Thursday Link-A-Mania

Super 8, The Hauntrepeneur, Odd Thomas, Lost Girl, Amazing Spider-Man

Japanese Super 8 Poster
It’s well known that JJ Abrams’s new film Super 8 is a homage to Spielberg SF flicks of the ’70s and ’80s, and this Japanese poster for the movie reinforces that notion. But is it a literal interpretation of something that happens in the film (it doesn’t seem to reflect any images we’ve seen in the clips or trailers so far) or the Japanese designers going off on a flight of fantasy?

And while we’re on the subject of Super 8, here’s another new clip:

The Hauntrepeneur
Sometimes you wonder if writers come up with the name first and the story later, and you suspect that might be the case with the puntatstic Hauntrepeneur. It’s a new original script picked up by Paramount written by Con Air and High Fidelity scripter Scott Rosenberg. The Hollywood Reporter describes it as a supernatural children’s tale in the vein of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory about a family who enlist the aide of a “Hauntrepreneur” to build them a haunted house in their new neighbourhood (which, to be honest, sounds more like The Frighteners or Beetlejuice to us). Michael Bay’s production company Platinum Dunes will produce. We suspect it may go through a name change before release, though; can you imagine TV presenters on teen shows round the world trying to get their tongues round “Hauntrepreneur”? We don’t think T4 employs pronunciation coaches.

50 Cent Joins Odd Thomas
The artist formerly known as 50 Cent, that’s Curtis Jackson to his mum, has been cast in director Stephen (Van Helsing) Sommers’ big screen adaptation of the Dean Koontz novel Odd Thomas, reports Variety. The story centres on a clairvoyant cook (played by Star Trek’s Anton Yelchin) who can see but not hear ghosts. Jackson is going to play Shamus Cocobolo, a blind DJ who helps Yelchin’s character “uncover a Satanic plot”. The film also stars Addison Timlin, Willem Dafoe, Patton Oswalt, Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Martha’s sister in Doctor Who) and Nico Tortorella.

Syfy Picks Up Lost Girl
The US Syfy channel has picked up Canadian supernatural succubus show Lost Girl, which always had the feel of a Syfy show anyway. It’s actually a lot of fun – the tone coming in somewhere between Buffy and Warehouse 13, but with a little extra (primetime friendly) kinkiness. It’s not really a story that affects us much here in the UK, to be honest, but it does make the future of the show that little bit more secure (the second season is shooting now) and hopefully it may make its way onto British screens soon.

Amazing Spider-Man – On-Set Video
Watch Andrew (Peter Parker) Garfield getting all angsty over something or other before reacting to a gunshot… These two videos were shot while production on the Marc Webb-directed Amazing Spider-Man was filming in Woodside, Queens, New York recently.