Accord­ing to one of our forum mem­bers, zandor117, who was present at the ADV panel at Animé Week­end Atlanta, ADV’s David Williams said that the Evan­ge­lion live action movie is now mov­ing into pro­duc­tion. We have seen no other report, even though the same panel was used to announce sev­eral animé licenses that have been reported by rep­utable animé news sources.

Accord­ing to zandor117, this is what was said:

Ques­tioner: “Is there any­thing new about the EVA movie?”

David Williams: “The EVA movie is now in Production”

Ques­tioner: “Can you tell us the director?”

David Williams: “I am not allowed to say that yet.”

ADV has not yet com­mented further.

While this does not seem like full pro­duc­tion (i.e. film­ing actors) or even fully fledged pre-production like set build­ing, the main con­crete news seems to be that a direc­tor has signed on, mov­ing the project beyond the pro­posal and devel­op­ment phase. Pre­vi­ously, nego­ti­a­tions were under way with a short­list of direc­tors who had expressed an inter­est, but the deci­sion had not been made yet.

Read the orig­i­nal dis­cus­sion thread

Doesn’t this just make you crave for a Halo Live Action movie? Neill Blomkamp really is some­thing spe­cial, and imag­ine that com­bined with the mas­tery of Peter Jack­son. Why isn’t this being made faster?

Oh, and I hope you are all enjoy­ing Halo 3!

BBC News are report­ing that a spe­cial effects tech­ni­cian has been killed in a stunt prac­tice run for an upcom­ing Dark Knight scene, at the Qine­tiq race­track in Sur­rey, Eng­land. The tech­ni­cian had been on a cam­era truck report­edly fol­low­ing the Bat­mo­bile. The fatal acci­dent occurred when the 4x4 truck ran into a tree.

“Warner Bros Pic­tures and the entire cast and crew of The Dark Knight are deeply sad­dened by this tragedy, and their hearts and prayers go out to the fam­ily and loved ones of the deceased.” 

As do ours.

The acci­dent is now being inves­ti­gated by Sur­rey police and the Health and Safety Executive.

The Dark Knight film­ing sched­ule is tak­ing Bat­man to Hong Kong this Novem­ber, where a planned 9 week stint shall take place. How­ever not all peo­ple are wel­com­ing this hero’s arrival, Hong Kong politi­cians have sited the pos­si­bil­ity of traf­fic dis­rup­tions and noise pol­lu­tion as cause for con­cern. For instance, the use of a heli­copter dur­ing night time (2 a.m.) scenes has had politi­cians stat­ing that res­i­dents should pur­chase some ear plugs for the period.

Film­ing is expected to revolve around “The Cen­ter”, the fourth tallest sky­scraper in Hong Kong at 73 storeys.

Source: Reuters, Hong Kong Standard

A blog net­work deliv­er­ing the lat­est news updates on a range of in-production block­buster movies.

In the french show “La Minute” from AlloCiné, there is a very brief Heath Ledger inter­view. Within he men­tions how much fun play­ing the joker has been and how the expe­ri­ence as exceeded all of his expectations.

To watch the video, head over here. It starts at about 2:15 in, if you want to skip all of the french.

Just a quick note to tell you all that the Offi­cial Dark Knight teaser has been made avail­able on Apple’s Quick­time movie trail­ers ser­vice, in high def and iPod formats.

A num­ber of web­sites (Hor­ror Movies, Movies Online) are report­ing that the Gears of War movie is being fast tracked into pro­duc­tion with­out a named direc­tor, with some spec­u­la­tion that this is as a result of pend­ing strike action in Hollywood.

If this is the case a direc­tor will more than likely be named in the com­ing month. Len Wise­man maybe?