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What If: Zack Snyder's Superman screenplay notes

Now that we know 300 and Watchmen director Zack Snyder has landed the job directing Warner Bros. new Superman movie, and that the villain in the film will be General Zod, what will Snyder's version of the Man of Steel look like when it reaches theaters in a couple of years?

Exclusive: Terra Nova pilot script reviewed

It must be getting harder to make new genre shows for television. Think about it for a moment and see if my point makes sense to you: suppose you're a TV creator and you've thought up an idea for a new sci-fi series set on a spaceship. Now you're going to be compared to Star Trek. What about a scientist that travels into the past? Quantum Leap fans are going to curse you out. Investigators of the paranormal? The X-Files did that a decade ago (though don't tell the Fringe guys – although they're doing OK by replacing the alien meme with parallel Earths.)

Confessions of a movie website owner

Lately I've been giving a lot of thought to what it's like being a movie website owner in 2010 and I've come to one or two conclusions. One of them is that I love what it is that I get to do with Coming Attractions. The other thought is that sometimes it frustrates the hell out of me to even try and run a movie website these days.

Exclusive: Rise of the Apes set photos

Five minutes away from where I live, 20th Century Fox has set up a massive outdoors greenscreen set for Rise of the Apes.

Is the Alien Harvest script out there really the Alien prequel movie we'll see?

Lurking away in the dark reaches of the internet is a PDF file for what some believe is the next Alien movie, the prequel film that Ridley Scott is prepping for 20th Century Fox. But is the Alien Harvest screenplay legitimate or is it a piece of fan fiction? Six months after the script leaked online the question still remains unanswered, and with the latest bits of information that Scott himself said publically last night, the mystery has deepened still further.

Director's Cut: George Lucas finally admits he made Star Wars up as he went along

As ABC's Lost draws to its finale, the accolades from other showbiz creators are coming in and being received by the series' creative team. But what one well-known creator of a story that takes place a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away said to the Lost team is rather telling of the real way he made up the Star Wars saga's storyline.

Exclusive: Script review of The Thing prequel

It’s been 28 years since John Carpenter stood on the refrigerated Los Angeles set and gave directions on The Thing, his remake of the 1951 black and white sci-fi red scare classic film. When Carpenter made his version of The Thing, he had several great people contributing to what I and many horror fans consider one of the greatest monster movies of cinema: great source material in the form of John W. Campbell’s short story “Who Goes There?”; comic book giants like Mike Ploog and Bernie Wrightson contributing the conceptual artwork of the creature design; a minimal but infinitely moody atmospheric score by Ennio Morricone;  a talented group of actors making up the doomed men of U.S. Outpost 31; and finally what I consider the most important element of the film, the sheer genius of a then 21-year-old make-up effects artist by the name of Rick Bottin. For anyone that has ever watched Carpenter’s movie and marvelled at its amazing practical effects – which still hold up to this day and under the all-seeing presence of computer generated digital effects – Bottin’s benchmark work in the film truly brought the deadly Thing to life.

Exclusive: Script review of The Chronicles of Riddick - Dead Man Stalking

The Fast and the Furious may have made him a star but it was his role as convict Richard P. Riddick in Pitch Black that first brought him to our attention. While that film was a modest success in theaters and home video, when Fast and Furious brought Diesel up to A-list action star status it was then that the actor and his Pitch Black director went to Universal with a tempting offer: give them the opportunity to make a big budget sequel to Pitch Black and they'll set the foundation for a trilogy of sci-fi action movies starring the Riddick character. The story goes that when director David Twohy went in on that day to pitch a Chronicles of Riddick trilogy, he took with him three binders, all with closed locks. The first one contained the script for what became 2004's The Chronicles of Riddick; the other two were either outlines for the two follow-up sequels or the screenplays themselves. Twohy left behind the key for the first binder.

