The director of Donnie Darko returns with The Box, about a couple that's offered a chance to push a button that will kill a stranger for $1,000,000. He describes the movie's thematic relation to Darko and tells whether or not he would push the button.

Q: What made you want to adapt Richard Matheson's short story?

A: I was a kid when I first discovered this story. It was published in 1970, I think in Playboy.

Q: Which of course you were only reading for the articles.

A: [Laughs] Of course! No, I don't know if I saw it in Playboy or not. But it always kind of stuck with me, and I always thought it had this tantalizing premise that was inherently filled with so much suspense that I just had all these questions I wanted to have answered: I wanted to know who was Mr. Steward [Frank Langella]? More importantly, who does he work for? Who built the button unit? What is their motive, what are they trying to accomplish by approaching these married couples?

Q: The allure of the original story and Twilight Zone episode is that these questions weren't answered. How do you maintain it after answering them?

Continue reading "The Box Director Richard Kelly on His Obsession With Ominous Strangers" »

The BSG star goes double-duty directing The Plan, a movie depicting the series from the Cylon's point of view. He describes adding nudity to the franchise, explains how the movie answers lingering questions, and dishes on his role in Green Hornet.

Q: Was directing this Battlestar movie different than directing a normal episode of the series?

A: Oh yeah. This became probably one of the most ambitious pieces of work that's ever been done for Battlestar, because it became a situation of having to encompass in two hours a span that took two years to create in the front story. The hard part was trying to make one cohesive solid story. It could easily have become a clip show, and just the opposite has happened. It took me almost nine months of editing -- it became a real tour-de-force on the part of trying to structure the piece and getting it down to the nuances of the performance.

Q: Some fans complained that Battlestar Galactica didn't answer all the questions it posed. Will this movie rectify that?

Continue reading "Actor Edward James Olmos Explains How Battlestar Galactica Leads to Blade Runner" »

The director of Flushed Away discusses his new Japanese manga adaptation, shares his science fiction influences and relates Astro Boy's thematic relationship to Star Wars.

Q: What were some of the difficulties in introducing a Japanese manga character to American audiences?

A: It was interesting -- it's such a rich story, and I think its themes are universal. I think American audiences are very used to superheroes, so it's not an enormous stretch for them. The only difficulty was having it be such a beloved character and having to decide what to retain and what to get rid of.

Q: I was thankful your Astro Boy wears a shirt most of the time.

Continue reading "Astro Boy Director David Bowers on the Challenge of Animating Spiky Hair" »

On the 30th anniversary of the first publication of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy comes And Another Thing..., the sixth book of the series penned by Artemis Fowl novelist Eoin (pronounced Owen) Colfer. Colfer discusses his reluctance to take on the project and his hopes for the future of Hitchhiker's.

Q: What made you decide you wanted to pick up where Douglas Adams left off?

A: The project was not something I went looking for. Douglas Adams' agent presented it to me as a way to bring the Hitchhiker back to the forefront of scifi, so that seemed like a good, honest project to be a part of. Also I was insanely flattered to be asked.

Q: Adams has said he was disappointed with how bleak the fifth book was. How focused were you on making this more upbeat?

Continue reading "Novelist Eoin Colfer on Resurrecting Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" »

The star of The Rookie and G.I. Joe discusses his scifi/horror Pandorum, describes how sense memory helps disorient him and explains what a redneck has to do with the apocalypse.

Q: What made you want to star in Pandorum?

A: It's a really good story -- unique and original, and Payton is a great character. So that was it. My taste runs to all different kinds of films, so when I choose a movie, usually the question I ask is, "Is this a movie I want to see?" And yeah, this was one.

Q: This is the second time you've played a spaceman, the first being Gordon Cooper in The Right Stuff. How did it compare?

Continue reading "Actor Dennis Quaid Describes a Possible Pandorum Trilogy" »

The novelist discusses the ABC adaptation of his 1999 book -- about a worldwide event that allows everyone a glimpse into their future -- and explains the network's reluctance to compare it with Lost.

