THE GHOSTS OF ROME

So here I am in Italy, checking out stage space at fabled Cinecittà Studios outside of Rome, this for a project I expect to shoot next year.  They have over 20 stages here, but the most impressive – for a few reasons – is “Teatro 5.”  Not only it is massive in size, but it’s also known as “Fellini’s Stage,” since the master shot “La Dolce Vita” and “8 ½” and “Casanova” and many other movies here.  It’s good to commune with the ghosts of greats once in awhile.

The backlot is impressive, too, with a permanent Rome set.  Unfortunately, no real sets remain from “Ben Hur,” shot on this very ground in 1958.  But this wasn’t a bad proxy.

Had dinner down on Via Margutta one night while in Rome, then took a stroll afterwards.  Ran unexpectedly into this on the side of a building.  It seems to mark Fellini’s home residence.  I took a whack at translating the script below but came up short.  Maybe some of you can do better.

Experiencing E3

 

The good folks at Activision invited me over to E3 yesterday to check out their latest and greatest.  Saw the trailer for DESTINY, publicly available, but then on the DL they showed me some gameplay footage for the upcoming CALL OF DUTY, ADVANCED WARFARE.  While DESTINY impressed, the CODAW footage rocked hard.  Count me in for that one.  Maybe both.  Gina Ramirez was nice enough to show me around.

 

RIDDICK, the unrated Director’s Cut

Some of you have been asking for dish on this new cut of RIDDICK, available now on iTunes and dropping January 14 on DVD.  Well, the Director’s Cut is probably 8-9 minutes longer than the theatrical version.  The bulk of that time comes in two areas — several new scenes in the flashback sequence that shows how Riddick’s tenure on the Necromonger throne was a troubled and dangerous one (this includes a lot more of Karl Urban), and a new coda that sees Riddick returning to the Necro armada to seek out Vaako, the man he believes double-crossed him.  All told, we probably created 50 new VFX shots just for this extended cut.

BTW, I hate the cover art for RIDDICK: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION.  Someone should’ve run it by me first.

Top of The Heap

Just a quick but heartfelt shout-out to all those who helped make RIDDICK the #1 movie in the US and UK this week.  I’m talking about my cast who came to play…my stalwart crew heads who ventured into battle beside me…to the rank-and-file in Montreal who pulled it all together and shared their city with us.  To all I say “A thousand thanks.”

The view from the summit may be fleeting but it is memorable.

DT

COMIC-CON DEBRIEFING

So it was a crazy day.  Which made it a fairly typical day at Com-Con. 

I hit SD about 10:30 in the morning.  Got an hour or so to walk the auditorium floor, and was heartened to see the comic book stands…the concept artists working away at their stalls…the smaller vendors hawking their fantasy figurines.  I was last at Com-Con 13 years ago, and I was glad to see that it hadn’t been completely co-opted by the studios and networks. 

Then it was time to get down to business.  “H” Hall business.

Vin, Katee, and I strode into the hall before 6,500 pairs of eager eyes.  Last time here, I showed clips from a small movie called PITCH BLACK, and today I was showing scenes from RIDDICK, third in the same series.  It played about as well as I could’ve imagined.  I’ve actually seen the movie with precious few people because I chose not to test the movie, chose not to focus-group it to death.  Hey, I figure I know our audience by now.  They were right here in “H” hall, eating up the new RIDDICK red-band trailer. 

“H” Hall done, the three of us broke up for our individual interviews.  It’s a blur now, but I do recall spending time in the Entertainment Weekly suite and with Drew McWeeney of Hitflix and with the IGN folks among many, many others.  I probably did a solid seven hours of interviews and poster-signing.  There comes a point when you start to tire of your own answers – the same answers which seemed fresh and inspired just hours before.  Charlie Sheen once told me that, on particularly long press junkets, he just started making shit up to keep himself amused. 

Well, Charlie can do that.  But I hew closer to reality than Charlie does.  (No huge badge of honor, that.)

Anyway, great day and mission accomplished.  RIDDICK comes out September 6 in the U.S. and Canada.  Try to see it in a digital IMAX theater – that’ll be the best presentation.

COMIC-CON APPEARANCE!

I’ll be there on Friday, July 19, Hall H.  How ’bout you?

DT

Poster by Charles Ratteray

RIDDICK WILL BE BIIIIIIIIG

I’ve been working over at IMAX in Santa Monica the last few weeks, overseeing the conversion of RIDDICK into its giant-ass supersize-me format.  Hasn’t always been an easy task:  David Eggby and I shot the movie widescreen (2.40:1), yet the native aspect ratio of IMAX is much taller (1.90:1).  That’s no small difference to reconcile.

