Brickyard VFX of Santa Monica, California, provided extensive beauty and split screen work on a :30 spot for The Gap titled "Boyfriend Trouser," directed by the Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE). The spot stars actors Claire Danes (SHOPGIRL, MY SO-CALLED LIFE) and Patrick Wilson (RUNNING WITH SCISSORS, LITTLE CHILDREN).
With it in U.S. theaters for less than a week, THE HOST is already being circled as a remake possibility at Universal, reports SCI FI Wire. In an interview, the original's director Bong Joon-ho stated that Universal had bought the rights to his film, which follows a dysfunctional family as they try to rescue their youngest member from the clutches of a genetically altered amphibian, which has run amok in Seoul.
Well, 300 did a whopping $70.8M at the box office last weekend, surpassing any previous March opening, and broke an IMAX record too with $3.6M. A lot of attention is deservedly being paid to the painterly look of Zack Snyder's adaptation of the Frank Miller graphic novel. You can read Tara DiLullo Bennett's in-depth feature on how they pulled it off with a virtual backlot and some cunning CG. Plus there's an assortment of great breakdown images and a QuickTime clip from the trailer.
The Foundry of London, which recently won an Academy Award for development of the Furnace suite of plug-ins, announced at its 10-year anniversary party last Friday, March 9, that it has acquired D2 Software's flagship NUKE compositing software.
The Foundry also makes Keylight (another Academy Award winner) and Tinder plug-ins, and is the creator and major supporter of the OFX plug-in standard, plug-ins that are currently supported within NUKE.
The following statement can be found on The Foundry website:
Daniel Craig exceeded all expectations last year as the sixth and grittiest 007 in CASINO ROYALE, rebooting the franchise with an all-time best worldwide box office gross of nearly $600 million. Now Ian Fleming's first James Bond adventure comes to the home theater March 13, 2007, from Sony Pictures Home Ent. in a variety of formats: two-disc DVD ($28.96), Blu-ray Disc ($38.96) and PSP ($28.95).
300: THE IMAX EXPERIENCE contributed a record-setting $3.6 million of the $70,855,301 that the film grossed at the domestic box office opening weekend. 300: THE IMAX EXPERIENCE played in 62 domestic IMAX theaters, while 300 played in 3,103 locations across the country.
Sony Pictures Imageworks has proposed moving more than 100 jobs from Culver City to New Mexico if lawmakers approve a state bill next week that would make permanent an existing program providing a combined 25% rebate on taxable production expenses, reports THE LOS ANGELES TIMES.
A proposed 112,000-square-foot digital facility would be housed within the newly opened Albuquerque Studios. The partial relocation would not only reduce the cost of making vfx and 3D animation, but also ease the burden of the Culver City facility that currently operates at full capacity.
Eustace Lycett, a 43-year Disney veteran who won Academy Awards for his special photographic effects in MARY POPPINS and BEDKNOBS AND BROOMSTICKS, passed away on Nov. 16, 2006. He died of natural causes at Park Vista at Morningside Nursing Home in Fullerton, California. He was 91.
300 star Gerard Butler is part of CAA's pitch for a remake of John Carpenter's 1981 sci-fi cult classic ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, reports VARIETY. Neal Moritz is set to produce from a script by BLACK HAWK DOWN writer Ken Nolan. The story follows Snake Plissken as he is given the task of rescuing the president from Manhattan, which has been turned into maximum-security prison.
SPEED RACER, the live-action feature from the Wachowski brothers, now opens May 9, 2008, two weeks earlier than previously slated, thus avoiding a Memorial weekend showdown with INDIANA JONES 4 from George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. In addition to opening wide domestically, the actioner from Warner Bros. Pictures will be released day-and-date in a majority of the international markets.
eyeon Software announced the release of the Fusion 5.1 Learning Edition, which gives compositors of every skill level the opportunity to learn Fusion.
The learning edition was created to give everyone the chance to experiment, test and grow his or her compositing skills on eyeon's award-winning desktop visual effects software.
Maggie Gyllenhaal is in closing negotiations to take on the role of Rachel Dawes, which was played by Katie Holmes in BATMAN BEGINS, in Christopher Nolan's THE DARK KNIGHT, reports VARIETY. Holmes stepped down from the part earlier in the year.
Late spring or early summer is when the film will start shooting with it set for a summer 2008 release.
Emma Thomas, Charles Roven and Nolan are producing with Legendary Pictures and Warner funding the project.
CORPSE BRIDE writer John August has been tapped to adapt DC Comics' SHAZAM! into a feature film for New Line, according to THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER. Peter Segal (TOMMY BOY, ANGER MANAGEMENT) is set to direct and will also produce with Michael Ewing.
The film will chronicle the easygoing Billy Batson and his superhero alter ego Captain Marvel. Batson changed by saying the word "shazam," giving the attributes to six Greek gods. The character appeared in DC Comics in the 1970s and originally appeared in the 1940s as a Fawcett Comics title.
