Last year, I remember a few diehard fanboys mocking me when I flagged Twilight as a big deal at Comic-Con. The power of Twilight fans became clear as thousands of girls screamed their lungs out for emerging star Rob Pattinson. Helping to avert certain traffic gridlock, Comic-Con organizers pushed apart back-to-back Thursday panels for Twilight: New Moon and James Cameron's Avatar, by far the most anticipated two panels of the Con. Many were concerned that the threatened tsunami of fans surging toward Hall H Thursday morning (many of them female, in this very male-dominated universe) would make it tough to also cover Disney's 11 AM 3-D panel (Zemeckis's A Christmas Carol, Burton's Alice in Wonderland) and James Cameron's Avatar on the same day. Now New Moon is at 1:45 pm and Avatar is at 3:00 pm. Covering media may have a tough time getting into New Moon without some kind of press pass.

As THR covers how the studio marketers are harnessing the rising power of the online fansites--many of whom will participate in Comic-Con's annual Masters of the Web panel on Thursday at 2 PM--The Wrap examines the countering impact of Twitter on movie openings. As the studios try to use Twitter to disseminate information, word-of-mouth is taking on a whole new meaning in the Twitter universe. The Wrap also posts a handy short-form entertainment sked (the full Comic-Con schedule is packed with cool but not movie-centric graphics and comics panels). Here's Marvel's collection of panels, including Hall H's intro to Iron Man 2.

HitFix is also tracking Comic-Con. Stay tuned. I'm covering. I'm looking forward to seeing Hayao Miyazaki and Pixar's John Lasseter for one of my fave movies of the year so far, Ponyo, and seeing Terry Gilliam again, who is showing some footage but not the entire Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassas, starring Heath Ledger, who made the cover of Vanity Fair this month, a must-read. And for the first time ever, New Zealander Peter Jackson is appearing at the Con in person, to introduce District 9.

USA Today presents a first look at Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, starring Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham-Carter and Anne Hathaway, pictured here as the Mad Hatter and the white and red queens, respectively. The on-line story allows you to explore cool large photos via zooms.

[Hat Tip: In Contention]

One's Japanese, the other isn't. And there's the rub.

While John Lasseter's Disney animation division and producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall have supervised the English-language dub of Hayao Miyazaki's latest anime film, Ponyo--already a hit overseas--the film is still magical and yes, very Japanese. (It closes the LAFF June 28; Miyazaki will appear at Comic-Con in July before the film opens in North America on August 14.) Lasseter is banking that with proper handling from Disney, the movie could break out to family audiences in a way none of Miyazaki's imports ever have, even with one Oscar nomination (Howl's Moving Castle) and one win (Spirited Away). Liam Neeson, Tina Fey, Liam Neeson, Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon and Betty White are among the stars providing voice talent on Ponyo.

Fast Company lists Miyazaki as one of the top ten most creative people in film and TV. Wired lists the best anime coming out this summer.

I've been a huge Miyazaki fan, from My Neighbor Totoro through Kiki's Delivery Service, Princess Mononoke, and beyond. Ponyo is also sublime. Like all great movies it whisks you effortlessly into another world. And it's old-fashioned, hand-drawn 2-D (not an ounce of CG in it), stylized animation. Miyazaki has always been able to capture the forces of nature and the great outdoors, in this case, the ocean that menaces the Japanese coast in the form of a tsunami. The movie lacks violence or anything urban: nature provides the story's threat and drama. Don't miss this one.

The Seattle Film Fest debuted another movie from a Japanese source. Hachi: A Dog's Story is a remake of Hachiko, based on a famous true story from the 20s. Loyal Akita Hachiko met his beloved master every day at the train station, and after the gentleman died of a stroke and never returned, escaped each of his new homes to wait for his master, faithfully every day, through heat, rain and snow, until he died ten years later (sob).

