JjAbrams

Hey, Lost fans, I know your beloved show has come to an end, and you need something to fill the Lost-sized void in your heart. I know this because I felt the exact same way when Silver Spoons was taken off the air. My life continues to have no real direction.

But, there's hope for you! There's no reason Lost really has to end -- not while there's still a mountain of merchandise that you have yet to own. Case in point -- this set of limited edition Lost art prints (only 100 of each one) from Bernard Gumz and Scabfarm. Do you own them? Not yet? Then click here and get crackin'. If you order all six, Gumz will thrown in a special super-rare Daniel Faraday print (only twenty-five Faraday prints were made). Yes, I'm being a total shill, but these things are awesome, and I'm not even a fan of the show.

The website ScariestThingIEverSaw.com has been linked to JJ Abrams' Super 8 since the secret project was (modestly) unveiled two weeks ago and it looks like fans on the hunt have already begun to dig up clues. MovieViral.com has assembled a chronological account thus far, which is well worth reading if you enjoy these clever marketing campaigns, but in short it goes like this:

1. Countdown timer on ScariestThingIEverSaw.com ends, reveals computer terminal simulator.
2. After many failed commands, two fans were able to find a functioning executable command.
3. Said command revealed two scans from a newspaper, one being a large ad for Rocket Poppeteers, a Popsicle treat, the other an excerpt from JFK's speech about the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

Here's where it gets interesting. Forum members noticed that various words had been 'marked up' and that there were two "X"s on both pages. They then aligned the two "X"s (someone remembers Contact's lesson on aligning primers) and revealed that the marked words on the left page isolated a handful of words from JFK's speech. This is the most logical sentence they form:

When I attended last week's Ain't it Cool News screening of Iron Man 2, the audience, particularly AICN headgeek Harry Knowles, sounded noticeably disappointed when Jon Favreau said the print of the film he brought was missing the post-credits scene and that if we wanted to see what it was we'd have to go on opening day. And even though I dug Iron Man 2, I hardly felt the need to go to a midnight showing just to see a 30 second clip. Well, either Favreau was holding back more information about the public's prints of the film or didn't know about the following, but it looks like Paramount has found a way to motivate geeks like me to see the movie as quickly as possible.

Drew McWeeny at HitFix.com has once again blown the lid off a JJ Abrams' secret film. According to his source(s) - and considering he was also the first person in the world to announce that the trailer for Cloverfield, a movie very few even knew existed at the time, would be attached to Transformers, I'd trust whoever gave him the info - all American prints of Iron Man 2 will have a teaser trailer for a secret JJ Abrams' film called Super 8. As for what Super 8 is about...well, Drew isn't spilling, but he says it's rumored to be a sequel to Cloverfield.

SXF, the Brit Sci Fi Fantasy mag, has announced their awards. And why should you care? Because it's a very interesting list. The magazine announced the awards at their annual convention earlier this month. Curious as to what they think about science fiction on the other side of the pond? Not surprisingly, it's brit heavy, but it's still interesting. Here are the sci-fi highlights:

Best Film Director: JJ Abrams (Star Trek)
Best TV Episode: Torchwood "Children Of Earth" Episode Five
Best Actress: Eve Myles (Torchwood)
Best Actor: David Tennant (Doctor Who)
Best Novel: The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman
Best Comic: Batman: Whatever Happened To The Caped Crusader? Neil Gaiman and Andy Kubert
Best Game: Batman: Arkham Asylum (Rocksteady)
Best Collectible: The Journal of Impossible Things (Doctor Who)

Hope for the Future: Steven Moffat (succeeding Russell T. Davies on Dr. Who)
Lifetime Award: Gerry Anderson (Thunderbirds, UFO, Space 1999, Terrahawks and much more)
Cult Hero: Ianto Jones (Actor Gareth David Lloyd on Torchwood)
Sci-Fi Phenomenon: True Blood (they've only seen season 1)

Unfortunately, some of the most interesting categories are not available online, such as the Best Death Scene, Biggest Disappointment, and Best Dialogue. But my favorite award up there is easily Gerry Anderson. Not only did his work influence the SFX team as children, it made me very nostalgic.

If Fringe producer J.J. Abrams had his way, he'd lock down a clear end date for Fox' sole remaining sci-fi property. A report from Slice of Sci-Fi relays Abrams acknowledgment that setting the end date for Lost completely revitalized the series and that Fringe may soon need a similar wake-up call. In his own words, "I do think that at a certain point it would be a really smart thing to start to say, 'OK, let's figure out ... what the actual date is so we sort of know ... how far we should push things.'"

Unfortunately for fans, however, that call isn't up to Abrams; the slipping ratings performance of Fringe means that Fox might cancel the series before the creative team can even make that decision. The reason the end date worked so well for Lost is because that crazy island was making ABC money hand over fist and the network essentially said 'We'd prefer the show be on the air forever, but we'll take as many seasons as you can give us.' Fringe doesn't have that luxury.

On a more positive note, Abrams does remain positive about the chances of a third season renewal, but his response is a little reticent to dream the show can go on for as long as the writers can.

"And then there are other things that ... we've talked about doing- ... her stepfather story-that ... we're putting off. So I feel there's a lot of ... opportunity for where we're going beyond this season, and I'm going to be bullish and optimistic about that. And I feel like we have a long way to go still, but I think ... that the show ... has sort of found a kind of rhythm that is nice to see, ... and I'm really proud of what we're doing with it."

