Sci-Fi Film and Television Developments
Predators
12/18/09 – SCI Fi Wire reported, of the upcoming sci-fi movie Predators, that Laurence Fishburne has been added to the already impressive cast, which includes Adrien Brody, Topher Grace, Walton Goggins and Danny Trejo. Fisburne will play Noland, a character being compared to Yoda, who has used his Zen-like abilities to survive among the alien Predators on a deadly hunting planet. Predators, which is now in production, is conceived of as a sequel of sorts to the original Arnold Schwarzenegger film. The story of Predators centers on a group of eight humans who wake up to find themselves being hunted for sport in the jungles of a strange planet. Predators is being directed by Nimrod Antal and is produced by Robert Rodriguez. The production shot in Hawaii for a few weeks and is now being completed at Rodriguez's Austin-based Troublemaker Studios. Predators is currently slated for a summer 2010 release.
10/7/09 - The Hollywood Reporter said Adrien Brody will star in Robert Rodriguez's Predators, a reboot of the sci-fi franchise. Topher Grace is in negotiations to join the action-adventure movie, to which Alice Braga, Mahershalalhashbaz Ali, Walt Goggins, Danny Trejo, and UFC fighter Oleg Taktarov have also been cast. Nimrod Antal is at the helm of the 20th Century Fox movie. Rodriguez is producing with Elizabeth Avellan. Written by Rodriguez, Alex Litvak and Michael Finch, the script follows a group of elite warrior types who are being hunted by members of a race of merciless alien trackers called Predators. Brody plays a man who ends up inheriting the role of leader and is known as a hunter of men. Grace would play an accountant type whose unassuming facade masks a dangerous serial killer. Braga is the tough female killer. Ali is a man not afraid to die, Goggins is the loose cannon of the group, and Taktarov is a former Russian special ops agent. Trejo, already cast, is Cuchillo, a hardened warrior with twin uzis strapped to his back. Shooting begins next month in Hawaii, then moves to Rodriguez's Troublemaker Studios in Austin. The movie is slated for a July 9, 2010, release.
9/29/09 - About the plot of next summer's Robert Rodriguez-scripted Predators reboot, Latino Review got a chance to read a 90-page script and shared some insider information. The draft is a "bloody, violent, Hard-R script" that pits a team of seven kidnapped humans against Predators on the aliens' home planet. Reportedly, the team of seven are: Royce, a Steve McQueen type; Cuchillo, a Mexican enforcer for a drug cartel who has twin uzis strapped to his back; Nikolai, a bear of a Russian armed with a four-barrel gas-powered rotary machine gun; Isabelle, a French woman armed with a sniper rifle; Stans, a San Quentin prisoner with a shaved head, armed with a prison-made knife; Mombasa, an African member of the Sierra Leone death squad; Hanzo, a Yakuza enforcer; Edwin, an unassuming man who was formerly on the FBI's most-wanted list.
8/31/09 - 20th Century Fox scouts have been combing the jungles of the Big Island of Hawaii for possible locations for their new movie in the Predator franchise Predators, according to Tim Ryan's Reel Hawaii. Predators would be shooting on location in Hawaii for 18 days if plans pan out, with additional shooting done at Robert Rodriguez's Troublemaker Studios in Austin beginning in late September. Rodriguez will be producing the $40 million SF/horror sequel, which he co-wrote with Alex Litvak and Michael Finch. Nimród Antal will direct. Predators is currently scheduled for a July 7, 2010 release.
8/13/09 – SCI FI Wire reported that director Robert Rodriguez briefly discussed a few of the upcoming films he's involved with. Rodriguez said things were moving forward on Predators, the reboot/prequel film, which he's producing. Specifically, he said that he's loaned out his Austin, Texas, studio and crew to help breathe new life into the franchise. "I have a director on that [Nimród Antal], and it's my main crew that I usually use," he said. "It's taking place right there, so I get to walk in and see designs and comment on stuff and work on the script with him. We start shooting that pretty soon." Another long-gestating project Rodriguez is attached to is Sin City 2, which he said is on the back burner and which lacks at least one important element. "Until I'm actually on the set, it's not happening," he confessed. "But we have a script—we just haven't shot it yet." The recently announced futuristic sci-fi thriller Nervewrackers, which was originally scheduled for release April 16, 2010, was moved back. Rodriguez said that he hasn't forgotten about it. "That would be next year sometime," Rodriguez said. "I have a script for that." Finally, Rodriguez offered a few details about his proposed Jetsons live-action update, saying that he wouldn't render its futuristic world in the same way he did something equally far-out, like Sin City. "It would have to be a mix," he said. "It wouldn't be all green screen."
7/2/09 - Robert Rodriguez, who is writing and producing Predators, confirmed to Ain't It Cool News that Nimrod Antal will direct the movie, and he also offered up a few details about the film, which is supposed to reboot the franchise and move it as far away as possible from the Aliens vs. Predator movies. Rodriguez said, “I can't go too much into the story right now, because we're still writing. But it still involves a very intense group of people stranded on a Predator planet discovering unspeakable horrors (that are not always from outside their group). So like the original movie, the title does have a double meaning. Aliens was a different take on the Alien idea, and an original movie in its own right, and that's what we want to do with this.”
4/29/09 - Robert Rodriguez, who is developing a reboot/re-imagined film called Predators for Fox, told Ain't It Cool News that the movie is a sequel set on a jungle-like Predator planet. "With a nod toward Cameron's Aliens, I decided to call it Predators," Rodriguez told the site. Rodriguez added: "Predator is a masterpiece of the action/science fiction genre. It's been borrowed from so much in other movies and even video games (that will now probably be turned into movies themselves) that I liked the idea that we could have Predators made relatively quickly. What I'd like to do with it is expand on ideas I dreamt up back in the original treatment, that had really expanded on the universe both the Predators and other species live in. We'd create new otherworldly characters while not taking away from the draw our main Predator has. I think another reason I called it Predators was to mark it as a project that should be taken seriously by a filmmaker to make a worthy follow-up to a classic, much in the way Cameron made Aliens a compelling work on its own, following Ridley Scott's Alien." The writer/director added that his treatment envisioned an R-rated movie.
4/24/09 - IESB.net is confirming a rumor, first reported by Bloody-Disgusting, that Sin City director Robert Rodriguez will reboot the Predator franchise with a new film, Predators, for 20th Century Fox. Rodriguez will produce and direct the reboot, he told a news conference today at Troublemaker Studios, where Texas state politicians were in attendance to sign HB 873, the long-awaited reform of the Texas film incentive program. "I'm going to be able to shoot my upcoming Machete here, a sci-fi action film called Nervewrackers, a reboot of the Predator series called Predators and a couple of smaller movies called Sin City 2 and The Jetsons," Rodriguez told reporters. Here's how Bloody-Disgusting described Predators: "In the reboot, a team of commandoes face down a mysterious race of vicious monsters."
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