Q: FlashForward was originally optioned as a movie. Now it's a television series. Do you have a preference either way?

A: To be perfectly blunt, if we last longer than one season I'll make more money off of a TV series than I would off of a film. So I think a TV series is a marvelous idea. Also, the comparison is often made to Lost. Well, here's the difference: Lost has 40 people on one island affected by the event. We've got 7 billion people on five continents. So of course we've got a bigger canvas and more stories to tell.

Q: Why was only one of your characters, Lloyd Simcoe, incorporated into the series?

Continue reading "FlashForward Author Robert J. Sawyer on How George Lucas Pre-Empted His SciFi Series" »

Terminator 3 director Jonathan Mostow returns to cyborgs with the Bruce Willis thriller about citizens who live their lives vicariously through robot avatars. Mostow discusses the implications of his movie and the movie's similarities to the recently-released Gamer.

Q: This is your first feature film since 2003's Terminator 3. Why the long gap between projects?

A: It's hard for me to go to work on a film as a director unless I'm doing something I find very interesting. You really have to have an idea that can sustain you through two years of non-stop work -- there are some people who love directing itself so much that it's not as important they love the material. For me, I really have to be into the idea. When Surrogates came along, I recognized it as something I could spend two years thinking about.

Q: What about Surrogates attracted you to it?

Continue reading "Director Jonathan Mostow Explains the Difference Between Surrogates and Terminator" »

Animator and filmmaker Shane Acker makes his feature debut in the Tim Burton-produced "stitchpunk" movie 9, based on his own award-winning short. Acker describes building a world for humans -- and destroying it for his creatures.

Q: How did this movie evolve from your short?

A: I spent four and a half years making the short, and it was intended to be a director's reel piece to lead me into other projects. So the idea of going back into this world made me a little apprehensive. My way in was just imagining who these other little creatures were -- you see two of the creatures in the short, but now we get to see all nine of them. And it kind of explains where they came from. But you know, story is hard -- and we were always chasing the clock the whole time. I wish we had more time, because we could have invested more in the characters and really developed them more.

Q: You did animation for the third Lord of the Rings movie. What did you learn from that experience that you were able to bring to 9?

Continue reading "9 Director Shane Acker on Playing Mouse Trap With Puppets" »

The twisted minds behind the Crank series turn their attentions to human video games and real-life Second Life in Gamer. Directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor talk about their controller fantasies and the top secret sequel they can't talk about.

Q: Where did you get the inspiration for Gamer?

MN: We were looking at all these reality shows on TV, and of course we were going to cage-fighting matches, and we kind of came up with this stupid idea of a world where it was like a live human video game. Not like Tron where you're stuck inside a game, but where you could control humans on a massive scale. So we just started there and decided to create "Slayers," and also "Society," which is basically like Second Life put back in the real world.

Q: Did you take any inspiration from movies like Rollerball?

Continue reading "Gamer Directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor on Wanting to Be Abused" »

Dune author Frank Herbert's son discusses picking up his father's threads in Winds of Dune, out this month, and his hopes for Peter Berg's movie adaptation of the saga.

Q: The Winds of Dune is part of your Heroes of Dune series of prequels. What was the inspiration to go back?

A: When [co-author] Kevin [J. Anderson] and I started writing books together, he wanted to do Dune 7, which was the book my dad had not written before he passed away. I wanted to do The Butlerian Jihad and go back 10,000 years. So we settled on a third option -- we're doing the core characters of Dune when they're all older. Winds of Dune focuses on Jessica, and it's about her reaction to this jihad that's going on -- billions of people have been killed in her son's name. My dad was a reporter and he liked to look at the myths under which we lived, and he would flip the myth of a charismatic leader: Isn't it great we have this wonderful leader, but what if it's the other way? Hitler and bin Laden were charismatic too.

Q: Was it difficult to write a Dune prequel that doesn't conflict with canon?

Continue reading "Winds of Dune Author Brian Herbert on Flipping the Myth of Jihad" »