrilled with the fit.

"There's something hyperbolic and authentic about a Guy Ritchie movie. His best movie are deeply, deeply  stylized yet they are all grounded; there's a grit of stylization, which sounds like an oxymoron but it makes perfect sense when you've seen his films."

Goldsman added: "We've never seen Guy's sensibility married to a project with such a large special effects budget. "

Goldsman said Ritchie will shoot a test scene in November -- "We've got the character design pretty much done," Goldsman said, "and the test will get us moving forward to the next step" -- and casting will be decided after that.

Then there's "Swamp Thing," which Goldsman said will be closer in tone to the character as presented in Alan Moore's eerie, metaphysical horror comics than the rubber-suit bog creature from the 1982 Wes Craven B-movie.

"We want a film with real Southern, dark horror overtones, a little bit like a classic Universal horror film," Goldsman said, knowing full well that his presence on the project will stir controversy -- it's a character that filmmaker Guillermo del Toro has called one of the "few remaining Holy Grails" in comics. There's also also talk of a Fantastic Four reboot, which has been met, no surprise, with sharply different reactions.

Vestiges of fan vitriol remain on the Internet for Goldsman, but in Hollywood his reputation is stellar. J.J. Abrams has brought him into the fold on "Fringe" as a key story collaborator, and Howard has now directed four films with Goldsman as screenwriter.

Howard said he has been "prodding" Goldsman to direct since watching the writer work with Russell Crowe and others on the set of "A Beautiful Mind."

"There have been many screenwriters who moved into directing with varying degrees of success, but it's not an automatic path," Howard said. "Screenwriters have, of course, a great sense of story and the nuances trying to being achieved, but they shield themselves from the practical matters of getting that story told on film. None of that is a problem for Akiva. He's comfortable having conversations with actors and collaborating."

 

Goldsman puts a premium on his affinity for teamwork and rattles off all the lessons he's learned from collaborators, such as Howard's open and supportive style, Peter Weir's devotion to authenticity, Will Smith's relentless optimism.

Goldsman got his start late in Hollywood. He had graduated from Wesleyan in 1983 and worked in the mental health field carrying the family tradition of sorts, but he found he was gripped more by flights of imagination than clinical challenges. He studied creative at New York University but novel writing defied him. He became an avid disciple of screenwriting guru John McKee’s approaches and had a breakthrough with his 1994 adaptation of John Grisham’s novel “The Client.”

His own literary beacons won't impress anyone with art-house sensibilities -- he talks with wonder about Stephen King's "ability to understand the emotional architecture of our imagination" -- but his populist tastes, skill with story and that old comic-book collection make him a man for the moment in Hollywood. He's now looking for a feature film to direct, and it may end up being a screen version of his favorite novel, "Winter's Tale," Mark Helprin's 1983 fantasy about an alternate-history New York, a thief and flying white horse.

It's yet another new chapter in the career of a man who has specialized in playing well with others in an asylum setting. "I'm very scared of many things, but drop me into world of people raging with schizophrenia and I feel perfectly at home," Goldsman deadpanned. "And I love Hollywood. Go figure."

-- Geoff Boucher

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Photos: Akiva Goldsman on the Warner lot (Brian Vander Brug/Los Angeles Times). Lobo from DC Comics. The cast of "Batman & Robin." Posters for the DC series "The Losers," the upcoming "Jonah Hex" film and "Fringe." Will Smith and Akiva Goldsman in 2007 (Toshifumi Kitamura/Getty images)

'Fringe' looks to solve the trickiest mystery -- its own identity

ON THE SET

Here's a longer version of my cover story on "Fringe" in today's Los Angeles Times Calendar section. The season premiere is tonight on Fox.

The low-slung motel looked like the sort of place Norman Bates might open as a north-of-the-border expansion of the old family business. The roadside sign promised “TELEPHONES” in every room but the brownish-orange carpeting and peeling paint were nothing to call home about. The radioactive Russian cosmonaut in the parking lot, however, was something you don’t see everyday.

“Who comes up with this stuff?” asked a smirking Joshua Jackson, one of the stars of the Fox series “Fringe,” which returns tonight with the premiere of its second season of conspiracies and codes, parallel worlds and evil corporations, mad scientists and con men. “Seriously, who are these people?”

Jackson was waiting for the camera to start rolling again on a bright, crisp afternoon during an on-location shoot for a mid-season episode of “Fringe.” Nearby, the show’s other stars made idle chit-chat or had their make-up checked while a quartet of extras outfitted in FBI haz-mat suits practiced their task – wheeling around a shiny metallic casket with ominous radiation stickers and assorted pseudo-scientific warnings in Russian. Well, everyone involved hoped they were pseudo-scientific warnings.

“Can we get a translator and find out what this writing means, specifically?” asked Jon Cassar, director of the episode and an industry veteran with 59 episodes of “24” on his resume. “Maybe it says ‘Do not open until Christmas’ or ‘Watch ‘The Simpsons’ on Sunday night,’ knowing Fox.”

The mood on the set was upbeat and with good reason. A few hours later the cast – led by Anna Torv as FBI agent Olivia Dunham, John Noble as the kooky, scene-stealing Dr. Walter Bishop and Jackson as slippery genius Peter Bishop – would be at party celebrating the release of the first season on DVD and, more importantly, there is a strong expectation that the show is poised to finally realize its often cited potential.

“The second year is much tighter,” says Blair Brown, who plays the mysterious Nina Sharp, who may or may not be the villain of the show. “The writing is wittier, more complicated but also there’s clarity to the stories and character. And we are all speaking with quite different voices. The rhythm of show is clear now.”

Early on, “Fringe” was neither fish nor fowl (nor was it amphibian, like those strange frogs in the opening sequence). The show possessed the same trench-coats-and-autopsies ethos as Fox’s signature 1990s sci-fi show “The X-Files,” but it was also informed by more recent, purer procedurals such as “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” and even “Bones,” which teams a federal agent and laboratory oddballs but with far more flirting.

