Category: Invasion Alerts!

By Jason Apuzzo. • There’s been an ocean of ‘alien invasion’ news since our last Invasion Alert! – so much so that I’ll barely be able to cover it all. So let’s jump right in, focusing on recent developments …

• Trailers and promotional art have begun to appear for Steven Spielberg’s Falling Skies TV series for TNT. If ever we’ve seen a classic alien invasion scenario, this would seem to be it. The excellent new promo trailer for this series makes it look like a cross between V and War of the Worlds – although, interestingly, some of the promotional art seems to suggest that this series may also be headed down the path of Robert Heinlein’s Puppet Masters, with alien creatures riding on the backs of humans and ‘controlling’ their thoughts and actions. That’s just a hunch, but check out this promotional poster here (scroll below to the second poster) and perhaps you’ll see what I mean.

I’m not too crazy about Noah Wyle in the lead – he plays a Boston history professor who has to “use his military knowledge to aid the resistance movement known as the 2nd Mass” (sounding a bit like V here?) – although that may be because I keep thinking of him playing Steve Jobs in Pirates of Silicon Valley, which didn’t quite work for me.

In any case, the show’s trailer features a lot of gratuitous flag-waving and patriotic imagery, once more suggesting that this genre is heading back down its traditionally pro-American, pro-freedom path, a la the recent Battle: Los Angeles. With that said, I strongly suspect that this series will likely also have multiple layers to it in the way V has had over its first two seasons.

As far as alien invasion projects, Spielberg’s Falling Skies will be headed into some crowded skies when it premieres in June, right after the J.J. Abrams/Steven Spielberg Super 8, and with the Michael Bay/Steven Spielberg Transformers: Dark of the Moon and the Jon Favreau/Steven Spielberg Cowboys & Aliens opening in July. By the way, anybody notice a recurring name here?

• So Battle: Los Angeles worked out well, yes? You can read my glowing review of Battle: LA here, which got some attention when most everyone else in the critical community was trashing the film. Battle: LA is currently the top-grossing movie worldwide, so far having taken in over $153 million. Possibly the rest of the world simply likes seeing Los Angeles being destroyed? Putting a more positive spin on things, I suspect the film’s done well because it depicts a more old-fashioned, hard-nosed, patriotic side of America – the America that the rest of the world misses, even when they claim they don’t.

At the same time, I think Battle: LA probably could’ve done even a lot better at the box office had the film been a bit more original in conception. Battle: LA takes such a straight-no-chaser approach to alien invasion that it’s hard to distinguish the film from many similar projects that have come before it – and will soon be coming after it. In any case, I’m already looking forward to the DVD …

• Brooklyn Decker spoke recently about Battleship, giving us some crucial new insights into next year’s alien invasion war thriller. In the UK promoting Just Go With It, Ms. Decker revealed that “I worked on [Battleship] for a good four months and I think it’s going to surprise a lot of people … There was weapons training, stunts with cars, it’s more of an intense film with a lot of fights and a lot of yelling.”

It’s true that when aliens invade, there’s usually a lot of yelling.

• Since our last Invasion Alert!, Guillermo del Toro very publicly had to set aside one alien invasion thriller, At the Mountains of Madness (from the H.P. Lovecraft novel), in favor of directing another alien invasion epic called Pacific Rim. At the Mountains of Madness was to star Tom Cruise, be shot in 3D, and would’ve had James Cameron on board as a producer. Universal, however, balked about the project’s reported $150 million price tag and potential R-rating, so del Toro has switched to directing Pacific Rim for Legendary – which is looking like an old-fashioned, Toho-style thriller about “a future Earth defending itself from attacking creatures.”

What do I think of this? It comes down to the question of whether you’d prefer seeing an important novel filmed and botched – or not filmed, at all. For various reasons I was having doubts about del Toro’s vision of Madness, although I’ll confess to having looked forward to seeing what he, Cruise and Cameron would come up with. Ultimately I suspect that same team will probably still make the film, only with another studio; as for Pacific Rim, we know little about it at this point other than that it feels a bit like Godzilla, which happens to be in the midst of a re-boot from Legendary.