Lasse Hallstrom (My Life as a Dog) took on the American remake with Richard Gere in the role of the professor who bonds with his dog. (The two men are friends and neighbors and worked together on Hoax.) But the movie twists itself into a pretzel explaining how a Japanese dog named Hachiko came to America, met the professor, got into the habit of waiting for him at the train every day--and kept waiting. There's a wife (Joan Allen) and a very slim family narrative. The movie doesn't work. Yet the bones of the story are still so powerful (which is why Gere and Hallstrom wanted to do it), that the Seattle audience and I were all in tears.

The movie's financeer, international sales co.Inferno Distribution, has a pact with Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions Group for North American and Australian ancillary rights to its movies. Inferno is negotiating with service distrib Consolidated Pictures Group (led by Bottle Shock filmmaker Randall Miller, who’s releasing I Love You Phillip Morris), which is looking to raise some P & A for a fall release.

But the movie really belongs at Disney, where the family label would mean something. Gere's agent Ed Limato showed the movie to Disney's Dick Cook, but the studio passed. Inferno's Bill Johnson changed the title from Hachiko to Hachi because he was afraid it would put off American audiences. "Hachi is more reminiscent of Benji," he said.

Check out the original Hachiko. Like Ponyo, it's the authentic real deal.

L.A.'s v. cool comics store Meltdown on Sunset is hosting an after midnight book signing with director Guillermo del Toro on Tuesday, June 2. He's flying in from the New Zealand set of The Hobbit to sign 500 exclusive copies of the first book, written with Chuck Hogan, of The Strain Trilogy, which is about a virus-infected plague of monsters invading New York City. (You can preorder Book One). Here's my earlier story.

UPDATE: Wired talks to del Toro and posts a trailer:

UPDATE: Del Toro talks to Craig Ferguson:

[Posted by David S. Cohen]To date, other than James Cameron's Avatar, there have been no announcements of a major franchise installment in live-action 3-D. No 3-D Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Die Hard or Pirates of the Caribbean. We hear from people who've worked on live-action 3-D that there's a learning curve involved, and that a company or studio should make a 3-D movie before diving into the format.

With that in mind, though, we can't help but notice that 1) Disney is heavily invested in 3-D, including live-action. 2) Gore Verbinski and Johnny Depp are making an animated 3-D movie together, Rango. and 3) Jerry Bruckheimer is making G Force in 3-D.

Disney, Bruckheimer, Verbinski, Depp... Nobody at Disney is talking, but we wouldn't be surprised to hear a P4 3-D announcement one of these days.

Not one to miss the opportunity to play with a cool new toy--especially if Chris Nolan did it on The Dark Knight--Michael Bay will wield jumbo IMAX cameras to film select scenes in his currently shooting The Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. The giant robot sequel starring Shia LaBeouf will hit IMAX theatres at the same time as the movie’s wide June 26 release.

The IMAX version of the film will run digitally remastered 35 mm letterbox sequences alongside scenes shot with IMAX’s cameras, which will expand vertically to fill the entire IMAX screen. Count me out. I preferred seeing The Dark Knight in good old-fashioned 35 mm. The IMAX stuff, while gorgeous, overwhelmed me with pixels. And Transformers did the same when I saw it in 35. My brain can only absorb so much info.

Anticipating the coming financial apocalypse, Spoutblog turns to dystopian cinema for guidance.

Summit Entertainment is doing cartwheels. That's because they're already in production on a movie, Twilight, based on the first book in a trilogy vampire saga by book phenom Stephenie Meyer.

The 34-year-old Mormon author just landed a takeout in Time Magazine calling her the new queen of fantasy with the head: The Next J.K. Rowling? The article praises Meyer's books for being about the "erotics of abstinence." She "rewrites stock horror plots as love stories."