My solution was to adopt different aspect ratios within the same movie – something that was never done 10 years ago when film was still king.  But now that we use an entirely digital pipeline, we can vary the size of the image on the screen – on a shot-by-shot basis.  So that’s what I opted to do for the IMAX version.  (RIDDICK will have about 300 IMAX screens.)

And don’t confuse IMAX with 3D as some do.  They’re distinct things, and a movie can be one…can be the other…can be both.  So RIDDICK will be big – but not extra-dimensional.  I think straight IMAX yields a superior viewing experience and is here for good.  But 3D?  Not sure it’s so much more immersive than a screen 70 feet high.  That said…

The good folks at IMAX did run IRON MAN 3 for me in both large format and 3D.  And let me tell you, it was quite a spectacle.  So I’ll keep my mind open for awhile longer on the ultimate utility and fate of 3D.

RIDDICK is set for release in the US and Canada September 6.  Next post, I’ll try to include international release dates since some of you who live overseas have been asking.

Harlan the Great

Called up Harlan Ellison today for two reasons:  1)  I missed his cranky old voice and, 2) To make sure he was still alive.  We hadn’t spoken in a few years and, frankly, I was starting to worry.

For those of you who don’t know, Ellison is our greatest living writer of science fiction.  Okay, “speculative fiction,” since I think that’s what he prefers.  But in addition to Hugo-winning work like I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, The Glass Teat, and Deathbird Stories, Harlan wrote what is, hands down, the finest Star Trek script ever (City on the Edge of Forever), and two of the best Outer Limits episodes (Soldier and Demon with a Glass Hand – more on Demon below).

Mapwise, Harlan lives up in the hills of L.A overlooking The Valley and “too many fucking Republicans.”  Talentwise, he lives in the same house as Bradbury, Clarke, Asimov.  In that pantheon.

I was 15 impressionable years old when Harlan first made landfall in my life:  It was at some comic book convention, and “HE” was speaking from a dais so lofty it seemed to treble his true stature.  Harlan was waving around a gold watch for all the assembled to see, claiming it had cost five thousand dollars, and further claiming that he had paid for it by – get this – moving words around on paper.

And oh, how he moved those words around!

His stories were always provocative, typically shocking, sometimes downright assaultive.  “You can write like this?” I asked in punch-drunk wonder.  “You can actually put two fucking colons in the same fucking sentence?  While sprinkling in a lot of ‘fucks?’”   The answer seemed to be “You can do whatever you want.  It’s your story.  It’s your writing.”  Thousands of his pages I must’ve consumed in a fever-dream of reading and learning that probably, more than anything else, shaped the manner in which I write professionally to this day – so many years after that ostentatious watch-wagging show of his.

I still hope to make a movie of Demon with a Glass Hand.  Harlan and I worked on a script together, but that got stuck at Disney after their divorce with Miramax/Dimension.  It may take a suitcase full of cash and dynamite to break it loose from there but, trust me, it’d be worth it.  Demon was a story that stuck to the flypaper of my brain for about 30 years, and that’s surely a sign that it’s something special.  The Outer Limits episode is very much of its own time – meaning, it was made for two dollars and looks like it – but the big, haunting ideas are still there, waiting to be brought to the fore.  Wonderful world-ending ideas.  Jaw-dropping stuff.

Anyway, I learned in my phone call with Harlan that he’s slowing down these days, not writing anymore, not driving.  Too bad on that first count.  But while his voice will be missed…I recognize that some of it lives on in my own.

DT

IT’S CRUNCH TIME

Feels like I’m back in production! 

Been pulling 14-hour days trying to finish RIDDICK.  My typical day starts at 9am with intensive visual effects meetings, sweating out the details of our 900 VFX shots.  Then I jet across town to the mix stage, Soundelux, where I supervise the sound, balancing out the often-competing elements of music, sound fx, sound design, and dialog.  At night I hit the lab, Technicolor in Hollywood, staying until midnight to do “DI work” — color-correction of the movie.  This is where David Eggby and I have one last chance to get the images right, dropping in grads and power windows to finesse what we shot on set.  It’s a great tool, the Digital Intermediate.  Kind of like Photoshop for movies.  Gotta love it.  Gotta love the challenge of bringing it all home.

 

 

Good Luck, Karl

I see that my friend Karl Urban is going to host a screening of DREDD this week at Comic-Con. Just wanted to wish him well with that — and remind everyone what his eyes really look like.  Here he is reprising Vaako for us, no helmet in sight.  The actor over his shoulder, menacingly out of focus, is the great Andreas Apergis who plays “Krone” in the upcoming RIDDICK.