This may end up being del Toro’s put-up-or-shut-up moment; either Pacific Rim is a huge hit, or he may have a lot of trouble helming another big-budget sci-fi feature in the future. Tron: Legacy‘s Joseph Kosinkski is finding that out right now, as his huge sci-fi project Horizons just got dropped by Disney.

• Some new pics came out today of Transformers: Dark of the Moon, plus word that Leonard Nimoy will be doing the voice of Sentinel Prime, who’s glimpsed briefly on the Moon in the film’s teaser trailer. Also: some spoilerific details about the film are apparently available in the Dark of the Moon novelization.

I’m really looking forward to what Michael Bay’s cooked-up here, especially now that he’s taken the plunge into 3D. I thought the first two Transformers films were a lot of fun, and also warm-hearted – unlike a lot of contemporary sci-fi.

• Men in Black 3D seems on the road to becoming one of those spectacular behind-the-scenes disasters that comes along every few years to bankrupt studios, end careers, etc.

The film, which has been in development for years, went into production with only a third of the screenplay written in order to take advantage of expiring tax incentives; the latest story now is that nobody even knows who one of the screenwriters is working on the film’s rewrites! Ouch. Also: Alec Baldwin has dropped out of the film (hooray!), and tensions are developing between director Barry Sonnenfeld and producer Walter Parkes. It will be interesting to see how – or whether – they pull this one out of the fire …

• In other Alien Invasion/Sci-Fi News: Ridley Scott’s Prometheus is shooting right now in Toronto, and Noomi Rapace talks about the project here; a new trailer for The Thing should be coming soon; there’s breaking news about The Darkest Hour; J.J. Abrams has been talking about Super 8 recently, and 20 minutes of the film was recently shown to exhibitors; incidentally, Abrams still apparently wants to do Cloverfield 2 (see here and here); another J.J. Abrams project, Star Trek 2, has apparently bumped the Jack Ryan reboot from Chris Pine’s calendar for the time being; a description of the first two reels of Cowboys & Aliens has leaked; the release date for Apollo 18 has been switched to January 6, 2012 (not a good sign); indie alien invasion thriller Attack the Block apparently rocked the SXSW film festival in Austin (see new clips of the film here); the indie sci-fi pic Another Earth (read the LFM Sundance review here) will be released July 22nd; Paramount just put Dune into turnaround, probably because they can’t find anyone with half a brain to do it; Tron: Legacy and the original Tron hit DVD/Blu-ray on April 5th (see my Tron: Legacy review here); will there be a third Tron? my guess is yes, with a new director and new writers; Steven Spielberg’s massive new Terra Nova series has been delayed again; a new trailer for Mass Effect 2 is out; there’s casting news on the Total Recall remake (see here and here); and there’s been a huge new wave of sci-fi deals all over Hollywood (see here and here), including movement on such projects as: The Runner, Voltron, Agent OX (about a human spy infiltrating an alien planet) and something by McG.

• Speaking of Pacific Rim and Godzilla, on the Creature Invasion front the forthcoming Piranha 3DD now has: 1) the greatest title in the history of the cinema; 2) a new script; 3) Tara Reid in the cast; 4) a rumored setting of a water park; 5) and a Thanksgiving release date of November 23rd. I’m there. No questions asked.

• James Cameron and George Lucas recently sat down to discuss 3D, digital technology and the future of the cinema. Lucas’ Phantom Menace is currently being retrofitted into 3D, and the entire Star Wars saga is now coming to Blu-ray on September 16th. Very much looking forward to both.

Cameron has been in the news a lot lately, as usual. He recently said that that he’s considering bringing the cast of the Avatar sequels to the Amazon so they can get in touch with nature and with the lifestyle of indigenous tribes – this, no doubt, to the chagrin of the former Fox executive who wanted him to cut the “New Age, tree-hugging, hippy crap” out of Avatar. Also: the Japan earthquakes are probably going to lead Cameron to call off his planned dives to the Marianas Trench to capture footage for the Avatar sequels. Cameron also wants to shoot the Avatar sequels at  48 or 60 frames/second to reduce 3D strobing, which sounds great except for the fact that every theater in America would need to be retrofit for that. (Incidentally, is Fox paying for all this?)

