AWN Headline News

Blur Studios short ROCKFISH will be transformed into a CG feature via Vin Diesels One Race Films. Diesel will also lend his voice to the main character. One Race is trying to secure financing for the sci-fi film, which it believes will cost under $30 million. In addition Diesel will produce alongside his partner George Zakk and Blur creative director Tim Miller, who wrote and directed the short and will direct the feature.

Warner Bros. Online announced that IBM will provide the on-demand technology and services to power THE MATRIX ONLINE, Warner Bros. Interactive Ent.'s first massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), co-published with SEGA of America. Based on THE MATRIX film trilogy, THE MATRIX ONLINE will be released in North America on March 22, 2005, and in Europe on April 8, 2005.

Seamus O'Kane has left VTR to join The Mills transatlantic telecine team of Fergus McCall, Adam Scott, Paul Harrison, Jamie Wilkinson, Tom Poole and James Bamford.

OKane, who begins in April, has worked with award-winning directors Ivan Zacharias, Steve Reeves, Stuart Douglas, Chris Palmer, Vince Squibb and Tom Carty. Among his many recent credits are: Stella ENGLISH AIRMAN (Zacharias), HSBC EASY RIDER (Palmer) and Lynx KUNG FU ROMANTIC (Tom Carty).

Columbia Pictures has hired Keanu Reeves to topline its long gestating THE 8TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD project, reports VARIETY. XXX director Rob Cohen will direct with Neal Moritz producing. Charlie Mitchell has been hired to rework the script from Cormac and Marianne Wibberly and Tedi Sarafian. The eighth-century tale will place Sinbad and his crew in China searching for the Lamp of Aladdin, while encountering a supernatural Chinese general, gorgeous empress and fantastical creatures. Director John Singleton was previously attached to this project.

Disney-based Mandeville Films has announced that it will start production on a SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON remake in September at the Queenslands Warner Roadshow Studios, reports PRODUCTION WEEKLY. Greg Poiriers screenplay has set the story during the time period of the book -- the beginning of the 19th century. Based on a novel by Johann David Wyss, the story chronicles the adventures of the Robinson family after they are washed ashore on an uncharted tropical island following a stormy shipwreck. The original 1960s film version starred John Mills and Dorothy McGuire.

Broadway Video Enterprises and GoodTimes Ent. have finalized an exclusive deal with Distant Horizon, acquiring worldwide television, merchandising, licensing (all categories) and home video rights to THUNDERFORCE, one of the hottest Taiwanese youth properties. This mystical martial arts franchise, to be renamed WULIN WARRIORS: LEGEND OF THE SEVEN STARS for the international and domestic market, will debut on the Cartoon Network in the U.S. this fall.

In a new Simon & Schuster book titled DISNEY WAR, Pulitzer-Prize winning author and journalist James B. Stewart provides an explosive and vividly detailed account of turmoil within the Walt Disney Co. and of the controversial two-decade tenure of ceo Michael Eisner ($29.95).