Various Internet sources have claimed that Fox Home Entertainment and LucasFilms have released information to retailers that the original STAR WARS trilogy will be released on DVD November 2, 2004. These rumors first started when LucasFilms held a hush hush invitation only marketing preview in San Francisco on Nov. 5, 2003. Force.net is stating that the films with be packaged individually and not as a box set. Fox Home Entertainment has told VFXWorld it is too early to confirm any of the details until LucasFilms informs them.

On the heels of Ridley Scott's recent director's cut of ALIEN comes ALIEN QUADRILOGY, the ultimate box set of the sci-fi franchise and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment's (TCFHE) most ambitious DVD project yet. Streeting Dec. 2, 2003 and priced at $99.98, QUADRILOGY contains four films, nine discs and 45 hours of bonus materials. Plus new vfx in ALIEN and ALIEN3 supplied by TCFHE and five houses (Svengali, R!OT, Encore, Frantic and Modern Video). There are 15 new CG shots in ALIEN, including CG blood, CG fire, wire removal and star fields.

Disney's PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL, which has amassed more than $304M to date, arrives Dec. 2, 2003 on DVD (Walt Disney Home Entertainment, $29.99). The two-disc set includes a bounty of supplemental riches, including audio commentaries by director Gore Verbinski and Johnny Depp, deleted scenes, a "making-of" featurette, "Moonlight" scene progression, blooper reel and an interactive history of pirates.

Spike TV (a division of MTV Networks) will be airing animation created using ILL Clan Inc.’s proprietary 3D animation technique called machinima. By modifying off-the-shelf computer game technology, the New York animation studio produces machinima in a fraction of the time it would take using typical computer animation techniques.

Finalists in the nine of 12 categories of competition for the Australian Effects and Animation Festival (AEAF) Awards have been announced. Winners in each category will be announced at the AEAF Awards presentation, Dec. 9, 2003 at 7:00 pm. AEAF will be held at the Sydney Convention Center, Darling Harbor from December 7-10.

All finalists entries will be screened during the Awards ceremony in an evening of animation and vfx entertainment

NXN Software has integrated support for Kaydara's universal FBX file interchange format into its flagship asset management product, NXN alienbrain Studio. The integration provides versioning, workflow and intuitive file management for FBX files.

Syd Mead, the renowned designer behind such films as BLADE RUNNER, TRON, 2010, and ALIENS, has joined the EXPOSÉ 2 Advisory Committee. EXPOSÉ 2 is the second in Ballistic Publishing's series of award-winning digital art books celebrating the talents of digital artists worldwide. Advisory Committee members will collaboratively assist in the selection of artwork to be presented in EXPOSÉ 2, as well as take on an advisory role ensuring the highest quality standards.

In addition to selling mental ray 3.2 integrated in 3ds max 6, Discreet will now offer a standalone version of the high-quality rendering solution. mental ray 3.2 can be deployed in multi-workstation and render farm configurations enabling greater return-on-investment and productivity gains for the world's largest community of 3D animators in film, games and design visualization.

Digital Element, an Oakland-based software developer and publishing firm specializing in art tools, and Digimation Inc., a leading provider of 3D models, announced the release of the Modelshop plug-in for Photoshop, which includes 50 3D models from Digimation's Model Bank Collection.

dvGarage teams up with the Gnomon School of Visual Effects up to make Maya more accessible to new users. THE MAYA LAB: VOLUME 1 provides a visual step-by-step introduction to the powerful but sometimes complicated application.

"We get requests for step-by-step training," explained Gnomon founder Alex Alvarez, "but we wouldn't be able to cover everything that we do if we built this kind of training day to day. It's really a daunting task to get it right."

Kaydara Inc. and MAXON Computer GmbH announced full integration of Kaydara's versatile FBX 3D interchange format into the new CINEMA 4D R8.5 upgrade, MAXON's premier high-end 3D modeling and animation tool. Kaydara FBX allows for the universal interchange of 3D data between every major 3D package and a significant number of second-tier applications.

X2: X-MEN UNITED (Fox Home Entertainment, $29.98) has arrived on DVD. The highly anticipated follow-up to X-MEN has director Bryan Singer and crew surer footed with both the comic book conventions and demanding vfx, supervised by Michael Fink, who recently wrote about the history of previs for VFXWORLD.

Warner Bros.' GOTHIKA, the contemporary ghost story starring Halle Berry, Robert Downey Jr. and Penelope Cruz, marks the debut of new digital fire effects created by CafeFX. With fire a central motif in the movie, CafeFX was challenged to develop custom software for fire shading and motion in key sequences, and with creating effects that heighten the impact of other frightening scenes.

Cinesite (Europe) Ltd announced that it has moved into production on visual effects for several major feature films, which will complete throughout 2004. These include TROY (Warner Bros.), HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN (Warner Bros.), ALIEN VS. PREDATOR (Fox), AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS (Walden Media), SAHARA (Paramount), KING ARTHUR (Buena Vista) and ALFIE (Paramount).

Veteran motion picture and television animator Everett Burrell has joined Café FX as animation supervisor. Burrell comes to Café Fx from Cantina Pictures Inc. He brings 18 years experience managing teams of 3D animators, 3D digitizers, texture artists, compositors, technical directors and freelance artists, and working collaboratively with directors, producers, art directors and software engineers in defining the creative and technical direction of projects.

For ABC’s PETER JENNINGS REPORTING: THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION—BEYOND CONSPIRACY, the 3D animation was created by Dale K. Myers, an Emmy-winning animator and author, with a BOXX 3DBOXX workstation, running Newtek’s LightWave 3D software. The workstation contained dual Intel Xeon 3.06 processors, 4GB RAM and a 3Dlabs Wildcat 4 7210 graphics board.

In an interview with the TORONTO STAR, actor Andy Serkis, the man behind LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWER’s scene-stealing CG character Gollum, alluded to his re-teaming with RINGS director Peter Jackson as the big ape in KING KONG. The article stated, “Serkis has an even bigger assignment ahead of him. Rumour has it he'll be the face of King Kong in Peter Jackson's planned 2005 remake of the legendary ape epic.

Moviegoers attending the special engagement of Disney's THE HAUNTED MANSION at Hollywood's historic El Capitan Theatre (Nov. 26, 2003 through Jan. 4, 2004) will have the opportunity to explore a rare behind-the-scenes attraction about the making of the movie. "The Haunted Mansion - Hollywood" features the actual sets, costumes and vfx designed and built by the film's Academy Award-winning team of artists at Sony Imageworks.

The world of integrated effects creation just got faster. Shipping immediately for an upgrade price of $199, Boris FX 7 brings high performance directly into the editing environment with new OpenGL acceleration and faster renders. Editors can now experience advanced keyframe control with more than 20 new filters and paint tools for advanced masking and compositing.

Buena Vista Pictures Distribution has acquired the domestic distribution rights to Walden Media's adventure comedy, AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS, starring Jackie Chan. The film will be released by Walt Disney Pictures as a summer 2004 tentpole.