You get the feeling that pre-production on these Avatar sequels could total around $1 billion. Why am I thinking these films may take another 12 years for him to complete?

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … let’s take a look above at Sarah Carter of TNT’s forthcoming alien invasion series Falling Skies. She plays the only surviving member of an “outlaw motorcycle gang” who’s now on the run after a massive force of extraterrestrials arrive on Earth and begin wreaking havoc. Do women in outlaw motorcycle gangs really look like this these days?

And that’s what’s happening today on the Alien Invasion Front!

Posted on March 31st, 2011 at 6:44pm.

By Jason Apuzzo. • The most striking news on the Sci-Fi/Alien Invasion front recently was without doubt the announcement from Warner Brothers/Alcon that they’re going to reboot Blade Runner as a franchise of prequels and/or sequels. As electrifying as the news was, I was not altogether surprised to hear it given the current sci-fi craze and mania toward rebooting older franchises.

The big question, of course, is what precisely ‘is’ a Blade Runner franchise without the involvement of Ridley Scott, Harrison Ford or Philip K. Dick – none of whom are currently attached to any of these future ‘Blade Runner’ projects? (Dick being, of course, long deceased and not having furnished any ‘franchisable’ sequels to his original story). The answer, I’m afraid, is that such a ‘franchise’ is worth very little.

Having read several interviews with the Alcon people (see here and here), three points emerge: 1) they haven’t even contacted Ridley Scott yet; 2) they’d apparently like to work with Christopher Nolan (with whom they have a prior relationship), whose work on the Batman franchise represents the “template” they’re working from (i.e., it made a lot of money), and; 3) they apparently have no idea where precisely they want to take the story.

I’m groaning at all of this. It’s looking like the usual sort of thing: an ambitious group of producers grabs a lucrative ‘property’ they like, without a clue of what to do with it. They flail around looking for a ‘visionary’ (i.e., trendy) director to come in and do the actual work of figuring out what to do, because they never bothered to figure that out for themselves. Years get spent in ‘development,’ nothing happens – or worse, something like the 2010 Clash of the Titans remake happens. And memories of something precious get spoiled.

I have my doubts about this project, in other words. Indeed, I have doubts about whether it’s even going to happen. The likelihood is that neither Ridley Scott nor Christopher Nolan will be interested in doing it, and so who are the producers going to go to? Zack Snyder? Bryan Singer? God help us – I’d rather not learn what those guys think ‘The Tannhauser Gate’ really looks like. [Sigh.]

• Speaking of rebooted 80’s franchises, George Miller is assuring everyone that Mad Max: Fury Road will be back up shooting in January 2012, albeit apparently now without I Am Number Four‘s Teresa Palmer. Bummer! I’m otherwise looking forward to that film, which will be photographed in some new Miller-designed form of 3D. Also: a trailer has just been released for Tron: Uprising, an animated series that’s part of Disney’s ongoing Tron reboot. The trailer for this series actually looks better than Tron: Legacy, itself – but that may just be because there’s no Garrett Hedlund in it.

• Some other big news of late on the Sci-Fi/Alien Invasion front was that Space Battleship Yamato (or Star Blazers, in its American incarnation), the classic Japanese TV series from the 1970’s and an old favorite of mine, is going to be adapted with Christopher McQuarrie writing the screenplay and David Ellison (True Grit; son of Larry Ellison) producing. This is another project, incidentally, that can be filed away as an alien invasion project – as alien invaders are an important part of the storyline. (Btw, Ellison and McQuarrie are currently the main guys behind the potential Top Gun sequel.)