Lance Reddick, a tall, lean actor whose withering scowl is known to viewers of “The Wire,” “Lost” and “Oz,” portrays Phillip Broyles, the federal agent who supervises the “Fringe Division,” which investigates teleportation, telekinesis and, well, anything that would have been filed under the letter “X” in Fox Mulder’s basement office at the FBI.

Reddick said as the cast found their characters and the writers sharpened their intentions, “Fringe” became its own series last season as opposed to a well-polished collage of other shows.

“We found who we were in episode 10, the episode where Olivia got kidnapped,” Reddick said. “We were trying to hedge our bets and trying to be too many kinds of shows at once. I’m not saying we got rid of the procedural element because each episode still is on a case – a case in terms of the quote-unquote police work -- but it’s not formulaic, not like the early episodes. What keeps the show most watchable is the fact that it is character-based.”

Those characters have kept critics on the side of the show even when “Fringe” left viewers rolling their eyes or scratching their heads. Noble, in particular, has been a sensation as the mad scientist Bishop who was extricated from an mental hospital to help solve the mysteries of fringe phenomena, which are increasing due to a worldwide pattern that is a key thread in the show’s larger tapestry.

Critics have been as uniformly kind to Torv, who some call wooden or the show’s weak-link cipher. But Robert Lloyd, reviewing the first season’s finale in the Los Angeles Times, said Torv and show as a whole have “soulfulness of a dry, cool, wintry variety” and said Torv is fine amid the more vivid cast members since “much of the drama is located in her ‘Alice in Wonderland’ eyes.”

In person, Torv is much more reserved than her two lead costars. “I’m all serious, they have all the fun,” she said with a wink of her buttoned-down character but perhaps referring a bit to herself as well. She said the job of a working on a creepy sci-fi show does have its perks however: “The other day Olivia got to eat worms. So there was that….”

The 30-year-old Aussie (who last year married Mark Valley, who played her partner in the pilot of “Fringe”) said she is different from her fellow cast members in one major way – she doesn’t enjoy the slowly unfolding mysteries of the show, she’d prefer to know where everything is going now so she could modulate her performances.

“This is a completely different world we jump into and I’d love to be able to plot out for myself where it’s going,” Torv said. “I think I’m the only one, though, after having this conversation the other day. I think some of the others who have so much more experience than I do, they like making it up as we go.”

By all appearances, nobody knows for sure where “Fringe” is headed. J.J. Abrams created “Fringe” with his “Star Trek” collaborators Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci and like his hit ABC show “Lost” the Fox series has a sometimes-dizzying mythology to sort out. The challenges is stitching together the big story arcs but not scaring away casual viewers who want an hour of digestible science fiction.

“That’s the monster challenge in a show like this, how do you do a show that has mythology ongoing, a continuum, but is also somewhat stand-alone?” Abrams said. “For me, last season the introcution of the character Mr. Jones played Jared Harris [the son of the late Richard Harris] was the turning point. I think it felt like there was another point on the map. Now we know where we’re going. Now it’s not just sort of seemingly arbitrary, random stuff. Ironically, that and later episodes actually ended up connecting to things that we did in the early stories. It all started to feel inevitable, that we had a mythology and arc that we were following.”

This season, “Fringe” will delve further into the relationship and history between Walter and Peter Bishop. There will also be a more complete portrait of the elusive William Bell, a linchpin figure in the show’s mythology who was revealed in last season’s finale (played by Leonard Nimoy) alive and well on an alternate earth where the World Trade Center stills stands in New York.

Behind the camera, the season premiere tonight was directed by Akiva Goldsman, the screenwriter who won an Oscar for “A Beautiful Mind,” who has now been added to the show’s circle of creators.

Season two will also, according to Orci, explain in detail the nature of the Observers, the strange, bald visitors who will “get riled up” and become less passive. There will be more on the background of Reddick’s character, too, and look at the events in his life that led to his divorce.

“We learn about his military background,” Reddick said, “and see events in his past that explain his relationship to the United States government.”

For, the three main characters, the emphasis will be fine-tuning the portrayal of Jackson’s Peter Bishop, who will be finding out some unsettling truths about his background. Jackson, all grown up from his days on “Dawson’s Creek,” made it near the top People magazine’s “sexiest men alive” list last year and gives “Fringe” a cynical edge as a world-class thinker who has the heart of a self-interested con man.

“He’s the kind of guy that, when he leaves the room, you should check to see if you still have your wallet,” Jackson said. “I think we make sure that stays within the character, that he has that edge and that capability to do things that the audience finds unsavory and unethical. That’s the tug with this character.”

If anything, Peter will be going back to the way he was at the start of the show, when he was less shiny and happy and far less ethical.

Perhaps more than any other series in primetime this season, “Fringe” is looking to finally deliver on its promise by solving the mystery of its own identity. Watching the DVD of the first season, Abrams said, offers clues to that mystery but also feels at times more like a scavenger hunt than a series.

“Anytime you go back and look at the very first episode of almost any series there’s a charming incongruity to it,” Abrams said. “It’s not the show you’ve come to know. It’s all promise but no clear trajectory. It’s those next few episodes that kind of determine where it’s going. I think frankly those early episodes of first season we were on shakier ground. By the third, fourth, fifth episodes we began to find out footing. And now this season, we start running I think.”

-- Geoff Boucher

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Dr. Walter Bishop, the latest lab-coat in a TV science surge

Photos: Top, Joshua Jackson, left, and Anna Torv lead the way on "Fringe." Second photo:  Jackson and John Noble. Third:  Torv. Fourth: Jackson, Torv and Noble. Credit on all: Fox. 