She's basically the young adult Anne Rice, because Twilight is a romantic 17-year-old Romeo and Juliet with vampires and humans. Rising star Kristen Stewart (discovered by Jon Favreau in Zathura, Panic Room) plays a girl who falls for a handsome guy (Robert Pattinson, of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) who turns out to be a vampire. But he's a good vampire who has renounced sucking human blood. He and his mother coven feed on animals. His virtue--his psychological struggle against his lust for blood--makes him interesting. The movie, directed by thirteen's Catherine Hardwicke, is due December 12.

Vampires have fed Hollywood since its infancy, from Bram Stoker's Dracula and Nosferatu to Rice's Interview with a Vampire, Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Underworld series. But this series has femme appeal.

When Summit slapped a teaser trailer up on MySpace on Monday at 11 AM, it pulled 1 million views in 36 hours and has now passed 2 million. The teaser will premiere on E.T. Friday, and will run in front of family-friendly Speed Racer (maybe that will boost its ticket sales). "I would have been happy with 500,000," says Summit chief Rob Friedman, who scooped up the rights to Twilight when it had sold 10,000 copies just after he started Summit's new production/distrib arm. Paramount had the option and let it go. Since then the first three Twilight books have sold over 6 million copies in the U.S. "I knew the book had a fan base but it's always good to see it's bigger than you think," says Friedman, who has a potential franchise on his hands. This is what any new company lusts after.

UPDATE: Wired is also tracking this. The trailer could break the current record of 4.1 million views in one week set in March by Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The internet fan buzz on this is so intense that Summit marketing may want to consider pulling back a tad.

Here's the HD teaser trailer:

Twilight in HD

[Illustration for Time by Anita Kunz]

The movie that is likeliest to exceed expectations at the boxoffice this summer--and pass the $300-million mark domestically-- is the second Narnia pic, Prince Caspian, partly because the filmmakers have added more grown-up action and a more adult hero in Caspian himself. It's not only a sequel, but a family-oriented four quadrant Disney/Walden pic that has been embraced by the Christian community--and is tracking really well in advance of its May 16 opening.

Here's a new photo and excerpt on the cast from the film's gushy behind-the-scenes book, which is not surprising as it is written by the unit publicist on both Narnia pics, Ernie Malik:

Making a full-scale motion picture like Prince Caspian is a journey unto itself -- not only a physical one that took hundreds of filmmakers thousands of miles across two hemispheres, but also a spiritual and emotional voyage for the film's family members.

With mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters, and husbands and wives away from home for close to a full year, the film company's 600-plus members bonded closely, sharing in both work and play, to create not only a friendly on-set environment over the lengthy seven-month shoot, but hopefully something greater than the sum of its parts -- something all can hail proudly when the lights go down, the projector flickers, the film unspools, and their collective movie magic enchants audiences the world over.

As production began over a year ago on that mid-February morning in Auckland, there stood Andrew, the lanky director, alongside his Pevensie clan like a proud father with his children, home for the holidays. Even though it had been barely two years since the completion of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, his film family had, indeed, matured, both physically and emotionally. Their patriarch grinned with pride at the progress.

Well, the Hobbit shoe has finally dropped, and Guillermo del Toro has committed to direct the movie for New Line Cinema. There is rejoicing throughout the land, I suspect. If it wasn't going to be Peter Jackson (who is exec producing with Fran Walsh), Pan's Labyrinth helmer Del Toro is just about a perfect match for this J.R.R. Tolkien fantasy. It will be cool.

UPDATE: Salon's Andrew O'Hehir thinks Del Toro is a terrible idea. I would argue that it all depends on how willing Del Toro is to stay close to the world created by Jackson. It would be foolish to go too far astray, either from the original book (the success if the Jackson/Walsh trilogy derives from their faithfulness to Tolkien) or the blockbuster trilogy. O'Hehir makes some good points about the larger business picture here (Jackson is a tycoon now in the George Lucas mold, basically). But I would argue that Del Toro is grabbing an opportunity to do a movie that he can score with and that he and Jackson are a good aesthetic fit. This is not your standard cynical sequel. Del Toro's not going to do a hack job here, and Jackson won't let him. They'll have control over it, not some studio. They are both artists first, businessmen second. Does that sound naive? Well, ok, it won't do Del Toro any harm over the long haul to bank some b.o. hits so he can do the other stuff that may not be so overtly commercial.