I like the sound of this project – although admittedly it’s seeming a bit like Battleship in outer space – and on an even bigger budget. Here’s the key thing to understand about Battleship Yamato, though: it’s almost a kind of anti-Avatar, featuring blue-skinned aliens (the “Gamilons”) out to destroy human life on Earth (by way of radioactive meteorite bombs) so that they can repopulate the planet themselves. Earth’s forces have to rally around an enormous space cruiser, built out of the hulking wreckage of the original WWII Japanese battleship Yamato – although at this point, they might want to instead use something like Larry Ellison’s yacht. Anyway, my only requests here would be to re-name the “Gamilons” the  “Na’vi,” cast Brooklyn Decker or Megan Fox, and otherwise we’re good to go.

• Check out this new trailer for Attack the Block, a cheeky indie alien invasion project from the UK that’s about to unspool at the SXSW Film Festival. The trailer features one of the better taglines in recent memory: “Inner City Versus Outer Space.” Also on the indie alien invasion front: a new film called Invasion of the Alien Bikini recently won the Grand Prix at the 21st Yubari Fantastic Film Festival, in Japan. Now that film I’d like to see … anybody know if it’s in 3D?

• Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace will be coming to theaters in 3D on February 10th, 2012. Killjoys of the world now have something more to complain about; I personally, however, am very much looking forward to seeing Darth Maul, Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon go at it in 3D.

I thought I would take the opportunity here to share with Libertas readers what I thought about The Phantom Menace: which is that I loved it. Not every aspect of it, perhaps, but on balance it holds up as being a very satisfying epic adventure in the Errol Flynn-swashbuckler mode, with an intriguing storyline that’s like something out of The Fall of the Roman Empire. It also happens to be one of the most visually sumptuous films ever made – sweeping you along from Italy’s Caserta Palace, to the deserts of Tunisia, to the beautiful (digital) cityscapes of Coruscant. The costumes on Natalie Portman are gorgeous, Liam Neeson is really the epitome of what a Jedi Knight should be, John Williams’ score is one of his best … and then, of course, there’s Ray Park’s Darth Maul – easily one of the greatest movie villains of all time, a rival to the best villains ever played by Basil Rathbone in swashbuckler films of this kind.

So with all that, who cares about Jar-Jar Binks, thin dialogue, or a little too much cutesy-pie time with young Anakin? The movie’s a blast – a huge box office hit (adjusted for inflation, it would’ve made about $680 million domestically in 2011) – and you’re all going to be there next February, anyway. So stop whining.

• More to the present, Battle: Los Angeles is coming next week – and I’ll be saying a lot about that in coming days. In the meantime, many new clips of the film have been released on-line (see here), as well as some behind-the-scenes pics (see here), images of the aliens (see here), the film also has a new poster out, and we’re also learning that the film was not, for the most part, shot in Los Angeles – but instead in Louisiana. So I suppose the title Battle: LA has a double meaning. (This reminds me: why do movie aliens always look like seafood these days?)

• In other Alien Invasion/Sci-Fi News & Notes: Michelle Rodriguez says that Avatar 2 will be set for the most part underwater; Apollo 18 has a new trailer out (see my opinion about it here) and a new Russian poster; David Koepp (Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, Indiana Jones 4) will be doing a rewrite on the already-in-production Men in Black 3D; J.J. Abrams talks Super 8 and Star Trek; many new rumors are trailing Ridley Scott’s Prometheus (see here, here, here and here) and there’s more casting news on that film (see here and here); more Transformers 3 trailers are coming; Steven Spielberg’s Falling Skies alien invasion TV series has new promos out; the Total Recall remake featuring Colin Farrell now has a release date of August 3rd, 2012; the SyFy channel recently featured an Area 51-related movie; and Louis Leterrier, who is responsible for the wretched Clash of the Titans remake, will soon be doing something called G – which is apparently about “a father who has to search for his lost child as the world stops spinning and Earth begins to lose its gravity.” Let me tell you, Louis: if the Earth stops spinning, you probably won’t have much time to search for family members. Trust me on that one.