Starfleet goes Guantanamo? 'Star Trek' team hints that the next film will reflect contemporary war issues

I was in Vancouver visiting the set of "Fringe" (you'll see that story here on Thursday) and caught up with two of the show's key creators, J.J. Abrams and Roberto Orci, who are also squarely at the center of the "Star Trek" universe now. They had great success with the revival of the grand old Starfleet mythology with Abrams directing and Orci co-writing (along with Alex Kurtzman)  and I had to ask about their plans for a follow-up film, which will have Damon Lindelof added to the writing team and is aimed at a summer 2011 stardate at theaters.

Abrams spoke about the general creative imperatives for the story while Orci hinted that we might be seeing clear metaphors for modern geo-political concerns in the story about ongoing mission of the Starship Enterprise. First, here's what Abrams told me: 

"The ambition for a sequel to 'Star Trek' is to make a movie that's worthy of the audience and not just another movie, you know, just a second movie that feels tacked on. The first movie was so concerned with just setting up the characters -- their meeting each and galvanizing that family -- that in many ways a sequel will have a very different mission. it needs to do what [the late 'Trek' creator Gene] Roddenberry did so well, which is allegory. It needs to tell a story that has connection to what is familiar and what is relevant. It also needs to tell it in a spectacular way that hides the machinery and in a primarily entertaining and hopefully moving story. There needs to be relevance, yes, and that doesn't mean it should be pretentious. If there are simple truths -- truths connected to what we live -- that elevates any story -- that's true with any story."    

Here's what Orci had to say:

"We’ve literally had two meetings now. We haven’t decided anything but we’re starting to circle around some ideas. We got a lot of fan response from the first one and a considerable amount of critical response and one of the things we heard was, ‘Make sure the next one deals with modern-day issues.’ We’re trying to keep it as up-to-date and as reflective of what’s going on today as possible. So that’s one thing, to make it reflect the things that we are all dealing with today.

I asked Orci somewhat flippantly if that meant we might see Starfleet grappling with the ethics of torture or dealing with a rising terrorist threat or perhaps a painful, politicized war with the Klingons.

"Well yeah, those are the kind of issues we're talking about. Wow, you're good! But seriously that's the way we're thinking, that's an approach. So if you have any ideas ... "

As an aside, I also mentioned to Abrams that I had interviewed James Cameron recently and that the "Titanic" filmmaker had been gushing about his fondness for the "Trek" revival and cited it along with "Up" as a stand-out for 2009.

"James Cameron, as in the James Cameron? Well, it’s incredibly sweet and, frankly, it’s just weird. I mean, it’s always a ridiculous thing to hear that someone like James Cameron even knows what you do. To hear that, it’s blush-inducing. Now tell me about 'Avatar' ... "

And I did...

-- Geoff Boucher

Photo: Director J.J. Abrams (center) discusses a scene with actors John Cho (Sulu, far left) and Anton Yelchin (Chekov, center left). Zade Rosenthal / Paramount Pictures

RECENT AND RELATED

Chris Pine takes command: "I am not William Shatner"

REVIEW: "Star Trek" star Chris Pine takes the stage in L.A.

VIDEO: "Star Trek" meets ... Monty Python?

Leonard Nimoy: "Star Trek" fans can be scary

William Shatner: "It's strange to say goodbye"

Simon Pegg: "I felt damn sexy" in Starfleet uniform

Boy of Summer: Anton Yelchin in "Trek" and "Terminator"

Eugene Roddenberry and the legacy of 'Star Trek'

Cruise and Abrams choose to accept another 'Mission'; will it self-destruct?

Michael Fleming at Daily Variety has a surprising bit of news: J.J. Abrams, fresh from the critical and commercial success of "Star Trek," has agreed to co-produce a new "Mission: Impossible" film with action star Tom Cruise. Here's an excerpt from Fleming's story:

The return of Cruise to [Paramount] itself is surprising in view of the circumstances surrounding his departure in August 2006. Apparently irked by the heft of Cruise’s deal, among other issues, Viacom chief Sumner Redstone abruptly terminated the 14-year relationship between the star and the studio. Cruise’s then-CAA agent, Rick Nicita, termed Redstone’s decision “shockingly offensive and graceless.”

The rift led to Cruise becoming the chief of United Artists and taking a more active role in production decisions. Redstone, meanwhile, has sought to heal the relationship. At a recent appearance, he described the star as “a great actor and a good friend.”

The “Mission” installment would augment Paramount’s formidable array of sequels, which will include “Star Trek 2” and a third “Transformers.”

The plan is a 2011 release, and it will be interesting to see if Abrams chooses to direct the film. I'm guessing he will and also that he will hand off directing duties on the "Trek" franchise after the second film but stay on as a producer for any Starfleet films beyond that.

-- Geoff Boucher

RECENT AND RELATED

J.J. Abrams: "Trek" must escape the shadow of George Lucas

"Star Trek" director fretted about the "Galaxy Quest" problem

Seven reasons the Abrams "Trek" is the best Starfleet film ever

William Shatner has a message for Abrams

Review: "Fringe" is uneven but promising  

Top photo: Tom Cruise and J.J. Abrams on the set of "Mission: Impossible III." Credit: Paramount Pictures. Bottom photo: J.J. Abrams. Credit: Dan Steinberg / Associated Press.

 

Chris Pine takes command of the Enterprise: 'My name is not William Shatner'

Sunday was the big Summer Sneaks issue of the Calendar section in the Los Angeles Times and I had an article on Chris Pine taking over the captain's chair on "Star Trek." Here is a longer version of that story -- it was trimmed for publication for space issues, so think of this as the director's cut.

Wearing a trucker hat, battered blue jeans and an air of breezy confidence, Chris Pine walked through the Paramount Pictures studio lot like he owned the place but felt no particular need to show anyone the deed in his pocket.

