At the moment I am reading Inkspell, the sequel to German author Cornelia Funke's successful book Inkheart. In Inkheart, young Meggie discovers that her father can actually read people out of books. This seems to be a wonderful gift, but he cannot really control who he reads out of the books, meaning that some rather dangerous character from fantasy novel Inkheart have made it over into our world. Inkheart is a very well written book with great characters, and movie studio New Line snapped it up when they realized they couldn't keep making Lord of the Rings movies forever, to ensure that they still had their fix of fantasy material to base successful pictures on. The lead role of Mo, the man capable of reading characters out of books, has gone to Brendan Fraser, the actor who was actually the inspiration for Funke when she wrote the book. Other actors who are on their way to the world of Inkheart are Andy Serkis as the evil Capricorn, Paul Bettany as the heroic Dustfinger, Helen Mirren as bookish Elinor, and up and coming young star Eliza Bennett as Mo's daughter Maggie.
As I write this, Disney's Bridge to Terabithia is doing very well in American movie theaters, attracting large crowds, paving the way for more kids books to find their way to cinemas. One of the movies hoping to profit from this success (and of course from the success of other book-movies like Harry Potter and The Chronicles of Narnia) is The Spiderwick Chronicles. This movie, being released in the beginning of 2008, is based on a series of books written by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black. They focus on nine year old twins Simon and Jared and their older sister Mallory, who have moved to an estate that has seen better times. It soon turns out though that this estate isn't as boring a place as they had feared, when they discover that faeries live here. Anot only that, but these fairies also have their very own magical world, where the kids are soon transported to. Yes, it all sounds a bit familiar, but when movies like this are done right, they can be immensely entertaining.
Writing about any of Walt Disney Animation's upcoming movies is a bit risky. There's a lot of talk about the future of the studio right now, with the most recent talk being that WDA is going to go back to hand drawn animation. I already burnt my fingers in that respect when I wrote a glowing article about Chris Sanders' American Dog, which I thought might have become one of the best animated movies ever made, especially with Sanders' (Lilo and Stitch) directing. Of course, a few days after that I got the news that Sanders was kicked off the project, mainly because John Lasseter wasn't happy with the way the movie was turning out, and also because Sanders wasn't too pleased that he had to re-tool the whole movie as a hand drawn project. Now Sanders has been replaced by a different director, and even though I'm still interested to see what it will turn out like, I'm also a bit worried that it will miss that magic that made Lilo and Stitch so special.
It's maybe not the type of project you would expect from the Wachowski Brothers, but you can be sure they will put their own original spin on the source material: Speed Racer. The movie version, no doubt helped by a huge budget, will retell the story from the classic 1960's animated series, in which a young race car driver tries to become the best in his sport, helped by the magnificent Mach 5 designed by his father. The movie version has been doing the rounds in rumorville for a long time, but now it's finally coming to screens. As is usual with this type of huge movie, many people are already rumored for the lead role, but I think it's safe to say that the Wachowski's will probably go with an unknown lead. One thing the fans will maybe look forward to even more than the revelation of who is going to play the lead, is the first look at the Mach 5 in the movie. With today's techniques, it should be possible to make something really spectacular out of both car and racing scenes. It's probably not going to be long before we hear more about this movie, since the shooting is scheduled to start in June of this year, with the release date of the movie almost a year later, in May 2008.
It's always fun to look at the movies coming out in the future. Many people on the web like to make lists with their predictions of the movies for the coming year (myself included), and when you look at those lists and see the release dates, some of those movies seem really far off. There are however also many, many movies in various states of production that are coming out even later than this, and in this new regular column I will show you some of the movies that you won't be seeing in theaters for a long, long time. And we kick things off with: Horton Hears a Who.
1. Monsters Inc.
2. The Incredibles
3. Finding Nemo
4. Ratatouille
5. Toy Story
6. Monster House
7. Toy Story 2
8. Flushed Away
9. Over the Hedge
10. Arthur and the Minimoys/Shrek