Every year ShoWest screens an honor reel of movies that grossed over $100-million the year before. Which of the 2008 ShoWest promo pics will be on next year's reel?

Based on what I saw and reactions gleaned, here's my best guess:

Movie that could pass $300 million: the sequel The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, which will likely improve on its predecessor with more action and more mature protagonists.

Movies that could go well past $200 million: sequels The Dark Knight, starring Christian Bale and Heath Ledger, Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, starring Harrison Ford and Shia LeBeouf, Rob Cohen's China-shot Mummy 3: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, starring Brendan Fraser, Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh, and Guillermo del Toro's epic-scale actioner Hellboy II: The Golden Army; plus non-sequels Wanted, starring Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman as assassins training rookie James McAvoy, the invulnerable Will Smith as a homeless hero in Hancock, Judd Apatow's dumb male comedy Step Brothers, starring Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, Marvel's Iron Man, which boasts femme appeal via Robert Downey Jr. and co-star Gwenyth Paltrow, and animated family originals Kung Fu Panda (DreamWorks Animation) and Wall-E (Disney/Pixar).

Movies that could break $100 million: a remake of Marvel's The Incredible Hulk, starring Edward Norton as a thinking man's Bruce Banner; for the femme audience, a remake of the HBO classic Sex and the City, a remake of the boomer TV show Get Smart, starring Steve Carell and Ann Hathaway, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler's surrogate nightmare comedy Baby Mama, and a movie version of the Broadway musical Mamma Mia (also for musical fans); Judd Apatow factory comedies Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Pineapple Express; Ben Stiller's starry R-rated action comedy Tropic Thunder, starring Stiller, Downey, Jack Black and Steve Coogan; the frere Wachowski's adaptation of the anime classic Speed Racer, starring Emile Hirsch and Christina Ricci; and George Lucas's animated sequel Star Wars: The Clone Wars. (Am I the only one who feels a shock that the film is going out through Warners? Even though Lucasfilm controls and markets the movies and collects the lions' share of the take, I feel like all Star Wars movies are supposed to have the Fox fanfare in front of them.)

Warners has figured out a Harry Potter solution that is consistent with the studio's successful approach to adapting the hugely popular J.K. Rowling books: stick to the story. In the case of the final installment Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, that means splitting the long book into two films, six months apart. (And filming the kids back-to-back while they still look under 20.) The Deathly Hallows will open in November 2010, with the second part to follow in May, 2011.

As reported, Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell are playing different aspects of Heath Ledger's character in Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, which has resumed filming in Vancouver. Here's the website.

AICN confirms that Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell will be stepping in to do homages to Heath Ledger in Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus.

I admit I missed boxoffice juggernaut National Treasure: Book of Secrets. (It scored 41 % on Rotten Tomatoes.) But it has its champions, including intellectual cinephile David Bordwell.

Never say never in Hollywood. The weekend that New Line Cinema's would-be follow-up fantasy franchise to The Lord of the Rings, The Golden Compass, tanked at the boxoffice, I said, "Watch Robert Shaye bury the hatchet with Peter Jackson and set up The Hobbit."

Sure enough, Shaye, whose deal at Warner Bros. is coming up for renewal, wasted no time in doing just that. At this point Jackson and his partner Fran Walsh will serve as exec producers. UPDATE: David Poland adds his two cents at The Hot Blog.

As The Golden Compass, which cost New Line Cinema something north of $180 million, heads down the tubes domestically (luckily it's doing okay foreign), when I read Variety's story on studio resistance to hiring maverick fantasy master Terry Gilliam, it struck me that a cheaper Golden Compass directed by Gilliam might have yielded a better movie--and a happier ending.