It’s precisely that mix of fighter-pilot cockiness and surfer-dude Zen that you would expect from an actor who, as the leading man in “Star Trek,” has taken on the biggest challenge of any popcorn-movie star this summer: How to play James T. Kirk without imitating the role’s originator, William Shatner?

“That’s it right there, that’s the challenge,” Pine said on that November afternoon after a screening of early footage from the film, which opens on Friday, May 8. “If I can do that, then we’re good.”

The L.A. native has apparently done just that, at least according to early reviews and a uniformly positive industry buzz that seems to frame “Star Trek” as this year’s “Iron Man,” a sleek summer movie with intense action, wit and surprising buoyancy considering all the heavy equipment taking flight.

The film, written by the “Transformers” tandem of Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, begins on the day Kirk is born — the same day his father dies just 12 minutes into his first command as a starship captain. It follows Kirk through his daredevil youth and his Starfleet academy career as a rakish Romeo with a need for speed and no love of regulations. Then its off into space where he and the rest of the crew must tangle with a rogue Romulan named Nero who, like pretty much every “Trek” villain through the years, is out for vengeance.

Paramount, expecting big things, has already announced a sequel for 2011. Still, there are no sure bets in Hollywood, and though the crew of the USS Enterprise may live in the future, they might seem like the ancient past to young moviegoers. The last film under the Starfleet banner was 2002’s “Star Trek: Nemesis,” which set the franchise on stunned: It grossed just $43 million in the U.S. and its eventual worldwide total barely covered its $60-million budget.

This “Trek,” though, is not your grandfather’s starship. Director J.J. Abrams (“Mission: Impossible III” and television’s “Lost’) grew up as a “Star Wars” fan and decided that Gene Roddenberry’s venerable space-frontier epic could use a bit of the George Lucas mojo (yes, that sound you hear are Trekkers gagging on their Romulan ale). This new version “Trek” has intense dogfights, a sprinkling of exotic aliens, major dollops of humor and even a bit of an icy tribute to “The Empire Strikes Back.”

Zachary Quinto of NBC’s “Heroes” is in as Spock (and, thanks to some time travel, Leonard Nimoy also appears as the Vulcan in his advanced years) and the cast includes Simon Pegg, Eric Bana, Winona Ryder and, startlingly, a cameo by Tyler Perry.

But “Trek” will fly or fail based on the man in the captain’s seat, 28-year-old Pine. “He is our star,” Abrams said, “and it was an intense challenge to take on a role that was so defined for so long by Shatner.”

On a recent afternoon, Pine sat down for lunch amid the hectic swirl of La Petit Greek on Larchmont Boulevard. He wasn’t asked for any autographs, but that may be happening quite a bit in the days to come. He is the son of Robert Pine, an actor with 4 1/2 decades of film and television work whom many people might remember as Sgt. Joseph Getraer on “CHiPs.” He said his father passed on some sage advice about the walk between the dressing room and the camera.

Seven things I love about the new 'Star Trek'

The "Star Trek" film franchise, after 10 films, is about to hit maximum warp for the first time.

Yes, the new one is the best of them all, which (in my opinion) is actually faint praise. The movies have each been flawed, really, and while I do adore "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan," this new film, pound for pound, is far superior. That's all the more impressive when you consider the fact that this all-new crew ensemble can't take emotional shortcuts with the audience.     

I saw the new film last Friday and it's fun, smart, sexy, sleek and action-packed. J.J. Abrams took plenty of lessons from the most recent trilogy of "Star Wars" films and their portrayal of alien cultures, space travel and frenetic battle scenes. Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, meanwhile, have written a script that is infused with Gene Roddenberry's optimistic vision of unity, exploration and technological possibility. It seems to me this movie is this year's "Iron Man," the fully satisfying summer movie that feels fresh and buoyant despite all the heavy machinery taking flight on screen.

So here are seven things I loved (although there were plenty more) about "Star Trek," which opens on May 8. NOTE: There are no MAJOR spoilers in here but I do talk about the setup and flavor of some scenes, some vague (but important) plot points and some of the fun, small moments, so if you prefer to walk into the theater cold, stop reading now! Otherwise, keep reading and prepare for warp-speed because, of course, this ship has no seat belts:

J.J. Abrams: 'Star Trek' must escape the shadow of 'Star Wars'

EXCLUSIVE: This is the second part of an interview with J.J. Abrams about his cinematic voyages aboard the Starship Enterprise. Today he talks about his concerns that "Star Trek" is "clearly in the shadow" of George Lucas. He also addresses premature talk of a "Trek" sequel: "I'm in the middle of lunch and someone asks, 'What do you want for dinner?' "

      

You can read part one here.

"Star Trek" is back. The 11th film in the storied franchise returns to theaters in May and this time the director is J.J. Abrams, who was just 2 months old when the original television series premiered in 1966. Abrams has conceded that he was never an impassioned fan of "Trek" but his take on the mythology promises to be intriguing considering his television success with "Alias," "Lost" and "Fringe" as well as his work as director of "Mission Impossible III." He talked to Hero Complex about navigating his movie through the neutral zone that lies between hard-core "Trek" fans and average summer moviegoers.

GB: Is it your sense that you are winning over skeptical fans to this point? 

JJA: You know, I would think that especially fans of "Star Trek," which is an optimistic universe, a universe about working together and the possibility of the human endeavor, you would think that people who appreciate that wonderful portrait of the future and that universe would be open to literally going to a place no one has ever gone before. I'm very optimistic that fans of the show, even the purists, will be willing to embrace the spirit of Roddenberry and once they see these actors doing this extraordinary work, I think they will not have to intellectualize it all, they'll simply enjoy the experience. It's a cliche now to say "Where no man has gone before" because it has been the vernacular now for more than 40 years but if you actually think about it -- and actually remind yourself that we live on this planet and we are creatures inhabiting in this space with undefined limits and with technology that will invariably come -- "Star Trek" is positing a future that is incredibly inspiring. If you can get past the cliche and make it real and relevant, there's something very exciting about that. This is not "Star Wars" which happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. This is us and our future.

