Movie Version of ‘Rome’?
Bruno Heller says he wants to produce a theatrical wrap-up to his critically beloved and prematurely canceled HBO drama ‘Rome’.
Tag Archive for 'HBO'
Weighing in at 10 pounds, The Sopranos: The Complete Series includes a 56-page hand-assembled album enclosed in a sleek black linen box featuring all 86 episodes re-mastered on 28 discs as well as two bonus discs and two CD soundtracks, spread over three discs.
The album also includes 16-pages of editorial detailing the entire award-winning series.
The set is loaded with over 3½ hours of never-before-seen bonus material including:
Supper with The Sopranos, two sit-down dinners with cast and crew full of insider trivia like what was the one condition Stevie Van Zandt made in order to play Silvio and what did Edie Falco as Carmella forget to wear during the final diner scene; as well as a separate, exclusive two-part interview of creator David Chase by actor Alec Baldwin (a huge fan who tried to get Chase to cast him in an episode) where Chase shares his personal views including his first impression of James Gandolfini during his audition and who was his inspiration for Lidia in the show.
Other extras include:
Paley Center for Media Seminar - discussion with David Chase and Terence Winter, featuring characters who were “whacked” including Vincent Pastore, Steve Buscemi, Drea de Matteo, David Proval and Annabella Sciorra
- Extra Gravy - spoofs and parodies of The Sopranos
- Lost Scenes from all six seasons
- Original audio commentaries from cast and crew
- 2 CD soundtracks on three discs featuring a genre-bending collection of music including the show’s theme “Woke Up This Morning (Chosen One Mix)” by A3
- 16-page detailed Episode Guide
Vampire fascination helps HBO to well-timed hit.
This is getting better by the week! Absolutely essential viewing - JR
True Blood Reveals Rules of Its Vampire Universe.
Absolutely loving this show thusfar! Gets better with each episode and yours truly is hooked!
Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails has been in talks in with HBO about making a two-season maxi-series out of “Year Zero,” the dark future tale that Reznor has chronicled in his music as well as in a celebrated Alternate Reality Game (ARG) with the same title that was created by 42 Entertainment.
“It’s the most exciting thing on the horizon, it’s the thing that when I wake up in the morning it makes me say, ‘God it would be cool if that happened,” Reznor told me this week while sitting backstage before a Nails concert in Toronto. “This is my grand ambition. Will it happen? I don’t know. It was fun sitting and telling [the HBO] guys and watching them shake their head and having writers on board and producers that are in to it. It’s been a fun thing.”
“Year Zero” began (as so many things do in the music of NIN) from a place of negative emotion and sonic experimentation. Reznor was increasingly outraged by the geopolitical situation during the Bush years and he wanted to channel that fury into music, but he was loath to drift into the limiting lexicon of protest lyrics.
“How could I express what I was feeling in a way that didn’t sound like bitching about George Bush? I mean, you know, I love Neil Young but I didn’t want to listen to that record, really,” he said, referring to the singer-songwriter’s “Living with War.” “My reaction to that kind of record is, ‘We know this. It’s obvious.’”
“So it started with me trying to write it as a piece of fiction. I was thinking, ‘It could be the worst idea ever in the world but, if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t have to come out.’ I started by writing a kind of world bible about what life would be like around 15 or 20 years from now if things continue on the same path. I spent a few weeks filling it in with the events that could lead to this kind of time and place. Then as an experiment I started writing songs about people in this place and from different points of view.”
The problem was the music was compelling and powerful, but it was more about sensation than story.
“I had a record that would make sense to me but no one else would ever know what it was because there was no narrative. It’s modular, its a collection of snapshots. These were glimpses of a place. Maybe with liner notes I could communicate some of it, but how do you get liner notes in 2007?”
He considered a graphic novel. “That was the route we were going to go with initially. We talked to a different companies about releasing it. But it didn’t feel quite right. We thought about a film, but that has a different timetable and too many people need to say yes. That wouldn’t line up right. then I started thinking about how I could make it really interactive, something you experience rather than something you read.”
Reznor remembered reading about 42 Entertainment and their deeply layered ARG for the Steven Spielberg film “A.I.” He met with them and the result was a truly amazing through-the-looking-glass creation on-line, shaped by the 42 team working closely with the rock star and his art director, Rob Sheridan. “It’s ahrd to explain it,” Reznor said, and he’s right. But the best way to get your head around it is through the nifty (and entertaining) case-study presentation that you can find here.
Reznor was delighted with the result. “It was probably the most fun thing I’ve done.” Now he wants to finish the story he started and do it across a range of media.
“I just pitched it to HBO two weeks ago in L.A. It went great. Ideally, we’re trying to get them to do a two-year limited series. I prefer that over a film. We would have a second ARG tying into the second album and ties into the series and they all happen together with a budget needed to pull that all off. There would be a tour down the road. The record completes the story, the ending that no one knows. I know what happens. I knew when I started it. And it’s not what people think.”
