Blu-ray Prices Dropping Soon

The price of Blu-ray discs will be coming down. Electronista reported earlier today that Panasonic, Philips, and Sony have agreed to form a single licensing firm for the discs. By combining all the required licenses for Blu-ray, DVD, and CD in one place, the new project, once operational, will allow companies to visit one place to acquire rights to Blu-ray burners, discs, and players, which should result in a drop of license prices.

This is a result of a few market conditions. To begin with, you have the economy: Toilet. And then you have the numbers relating to DVD sales versus Blu-ray sales, and while the new technology is slowly gaining ground, that’s just it. It’s slowly gaining ground.

The licensing, believe it or not, is a huge financial concern for manufactures and patent holders. Not too many years ago, a company wanting to make a standard DVD player would have to pay a $15 license for each unit. That’s before anything actually gets made.

Blu-ray Prices to Come Down

Marvel Gets Samuel Jackson For Nine Movies!

Here’s a bedtime story about, amongst other things, economies of scale.

After appearing in the post credits geek-tease on Iron Man, Sam Jackson’s Nick Fury was slated for a bigger, better showing in the next installment. Seemed like a sure thing, until Jackson himself cast the assumption into doubt. Other stories started surfacing about cost-cutting or, at the very least, an unexpected sense of budgetary pragmatism in the Marvel movie bursary (Don Cheadle in, Terrence Howard out, Mickey Rourke in, out, in, out and shake it all about). Our collective popcorn dreams of more Samuel-powered Fury seemed to be a burst bubble…

Not any more. The Hollywood Reporter are telling us that Jackson has been signed for appearances in nine more Marvel motion pictures – including Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America, The Avengers, possible sequels to these and, perhaps most interestingly of all, the lead in their in-development S.H.I.E.L.D movie.

Samuel L. Jackson really does have better things to do than spend nine times the typical tentpole schedule mucking about in an eye patch, but by keeping eight of these appearances down to managable cameos, or so I’d assume, he at once gets to keep his integrity, his comic book cred, and blank pages in his planner for more exciting things.

And, I hope, a reasonable slice of greenbacked recompense.

There’s mild intrigue in the list of films we can expect to see Fury cropping up in. Appearances in Thor and Captain America pretty much confirm that previously rumored directions for the projects – being Valhalla bound and period set respectively – are now scrapped in favor of cross-over-tastic contemporary settings.

Getting Jackson to ink for all nine pictures now means Marvel can offer him a decent enough payday with the promise of repeated returns on this investment in the future. The only risk is the off chance we all fall out of love with Jackson – maybe if he’s caught plying kids with Jesus Juice or burying a body in the woods this might happen, but other than that: fat chance.

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Green Lantern Movie Set For December 2010 Release

Here’s a headsup from G-Man over at ComicVine.com…

It is now official. Warner Bros. has announced the release date for the Green Lantern movie. Mark in on your calendar now…or wait until you get a 2010 calendar and then mark it. December 17, 2010.

The movie will be directed by Martin Campbell (“Casino Royale”) and is said to be about the story of Hal Jordan. Some concept art has already been seen, including what Oa may look like.

Co-writer, Marc Guggenheim has stated that he would love to include cameos. Obviously they are nowhere near ready for casting.

Start charging up your power rings.

Looks Like A Green Christmas In 2010 With Green Lantern

Gore Verbinski to Direct Clue

I wonder who they are going to get to replace the likes of Tim Curry, Madeline Kahn, Eileen Brennan, Christopher Lloyd, Michael McKean, Martin Mull, and Leslie Ann Warren.  The original is a classic and was populated by funny, talented actors who knew their craft.  Good luck Gore…

Universal Pictures has made a series of deals with Hasbro to adapt board games and toys into big screen movies. Last year the studio signed Ridley Scott to develop a movie based on Monopoly. Over the past month it was announced that Platinum Dunes was developing a movie based around the Ouija board, Etan Cohen was writing a screenplay for Candyland with Enchanted director Kevin Lima to direct,  and Steve Oedekerk to write a big screen adaptation of Stretch Armstrong.

And now comes news that Pirates of the Caribbean helmer Gore Verbinski has signed on with Universal to direct and produce a live-action adaptation of the board game Clue. While most of the other properties might seem like odd choices, Clue has a murder mystery storyline that seems much easier to turn into a narrative story.

As you know, the board game is set in a big mansion where a murder has taken place. The competitors try to uncover who committed the murder, Professor Plum, Ms. White, Col. Mustard, Miss Peacock, Mr. Green or Ms. Scarlet, what murder weapon was used, either a knife, rope, candlestick, wrench, pistol or a lead pipe, and what room the murder was committed in. The board game has made over $1 billion in sales over the last 61 years.

The board game was previously turned into a big screen film in 1985, and while the black comedy was a critical and financial failure at the time of it’s release, the film has gone on to develop a cult following on DVD and television airings. Most interesting is that the film actually is one of the only mainstream movies I know of which was released with alternative endings. Depending on which theater you screening the movie, moviegoers were presented with one of three different endings. Newspapers listed the film with an A, B or C depending on the ending included with the print. It would be interesting if they tried to do such a gimmick in the Internet age, and if the gimmick would result in more ticket sales.

Verbinski is an interesting choice because he has experience in bringing fantastical period stories to life with a great mix of realism and wonderful visuals. However, this is just one of the films that Verbinski has on his plate. I think I would much rather see his big screen adaptation of the video game Bioshock than another Clue movie.

