It’s being reported that 1019 Entertainment’s Ralph Winter and Terry Botwick are developing a modernized re-telling of the tale of Frankenstein based on the series of books by acclaimed author Dean Koontz.

The hope is that a new franchise can be born. It will be set in modern New Orleans, where a successful businessman has secretly created a super-human monster named Deucalion. A couple of detectives meet come face-to-face with the monster while investigating a murder one day, and when they investigate a little further, they are lead to a world of manufactured human beings.

Koontz’s first novel in the series is called Frankenstein: Prodigal Son, and was followed by two more books. It has also recently been adapted into a graphic novel format.

Here is a synopsis for his books.

Every city has secrets. But none as terrible as this. His name is Deucalion, a tattooed man of mysterious origin, a sleight-of-reality artist who’s traveled the centuries with a secret worse than death. He arrives as a serial killer stalks the streets, a killer who carefully selects his victims for the humanity that is missing in himself. [...]

This post is simply for the purposes of fun hypothetical discussions.

Truth Out wrote a piece recently talking about why controversial documentary filmmaker Michael Moore should run for President of the United States. Now, I don’t know if this is some kind of random joke post, but it sounds like author is being pretty serious and he even makes multiple points as to not only why Moore should run, but how he could actually WIN. Yikes.

Obviously this is just crazy to think about. After Bowling for Columbine came out, Moore was the top dog in the world of documentaries, but it did not take long before he was attacking the world of politics with a vengeance. Some praised his strong stance and determination to get things changed in Washington, while others were turned off by his loud and aggressive tactics. And when many reports — such as this one — seemed to point out Moore’s apparent hypocritical words and actions as well as his sneaky methods of editing his films to create situations that didn’t actually take place, trust became a major issue. [...]

Horns, the latest offering by author Joe Hill is out in hardcover today. In conjunction with this release, we here at Geeks of Doom have five (5) copies of the novel to give away to our readers!

Five (5) winners will receive:

– One (1) Horns by Joe Hill

HarperCollins has posted the first 11 chapters of Horns on their site, so browse through the book to read these beginning chapters (there’s 50 chapters in total).

“We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.” –– Oscar Wilde

Proceed with caution. HORNS dead ahead.

Ignatius Martin Perrish spent the night drunk and doing terrible things. He woke the next morning with a headache, put his hands to his temples, and felt something unfamiliar, a pair of knobby pointed protuberances. He was so ill––wet-eyed and weak––he didn’t think anything of it at first, was too hung-over for thinking or worry. But when he was swaying above the toilet, he glanced at himself in the mirror over the sink and saw he had grown horns while he slept. He lurched in surprise, and for the second time in twelve hours he pissed on his feet [...]

Farscape, Vol. 1
The Beginning of the End of the Beginning
Story by Rockne S. O’Bannon
Script by Keith R.A Decandido
Art by Tommy Patterson
BOOM! Studios
Release Date: October 6, 2009

Farscape, the popular sci-fi channel series of the same name, has taken a page out of the book of many other canceled shows and begins anew in comic book form. Continuing right after the end of the Farscape movie, The Peace Keeper Wars, all seems quiet on living ship Moya and in John Crichton’s life. He has a wife and kid, living in a peaceful bliss. Though in Crichton’s life, peace and quiet never lasts long. Failing to seize the throne on his home planet Hyneria, Rygel and members of the Moya crew are taken hostage by his former subjects, leaving John and Aeryn to rescue them.

The story, crafted by Farscape creator Rockne S. O’Bannon and writer Keith R.A Decandido, is set in continuity with the show and delivers the same type of story and characters that Farscape fans have come to know. The dialogue is funny, the action is quick. It is always nice to know that the creator of the show is so heavily involved in the comic. It gives the fans a sense that the property will be taken care of in its new format and that the story will be true to the show’s sensibility, which it is [...]

The Nobody
Hardcover
By Jeff Lemire
Vertigo
Release date: July 7, 2009

Large Mouth. Population 754. A small town run by average people. Then a mysterious stranger arrives — a man completely covered in bandages. He doesn’t say a word, just checks into the local motel, and locks himself away. What is he doing behind that locked door? What is he hiding?

