The fourth Indiana Jones movie hasn’t been shown yet but George Lucas is already talking about a possible fifth or sixth installment to the well loved franchise.
In an interview with Fox News at the Cannes Film Festival, Lucas kind of spilled the beans about sequels to the Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull. In fact, he said that “there is more than a strong possibility” for another Indiana Jones movie.
Lucas said that he and Steven Spielberg have made certain plot points that will make it possible to do a sequel to the upcoming movie.
Lucas further said that even though he hasn’t told Spielberg or star Harrison Ford about the plan, he said that he has an idea of making Shia LaBeouf’s character becoming the lead in the possible sequel and Indiana Jones coming back in the same capacity as Sean Connery did in the last movie.
The idea sounds interesting enough. But can Shia LaBeouf carry a movie this big in a couple of years? We’ll see how well he does in this new movie.
New Look at ‘Falling Skies’
TNT has released a new trailer for Falling Skies, showcasing more of the big-budget epic scope and human drama of this post-alien-invasion series. Steven Spielberg produces this exciting new scifi series starring ER‘s Noah Wylie as a resistance leader.
First Look at Terra Nova
While Fox‘s Superbowl XLV broadcast included trailers for all of this summer’s biggest blockbuster films and a whole heap of hilarious product commercials, Fox also worked in a short trailer for its big-budget scifi series Terra Nova (website). After endless casting and filming delays, Terra Nova has finally gotten off the ground, telling the story of a family in a destruction-filled future who join a program to go back to dinosaur times to try and get human society right a second time. The show is executive produced by Steven Spielberg.
If you missed it, you can get a glimpse of the dinos and other big-budget scenery in the trailer right here:
NBC Snags Spielberg Musical
Now that Glee has proven that there’s room on the small screen for musicals, it’s inevitable that more song-and-dance series will make their way to television screens. But I don’t think anyone expected Steven Spielberg to be behind the next one.
Spielberg has just sold a musical idea to NBC called Smash, which follows a group of characters as they put together a Broadway musical. Reportedly, new NBC honcho Robert Greenblatt first tried getting Smash on Showtime, where he formerly worked. But now NBC has greenlit the pilot, which was written by playwright Theresa Rebeck and is being produced by Broadway heavyweights Craig Zadan and Neil Meron of Hairspray, along with Spielberg and DreamWorks TV.
Unlike Glee, Smash will utilize original songs written for the show, from award-winning songwriters Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman.
Glee hit on such a unique formula: a situation that calls for music to believably enter the drama, witty/quirky high school characters, and fun remakes of established hit pop songs. I’m unconvinced that its success can be so easily replicated.
New Details, Pics, Premiere Date for Terra Nova
Terra Nova, Fox’s big-budget production from producer Steven Spielberg, will get a Spring premiere as an “early preview,” a la Glee. Two hours will be shown over two nights: Monday, May 23rd and Tuesday, the 24th. Fox was eager to paint the show less as a science fiction epic like Lost and more of a new take on the Old West, focusing on a “family trying to survive on a new frontier.”
New details have emerged about the much-discussed show from the Television Critics Association “up fronts” presentations this week. There’s already been a lot of drama surrounding Terra Nova before a single frame of footage has been seen, with reports of budget overruns, difficulties with casting, and writers dropping like flies. Fox worked hard to downplay this, explaining that most of these on-set reports were exaggerations.
The series’ high price tag is already being mitigated by sending the show direct to series after its pilot, saving money by not having to break down sets or send cast and crew home and then return them to Australia. Much of the pilot’s $14 million price tag, Fox claims, is being recouped or spread out to the entire first season. Showrunner Brannon Braga (Star Trek: Voyager, Enterprise) copped to the casting issues, explaining that casting a family on such a high-profile show was something they weren’t willing to rush. But Braga says that only one writer left the show after the pilot, so he’s not sure how that got blown so out of proportion.
In happier news, Braga reports that producer Steven Spielberg is heavily involved in the production, constantly coming up with “ingenious ideas” that get used on the show.
Terra Nova follows the Shannon family, who originate in the year 2149, where Earth has become overcrowded and heavily polluted, with (arguably) too much technology. When scientists discover a fracture in time, they build a portal that can take them back 100 million years, to a more primal time for nature, the time known as the Cretaceous Period. There, they come up with the idea of rebuilding civilization from scratch and trying to get it right this time. They found a fenced-in colony called Terra Nova, and select a group of people to live there, including the Shannon family. I guess you could call it The Reeeeeeeeeally Old West.
Jason O’Mara stars as Jim Shannon, the family’s patriarch, along with Shelley Conn as his wife Elisabeth. Landon Liboiron is 17-year-old Josh, Naomi Scott is 15-year-old Maddy, and Alana Mansour rounds out the family as 5-year-old Zoe. The cast also includes Avatar’s Stephen Lang as Commander Frank Taylor, the leader of the Terra Nova settlement. Christine Adams stars as Mira, the leader of a group opposed to Lang.
According to Fox, the Terra Nova settlement is filled with dinosaurs and “other prehistoric threats” (no idea what those might be), as well as “sinister external forces intent on destroying the new world.” Braga says that the show ultimately asks the question, “Can Utopia be built? Is it possible?”
Here’s my question: Why aren’t they worried about changing history? A high-tech human settlement plopped down in the middle of the Cretaceous Period? Won’t that completely alter humanity’s past, present, and future? Either way, with this level of production values and Spielberg’s involvement, it goes without saying that I’m in. What about you?
Check out the gallery of first stills from Terra Nova below.