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Smallville Officially Back For Another Season

According to Entertainment Weekly’s TV guru, Michael Ausiello, Smallville is among the shows officially announced as being picked up for another Season come this fall by the CW. This season has seen steady ratings, and good buzz amongst fans with Doomsday as a major villain and more DCU guest stars including the Legion of Superheroes and the coming appearance of Zatanna. Two of the four current producers of the show are leaving to helm a remake of Melrose Place (I wish I was kidding).

Supernatural, Smallville’s genre sibling on the network, also got renewed for a new season.

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‘Mars’ For The Savage Worlds RPG From Adamant Entertainment

I’ve been waiting for this to come out for Savage Worlds, and as I’m not a fan of d20, this is great news. Releasing March 9th, exclusively through Adamant’s website, with distribution to game stores later this year.

Welcome to Mars!

Not Mars as it is – airless, most likely lifeless, with only the faintest hints of what might have once been a damp, if not necessarily lush and living, world billions of years in the past. No, this is Mars as it should be and as it was once imagined to be – an ancient, dying, but not yet dead world, a world where a vast canal network reaches from pole to pole, bringing water and life to vast and fantastic cities.

A Mars where albino apes run a vast empire in the last surviving jungle, a world where warrior tribes of Green Martians raid the outlying cities of the canal dwellers, a world where, in places dark and quiet and forgotten beneath the surface, ancient and terrible intellects plan dark and dire deeds.

It is a Mars of sky-corsairs, of duels with blade and blaster, of vile plots, fantastic inventions, daring rescues, arena battles, and spectacular stunts. It is a Mars where ancient cities can be discovered and their lost treasures plundered, a Mars where a trek across the dry sea bottoms can yield amazing discoveries, where terrible monsters roam the rocky wastes.

It is the Mars of pulp fiction and Saturday morning serials.

It is now yours.

The Sword-and-Planet genre comes to Savage Worlds! Adamant Entertainment will be releasing our setting of action, intrigue and adventure beneath the Moons of Mars — previously only available for d20 — in a brand-new edition for Savage Worlds.

Michael Bassett on the SOLOMON KANE movie: "It’s classy and intense"

QuietEarth.us has some really cool news about a movie I’m fairly giddy about…

In my cinema obsessed mind, Michael J. Basset is currently battling Neil Marshall for British genre director supremacy and, as it stands right now, it’s a dead heat. Both have proven themselves to be genre aficionados who are hungry for attention and equally adept at creating hard edged flicks with great ensemble casts. In fact, each burst onto the scene in the same year (2002) with equally impressive first features- Marshall with Dog Soldiers and Bassett with Deathwatch. Their follow-ups were just as impressive, though Marshall’s The Descent managed to capture the collective conscience while Bassett’s fantastic Wilderness failed to find a large audience.

So now it’s all down to Bassett’s adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s Soloman Kane to decide which director will be the new strong arm of British genre film. Doomsday was hard-core and a real blast no doubt, but Bassett’s Kane might trump it based on the fact that it won’t be as steeped in obvious homage. But where’s the film? It was supposed to be out in 2008 but there has been nary a word or new piece of marketing for the film since those early teaser posters dropped at the end of ’07. Well just today, Bassett updated us on the status of his dark fantasy epic which sounds oh so close to being unleashed. Read more

Michel Gondry to Direct Rogen’s Green Hornet

What a strange and tumultuous journey it’s been for Seth Rogen’s The Green Hornet. First, Asian kung fu master Stephen Chow was tapped to direct, but then discouragingly stepped out of the director’s chair due to creative differences. Then it was reported that the project might not happen at all, only for Seth Rogen to chime in saying that if a director could be found, the project would still move forward. Now, according to The Hollywood Reporter and Variety, that director has been found: Michel Gondry (They also report that at this point, Chow is still expected to play Kato).

Gondry is one of my favorite directors of all time, despite the fact that I was hugely disappointed by Be Kind, Rewind last year. However, this choice strikes me as bizarre at best. Hornet is positioned to be a comedic actioner, and while Gondry undoubtedly has the skill to branch out in the action department, there’s nothing in his filmography that  screams “mainstream friendly.” Gondry creates fantastical worlds that are visually interesting, and he constantly forces the viewer to wrap her head around them. Read more

Left 4 Dead receives massive patch on Xbox 360

Valve just informed us that a patch has been released for the Xbox 360 version of Left 4 Dead, just in time for the soon-to-be-released downloadable content.

The patch, applied via a mandatory title update over Xbox Live, fixes a bunch of bugs, attempts to balance online gameplay and generally improves the Left 4 Dead experience. View the entire list of changes after the break.

(Oh, PSA: Be sure to take extra care staying away from Tanks. We don’t remember asking for reduced auto-shotgun damage against them.)

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The Kindle 2 Gets Disassembled

Once again, the guys at ifixit have gotten their hands on a shiny new gadget just to tear it apart. However, they did discover some interesting bits of information about the build.

•The Kindle 2 sports a 532 MHz processor, clocking in faster than an iPhone 3G. Amazon used a 90nm ARM11-based Freescale MCIMX31L multimedia processor.

•The interior of the Kindle 2 is very functional, but not as aesthetically balanced as some of the devices we’ve disassembled.

•We demonstrated the E-Ink display’s persistence by completely disconnecting the screen from the battery. The content on the screen remained crystal clear even though there was no power to it.

•Pound for pound, it’s more expensive than the MacBook Pro 17″ Unibody we took apart last week, since the Kindle 2 weighs only 10.2 ounces.

•As many have reported, the text-to-speech was remarkably clear and surprisingly listenable.

•The Kindle 2 is thinner than the iPhone 3G, but a hair thicker than an iPod Touch.

•Completely disassembling the Kindle 2 is simple once the case is opened — we removed only 26 screws and disconnected four connectors.

Head on over to ifixit for the full break down in all its gory detail. [ifixit]

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