Nerdy News

Jill Pantozzi | April 1st, 2009

Cable station IFC is adapting Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake to the small screen for it’s first stab at a made-for-tv film says Variety. Based on the erotic fantasy novels, the project will actually be billed under the book’s Marvel comic adaptation title, Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter. Lionsgate and After Dark Films will be co-developers and the script has already been written by Glen Morgan (X-Files, Final Destination). Production begins this summer and The Hollywood Reporter says, “IFC is targeting the movie to its core base of men 18-34 and plans to air it next year.” 

Huh. Really? Men 18-34? That makes absolutely no sense to me. I had no knowledge of the book series when I picked up the first issue of the comic way back when. Chick fighting vampires, it was already a hit in my mind. I think I managed to read three issues (the third bought by mistake) before I stopped. It was absolutely atrocious and I wanted to jab my eyes out with forks every time there was another shirtless vampire. It made more sense once I found out the “erotic fantasy novel” part but I still wondered if this was what “girl comics” were supposed to be. I wanted no part of them.

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Paramount Pictures and J.J. Abrams announced they’re moving forward with a sequel to the new Star Trek film. Ease off the thrusters there pal, your movie hasn’t even been released yet.

Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof have been hired to write the screenplay which they’re aiming to have done by Christmas. Variety reports, “There’s obviously a lot of hubris involved in signing on to write a sequel of a movie that hasn’t even come out yet,” said Lindelof, “But we’re so excited about the first one that we wanted to proceed.”

It really does take guts to begin work on a sequel when you don’t even know how the public will perceive your first film. Variety says Kurtzman and the others will wait before writing too much, “Obviously we discussed ideas, but we are waiting to see how audiences respond next month,” he said. “With a franchise rebirth, the first movie has to be about origin. But with a second, you have the opportunity to explore incredibly exciting things. We’ll be ambitious about what we’ll do.”

It certainly is ambitious but I’m of the mind they might be jinxing themselves big time. I can see Lindelof at a convention down the road answering questions about the amazing story he had planned for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Locke, that never got made.

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What do Mads Mikkelsen, Gemma Arterton and Alexa Davalos all have in common? They’ve all just been cast in the Clash of the Titans remake and they’ve all starred next to Daniel Craig in other films.

Mads Mikkelsen, who played the villain in Casino Royale, will play Draco. Gemma Arterton appeared in the more recent Bond flick, Quantum of Solace, and has been cast as Io. The World War II drama Defiance is where Alexa Davalos starred with Craig and will be playing the captured Andromeda.

The newcomers join Sam Worthington, who was the first to be announced, starring as Perseus in the remake of the Ray Harryhausen classic. The Incredible Hulk’s Louis Leterrier will be directing. All I know is there better be a clockwork Bubo and not some CGI crap.