I don't think anyone saw this coming. Harlan Ellison, the prickly sci-fi author best known to Star Trek fans for spending the last forty years bitching about changes to the only episode he ever wrote ("City on the Edge of Forever"), has opened his arms to J.J. Abrams, asking to be part of the new Star Trek creative team.

"If anyone out there thinks this melding has legs, let Abrams or anyone else with the chops to get in touch with me directly," Ellison pleads. "I am without full-time film-agent representation, by choice, at the moment; so if the job presents itself, I will work for pay."

Ellison has been a vocal critic of the late Gene Roddenberry for years, and he couldn't resist the urge to get a few cracks in, "Where's the 'downside' to getting topside the radar of J.J. Abrams? This guy ain't Roddenberry!...He's a writer I respect, whose work has frequently blown the lid off my box of surpriseability." The notoriously litigious Ellison recently settled a lawsuit with CBS/Paramount Television over monies owed from his classic episode.

I can't imagine Ellison working on the sequel to Abrams' hit feature film, but he might have a few interesting adventures up his sleeve for that new Star Trek television series that the folks at Bad Robot keep drumming up interest for. Time will tell.

(via Trek Today)

Seems the release of J.J. Abrams' Star Trek on DVD and Blu-ray has stirred up a hornet's nest of speculation concerning the inevitable sequel. Today, ComingSoon reported that Lost star Nestor Carbonell is the director's pick to play Khan, reprising the villain role made famous by Ricardo Montalban.

That's interesting, because I don't think anyone can be the frontrunner for a role that currently does not exist. "We're not even at that stage yet," Abrams told SciFiWire. "But the fun of where we are on the sequel is we could use some of what was done before in a new way. But we haven't even figured out what we would use yet, so it's very early on." While Abrams and company haven't ruled out the use of Khan, they also haven't tied down the specifics of a story, which would make any casting talk no more substantial than fanboy spitballing.

It's easy to connect the dots between actor Carbonell and the rumored role. Carbonell definitely looks the part, and Lost is also an Abrams production, so it makes sense, but until Bad Robot actually confirms anything, I'd take all Star Trek II rumors with a big grain of salt.

After the nuclear holocaust, the only thing left will be cockroaches and speculation that William Shatner might appear in the next Star Trek film from J.J. Abrams. This rumor just will not die. Now, Chronicles Network is heaping a captain's log onto the fire by stating that Shatner and Abrams are actually scheduling meetings with each other to see how this can work. Of course, Chronicles mentions no inside source at all, just presenting the nebulous meetings as hard fact, when it all sort of sounds like cloud talk to me.

The decision will ultimately be a creative one, but it would seem to me that the torch was already passed (in a strong way) to the new crew by Leonard Nimoy as Spock in the 2009 relaunch. With that in mind, should William Shatner even appear in Star Trek XII (or Star Trek 2 or whatever it ends up being called)? Is it time for the next adventure of the USS Enterprise to offer a completely clean break from the original cast or should they find a way to work Shatner in as Kirk for one last hurrah on the big screen?

(J.J. Abrams is beginning to talk more about the obligatory Star Trek sequel and how it needs to be relevant. Some fans are afraid that means it will be dated. Here's Elisabeth Rappe reporting for Cinematical)

Whenever J.J. Abrams, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman are pinned down, the talk inevitabley turns to the Star Trek sequel. They're only just beginning to toss around story ideas, but Hero Complex managed to pry a little more news out of Abrams & Crew, who hinted that Trek might start tackling contemporary issues.

"In many ways a sequel will have a very different mission. It needs to do what [Gene] Roddenberry did so well, which is allegory," says Abrams. "It needs to tell a story that has connection to what is familiar and what is relevant. It also needs to tell it in a spectacular way that hides the machinery and in a primarily entertaining and hopefully moving story. There needs to be relevance, yes, and that doesn't mean it should be pretentious."

Orci echoed Abrams, noting that it had been one of the biggest criticisms of the new Trek. "One of the things we heard was, 'Make sure the next one deals with modern-day issues.' We're trying to keep it as up-to-date and as reflective of what's going on today as possible. So that's one thing, to make it reflect the things that we are all dealing with today." When asked if "modern day issues" meant war, terrorism, and torture, Orci agreed that was "an approach" they were taking.

Read the rest at Cinematical

By: Elisabeth Rappe

The lovely Zoe Saldana is quickly becoming a name to contend with after managing to land plum parts in not one, but two of the biggest sci-fi films of the decade: Star Trek and Avatar. One is a bonafide hit, the other remains shrouded in a lot of mystery, but it's a mark of Saldana's star power that she's making a name outside of their huge hype. Plus, she's becoming an action heroine in her own right, and just might be our generation's Sigourney Weaver or Linda Hamilton.

We had the chance to catch up with Saldana this week, and she was game to talk about both projects. Of course with the Star Trek sequel still in a misty writing stage, she didn't have any big secrets to spill, but she shared the opinion of a lot of female Trek fans in hoping Uhura gets to do a little butt-kicking later on. "In Star Trek, I had so much fun, but the boys got all the action! J.J. [Abrams] promised me that I'm going to -- [that] in the sequel, she will have at least one little fight. I mean, just [let me] kick a guy in the groin or something!" Laughing, she revealed that there was an enormous ongoing e-mail list among the cast, Abrams, and the Trek producers where they regularly chat and joke back and forth. From the sound of it, that's also where the groin-kicking requests are made.

Check out her thoughts on Avatar over on Cinematical