GB: Can you talk a bit about the story of this film?

JJA: This story is ultimately about a guy who is full of unbelievable potential but he is aimless, he is lost. He ends up finding a path that takes him beyond his wildest dreams. It helps him find his purpose. That's a great story in any situation, in any culture. There is something about that spirit of innovation, collaboration, possibility, adventure and optimism that is inherent in what "Star Trek" was.

      

GB: How much did you go back to the various "Trek" shows, films, novels, etc., to research the mythology? I imagine at some point sifting through all of it would become a counterproductive exercise.

JJA: I looked at a lot of the episodes of all the series that came after the original "Star Trek" but because we are focusing on the original series I didn't really need to know every episode of "Deep Space Nine" or "Voyager" or even "Enterprise." But, yeah, I watched episodes, I read up a lot, I watched the movies, I talked to people, whether it was our "Trek" consultant or one of the two writers [Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci] about what it would mean to do what we wanted to do. We have one producer, Bob [Orci], who is a complete Trekker and another in Bryan Burk who had never seen an episode of the show ever. And it was a great balance. We could make sure it passed the test of the ultimate fan and the ultimate neophyte and make sure that it was equally entertaining to both parties.

'Star Trek' director J.J. Abrams on tribbles and the 'Galaxy Quest' problem

EXCLUSIVE: This is the first part of an interview with J.J. Abrams about his cinematic voyages aboard the Starship Enterprise. Read part two here.

      

Gene Roddenberry had this notion in the early 1960s about a television show that felt like "Wagon Train" in space, a frontier tale with groovy sci-fi imagery and a proud parable spirit. And just look what he started. In May, the pop culture phenomena of "Star Trek" proudly returns where it has gone before -- the movie theater -- with the 11th film in the franchise. This time the director is J.J. Abrams, a creative force in television with "Alias," "Lost" and "Fringe" as well as the director of "Mission Impossible III." He talked to Hero Complex about navigating his movie through the neutral zone that lies between hard-core "Trek" fans and summer moviegoers. This is part one of the interview.

GB: As franchises move into new eras it's interesting to watch how they change -- or don't change. "Battlestar Galactica" could hardly be more different than it was in the 1970s while "Star Wars" is essentially the same. With "Star Trek" you seem to be pursuing a revival like we've seen with Batman and James Bond, which holds on to core mythology but recalibrates the tone.

JJA: I think I benefited because I came into this movie as someone who appreciated "Star Trek" but wasn't an insane fanatic about it. The disadvantage is I didn't know everything I needed to know immediately at the beginning and had to learn it. The advantage though is I could look at "Star Trek" as a whole a little bit more like a typical moviegoer would see it; it allowed me to seize the things that I felt were truly the most iconic and important aspects of the original series and yet not be serving the master and trying to be true to every arcane detail. It let me look at the things I knew were critical.

         

GB: What are some of the things that made that "critical" list?

JJA: The characters was the most important thing in it. We needed to be true to the spirit of those characters. There were certain iconic things -- if you're going to do "Star Trek," you've got to do the Enterprise and it has to look like the Enterprise. If you're going to do "Star Trek" you have to do costumes that feel like the costumes people know. You have to be able to glance at it and know what that is. Even the text, the font of "Star Trek" has to look like what you know.

The phasers, the communicators, the Starfleet logo -- there are all these things that are the touchstones, the tenets of what makes "Star Trek" "Star Trek." If you're going to do this series those are things you don't mess with. And yet, they need to withstand a resolution that "Star Trek" has never had to withstand before. And I don't just mean IMAX -- though it will have to work there too -- but what I mean is that audiences are so savvy now and they've seen every iteration of "Star Trek," "Star Wars," two separate versions of "Battlestar Galactica," they've seen "Alien" and "Aliens," they've seen countless science fiction movies. They've seen it all. And even worse, they've seen a movie as "Galaxy Quest" that completely mocks the paradigm in its entirety.

GB: That's very true, you can't afford any accidental "Galaxy Quest" moments on your ship's bridge.

JJA: The trick is how do you use a ship like that, uniforms like that, characters who look like that and the name "Star Trek" and make it feel relevant and legitimate. the challenge is to take the familiar -- for better or worse -- and embrace the elements that make it unique but be sure the master you're serving is the making of the most entertaining movie possible. You can't look backward and try to make sure that every decision you're making is true to the past. that's not to say that we weren't true to the past, but that wasn't our guiding principle.

GB: You know that no matter what you do, you'll get an earful from hardcore fans.

JJA: The key is to appreciate that there are purists and fans of "Star Trek" who are going to be very vocal if they see things that aren't what what they want. But I can't make this movie for readers of Nacelles Monthly who are only concerned with what the ship's engines look like. They're going to find something they hate no matter what I do. And yet, the movie at its core is not only inspired by what has come before, it's deeply true to what's come before. The bottom line is we have different actors playing these parts and from that point on it's literally not what they've seen before. It will be evident when people see this movie that it is true to what Roddenberry created and what those amazing actors did in the 1960s. At the same time, I think, it's going to blow people's minds because its  a completely different experience than what they expect.

'Star Trek' in Rome, 'The Watchmen' and Omega in Everyday Hero headlines

Today's edition of Everyday Hero, your handpicked headlines from across the fanboy universe....