Gilliam is one of the fantasy cinema greats, and I am delighted that $30 million has been raised for The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, which Gilliam will direct from his own script. Even when his movies go south commercially, as did Brothers Grimm and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (above, with Johnny Depp as Hunter Thompson), I always have a good time escaping into Gilliam's visuallly sumptuous alternate universe.

Will Smith's futuristic actioner I am Legend and the family-friendly Alvin and the Chipmunks should both make strong debuts this weekend. According to Fandango's stats, the upcoming Hannah Montana and Celine Dion concert films are already fueling brisk movie ticket sales.

UPDATE: Here are weekend b.o. predictions from Fantasy Moguls and Variety, which also assesses the b.o. impact of the Golden Globes.

Fandango Five – Ticket Sales (as of 12/13/07 9:00 a.m. PT):

Movie Fandango User Rating % Fandango Sales

I Am Legend “Must Go” 40%

Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds (concert movie) “Go” 18%

Alvin and the Chipmunks “Go” 12%

The Golden Compass “Go” 5%

Celine Dion (concert movie) “Must Go” 4%

Will Smith returns this week in I Am Legend. Among his movies that opened during a holiday season, which was your favorite?

Independence Day 27%

The Pursuit of Happyness 24%

Men In Black 17%

Bad Boys II 14%

Hitch 12%

Enemy of the State 6%

The unfortunate fallout of a weak $26-million estimated opening for the $180-million would-be fantasy franchise The Golden Compass is that New Line Cinema's future is now in question, as Pam McClintock points out:

“Compass,” directed by Chris Weitz and starring Dakota Blue Richards, Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, is based on the young-adult book trilogy “His Dark Materials” by Brit author Philip Pullman. Story is set in a multidimensional world where each person’s soul is contained in an animal and a diabolical church seeks to control all.

New Line has floundered for much of the year at the box office and looked to “Compass” to ride the same wave that turned “The Lord of the Rings” into a blockbuster film franchise. Some have put the production budget for “Compass” at north of $200 million, while the studio said it cost $180 million.

New Line’s contract with Time Warner is up in 2008, so the studio’s box office performance is sure to be scrutinized.

While New Line scored in the summer with “Hairspray” and “Rush Hour 3,” its fall releases have been lackluster, with “Rendition,” “Martian Child” and “Love in the Time of Cholera” failing to connect with auds.

New Line emphasized the worldwide performance of “Compass,” saying Pullman’s books are far more popular overseas. Even though the studio has sold off international territories, meaning its returns will be capped, it says it is in solid financial shape.

In the U.S., some Catholic orgs have called for a boycott of the film, saying it will encourage children to read the books, which offer a decidedly negative view of the church. New Line and Weitz toned down this aspect in the film.

Domestic audience was 50% families and 50% people aged 15-55. Audience was evenly split among the genders.

“We are a bit disappointed with the domestic opening, but we still think we are set up very well for the holiday. We are the first film out of the gate and will have good word of mouth and slow build. We should have a successful holiday season,” said New Line prexy-chief operating officer of worldwide marketing and distribution Rolf Mittweg.

New Line's bid for a new fantasy franchise, The Golden Compass, should overpower the rest of the field this weekend, which also sees a rash of art-house openings led by Atonement, Juno and Grace is Gone. Here's Variety's take.

Fandango Five – Ticket Sales (as of 12/07/07 10:00 a.m. PT):

Movie Fandango User Rating % Fandango Sales

Hannah Montana (upcoming concert movie) “Must Go” 49%

The Golden Compass “Go” 30%

Enchanted Go” 16%

Beowulf “Go” 4%

Juno “Must Go” 3%

Fandango Weekly Poll (as of 12/07/07 10:00 a.m. PT):

Which holiday movie are you most looking forward to seeing?