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … the pretty and slightly strange Jennifer Lawrence is apparently the leading candidate to star in The Hunger Games, which, for brevity’s sake, you can imagine as something like The Running Man for teens – i.e., a sci-fi future dystopia featuring televised gladiatorial-style games. Since the story takes place in a world plagued with food shortages, it seems like perfect Obama-era sci-fi – doesn’t it?

And that’s what’s happening today on the Alien Invasion front!

Posted on March 4th, 2011 at 6:45pm.

By Jason Apuzzo. • I’ll start today’s Invasion Alert! with J.J. Abrams, Steven Spielberg and their forthcoming alien invasion thriller Super 8. A new trailer for the film ran during the Super Bowl – and although I’m very much looking forward to the film, the trailer itself didn’t do much for me, frankly. More interesting, actually, was a lengthy interview Abrams recently gave to The LA Times, in which he discussed the small town/middle America vibe of the film, its sentimental roots as a father-son reconciliation story, and the generally Spielbergean ambience of the whole project.

It’s becoming fairly clear that this film is going to be a return to the sort of family-oriented sci-fi projects Spielberg was doing in the late 70s/early 80s with E.T., Close Encounters and his TV work (incidentally, Close Encounters is coming to Blu-ray shortly) – although I sense a trace of anxiety in Abrams’ remarks as to whether such softer fare can still sell in the era of Michael Bay and James Cameron. My sense is that it can.

Many people tend to forget that most sci-fi films from the 1950s, for example (like Invaders from Mars or Invasion of the Body Snatchers), were actually set in small towns – and were highly evocative of middle American life and its values. Those films are still beloved today, not unlike Close Encounters (E.T. has aged somewhat) and if Abrams and Spielberg have done their homework on this one, they’re likely to pull off a crowd-pleasing hit – because I don’t yet sense any home runs in this current crop of edgier sci-fi invasion projects green-lit in the wake of Avatar.

I happen to like Abrams a lot, by the way. He talks in the interview about how he doesn’t do Twitter, how he still has a tape deck in his car, how he doesn’t really like the current film scene – in which everything has to be pre-marketed, pre-branded, franchised, etc., with no mystery left by the time a film is released. This remark from Abrams seems to sum up his thoroughly old-school attitude:

“We have such a challenge on this movie [Super 8],” Abrams said. ”Yes, we’ve got Steven’s name on it and my name on it — for what that’s worth — but we’ve got no famous super-hero, we’ve got no pre-existing franchise or sequel, it’s not starring anyone you’ve heard of  before. There’s no book, there’s no toy, there’s no comic book. There’s nothing. I don’t have anything; I don’t even have a board game, that’s how bad it is. But I think we have a very good movie.”

I know much of this is being said tongue-in-cheek, but isn’t it amazing that we’ve gotten to this point – a point at which a guy like Abrams, who is himself helming the new Star Trek franchise (the screenplay for the next Star Trek, incidentally, will apparently be delivered in about six weeks), feels compelled to say such things? I wish filmmakers working on the big scale would go back to telling personal stories, about actual human beings. In an era of formulaic entertainment, it’s the one formula no one seems willing to try.

• … and so now on to Michael Bay. Among the alien invasion movie Super Bowl trailers (of which there were no less than four) his Transformers: Dark of the Moon trailer certainly took the prize for spectacle, hands down. It actually looked a lot like Battle: LA, albeit in quasi-music video form.

At the recent premiere of his other alien invasion thriller, I Am Number 4, Bay actually compared Transformers 3 to Black Hawk Down – something which leads me to wonder why he doesn’t just do a movie like Black Hawk Down about our current war effort, rather than channel his energy into yet another toy franchise movie. Oh, wait! I think I know why; it has something to do with cross-platform marketing and casting Victoria’s Secret models. But that’s just a hunch.

Don’t’ get me wrong – I basically like Bay. He’s old-school in his own way. But there are reasons why he never really breaks through and has the Lucas/Spielberg/Cameron-sized hits, you know? There’s always just too much marketing there, and never enough imagination.