In The Nobody, a limited-run series by Jeff Lemire, known for his Eisner nominated series Essex County, takes the iconic character of the Invisible Man and drops him into a modern day small town. The story alternates between the point of view of the Invisible Man himself, John Griffen, and a 16-year-old girl named Vickie who is fascinated by him. She works at the local diner and decides to bring him food while he is in his hotel room. The two form a friendship of sorts, more about having someone around than actually knowing anything about that person. But it works and they both feel a bit more like someone with the other around. Of course, the general population of the town distrust Griffen from the start, which only makes Vickie want to help him more [...]

The major dilemma content creators face in the digital age is how to make money from their work. Regardless of what kind of content — blogs, music, films, etc. — it’s damn near impossible to earn a living off of donations and online ad revenue alone.

Co-founder of The Pirate Bay, Peter Sunde is heading up a new micro payment service called Flattr that would seemingly change all of that.

“We aim to revolutionize how people pay and get paid for content on the internet,” according to Flattr’s official site, which sent 200-beta invites for the service just days ago.

Essentially, Flattr works by having people donate a small amount of money each month to pay for their favorite content. Creators would then embed a “Flattr Button” on their content that fans could click if they liked it. At the end of the month, the money donated would be split equally for every button clicked.

Think of it as Google Adsense meets Digg voting [...]

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? #1
Volume 1
Written by Philip K. Dick
Art by Tony Parker
BOOM! Studios
Release date: Issue #1 July 2009; Vol 1 December 1, 2009

By Kathulhu

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is adapted from the book by Philip K. Dick (which inspired the Ridley Scott film Bladerunner) and is presented in graphic form by BOOM! Studios. The art by Tony Parker is appropriately dark with muted coloring done by Blond, and the story follows the illustrations in a continuous panel-by-panel format. Warren Ellis provides an “introduction,” found at the end of the comic.

The future, as painted by Dick, is a bleak and desolate place. It is the year 2021 and the population on planet Earth has been decimated by a radioactive dust that is the byproduct of World War Terminus. Few people are left on Earth, as the majority of survivors have left to colonize other planets. Those who remain on Earth run the risk of being labeled as “biologically unacceptable” while emigrants to the off world colonies receive the android of their choice [...]

Apparently Lars von Trier, director of the recent controversial film, Antichrist, is now the Jigsaw Killer of all film makers, setting challenges at the feet of his peers.

Many reports out of the Berlin Film Festival state that von Trier is challenging none other than Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro to remake their 1976 classic, Taxi Driver. The news is so insanely preposterous that it wasn’t even worth a glance at first; but with more and more reports indicating that an announcement will come soon, we all can’t help but wonder: is this really true?

This is not the first time that von Trier has done this, either. Back in 2003, the director challenged Jørgen Leth to remake his own 1967 classic The Perfect Human, which is von Trier’s favorite film. To up the stakes, von Trier pushed him to actually remake it five different times, with five different obstacles presented for each one. The result was a sort of documentary called The Five Obstructions, which showcased the challenges. [...]

According to the trades, Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald have secured their first title in their venture with Imagenation Abu Dhabi. The film will be titled Earthbound, and it is based on the book of the same name from author Richard Matheson.

Matheson is an author whose books have been turned into many popular movies over the years. Among his many works that were turned into films exists titles like The Incredible Shrinking Man, Somewhere in Time, Stir of Echoes, What Dreams May Come, and I Am Legend, which was also The Last Man on Earth and The Omega Man — all based on the books of Matheson. He even adapted some of the screenplays himself.

The story revolves around a married couple named David and Ellen who after 21 years are facing some complications in their relationship. This leads them to run away to a little cottage on the East Coast to try and remedy things. [...]

Let’s just get it out of the way right off the ol’ bat: Yes, we know it’s been a few months since we left the decade. Most folks undertook this heavy task pre-2010, but we decided that it would be a little bit better to let the new year settle in a bit before hitting you with something of this magnitude.

So here we are, geeks; we’ve officially arrived in FUTURE *cue retro ’50s sci-fi music* and still we have no freakin’ flying cars yet. What’s the deal with that? While it is pretty exciting to be inside of the year 2010 — a year that always seemed unreachable to us mere mortals — we are also exiting another entire decade that leaves us staring at one majorly epic task. That task? To search, dig, locate, retrieve, organize, polish, and present the very best films of the past ten years!

We must once again declare that this list is also simply opinion. You are are without doubt going to find movies here that you hate and do not think deserve to be included. You will surely think of movies that you think should not only be on here, but that should be at the very top of the list. There will even be some that I have not seen and thus, can not add. Even at this very moment, I sit, worrying and wondering if I’ve forgotten any that I would include; that’s just the way things fly when compiling something this massive [...]