Exclusive: The latest about the Voltron movie and new animated TV series

[Coming Attractions' reporter Thurston McQ had the exclusive opportunity to visit the offices of World Event Productions where the next Voltron animated TV series and live-action movie are being developed. This is his report. -- Patrick@CA]

The Visit

If you are one of the growing number of visitors to Voltron.com, you will have seen the website’s recent announcement: a new Lion Force animated series is coming to NickToons.

Exclusive: Script review of Falling Skies, Steven Spielberg's alien invasion TV pilot

In May 2009 the news broke that Steven Spielberg was collaborating again with the screenwriter of Saving Private Ryan, Robert Rodat, on a television pilot for TNT. As is the case for most of the concepts that attract Spielberg, this one was high concept: what would life be like for a group of survivors-turned-fighters in the aftermath of an all-out alien invasion of Earth? Now, nearly one year after the first announcement of this project Coming Attractions gives you the first look at what this still-untitled alien invasion pilot is shaping up to look like.

Exclusive: Script review of Abduction

No one that remotely follows the pulse and flow of Hollywood can doubt that Taylor Lautner is poised on the brink of stardom. After finding himself playing the wolfy Jacob Black in two Twilight movies, Lautner is poised to graduate to toplining his own solo projects. His agents have been busy cashing in on his Twilight heat by first attaching him to play Paramount's Max Steel, then losing interest in favor of Hasbro and Universal's Stretch Armstrong project.

Director's Cut: Seven Story Ideas for Avatar 2

With the first Avatar, Cameron has left himself plenty of latitude for where he can take us on the second Pandoran adventure. Money won't be an object and neither will be running time so all that's really undetermined is what James Cameron wants to do in movie #2. While I'm certain that Mr. Cameron doesn't have any problem coming up with his own ideas for Avatar 2, these seven ideas I had for what we might see in the sequel are merely meant for the rest of us to speculate and wonder about.

Exclusive: A review of the pilot script for The Walking Dead TV series

Is there such a thing as having too much dead people in your entertainment quota?

Director's Cut: Patrick's top 10 for 2010

In the days of Coming Attractions 1.0, at the end of every year I would write a list of what, at that time, were the movies that I was most looking forward to seeing in the coming 12 months. These upcoming top 10 lists reflected the excitement and interest level I had at the end of December. As I entered the new year and new trailers, images and news trickled out about the films that landed on my list, some fell down and off the chart while other new ones emerged and replaced the fallen. Keep that in mind as you read what movies I'm the most excited to see in 2010 because the promise of a movie's greatly conceived of marketing campaign can often fall short of the final product. Which ones from the following list will remain on my best of 2010 list and which movies will crash and burn on the bonfire of hype?

Exclusive: First look at Invasion

From the days back in the 1950s when James Arness played a walking space vegetable in The Thing, the alien invasion genre has been a successful one for Hollywood. And if there's gold to still be mined in those storytelling hills, why not? Steven Spielberg has given us his version of War of the Worlds, M. Night Shyamalan made a nicely told chiller about one family staying alive in Signs (which is still a decent enough movie if you stop it 10 minutes before the end of the film.) Both of those pictures went on to make over $200 million dollars at the domestic box office; more importantly they proved to the Hollywood bean counters that audiences will still pay to see the Earth get mean new landlords from beyond the stars. Right now Columbia Pictures is about to go into production with Battle: Los Angeles, Twilight author Stephenie Meyer's The Host is winding its way through development, 2012 director Roland Emmerich wants to do two back-to-back sequels to Independence Day, and Paranormal Activity's director is filming a trip to Area 51. There are more outer space invasions that can be title-dropped from orbit but let's end the E.T. roll call with the latest one to get sold, that being a spec script called Invasion by Ben Magid. Yesterday Shock Till You Drop mentioned that Hostel creator Eli Roth and Eric Newman were slated to produce this new project for Summit Entertainment. When Shock called the story "Cloverfield-esque," my interest was piqued, so I went about seeing if I could find out more about this one. I did. It’s nice to see that the dark magic still works well when I need it to.