Fears of the Dark Trailer

Go take a gander at the Fears of the Dark trailer over at Apple. Fears of the Dark is an anthology style animated horror movie directed by six different graphic artists—including Charles Burns of Black Hole fame. From what I can tell, Burns’ segment involves giant preying mantis. Awesome.

The animation is obviously based on Burns’ own artwork and is just fantastic. Check out a still from the Burns directed segment below.

© 2007 Prima Linea Productions / Charles Burns

James Jean’s Silk Spectre

Indieschmindie.

Go take a look at James Jean’s Silk Spectre illustration for the Watchmen movie. Jean points out that it’s in the trailer for a second when you see The Comedian’s apartment, but it plays a larger role in the actual scene. As always he provides preliminary sketch material.

LAST CALL goes to the BIG SCREEN

It looks like Universal has bought up the rights to adapt Vasilis Lolos’ Oni Press series The Last Call. Barry Josephson (Enchanted) and Eric Gitter are set to produce, and Evan Spiliotopoulos (”The Box”) will write the screen adaptation.

The Last Call is a series of graphic novels, written and drawn by Lolos, about two young metal head friends who, while on a joyride one night, get picked up by an otherworldly train that serves as a soul carrier. Lost and alone, the boys (Sam and Alec) try to dodge the train’s hulking conductor, who is looking for some tickets, and the rest of the ghoulish passengers only to discover a nefarious series of murders are taking place. The boys must navigate frightening pitfalls and dangerous monsters in order to solve the murder mystery and get home.

Now we don’t want to jinx anything, but an e-mail with Vasilis revealed that we both think one Guillermo Del Toro would be the perfect director for this movie. Like PERFECT.

Anyway, congrats to Vasilis!

Scott Pilgrim casting news

Bryan Lee O’Malley alerts everyone to the latest Scott Pilgrim casting news.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead, the cheerleader from Death Proof and John McLane’s daughter in the last Die Hard, is in talks to play mysterious Amazon delivery girl, Ramona Flowers in Edgar Wrights forthcoming film adaptation of Scott Pilgrim.

I hope she can roller blade.

Michael Cera Gets It Together

I’m sure most of you already saw this by now, but Michael Cera (“Arrested Development,” “Juno”) has been cast as the lead in the film adaptation of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim series. With “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz” director Edgar Wright behind the camera, I’m sure fans will be flipping out whenever this thing actually gets filmed.

The two most interesting responses to the casting news I’ve seen come from New York Magazine’s Vulture Blog – who wonder aloud whether or not the normally on-screen shy guy Cera can pull off Pilgrim’s mix of swagger and stupidity and whether it could save his career – and After Elton’s post on whether Wright will nail the relationship between Scott and his cool gay roommate Wallace. Both are valid points and interesting reading, but for my part I’m pretty hopeful that the movie will get it right on both fronts.

At the risk of sounding vague and douche baggy, I met one of the Apatow comedy crew actors a while ago at a party who’s into comics, and when he was asking for recommendations I mentioned Scott Pilgrim. “Oh, I’ve read that,” he says. “I’m friends with the guy who’s directing it, and Michael Cera’s going to be the lead. [Giant pause] Actually, those papers haven’t been signed yet, so don’t mention this to anyone, okay?”

He went on to explain how Wright and everyone involved are super into the original comic and they want to be as faithful as possible while still making it the movie version of the story. And if I had to put my money on what Wright film got made first between this and “Ant-Man” I’d totally bet on this.

In any event, the person whose take really matters is O’Malley, and by the look of his blog, he’s out in LA right now, so maybe he’ll be posting on all this later in the week. You should bookmark that page anyway, as he’s always posting cool art stuff, including the above pic which I have ruined with my horrible Photoshop “skills.”

And while we’re on the subject of an Oni Press book, I should definitely get off all of this Hollywood blather and mention that they just announced a new book from Matthew Loux (Sidescrollers) called Salt Water Taffy which looks like a blast and last week saw the release of Lars Brown’s first Northworld Graphic Novel, which I got a kick out of. Look for more on both those projects to hit this blog once I get off my lazy duff and call those dudes up.

– KP