When in Rome, do as the Romulans do: Reporter Ariel David of the Associated Press has this report from the Italian capital regarding the new "Star Trek" film: "Director and producer J.J. Abrams visited the Eternal City on Friday to give a sneak peek of the early years of Capt. James T. Kirk and the other characters who warp around the galaxy in the upcoming 'Star Trek' movie... 'I want fans of Star Trek to come watch it, but the truth is I made the movie for future fans,' Abrams said at the presentation in a Rome theater...the preview and four 'Star Trek' scenes were strictly controlled, with security keeping out cameras and other recording devices. This much we can say: The brash and womanizing Kirk had a less than glorious start to his career, since the film introduces him as a bar-brawling biker in 23rd-century Iowa. The movie follows the young troublemaker, played by actor Chris Pine, as he meets up with his future crew, getting off to a rocky start with most of them, including Zachary Quinto’s edgy and hostile Spock. The peek given Friday also featured plenty of action sequences, including a hair-raising space dive and a sword duel at high altitude above an alien planet as the crew battle the villains led by Eric Bana. The movie is also likely to enthrall fans with inside jokes, including a scene that pokes fun at the accent of Russian character Chekov, as well as a cameo by Leonard Nimoy, who reprises his original role appearing as an aging, time-traveling Spock." {Associated Press, via Yahoo]

"Watchmen" on the witness stand?: This upcoming Sunday the Calendar section of the Los Angeles Times is dominated by a huge image of Rorschach -- I have an advance copy here on my desk right now and its startling to see this familiar image by Dave Gibbons printed sooo large. Right above the blank-faced hero is a strip of photographs of just some of the Hollywood players who had a stake in the "Watchmen" property at some point in its long, messy trip to the screen. The accompanying article by John Horn is the most comprehensive explanation to date of the legal issues that entangle the Warner Bros film planned for next March. An excerpt he begins with a quote from director Zack Snyder: " They haven't stopped us,' Snyder said in early October, after he had shown dozens of journalists some footage from his film and was asked about the lawsuit. 'We are just acting like we're making a movie.' Even now that the movie is in postproduction and is stirring intense anticipation, 'Watchmen' presents other challenges for its distributor. Its R rating will keep out some younger moviegoers who made multiple trips to the PG-13-rated 'The Dark Knight.' And it very well may be hard to build a franchise like 'X-Men'; the 'Watchmen' movie has an ending that, like a comic-book version of 'Titanic,' hardly encourages a sequel no matter how good the grosses. A prequel certainly could be made but Snyder, a devoted fan of the graphic novel, has called it a terrible idea and vowed to oppose it. As Snyder hurries to finish the film and 'Watchmen's' release date approaches, the Fox and Warners lawyers continue battling over documents, depositions and the film's script, which Fox says Warners won't share. It's unclear if Fox can really prevent Warners from releasing the film. Warners will likely ask [U.S. District Court Judge Gary] Feess to dismiss the case once all the evidence is collected, a motion Fox is certain to oppose. The more likely outcome is Fox studio chief Tom Rothman or Warners' head Alan Horn striking some sort of compromise deal in which the studios share the movie's costs and proceeds. But because Warners already is sharing the portion of the film it didn't sell to Paramount with financing partner Legendary Pictures, the studio doesn't have that much to divvy up..." [Los Angeles Times]

The "Omega" force: The crossover between "legitimate" literature and comics continues. David S. Ulin, the books editor of the Los Angeles Times, has a review of the new Marvel collection "Omega: The Unknown," which has an intriguing pedigree: "It's fitting that 'Omega: The Unknown' (Marvel: unpaged, $29.99), Jonathan Lethem's first foray into comics, should come with a blurb from Michael Chabon. Chabon, after all, is the only other literary novelist I can think of who has made the jump to writing superhero comics -- with 'The Escapist,' which grew out of his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel 'The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.' Unlike 'The Escapist,' 'Omega' isn't an original creation; it's based on a little-known Marvel series from the 1970s. (It lasted just 10 issues.) For Lethem, though, 'Omega' was influential, helping to inspire his 2003 novel, 'The Fortress of Solitude.' He's a fan, in other words, as is his collaborator Karl Rusnak, and that's a defining factor in their 'Omega,' which also ran for 10 issues, in 2007 and 2008. Gathered for the first time in one volume, it is a strange and wonderful hybrid: a superhero comic that reads with all the ambiguity of fiction, set in the Manhattan neighborhood of Inwood and -- like "The Fortress of Solitude" -- merging the fantastic with the most mundane aspects of teenage urban life." [Los Angeles Times]

Credit: Photo of J.J. Abrams by Dan Steinberg/Associated Press. Dave Gibbons art from "The Watchmen," courtesy of DC Comics.

Batman sues Batman, the new Enterprise and James Bond in Everyday Hero headlines

The latest edition of Everyday Hero, your handpicked headlines from the fanboy universe...

Who is this Joker? Next year marks the 60th anniversary of Batman, one of the most potent pop-culture creations from the world of comics, having spawned seven live-action films, a prime-time television show, scores of cartoons, novels, movie serials, radio shows and enough toys and t-shirts to fill the Grand Canyon. But, apparently, Turkish politician Huseyin Kalkan never heard of the Caped Crusader until now and he wants a cut of the action. Ali Jaafar has the story, which I'm hoping is a gag: "Batman has a new adversary: Batman. The mayor of an oil- producing city in southeastern Turkey, which has the same name as the Caped Crusader, is suing helmer Christopher Nolan and Warner Bros. for royalties from mega-grosser 'The Dark Knight.' Huseyin Kalkan, the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party mayor of Batman, has accused 'The Dark Knight' producers of using the city's name without permission. 'There is only one Batman in the world,' Kalkan said. 'The American producers used the name of our city without informing us.' Undoubtedly the fact that 'Dark Knight' is about to pass the $1 billion mark at the B.O. played a part in stirring the ire of the Turkish hamlet. The mayor is prepping a series of charges against Nolan and Warner Bros., which owns the right to the Batman character, including placing the blame for a number of unsolved murders and a high female suicide rate on the psychological impact that the film's success has had on the city's inhabitants." No word yet whether the Bolivian village of Harrypotter will also be pursuing legal action against Warners. [Daily Variety]