On the marketing front, incidentally, Bay and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley were out helping to hawk new Transformers toys recently (toys which seem to be revealing plot details about the movie), and Rosie finally talks about the project herself, here. So far she isn’t calling her director Hitler yet, unlike certain prior Transformers leads …

• Brooklyn Decker, of the forthcoming $200 million alien invasion thriller Battleship, is basically everywhere right now – appearing in the stupid Adam Sandler/Jennifer Aniston movie (two people who need to disappear for about five years), and now, of course, she’s on the pages of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue. Did you really think we were going to miss that here at Libertas? Not a chance, amigo.

Also: the Hollywood Reporter just did a big feature on her, and you can watch the video associated with her SI photoshoot here. The video is probably NSFW (Not Suitable For the Workplace) – but at the same time, if your workplace doesn’t want you watching an American blonde prancing around in a bikini, perhaps you should simply work someplace else. This isn’t Iran.

• Cowboys & Aliens also had a Super Bowl trailer, and it was terrible – even though it featured the obnoxious Olivia Wilde going semi-topless. I’m getting the strong feeling that this film is going to be the turkey of the lot. If Jon Favreau’s got anything else to show us from that film, he’d better show it fast …

… although actually, he is doing that, as the LA Times followed Favreau recently to the Alamo Drafthouse where he showed the first two reels of Cowboys to an audience that apparently liked it a lot. Go figure.

One enthusiastic fan apparently even remarked, “You made Harrison Ford kick ass again!” Actually, Ford kicked alien and commie ass to the tune of $750 million worldwide for Indiana Jones 4 – but after all, who’s counting …

Also, Favreau recently talked to EW, and revealed some important clues as to his alien invasion film’s larger ‘meaning’:

EW: Instead of “cowboys and Indians” it was “astronauts and aliens.” So the idea of visiting an indigenous culture, invaders who in the Westerns would be the pioneers and settlers, is it reversed in this story? Are the cowboys essentially the natives and aliens are like the conquering Europeans?

Favreau: Yeah, in the frustration of not having the technology to allow you to prevail. It’s always the low-tech culture that feels powerless when faced with an enemy that has technology on their side. And of course the culture with technology on their side feels like it’s manifest destiny: They’ve been granted this gift by the divine and intend to use it. So yes, it is a bit of a flip, because the cowboys find themselves as the low-tech culture. And what’s also fun is it allows the cowboys and Native Americans to come together, which would be impossible had there not been a greater common enemy. It sets the Western up in a very classic way and then turns it on its ear.

I’m a little uncomfortable with this line: “[T]he culture with technology on their side feels like it’s manifest destiny: They’ve been granted this gift by the divine and intend to use it.” Why do I think he’s talking about us, when he uses the phrase ‘manifest destiny’? I thought Favreau was on our team; perhaps he’s now gone Eastwood/off the reservation.

In any event, it’s interesting – and somewhat grating – that from Avatar through to Cowboys & Aliens, V and Battle: Los Angeles, ‘imperialism’ and ‘oppression of indigenous populations’ are obviously emerging as key themes in this genre.

• The rumors have now been confirmed: Charlize Theron will be joining Noomi Rapace in Ridley Scott’s Prometheus; and, also, there is further confirmation – from cast member Michael Fassbender – that Prometheus is more-or-less going to serve as an Alien prequel. Fassbender says there is a “a definite connecting vein” in the film with the Alien series.

Incidentally, I’m not a fan of Charlize Theron – she’s a bit frosty and left-wing to my taste – but she can project intelligence and I’m otherwise glad to see that Scott is keeping the Alien franchise focused on compelling female characters. Prometheus may do Avatar-type business, if he plays his cards right.

• Speaking of blondes, Aussie blonde Teresa Palmer – who plays “a fearless, Ducati-riding alien” babe (every film should have one) in the Michael Bay-produced I Am Number 4 – talked to the Wall Street Journal recently; also check out this interview with I Am Number 4‘s highly perky blonde Dianna Agron.

• One of the other big alien invasion projects with a Super Bowl ad was, of course, Battle: Los Angeles – and Battle: LA also has a new extended trailer and a new TV spot.

