Universal has finally confirmed that Andy Serkis, the actor who brought Gollum to life in the LORD OF THE RINGS series, will indeed play the giant ape in director Peter Jackson's version of KING KONG, reports HOLLYWOOD REPORTER. In addition, Serkis will play Lumpy the cook, a ship member on the Venture as it ventures to Skull Island.

With the kick off of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Convention in Chicago (June 10-12), Discreet announced that leading architectural firms are using its design visualization offerings for a competitive advantage in winning new commissions and securing approval for high-profile design concepts, including Perkins & Will, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP, Kohn Pederson Fox, Ellerbe Becket and Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum.

Two of the most popular shorts at Annecy this week were Mike Gabriel’s LORENZO and Chris Landreth’s RYAN. You can be sure that both cutting edge digital works (from Disney and Copper Heart Ent./National Film Board of Canada, respectively) will be vying for an Oscar next year, and VFXWorld is proud to offer an exclusive visual development gallery for LORENZO and an in-depth profile of RYAN by Greg Singer.

Viggo Mortensen has been tapped to star in the New Line Cinema adaptation of graphic novel, A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, reports VARIETY. David Cronenberg is set to direct from a script by Josh Olson (INFESTED). The film set to go before cameras in the fall.

Based on the Paradox Press graphic novel by John Wagner, Mortensen will play a small town diner owner who lives peacefully with his lawyer wife and children, until a random act of violence propels him to hero status in press and brings him to the unwanted attention of thugs who believe he is a former colleague on the lam.

An intrepid group of students from Minneapolis will be trekking to Northern California to attend VES 2004, the Visual Effects Society's sixth annual Festival of vfx, June 18-20 in San Rafael. This will be the third year in a row that the aspiring visual effects artists and animators from The Art Institutes International Minnesota (AIM) will attend the festival, accompanied by faculty member Michael Heagle, an instructor of Visual Effects and Motion Graphics.

Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer Films have bought Terry Rossio (SHREK, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN) and Bill Marsilii's romantic thriller script DEJA VU for several million dollars, reports VARIETY. Buena Vista Motion Pictures Group president Nina Jacobson will oversee movie with evp production Jason Reed. Rossio and his writing partner Ted Elliott will exec produce with Jerry Bruckheimer Films' Mike Stenson and Chad Oman, who originally brought the script to Bruckheimer.

With SPIDER-MAN 2 coming to theaters June 30, 2004, Columbia TriStar Home Ent. is naturally plugging Spidey on DVD as well, reissuing SPIDER-MAN in a three-disc deluxe edition ($24.95) with a few new extras aimed at promoting the sequel, along with a superior quality SPIDER-MAN Superbit disc ($26.96).

While the first two discs in the deluxe edition are the same as the previous SPIDER-MAN collection, disc three includes the following:

Costume design featurette

Ex’pression College for Digital Arts of Emeryville, California, announced that its digital visual media students were chosen to design and produce the graphic openings for the Visual Effects Society’s (VES) sixth annual VES Festival on June 18-20 in San Rafael, California. A team of Ex’pression students under the direction of instructor Stephen Kopels is also responsible for videotaping all of the presentations for the VES archives.

Pixar Animation Studios has set a Q3 release for RenderMan Pro Server Release 12 (now entering beta).

Highlights from RenderMan Pro Server Release 12:

3D Baking
* The point cloud file format has been extended to support arbitrary data, and Pixar's innovative format, the brick map, supports data of arbitrary size. Together, any kind of data can be baked to disk and then retrieved with great efficiency.

CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK director/writer David Twohy has announced he is writing a two-hour movie for The Sci Fi Channel that would follow the fate of the Kyra character from the upcoming PITCH BLACK sequel, reports SCI FI WIRE. The character was first introduced as a boyish young teen in PITCH BLACK, but has grown into a beautiful but ferocious fighter for CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK. The movie will serve as an end-around pilot for a potential series tentatively titled KYRA, THE LOST YEARS, which would show what happened when Kyra chose to find Riddick after the events of PITCH BLACK.

Softimage Co. announced the worldwide availability of SOFTIMAGE|XSI version 4.0 -- the latest release of its industry leading nonlinear 3D production environment. Starting on June 7, 2004, Softimage customers with maintenance contracts can download version 4.0 at www.softimage.com/download, and first-time orders are scheduled to start shipping next week.

Turbo Squid, worldwide publisher for the Discreet Certified 3ds max Plug-in Program, has released the first two TURBO TOYBOX 3D content packs. Each TURBO TOYBOX contains 30 or more 3D models for gamers to use in customizing their favorite games created with Discreet's gmax. The first two products, Starter TOYBOX and Vehicles TOYBOX, are now available and sell for $9.95 each.

Rushes Postproduction Ltd. has promoted Paul Hannaford to head of visual effects.

In his new role, Hannaford will be responsible for the visual effects department, encompassing Flame, Inferno, Fire, Combustion and Backdraft. He will also continue to work as an effects artist and vfx shoot supervisor.

Motion Analysis Studios (MAS) has teamed with Digital Domain to create the seamless integration between live-action and CG elements needed for Fox’s upcoming I, ROBOT (opening July 16, 2004).

Hosted by Lindsay Lohan of MEAN GIRLS, the 2004 MTV Movie Awards, held at the Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, California, have announced the winners. The awards will air on MTV June 10, 2004 at 9:00 pm.

Paramount has named 13 GOING ON 30 helmer Gary Winick as director of a live-action/CG version of E.B. White's classic all-time best selling children's tale, CHARLOTTE'S WEB, reports VARIETY. Jordan Kerner (SNOW DOGS) will produce the film from a screenplay first drafted by Susannah Grant (ERIN BROCKOVICH) then revised by Karey Kirkpatrick (CHICKEN RUN, CURIOUS GEORGE).

Given the preeminence of CG characters in movies and gaming, Vicon Motion Systems has acquired Los Angeles-based House of Moves (HOM) in an effort to expand its U.S. motion capture presence. The move formally establishes HOM, an indie motion-capture service bureau of long standing, as a new technology test-bed for Vicon.

Busy director John Woo has signed on to direct Paramount feature adaptation of Tom Clancy's RAINBOW SIX, reports VARIETY. The long in-development pic was originally brought to Paramount by Artists Management Group's Michael Ovitz in 1999. Michael Shiffer, Bill Wisher, Art Monterastelli, Frank Capello and John Enbom have all taken cracks at the script over the years. The story follows former CIA agent John Clark, who leaves the agency to set up an U.K.-based multinational organization that fights terrorism.

Alias and Motion Computing agreed to include the full version of Alias SketchBook Pro on all Motion M1400 Tablet PCs configured with the Motion Pak software package sold worldwide. The bundle combines Motion Computing's cutting-edge Tablet PCs with Alias SketchBook Pro's best-in-class digital pen-based sketching and annotation software.

On the eve of the industry transition to PCI Express, ATI Technologies announced a complete line-up of FireGL workstation graphics accelerators with full native support for this new bus architecture. The newly branded Visualization series will offer four new graphics accelerators: the high-end FireGL V7100, mid-range FireGL V5100 and, redefining the entry-level segment, the FireGL V3200 and the FireGL V3100.