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, now that it has been confirmed that The Dark Knight scribes Jonathan Nolan and David Goyer are working on a script that will eventually turn into Batman 3, the rumors will begin flowing like the booze of a father mercilessly dragged to a Jonas Brothers concert by his daughters.

While rumors are usually B.S. created simply in hopes of stealing attention and hits to ones website location, sometime they come from an actual source, and these are the rumors that come with just a little chance of actually being true as night time blackness. In the case of this particular rumor, everything sounds like it would make sense and nothing is absurd and over-the-top. This information is actually a couple of weeks old, as well, but since its first running, some positive updates have come around and supported the claims, leading myself to think there could actually be some truth going on here. [...]

By now you’ve probably heard about the super intense epic battle between filmmaker Kevin Smith and Southwest Airlines that occurred Saturday night — at least I’m assuming you’ve heard about it since it was covered on Good Morning America.

If you haven’t heard about it yet and loath morning news (as I do), then the short version is that Smith decided to live-Tweet his experience of being kicked off a Southwest flight for “being too fat.” Smith said he was already seated on the flight with armrests down and seatbelt fastened (and he made a point to say with no seatbelt extender necessary) when he was told that the captain deemed him a “safety risk” because of his weight and he was ejected from the flight.

Since Smith’s first tweet regarding the incident, he’s responded to numerous queries from his followers on whether he typically buys two seats on no-class flight (sometimes, but always voluntarily) and if the director plans to sue the airline (no), and has continued to express his outrage by SWA’s treatment of him. SWA issued a statement on their blog Not So Silent Bob with their reaction to the incident where they issued their “heartfelt apologies” to Smith and then went on to disclose his personal information, such as “Smith originally purchased two Southwest seats on a flight from Oakland to Burbank – as he’s been known to do when traveling on Southwest.” The airline also admitted that their pilots “made the determination that Mr. Smith needed more than one seat to complete his flight.” [...]

If there were two words in one sentence you could say to alot of movie fan that would spark white-hot excitement, those words would be “Tarantino” and “Western.”

At a small luncheon recently held to celebrate the well-deserved Academy Award nominations for Inglourious Basterds, NY Daily Mail was on hand to ask a few questions to director Quentin Tarantino. Amidst clarifications of how he and star Brad Pitt don’t smoke weed when they’re working on a movie, speculations that Basterds has a fighters chance at pulling off a Best Picture upset, and implications of Best Supporting Actor nominee Christoph Waltz possibly moving on to star in a film called The Talking Cure as Sigmund Freud, there was a juicy little nugget of tasty good-ness!

Tarantino was asked what he would be doing next, and to my sheer delight, it did involve the word “Western!” The only problem is that it doesn’t sound quite like Quentin wants to make that gritty, old school Spaghetti Western that I’m dying to see him make. No, no — it sounds like he has an entirely different plan for what he refers to as a “Southern.” [...]

I’m going to be blunt with you for a moment. Recently, I finally was able to watch Twilight (which waited until New Moon was almost on freakin’ DVD before it even got to Showtime!) for the very first time.

Being someone who has a sixth sense that allows me to get a pretty good vibe from movies based on their trailers, my expectations were not very high. I was, however, full of hope that this vampire phenomena would somehow surprise me and turn out to be a good time.

It was not.

This is obviously all just my own personal opinion, but frankly, Twilight was one of the messiest, slapped-together-to-make-billions-off-of-a-popular-book-series movies I’ve ever seen. I think it could have been a hell of a lot better with a different director and some different casting, but that wasn’t the case. There was nothing compelling about it, the acting was completely forced, and the situations were so unbearably awkward that I literally felt like I needed to take out my cell phone and fake-text people in order to “get away” from it all. [...]

The names Roland Emmerich and Isaac Asimov are about as opposite as two elements of the same basic spectrum can be.

Emmerich is known for his massive end of the world disaster films like Independence Day and 2012, but has also faced much criticism for his lack of other crucial story elements, specifically with titles like Godzilla, 10,000 B.C., and The Day After Tomorrow. Asimov is a legendary author and a master of the realms of science fiction literature. He has written over 500 books and was also a professor of biochemistry at Boston University, just to note a couple of his awe-inspiring lifetime accomplishments. His most popular work as an author are his seven-book creation known as the Foundation series.