An Enterprising filmmaker: Jeff Jensen has a first-look photo of the new starship Enterprise (and it looks great) and short story that goes with it that reveals director J.J Abrams' favorite thing about Robert Wise's 1979 film "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" (and no, it wasn't the bald lady): "Abrams wasn't a huge fan of the original "Star Trek" TV series as a kid,  but he does have one unabashed gee-whiz Star Trek memory: watching the first feature film and marveling over the big reveal of the Enterprise during a long sequence in which James T. Kirk takes a slow-boat tour around the iconic starship. 'The coolest thing about it -- maybe the coolest thing in the movie -- was when you flew around the ship, you could see all the different panels that made up the ship,' says the director of the forthcoming Trek reboot, slated for a May 8, 2009, release. 'It was the first time I had ever seen that level of attention, that love of detail, given to the tangible, practical reality of the ship.'" [Entertainment Weekly]

A "Quantum" leap falls short: Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan was left cold by the icy new James Bond film, "Quantum of Solace," which opens Friday: "Outside of its title, 'Quantum of Solace' offers little solace for fans of the venerable James Bond franchise. All dressed up with no particular place to go, this 22nd Bond film tries hard but ends up an underachiever. ... Bond's superior, the redoubtable M (Judi Dench), is worried about the consequences of Bond being blinded by inconsolable rage. 'If you could avoid killing every possible lead,' she grouses at one point as only Dench can, 'it would be appreciated.' It's not only M who should be worried about Bond, it's audiences as well. For the vengeful secret agent is dangerously close to an automaton, a creature of such icy single-mindedness that even an actor of Craig's great ability has trouble making him recognizably human. That tendency toward detachment is enhanced by the change of directors. 'Casino Royale's' Martin Campell, an expert at this kind of glossy adventure filmmaking, has been replaced by Marc Forster, a cooler director who likes intense emotions ('Monster's Ball') but had trouble warming up even a natural heart-tugger like 'The Kite Runner.' 'Quantum of Solace's' script also seems rather tired and uninviting, and while its true not even critics go to a Bond film for the emotional moments, the story has to involve us for the elaborate action sequences to resonate the way they should." [Los Angeles Times]

Chip Kidd in town: Graphic designer and author Chip Kidd will be at Meltdown Comics and Collectibles (7522 Sunset Blvd.) tonight at 7 p.m. to talk about his book "Bat-Manga: The Secret History of Batman in Japan." There's been a dust-up in the comics community in recent weeks over the suggestion that Kidd's book, which collects up some 1960s work of manga writer and artist Jiro Kuwata, doesn't give Kuwata as much prominent credit on the project as he is due. It'll be interesting to see how Kidd handles that tonight. [Meltdown]

Bet on the Dark Horse: No comic-book company has had more success developing films out of new characters the way Dark Horse Comics has over the past 25 years with "The Mask," the "Hellboy" films, "300" and "Sin City." The biggest Marvel films are based on characters created in the 1960s, and DC's key box-office properties date back even further. So what's next from the Oregon publisher? Patrick Lee has this update from publisher Mike Richardson: "The most immediate is "R.I.P.D." ... David Dobkin ['Wedding Crashers'] is directing. We're doing it over at Universal Studios. We have a great script by [Matt] Manfredi and [Phil] Hay. R.I.P.D. stands for Rest in Peace Department. It's based on a graphic novel by Peter Lenkov. It's about dead cops that died in the line of duty that are sent back, basically, to get people who don't want to come peacefully, people who stayed behind. It's a lot of fun. ... It has a few of the elements of something like a 'Men in Black,' except this one has real scares in it. It's not sort of cartoon scares. A lot of humor, but real scary stuff going on.' Dark Horse is also developing several other films: 'Emily Strange,' based on the character created by Rob Reger and his company, Cosmic Debris Etc. 'I will say we'll have a good announcement coming up very shortly,' Richardson said. 'I'm working with Rob. Yes, we've set it up with a studio, ... but there'll be an official announcement coming up soon. ... [There's a] very interesting story that we've come up with, too. It'll add background to Emily.' And 'Freaks of the Heartland,' based on the graphic novel by Steve Niles ('30 Days of Night'). 'We just set up 'Freaks of the Heartland' over at Overture, with David Gordon Green ['Pineapple Express'] directing. And the writers just started working on that.'  [Sci Fi]

-- Geoff Boucher

"The Dark Knight" photo courtesy of Warner Bros., photo of Daniel Craig in "Quantum of Solace" courtesy of Columbia Pictures. "Bat-Manga" image courtesy of Pantheon Books.

William Shatner has a message for J.J. Abrams

Bill Shatner sat down for coffee with the Hero Complex a few days ago and made it clear that he feels left out because he wasn't invited to be in the new "Star Trek" film. So I was surprised when I read this quote from J.J. Abrams, the director of the new film, who was asked about Shatner's ire during an interview with AMC.com.

"It was very tricky. We actually had written a scene with him in it that was a flashback kind of thing, but the truth is, it didn't quite feel right. The bigger thing was that he was very vocal that he didn't want to do a cameo. We tried desperately to put him in the movie, but he was making it very clear that he wanted the movie to focus on him significantly, which, frankly, he deserves. The truth is, the story that we were telling required a certain adherence to the 'Trek' canon and consistency of storytelling. It's funny -- a lot of the people who were proclaiming that he must be in this movie were the same people saying it must adhere to canon. Well, his character died on screen. Maybe a smarter group of filmmakers could have figured out how to resolve that."

