Samurai Jack: The Feature Film Is Coming

The folks behind Frederator are stepping up to produce feature length animated movies. On their first development slate are a number of interesting projects - not least a Samurai Jack feature film. Of course, Genndy Tartakovsky is attached to write and direct.

Notice how there hasn't been any Dark Crystal sequel news of late? Last time it was rumoured to have ground to a halt the Hensons swore blind that it hadn't, but.... maybe their definition of a halt is different to everybody else's? Don't be surprised to see the Samurai Jack film in release before Power of the Dark Crystal.

Other Frederator films are set to include a stop motion film version of Doug TenNapel's The Neverhood videogame, written and directed by TenNapel himself, and The Seven Deadly Sins (again?!?) featuring hip-hop music and designs and, amusingly, Don King amongst the voice cast.

Curiously, a completely different line-up of movies is listed on the Frederator homepage: The Fairly Odd Parents, Super Santa, The Electric Piper, Globehunters and Crash Nebula. What's to become of these?

The plan is to budget each Frederator film below 20 million to allow some risk taking. We could be looking at some very exciting films here.

Yoda And Friends

That's Yoda. Seen him before? The image popped up on Collecting HQ having been gathered at the New York toy fair. What you're looking at is the CG design for the wee Jedi Master as he'll appear in the upcoming animated Star Wars TV show.

Despite being animated in 3D, the show is going to be based, visually at least, on the model sheets and styles of the old 2D-animated Clone Wars series.

This is a big year for the Star Wars cash cow, and a lot of the efforts seem to be aimed at setting up a new, young audience for the films - the old audience is growing up, finally, and their loyalty to new Lucas product has been on the wane since the prequels, anyway. Not all new Star Wars items are shooting for the young ones, though: there's a special 30th Anniversary DVD on the cards for later in the year, and that's aimed squarely at the aging geek market.

Speculation has been rife that this DVD will somehow be a new part of the Star Wars fictional canon, most likely as another re-edit of one of the first film. All the evidence I can muster (don't ask - I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you) suggests that this new, 30th Anniversary DVD is nothing of the sort, and is simply a 'Special Features' type project, centring round a documentary but with plenty of bolt-on little parts. There's a number of shots and short sequences still on the shelf from the first film, even after all of the tinkering, and with a bit of spit and polish from ILM they could make a very nice set of 'Deleted and Extended Scenes'.

We'll find out soon enough as the announcement can't that be far away - though it is worth noting that the DVD release appears to be timed for a 'Just In Time For Christmas' launch, not at all marking the actual anniversary date. Interpret that how you will.

Power Of The Dark Crystal Canned

I've been told, and I believe what I was told, that The Power of the Dark Crystal has been canned. Genndy Tartakovsky had been deep in preproduction on the film for a good while - at least two years, I'm told - but now, the film has officially been plaed 'on hiatus'.

Unofficially, however, it looks like the film will never be completed. Any chance of a book a concept art at least? Who knows.

The Henson Company have yet to comment. At least they have three more, very promising sounding, films in the offing (Look to the comments on that entry for the source of this story).

Pro-Nicotine Propoganda From Director Of Dark Crystal 2

Genndy Tartakovsky is a very talented director (at least of animation) with genuine winners like Samurai Jack and The Clone Wars under his belt already and his feature film debut, a sequel to The Dark Crystal, in production right at this moment.

Tartakovsky's most recent work to be released is a commercial for a quick-fix Nicotine gum, and I think it's pretty striking stuff, graphically speaking, if rather slight in terms of content.