The best thing this film has going for it, though, is this cheeky, History Channel-style documentary short about the original ‘Battle of Los Angeles’ from World War II. The video features Bill Birnes of UFO Hunters and is a real hoot. Check it out below.

The marketing campaign for Battle: Los Angeles has been nearly flawless, even without any blondes. We’ll see if the film itself matches up.

• In other Sci-Fi/Alien Invasion News & Notes: Men in Black 3D is experiencing more shooting delays, and the script is being re-written mid-shoot (ouch); Steven Spielberg’s/Fox’s hugely expensive Terra Nova TV series had an ad during the Super Bowl, and it looked like ridiculous Avatar-style liberal claptrap; Shawn Levy will be directing the James Cameron-produced 3D Fantastic Voyage remake; Logan’s Run is getting re-made; Roland Emmerich may be taking on Isaac Asimov’s acclaimed Foundation novel series, which he apparently would do in 3D, plus he confirms that there’s no action currently on an Independence Day sequel; Jerry Bruckheimer apparently wants to do a new space adventure film, to be written by the guy who wrote the first draft of what became Prometheus, and who also wrote the forthcoming alien invasion thriller The Darkest Hour 3D; Roberto Orci talks here about his hoped-for adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s alien invasion epic Ender’s Game; the indie alien invasion thriller Attack the Block will be showing at the SXSW film festival; and, finally, for some unknown reason, Gareth Edwards’ indie alien invasion thriller Monsters – which hardly made a dent at the box office, and which nearly bored me to tears – may still get a sequel or even a TV series, although Edwards himself won’t be involved.

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … you would think that with Brooklyn Decker writhing around the beach in a bikini for Sports Illustrated, she would be today’s official pin-up. Or perhaps the prickly Olivia Wilde, who goes semi-topless in the latest Cowboys & Aliens trailer. But the alien invasion genre has a deep bench, my friends, so instead I go today with Alice Eve, who just joined the cast of Men in Black 3D – playing a younger version of Emma Thompson’s character. Oddly enough, though, I don’t remember Emma Thompson looking quite like this in her youth …

And that’s what’s happening today on The Alien Invasion Front!

Posted on February 17th, 2011 at 7:30pm.

By Jason Apuzzo. • The big news since our last Invasion Alert! was the announcement by Fox of Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, a semi-prequel to Alien, Scott’s classic sci-fi horror thriller from 1979. As predicted here for many months, Noomi Replace has been tapped by Scott as the lead for this long-rumored project, with Angelina Jolie And Charlize Theron reportedly circling other roles. Also: Michael Fassbender was recently added to the cast, apparently to play an android. And, despite Scott’s coy public statements, early indications are that this film will, indeed, serve as a prequel to Alien – and that we may actually get two films following this new Prometheus storyline, as well.

So what is the Prometheus storyline? Lips are officially sealed but some interesting plot details have leaked … [SPOILER ALERT] suggesting that the story involves the discovery on Earth of alien DNA at a desert archaeological dig, followed by the lead characters’ jetting off to the original alien homeworld – a setting we haven’t set yet in the Alien series. (There’s already a lot of online chatter that Scott intends to shoot the film’s archaeological dig in Morocco.)

The word for years has been that Scott wanted to do a prequel to Alien that would tell the story of the non-human ‘space jockey’ from the first film (seen above), the fossilized/mummified creature in whose ship the alien eggs were initially found. I listened to Ridley Scott’s DVD commentary on Alien recently, in which he basically sketched out his conception of the Alien backstory: namely, that the race of ‘space jockeys’ were originally using the alien creatures as a kind of bio-mechanoid weapon to terra-form planets, prior to the creatures breaking loose in the ‘space jockey’ ship – the ship eventually discovered by the crew of the Nostromo. Of course, James Cameron later riffed off this theme of ‘military exploitation’ of the alien creatures in Aliens, and it’s easy to imagine Scott returning to this theme for Prometheus; the film’s title itself suggests the use of ‘forbidden’ technology, which the aliens would certainly represent. [END OF SPOILERS.]

