Sunday, November 29, 2009

Thor casting, Dark Void, Lost schedule, UFO, etc.

Some little tidbits of recent entertainment news that have caught my eye.

Casting for the Thor movie continues. Anthony Hopkins has been cast as Odin, king of Asgard and father of Thor (Variety blog). Stuart Townsend, Ray Stevenson, and Tadanobu Asano will play Warrior's Three (Variety blog), who fight alongside Thor (Chris Hemsworth), and Kat Dennings will play Darcy, who works with Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) (Variety). The cast looks pretty good so far.

Reeve Carney has been cast as lead Peter Parker/Spider-Man in Spider-Man: The Musical, aka Spider-Man, Turn Off the Dark (Variety). He joins Evan Rachel Wood as Mary Jane and Alan Cumming as the Green Goblin. The show's budget problems continue, but it seems that nothing has been rescheduled or called off, yet (LA Times)

Brad Pitt's Plan B production company along with Reliance Big Entertainment is planning to develop Capcom's video game Dark Void into a movie (Variety). I don't know the game, but I'm always wary of video game-to-movie adaptations, since they're usually so bad. We'll see what becomes of this one.

Lost has had a number of different air times over the course of its run, but ABC has decided that its sixth and final season this spring will air Tuesdays at 9. The season will premiere on Tuesday, February 2, with a two-hour premiere from 9 to 11 pm, then settle into its regular time slot for the remainder of the season (Variety).

Avatar is getting some big promotion from toy deals with McDonald's Coca-Cola, and Mattel. One neat feature are these augmented reality cards that seem pretty cool (Variety--you can see a short video clip of the augmented reality thingy at work). I'm not sure if the new technology is quite at an "hours of entertainment" stage yet, but still, they're worth noting.

The 1970s British TV series UFO is being adapted into a feature film version with Joshua Jackson set to star (Variety). I'm not familiar with the TV show, but Joshua Jackson has proved his value in the sci-fi genre with his work on Fringe. I'll keep my eye out for more news on this project.

And lastly, Joss Whedon has won a Vanguard Award from the Producers Guild of America for his achievements in new media and technology (Variety). Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog was an innovative and successful venture, and just one of Whedon's many achievements. Joss is the man. Congrats.

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