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HBO has released a poster for Alan Ball’s upcoming HBO series True Blood. In addition to creating Six Feet Under, Ball won an Adademy Award for America Beauty, and directed the upcoming film adaptation of Towelhead. True Blood is based on Charlaine Harris’ ‘Southern Vampire’ novel series.
The series follows the world of vampires set in small-town Louisiana. Apparently the vampires are able to co-exist with humans by drinking a Japanese-manufactured synthetic blood. The vampire sex scenes in the pilot are ‘Exorcist’-caliber disturbing. Hey! We’re so there!
The series is set to premiere on HBO starting September 7th 2008.
And do check out a higher-res version of the poster… after the jump…
Continue reading ‘HBO’s True Blood’
Start saving those pennies kiddies! Due Nov. 11, just in time for the holiday gift season, it weighs in at 10 pounds, with 86 episodes on 28 DVDs(!!!) Three CDs of soundtrack music. And two discs of bonus material, including 16 “lost” scenes, an interview of creator David Chase by Alec Baldwin, roundtable discussions with writers and stars and Sopranos spoofs from ‘The Simpsons’, ‘Saturday Night Live’ and ‘Mad TV’. There’s also a panel discussion from the Paley Center for Media among “Whacked Sopranos” actors reflecting on their regrettable but necessary exits.
But it won’t come cheap: The suggested list price is $399.99US, $100 more than the complete ‘Sex and the City’.
“It’s really the biggest DVD gift set we have released to date, and that means both physically and metaphorically,” says Sofia Chang, the channel’s senior VP of DVD marketing. HBO is promising a huge marketing push for the release.
“We put a lot of work into it,” creator David Chase tells USA TODAY. He conducted interviews for the extras early this year, about seven months after the surprising (and anticlimactic) finale aired on HBO.
Chase discusses with Baldwin his childhood, his early career and the show’s history. And there’s much discussion about the controversial final episode, which ended abruptly, midscene, as the Soprano family enjoyed a quiet meal in a diner.
Scenes rescued from the editing-room floor include Tony kissing Dr. Melfi in her office; Big Pussy being interrogated after a drug arrest; and Meadow visiting her ailing grandmother, Livia, in the hospital, where Janice falsely claims Tony tried to kill Livia, instead of the other way around.
Chase says he was surprised when he looked back how few filmed scenes he had left. He says most were cut because they “in some way emotionally hold up the show or derail it” or were “overexplaining” things when viewers “have an instinctive sense of what’s going on.”
Now Sopranos fans can only dream of a movie, given the box-office success of Sex and Chase’s recently signed deal with Paramount Pictures, run by Sopranos producer Brad Grey.
“I’m not anxious to do one; I’m not looking to do one,” Chase says. Never mind that star James Gandolfini has said he has moved on from Tony. “What I really don’t want to give is the impression I’m being coy.” The finale “makes it problematic to continue the story; I’m not interested in going forward.” So any movie would go backward, set midway through the series’ run.
“If something great came along, we might consider doing it,” Chase says. “But we don’t have people in rooms trying to come up with ideas.”
David Chase speaks! What do you do when your TV world ends? You go to dinner, then keep quiet. Sunday night, “Sopranos” creator David Chase took his wife out for dinner in France, where he’s fled to avoid “all the Monday morning quarterbacking” about the show’s finale.
Tony Soprano… is dead.
Why? Because…
i) First episode of this season Bobby says you don’t hear it when you’re shot.
ii) Second to last episode of this season, Tony flashes to Bobby saying you don’t hear it when you’re shot.
iii) The entire story arc was about Tony - when Tony’s gone, the arc is done.
iv) In the diner, every time someone walked through the door, the perspective changed to Tony’s as he looked up
v) After the last bell jingle, just as the perspective changed to Tony’s everything went black and silent - as though the person whose perspective we were to shift to was no longer alive
vi) The cat was a reminder that Tony killed Chris, and had Adriana killed. The cat was a reminder that Tony’s a bad guy - who has it coming.
vii) There was so much symmetry between Phil’s execution in front of his family and Tony’s last moments
viii) We all know how much Godfather III ruined the Godfather movies. I think the focus on Meadow was a reference to the Godfather. David Chase didn’t end it the way Godfather III ended. This time the boss gets killed.
ix) Every other episode ended in music during the credits. This one had no music because Tony’s dead.
x) Episode titles have always meant something. This episode’s title referred to Bobby’s gift of the gun to Tony. When he gave it to him he made the comment about how everything would just go silent when you were shot.
xi) The ending was so incredibly brilliant. We all felt what it was like to be Tony in those final five minutes. We all felt nervous, anxious, just as he must have felt. After being absorbed into Tony’s experience, we were left with silence and blackness like death because…
Tony Soprano… is dead.
The Sopranos final episode. The ending was never going to be straightforward - nothing ever was in the world of Tony Soprano. That is why millions of viewers around the world have been addicted to eight years of plot twists that finally came to an end last night.
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