I Am Legend 31%

National Treasure: Book of Secrets 28%

The Golden Compass 16%

Sweeney Todd 12%

Alien vs. Predator: Requiem 7%

Charlie Wilson’s War 6%

Here's the first five minutes of The Golden Compass.

As I predicted, Enchanted continued its boxoffice surge this weekend. Here's Pam McClintock's report.

The five-day Thanksgiving weekend boxoffice was flat when compared to last year, but that was good news after a dismal fall. As expected, the Disney musical Enchanted landed rave reviews and magical grosses, an estimated $50-million for the weekend. Mythical actioner Beowulf held just OK, while the Coen brothers’ ultra-violent No Country for Old Men went wide with a terrific $11-million in 860 runs.And new opener Starting Out in the Evening, which scored excellent reviews from the likes of the NYT and LAT, opened well on Friday on seven screens in NY and LA at an estimated $85, 596, and grabbed a fighting chance at pushing star Frank Langella into the best actor Oscar race.

Here are some early reactions to Beowulf, which is supposedly under a review embargo until November 12. Humph! I'll hold off a bit, but what I will say is this: in one scene when Angelina Jolie rises up out of her cave pool to seduce the mighty Beowulf, who has just killed her only son, Grendel, she walks on water, revealing that she is not only painted in gold, a la Goldfinger, but sports a tail and stacked high heels. Please. Barbie Doll stilettos in 5th century Denmark? There must have been debates about that one. I ran into Imagemovers partner Jack Rapke in the lobby of the Four Seasons Saturday.

"What were you thinking?" I asked.

He replied, "She's a demon! She's timeless." Two of the men I asked about this, intelligent film critics both, said it didn't bother them. I guess Jolie worked her magic.

Nicole Sperling lays out the VFX future in EW.

Jeff Wells writes a letter to Roger Avary.

Stephen Schaefer's early rave is mysteriously missing online:

Seeing is believing with Robert Zemeckis’ mighty, monumental “Beowulf,” which opens Nov. 16. This extravagant adaptation of the epic poem about a cursed kingdom invents a 6th century A.D. Denmark that is so richly detailed, romantic and engrossing it’s like seeing the Prince Valiant comic strip brought to blazing, 3-D life, a childhood fantasy realized in such a complete way you’re stupefied with delight. Using the motion capture technique that “Lord of the Flies” managed to create the lisping monster Gollum and that Zemeckis employed on the saccharine “Polar Express,” “Beowulf” is nothing less than an immersion into a world that is somehow familiar – they live in a harsh climate like Boston, they drink mead, get drunk and pass out, they have a wife and a mistress – and totally strange with its demons that morph into flying dragons, sea monsters that can be slain by blond Beowulf, a hero for all times. The fight scenes are startling, not the least because like “Eastern Empires” Beowulf is nude as he takes on Grendel in mano a mano to-the-death combat. The homoeroticism, a friend said, outdoes Gerald Butler’s “300” by “500.” Ray Winstone may look nothing like this sleek god-like warrior but he sounds perfect. The cast includes a brilliantly underplayed aging king by Anthony Hopkins, a Bette Davis-style villain in John Malkovich and Angelina Jolie’s siren, a shape-changing seriously seductive sylph who gets a laugh in her six-inch heels. Big Oscar Question: Is this in the running for Best Picture or Best Animated Feature?

UPDATE: And here's AICN's Moriarty. And Beowulf co-writer Neil Gaiman's blog posts a funny typographical error from transworld news:

Angelina Jolie has admitted she was got a little shy when she saw her nude scenes in her latest film “Beowulf.” The actress says although the nude scenes were stimulated, she was still a little embarrassed. “I was a little shy,” she says. “I was really surprised that I felt that exposed. There were certain moments where I actually felt shy – and called home, just to explain that the fun movie that I had done that was digital animation was, in fact, a little different than we expected.”