New Line has beat out several other studios to buy David Gilcreast's comedy spec script CRYPTOZOOLOGISTS, VARIETY reports. ContraFilm's Beau Flynn and Tripp Vinson will produce.
The story watches a group of cryptozoologists, scientists who study mythical creatures such as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, as they encounter a plethora of creature sittings in San Francisco.
Management firm Nine Yards, which reps Gilcreast, will exec produce.
wondertouch has released three new libraries in its Professional Emitters (Pro Emitters) product line for particleIllusion 3.0 software. Each library contains 30 emitters that are thematically geared to providing sophisticated, ready-to-use, motion graphics style particle-based effects.
PipelineFX announced the release of Qube! 5.1 render farm management software.
Cascade ACM SIGGRAPH, Oregon and Southwest Washington's local SIGGRAPH chapter, announced that award-winning Oregon State University professor of Computer Science, Dr. Mike Bailey, is scheduled to lecture on graphics processing unit (GPU) shader programming and visualization on March 22 at PCC Cascade Campus in Portland, Oregon. Titled "GPU Shader Programming for Fun and Visualization," Bailey's lecture will discuss the basics of vertex and fragment GPU shader programming, as well as the brand-new geometry shader capability, and its specific use in scientific data visualization.
Hong Kong's Emperor Motion Picture and Japan's Kadokawa Herald Pictures have teamed to adapt the popular SLAM DUNK manga into a live-action feature, VARIETY reports.
Kevin Chu Yin Ping (EXPECT A MIRACLE) will direct the pic, which starts shooting next week in Shanghai and Taiwan. It's scheduled for a winter 2008 release.
MY NAME IS EARL star Jason Lee has signed on to play the Chipmunks' dad, Dave Seville, in Fox 2000 Pictures and 20th Century Fox Animation's live-action/CG animated ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS feature, reports the trades. Tim Hill (GARFIELD: A TAIL OF TWO KITTIES) is directing and veteran TV writer Jon Vitti has penned the screenplay, which will depict the origins of the singing trio.
Universal Pictures has optioned Nick Redfern's novel, THREE MEN SEEKING MONSTERS: SIX WEEKS IN PURSUIT OF WEREWOLVES, LAKE MONSTER, GIANT CATS, GHOSTLY DEVIL DOGS, AND APE-MEN, as a starring project for NAPOLEON DYNAMITE star Jon Heder, reports VARIETY.
Jon, Doug and Dan Heder's Universal-based Greasy Ent. is set to produce alongside Ken Atchity's Atchity Ent. Intl. Chi-li Wong will exec produce. Mike Kuciak is the co-produce.
Dominic Monaghan (LOST) and Ron Perlman (HELLBOY) have signed on to producer-actor Larry Fessenden's Glass Eye Pix's horror film I SELL THE DEAD, according to THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER.
Monaghan has the role of an 18th century gravedigger and Perlman will play his priest. Fessenden (BROKEN FLOWERS) will also play Monaghan's London corpse trading partner. Angus Scrimm, who is best known as the Tall Man in the PHANTASM horror series, is in final negotiations to play the aristocratic doctor who buys the dead bodies.
M. Night Shyamalan has set up his next film THE HAPPENING at 20th Century Fox, reports VARIETY. It will start filming in Philadelphia this August with June 2008 penciled in as the release date. Shyamalan will also produce with Sam Mercer and Barry Mendel, who produced Shyamalan's THE SIXTH SENSE and UNBREAKABLE.
The R-rated, $57 million-budgeted film is a paranoid thriller where a family must flee from a natural emergency that threatens Earth.
Realscan 3D, an industry leader in mobile, high resolution and high color structured light 3D scanning, today announced that advancements in its proprietary scanning pipeline now allow the company to create and deliver a full-body, animation-ready normal-mapped character in any number of different levels of detail (LOD's) to film or videogame productions in only four days -- 20% less time than previously required. The same advancements have enabled Realscan to reduce the cost of adding levels of detail and normal maps to their scans, savings the company passes on to their clients.
mental images announced the upcoming availability of mental mill Artist Edition at the Games Developer Conference in San Francisco. mental images is known for providing artists and visual effects professionals with leading edge software tools to render their imagination visible such as mental ray and now mental mill, which is a breakthrough technology for the creation of hardware shaders in all popular formats.
Organic Motion Inc. announced the industry's first full body, markerless motion capture system. Functioning without the use of markers or body suits, Organic Motion's technology improves every step of the animation process by producing immediately usable clean data that can be imported into MotionBuilder, Autodesk's leading realtime character animation application, as well as any custom software applications. Organic Motion will be exhibiting at GDC (North Hall, booth #5603) in San Francisco, March 7-9.