We’ll be keeping a close eye on all this. My sense is that Scott was kicked in the pants to do this film by the success of Avatar; I doubt he wants to go down as second fiddle to Cameron – and, frankly, he shouldn’t. Suffice it say that although Scott has gone a bit daft in recent years, and become more aggressively left-wing, he remains one of sci-fi’s greatest filmmakers – and it’s exciting to consider what his return to this genre may hold. Prometheus is set for a June 8, 2012 release.

• Speaking of James Cameron, he recently committed to release dates in 2013 and 2014 for the Avatar sequels, and talked recently about some of the technical challenges he’s facing already on those films (such as underwater motion-capture, and the potential of filming in the Marianas Trench; he certainly doesn’t do anything the easy way, does he?) Also: Cameron claims that he still wants to do Battle Angel Alita, once he’s finally done with Avatar. We’ll see.

But that’s not all. Cameron also confirmed recently that Tom Cruise is interested in top-lining the epic alien invasion thriller At the Mountains of Madness (based on the Lovecraft novel) that he’s producing for Guillermo del Toro – although no deal is in place yet. (Del Toro also offers an update on that project here.)

• In the midst of her media blitz for Just Go With It, Brooklyn Decker recently talked with MTV about her forthcoming, $200 million alien invasion thriller from director Peter Berg, Battleship. You can check that interview out here. I can’t quite remember what she said, but I know she looked good saying it.

• Battle: Los Angeles is approaching. Images of the invading aliens have been leaked, plus new set photos, interviews and an on-set video blog are now available. I was initially quite enthusiastic about this film, but that’s cooled somewhat. We’ll see.

• Can you believe it? Some 25 years after it’s initial publication, Orson Scott Card’s alien invasion thriller Ender’s Game is now the hottest property being shopped around Hollywood (Card is a right-winger; did you know that?); although, of course, 25 years is nothing compared to the almost 100 years since Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars was published, and Pixar’s Andrew Stanton (WALL•E) offers an update on Disney’s live action adaptation of that novel here; John Carter of Mars is currently set for a March 9th, 2012 release.

• And guess who else is headed to Mars … Sinbad! No kidding, Charles Schneer’s son Barry wants to bring the Sinbad: Rogue of Mars comic to the screen in 2012 as a belated sequel to the wonderful Sinbad movies his father did years ago with Ray Harryhausen.

• Sinbad may not only be running in to John Carter up there on Mars, of course, but also Alexandre Aja’s Cobra the Space Pirate, another comic book/manga hero whom Aja (Piranha 3D) is planning to bring to the big screen soon, as well; Aja talked recently about that project here.

• On the Classic Alien Invasion Front: The New York Times reviews the latest triple-feature DVD release of Roger Corman’s Not of This Earth, War of the Satellites and Attack of the Crab Monsters; and we otherwise want to wish the great Zsa Zsa Gabor the best, as the star of the 1958 cult classic Queen of Outer Space continues to undergo more medical difficulties.

• In other Sci-Fi News & Notes: Director Gareth Edwards talks about the Godzilla reboot today; Matt Reeves And J.J. Abrams apparently haven’t found the right concept yet for Cloverfield 2; the J.J. Abrams/Steven Spielberg Super 8 will have a Super Bowl ad (along with Transformers 3 and Cowboys & Aliens); Spielberg’s forthcoming Terra Nova TV series continues to raise eyebrows, primarily due to its cost; Westworld is being re-booted (?!); Sony will be releasing Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium; V-babe Laura Vandervoort has a new interview out about the future of that series (which may not actually have a future, if its ratings continue to sag and its storyline irritates the fan base); and Liam Neeson will be returning to the Star Wars universe to voice Qui-Gon Jinn on The Clone Wars TV series.

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … Rosie Huntington-Whiteley of Michael Bay’s Transformers: Dark of the Moon just posed for the UK’s Vogue … and I’m suddenly not remembering Megan Fox any more, you know what I mean?

And that’s what’s happening today in Earth’s War on Alien Invaders!

Posted on February 4th, 2011 at 7:47pm.