The IESB are report­ing that Len Wise­man is no longer involved with the Escape from New York remake, which at first glance would imply that he plans to work on GoW. How­ever, through IESB’s con­tacts, it is now rumored that he is not involved in the video game adap­ta­tion either, and, more alarm­ingly, that New Line Cin­ema might pull out altogether:

Wise­man is also off the video game adap­ta­tion and New Line Cin­ema will most likely not move for­ward with the film at all. Our source is say­ing that the stu­dio has con­cerns with bal­loon­ing bud­get of the film.

We’ll have to wait and see what hap­pens on this one folks. Thanks for the heads up Philip.

GameDaily have posted up an insight­ful inter­view with Cliff Bleszin­ski, inclined towards the devel­op­ment of the movie. It cov­ers the movie’s story-telling and script writ­ing by Stu­art Beat­tie, R-ratings and the cons of cast­ing wrestlers as the main char­ac­ters. I’ve extracted the high­lights below, for the full arti­cle click the link above! Thanks for the heads up John!

BIZ: What’s it like work­ing with Stu­art Beat­tie, the man who helped turn Pirates of the Caribbean into a Hol­ly­wood block­buster?

CliffyB: Stu is amaz­ing to work with because he knows Gears inside and out. He beat the game sev­eral times and he was hooked on mul­ti­player. You go into these Hol­ly­wood meet­ings and expect a cer­tain type of Hol­ly­wood peo­ple, many of whom I’ve met. […] He respects the fran­chise and he’s a fan of it. He also knows how to write a com­pelling movie and adap­ta­tion. […] I think we have a really great script and now it’s just a mat­ter of get­ting the right direc­tor attached and mak­ing sure it becomes a “AAA” block­buster movie.

[…] The fact that Gears is an M-rated fran­chise and involves peo­ple get­ting chain­sawed in half, it’s got to be a pretty f***ing hard­core movie.

[…] I get a lot of forum posts where Gears fans tell us we need to cast this wrestler as Mar­cus. I don’t give a f**k if the guy’s buff or six foot five. What mat­ters most is that this guy is charis­matic and he can act and is some­body com­pelling that you want to watch on screen. […] What mat­ters is charisma because you can’t fake that. […]

CliffyB: We shared every detail imag­in­able with Stu on the fran­chise as far as the story bible and all of the secrets that every­body wants to know about what went down in Gears of War. […] He knows the under­ly­ing themes of the fran­chise and all of the under­ly­ing moti­va­tions of each of the char­ac­ters. That’s fuel for the screen­play that he’s written.

[…] New Line, hav­ing done Lord of the Rings, they know how to back a very risky but also a poten­tially very lucra­tive fran­chise and make sure it’s treated with the respect it deserves.

Halo 3 let’s you drive a warthog, but not like this. Here is the Bungie team try­ing out a real life Warthog. If only they cre­ated some of those Covenant vehi­cles, maybe we’ll get to see some if the movie ever pulls itself into gear.

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.