So what do these two have in common? Well, Roland Emmerich is currently the man who holds the arduous task of trying to adapt Asimov’s Foundation into blockbuster movies, of course! And with the knowledge that Emmerich is the man handling this, one of the most classic of series in science fiction literature, fans of Asimov may not want to read further. [...]

MTV caught up with popular British director Edgar Wright recently and placed a couple of feelers out on the status of the feature film adaptation of Marvel’s Ant-Man.

Wright explained that now that he has a little more time after finishing work on his comic book adaptation of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, he can go back to Ant-Man and continue writing that. The director also clarified that this project is no high-priority film, and that patience will be required in waiting for it to come along down the road.

I can’t do two things at once, so [now that 'Scott Pilgrim' is finished] I will return to doing another draft of that one.

It should be a great genre film, so that’s why I did a first draft. [...]

When these two mega-stars of cinema history team up, classics have been known to be born. The first time they collaborated in 1973, a movie called Mean Streets was made. Since then, many beloved titles have followed, including Taxi Driver, New York, New York, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Cape Fear, and Casino, which was the last time they worked together (not counting Shark Tale, of course).

In what sounds like the perfect next step for the duo, they are planning to work again, only this time, it sounds like it will be more of a reflection piece, with De Niro playing a big name in organized crime looking back on his life.

Here is what Scorsese had to say about the future project after his latest film, Shutter Island, screen at the festival. [...]

Back in June of 2008, we discovered that a new movie was being developed based on the 1844 Alexandre Dumas classic, The Three Musketeers. At the time, not too much was known about the project, and as you can tell, it has been a while since any updates have been offered.

Now, with the title set up and cozy at Warner Brothers, it looks like things are about to set sail. The studio has Producer Lionel Wigram in place, and Peter Straughan has been hired to write the screenplay.

Wigram has done a lot of work with Warner Bros. over the years; he’s had a big hand in the success of the Harry Potter franchise, and was a producer on both Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince. He was also a writer and producer on Guy Ritchie’s new take on Sherlock Holmes, which is crucial because that’s exactly where they want to go with this new Three Musketeers adventure. The hopes and plans are to make it fun and exciting to appeal to younger audiences, and to hopefully score another big franchise out of it. [...]

The very first new trailer for Neil Marshall‘s Centurion has been released via IGN.

The movie takes place in 117 A.D. and tells the story of Rome’s Ninth Legion, who set off on a major mission to find and destroy the leader of the Picts and anyone who tries to stop them. But when the Picts spring a trap on them and take the Legion’s general captive, one remaining Roman soldier must take just a few men and find a way to stop the Picts once and for all.

The movie reunites stars Dominic West and Michael Fassbender, who appeared together in another epic battle movie: 300. West plays captured General Virilus, while Fassbender plays Quintus Dias, a survivor of the ambush who is trapped deep within the enemy’s boundaries. The movie also stars Hitman and Quantum of Solace leading lady Olga Kurylenko as a Pict warrior whose tongue was removed by the Romans after they killed her entire family. This character would seem to point to one of those cases where we the viewers will not be sure who to pull for. [...]

I’ve been lucky enough to get to visit the Universal Studios Hollywood theme park in California several times in my life. Each time I’ve gone had been an amazing, fun experience that always leaves me looking forward to my next visit. Since I’ve been attending Comic-Con in San Diego for the last few years, I make it a point to unwind from my five-day hectic Con coverage with a few days of fun at Los Angeles-area theme parks, my first stop always being USH.

When I talk about visiting theme parks, a lot of people get confused, not knowing the difference between Disney and Universal. Let me straighten all that out before I get into my USH trip report.

There’s Disney World in Orlando, FL, which had four main theme park areas: Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Disney-MGM Studios, and Animal Kingdom. It’s the MGM park that typically gets confused with Universal Studios — but they are totally separate parks owned by different companies.

Disneyland is in Anaheim, CA, and had two theme park — Magic Kingdom and Californialand — along with Downtown Disney (there’s also a Downtown Disney area at Disney World).

Universal Studios also has cross-country counterparts: Universal Studios Orlando in Florida has two theme parks — Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure — and Universal Studios Hollywood in California, which only has one Universal Studios park. Both locations have a Citywalk area.

Ok, now that I’ve gotten out of the way, I’ll move on to my trip report for Universal Studios Hollywood [...]