j. michael straczynski Tagged Articles at Cinematical

The first thing Brooks does is set ground rules. Once infected and undead, zombies are essentially monomaniacal brains unmoored from brains' normal contingencies – e.g. a pumping heart, a digestive system, oxygen. Until the brain itself is destroyed, it will stupidly, relentlessly pursue human flesh, using whatever parts of the original body remain at its disposal. Zombies move slowly, with arms – if available – raised toward their target. If a zombie finds prey, it will moan; if a nearby zombie hears a moan, it will move toward the source and let out a moan itself. You see how this could escalate.

For the Silver Surfer fans dying to see his spin-off movie, this will come as a bitter disappointment. AMC's SciFi Scanner caught up with J. Michael Straczynski and asked him about the status of his Silver Surfer script. Not surprisingly, it is in the dead zone.

"Whether or not it ever gets made, I don't know, because they were kind of disappointed in how Fantastic Four 2 did. And given how this will be a subset of FF2 in terms of the marketing strategy, I think there is hesitation there about putting it forward. The script is pretty good, I like it, but whether or not it goes into production, I have no idea."

Silver Surfer would have taken place minutes after Fantastic Four 2 ended, and his surfboard raced back to his open arms. "You find out why Silver Surfer was there and what happened to him. We would have seen Galactus, his home world, what happened and him trying to get back there, because now that he's betrayed Galactus, he's concerned his home world might be in jeopardy."

The next project for Angelina Jolie will be a Clint Eastwood film about corruption in the LAPD, Variety reported last night. The Changeling, from a script by J. Michael Straczynski (World War Z), has been fast-tracked by Universal Pictures, the studio that housed Jolie's last film, the C.I.A. drama The Good Shepherd. Production is slated to begin in late 2007, with Brian Grazer and Ron Howard producing, along with Malpaso honcho Rob Lorenz. The story is based on events that occurred in 1920s L.A., but it's not clear whether a historical or contemporary approach will be taken with the project.

Jolie's role will be that of a woman whose son is abducted and then returned -- but she thinks the child that's returned is not hers. Somehow this leads into a revelation of deep-seated corruption in the LAPD. According to the article, Ron Howard was originally tapped to direct the film, but ultimately turned it down in favor of adapting "Frost/Nixon" into a feature film. Jolie will next be seen in A Mighty Heart, the story of Mariane and Daniel Pearl, and will lend her voice to Robert Zemeckis's Beowulf as Grendel's mother. Interestingly, the Variety article also gives some credence to the notion that that Jolie has made a firm time-commitment to her long-time pet project Atlas Shrugged, which Randall Wallace has written for Lionsgate. Cinematical asked Jolie directly in December what the status of Atlas Shrugged was, and you can read her response here.