This quote got back to Shatner and he has responded via video in an interview with his daughter, Elizabeth:

Clearly, Shatner is smiling through gritted teeth. He's trying to chide Abrams but also sweet-talk the director into finding a last-minute spot for him in the film. I don't think it's going to happen (principal photography was completed in March) and it's going to be an awkward situation for Abrams, who certainly doesn't really need a 77-year-old Shatner in a film that follows young Kirk and his crew in their earliest adventures when they are fresh from Starfleet Academy.

-- Geoff Boucher

July 2008 photo of J.J. Abrams by Dan Steinberg/Associated Press

'Fringe' review: New show is 'uneven but promising'

"Fringe," the new show from J.J. Abrams, premieres Tuesday night (8 p.m., Fox) and Abrams has been pledging for weeks that it will be easier to follow than some of his other shows, which he believes left some viewers feeling, well, "Lost."

How does "Fringe" compare to his past work?

Is it too derivative of shows such as "The X-Files" or his own baby, "Alias"?

Here's the lowdown from Los Angeles Times television critic Mary McNamara, who has a mixed-bag review of the show:

The poor airline industry. As if rising gas prices, increased security measures and constant cost-cutting were not enough, now there’s another J.J. Abrams pilot. Travelers who have finally shaken the anxiety-provoking images of cult-inducing “Lost” can look forward to a whole new set of phobias thanks to the opening moments of Abrams’ new show “Fringe.”

As lightning crackles around an international flight to Boston, a wild-eyed passenger injects himself with something one can only hope is a tranquilizer and then next thing you know ... well, I don’t want to spoil anything for the 19 people who haven’t seen the pilot online, but it results in the assemblage of every law enforcement agency in the country donning hazmat suits.

Because comparisons are unavoidable, it must be noted up front that this is not the same sort of jaw-droppingly, what-the-heck-kind-of-show-is-this pilot that “Lost” had. Frankly, we know what kind of show this is going to be. “Fringe” stands for Fringe Science, which includes everything from mental telepathy to reanimation, so much of your enjoyment will depend on how much you still miss the “The X-Files.”

While “The X-Files” told us the truth is out there, “Fringe” posits the equally vague notion that “Everything is Part of a Pattern.” So, if you’re the type of person who needs every little thing, or indeed any little thing, to make sense in a pilot, then you should probably watch “Fringe” in solitude, preferably with the door closed, so the rest of us can enjoy it for what it is — an uneven, but promising jumble of horror, thriller and comedy that is not afraid to reference SpongeBob and “Altered States” in practically the same scene.

Let the games begin.

Comic-Con: Big bags, 'Fringe' and the floor

It's just the preview night, but the 'exclusives' sellout frustration, shoulder bumps, stroller trips and aisle clogging fun is already in full stride.  A few highlighted items, besides the crowds and $5 pretzel dogs:

-- Every year, there's THE bag.  The prized big bags that patrons will most likely carry around throughout the Con and are often completely given out by Friday. Bags from Warner Bros. (a vintage WB network bag with "Smallville," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Veronica Mars," and "Gilmore Girls" pictured (below), and a Wonder Woman bag), Little Big Planet, BET Animation, and a big frakkin' bag from the Sci Fi Channel were the ones making the rounds on the floor. Bag, you say?  While it may not seem like much, they are coveted, as evidenced by the fact that many sported last year's well-received Warner Bros. "Smallville" bag.

-- Hot booths included the California Browncoats (fans of Joss Whedon's "Firefly") booth which had an exclusive "Serenity" comic book and were the only booth to sell t-shirts from Whedon's recently released Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along blog); the NBC-Universal booth, which sported two-headed Hiro "Heroes" dolls and a sold-out "Battlestar Galactica" toaster; the Mattel booth, the DC booth (showing the "Watchmen" trailer ad infinitum; the"Star Wars" booth because ... it's "Star Wars"; and the Sideshow Collectibles booth, which showcased some alternative looks at Darth Vader among other things.

-- Wednesday's preview night is usually reserved for shopping the floor exclusively, with no TV or film programming, but in a first for Comic-Con, new TV show "Fringe" had a 6 o'clock airing in the huge Ballroom 20 area.  J.J. Abrams sent along a personal video introduction in which he congratulated the crowd on seeing the "first not illegal, unleaked, evil internet screening" of the much-hyped show.  A harrowing opening few minutes involving planes, mysteries, government agents in bed and melting faces left some of the sparse crowd gasping.

-- Jevon Phillips

Why some lady on the web thinks you should shut up and watch 'Fringe'

This post in from Christie St. Martins, blogger extraordinaire of Funny Pages 2.0:

Every year, I check out the fall line-up and pray that maybe I'll get something to fill in the gap between my lost and beloved "Star Trek" series and of course the lulls between "Battlestar Galactica" seasons and their often questionable TV-made movie attempts. Every year, I see a few potential hopefuls that are always squashed for me by cynical bloggers getting the scoop before I see the pilot. You know that, OR I find out that the sci-fi show I was excited about was produced in Canada. Either way, every year I lose a little more hope.

You would think, with the success of the box office for the last eight years for graphic novel film adaptations that they would really try to up the ante for prime-time television. "Heroes" sure, thank you Fox, but guess what? We rather patient and loyal geeks have to wait months and months with only awful reality TV ("So You Think You Can Dance," excluded. Whatever. Mock me all you want, it's great.) to keep us company.

This brings me to the potential ray of light in my sad geekless televised world, "Fringe." "Fringe" is the fourth TV series created by  J.J. Abrams, of most recent "Lost" fame, that aims to explore mysteries of the paranormal as well as the relationships between the characters while steeped in yummy mythology. I was even one of Abrams loyal viewers with "Alias." (Yeah, I loved "Felicity" too, but this isn't a sleepover so I'll keep my mouth shut. Sort of.) Although, I am not particularly proud of the "Alias" years. After the fourth person died, but didn't really die, because, oh look, they are back in Sydney's life again, it was just a bit too much. Then "Lost" came around, oh happy day! Plane disaster stories. Delicious.