Friday, October 20, 2006

Dance your cares away...from Halo

The Fraggles are coming. hooray! Recently I picked up Fraggle Rock season 1 on dvd, and have been really loving it. The Fraggles we're always my favorite muppets for some reason. Anyways, as I mentioned in an earlier post there have been some rumblings about a Fraggle Rock film in the works. Well, it looks like things are actually progressing well on the Fraggle movie. They've got a writer on it now, and you'll never guess who it is.... Ahamet Zappa. Yup, according to AICN, Frank Zappa's son is writing/developing the film for the Henson company. He's only written one other film which has yet to get made but has a great title, The Monstrous Memoirs of a Mighty McFearless. While I have no clue about Ahmet's writing ability, I do know that the Fraggles are pretty tripped out as a concept, and if the Zappa family is anything its weird, so the combo could be a good match. I'm sure the Henson family knows what they're doing giving it to him too, hopefully this thing comes together, I know I for one would love it if there was a Fraggle resurgence.

In more troubling film news today Variety is reporting that Fox and Universal, who we're set to co-finance the film, has pulled out of the Halo film over financial disputes. While the studios are claiming that they've pulled their support because the budget looks to potentially be ballooning from $135 mil to upwards of $200 mil, the word on the street is that the move has more to do with Microsoft's $5 mil upfront payday, and their 10% cut of the gross. Basically this sucks. I really want this film to get made. Hell, I think everyone wants this film to get made. And with Peter Jackson producing I honestly think it will make bank. So why are the film studios being such idiots?! They need to get over themselves. Even if Halo did as well as King Kong it would still be worthwhile, especially when you factor in the tie in video game MS is developing. Granted I'm not sure why you need that big a budget, but as I don't know all of the particulars of the story having not played the games, I would leave it up to Jackson and co to make that call. Apparently Weta, Jackson, and director Blomkamp are all still involved, and hopefully we'll get some word on another studio stepping up to the plate soon. It would be really sad to see this project die.

In somewhat more immediate film news, the animated Hellboy movie Sword of Storms is going to be airing on Cartoon Network, on their Toonami programming block, on October 28th, so don't forget to set your Tivos; should be great.

gotta fly, later all.

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