Back in town, blogging will resume

Sorry for the radio silence...was on business travel last week.

But now I'm back. Back in Black.

Cloverfield is go!

Woot! Time for giant monster stomping things tonight!

Now that the Cloverfield ARG is wrapping up, I'm starting to follow Find815.com. Yay for LOST!

My review for Cloverfield will be cross-posted at Sistercritics tonight.

Uwe Boll - Violation of the Geneva Convention?

I posted my quasi-film review of the latest horror from Uwe Boll (and no, I don't mean horror film, I mean general horror) at the blog I have with my sister Sistercritics. Her reviews are way better than mine, and yet somehow I'm the writer and she's the producer person.

Go figure.

As for you, Uwe Boll...I won't be repeating this little mistake again.

Updating the Watch List: An exercise in futility

Yeah, I know -- it's horribly out of date. Do you know how difficult it is to hit a moving target?

Shows I think have hit hiatus, actually still have episodes in the can.

Shows I think are airing soon are getting pushed back on the schedule.

And don't even talk to me about what the heck happens after March...

I'll do some real work on it this weekend. Seriously. Because I lurves you.

The fuzzy math of theater owners

So, movie theater owners were surveyed as to which actors brought in the most dough in 2007.

Johnny Depp was cited as the #1 box office draw. While, I concede that at first glance this seems fairly obvious, the theater owners are actually morons if they think Depp's films brought in the most money this year.

That honor goes to Shia LaBeouf.

Depp's two films, "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" and "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" (nice long titles, those) have pulled in a collective $340 million.

LaBeouf's films, "Transformers", "Disturbia" and "Surf's Up" pulled in $457 million this year.

Who else made the survey list? Let's look at their box office compared to other names...

Will Smith placed second on the list. His film, "I Am Legend" generated $210 million this year.

George Clooney? $156 million ("Oceans 13" and "Michael Clayton")

Matt Damon - $344 million ("The Bourne Ultimatum" and "Oceans 13")

Denzel Washington - $146 million ("American Gangster" and "The Great Debaters")

Russell Crowe - $182 million ("American Gangster" and "3:10 to Yuma")

Tom Cruise - $15 million ("Lions for Lambs")

Nicolas Cage - $280 million ("Ghost Rider", "Next" and "National Treasure: Book of Secrets")

Will Ferrell - $118 million ("Blades of Glory")

Tom Hanks - $43 million ("Charlie Wilson's War")

Granted, I'm sure that when these theater owners are being surveyed, they don't just think about the previous year, but collective years. Who else in 2007 *really* drove box office? It's hard to say if people show up for the movie or the actor in some cases (I seriously doubt most people thought, "Hmm, I don't know if I want to see that 'Transformers' movie...wait, Shia LeBeouf is in it? Oh, I'm so there!"), but just for the exercise, who else "generated" the most income in 2007?

Eddie Murphy - $418 million ("Shrek 3" and "Norbit")
Seth Rogen - $270 million ("Knocked Up" and "Superbad")
Tobey Maguire - $336 million ("Spiderman 3")
John Travolta - $287 million ("Wild Hogs" and "Hairspray")

And since the theater owners seem to forget women are even in films, I'll just point out a few totals for the leading ladies this year:

Cameron Diaz - $322 million ("Shrek")
Keira Knightley - $312 million ("Pirates" and "Atonement")
Kirsten Dunst - $336 million ("Spiderman 3")

Other notes: Helena Bonham Carter was in 'Harry Potter 5' and 'Sweeney Todd'. Timothy Spall trumps her with appearances in both films AND 'Enchanted'. The costar who wears the box office crown: Jon Voight. If we wanted to be really fair, Jon Voight even beats Shia with his appearances in "Transformers", "National Treasure 2", "September Dawn" AND the BRATZ film for a total of $477 million.

Geekerati Radio tonight

No, it isn't Monday, but Geekerati is on tonight, 7 PM PST/10 PM EST. Here's tonight's show description:

Gareth-Michael Skarka, of Adamant Entertainment, joins the geeks to discuss e-publishing in the modern RPG marketplace. Skarka has made a name for himself as the publisher of the acclaimed THRILLING TALES pulp d20 Modern supplements.

Come listen to us live or subscribe at iTunes to the podcast which goes up after each live show wraps.



If you missed our best show of 2007, our interview with Tim Minear, you can catch that here:

Optioned

So, at long last I got a greenlight from my sister to announce the big secret we've been harboring for months.

As of the end of October, our tv series "The Protector" is optioned by Tig Productions, better known as Kevin Costner's production company.

It is an 18 month option, which we agreed was warranted since the strike was breathing down our collective necks at the time. We are being packaged by a major agency in town...and that's about all I can say.

Of course, the option was signed two days before the strike. This of course means that all of the work from June to October came to a screeching halt.

It started in June when I finished writing the pilot. My sister Julie is credited as co-creator on the series with me. We sent the script out to a couple of people who had shown interest at management companies. As a strange coincidence, she happened to meet up with the producers of our project that night and casually mentioned that we had sent out the script in an effort to get me representation. They expressed interest in us coming in to pitch.

We didn't think they were serious. They were.

So, we pitched. Left them the bible and the script. We had prepared our seven minute pitch, but they wanted a casual meeting and we ended up chatting about the show for an hour. The told us they were very interested in working with us, and on the whole I felt lucky to just have an opportunity to pitch a project as *practice*.

A week later they wanted us to go to Big Agency #1 to pitch our project to the head of the TV Lit Department. The producers had a couple of other projects they were working on with this agency and thought it would be good to have us in to talk specifically about ours.

We freaked out a little bit, yes.

Then in August we met with Kevin and got his notes. Yes, that was weird and I'll supply details at some date in the future.

Finally, we pitched to a packaging agent at BIG AGENCY #2 which Tig was talking to. And by October we were optioned.

And now we wait. But this is what I've been alternately stressing and giddy about for the last half of the year.

Now I hope that 2008 will be THE YEAR for us to really make some headway.