NEWSCHUNKS: Comic-Con roundup

At the rate that sci-fi and horror news is erupting out of Comic-Con, I can't hope to cover it all here. But here's a smattering of some of the more interesting developments.

HALO ANIME: Microsoft has hired five anime studios to create seven Halo shorts for an upcoming DVD.

CAMERON SCREENS AVATAR FOOTAGE: Folks are just gushing about the 15 minutes of Avatar that James Cameron showed at the con. If you're itching to see the footage yourself, Cameron has an interesting PR gimmick planned: he's going to show the 15 minutes for free in theaters on August 21st. That could be cool, but I can imagine it sort of backfiring. If you've ever seen a few minutes of a movie and then had to quit for some reason and start over again later, you know that those minutes you already saw are a lot less interesting the second time around.

GILLIAM SCREENS "BORING" PARNASSUS FOOTAGE: Terry Gilliam, meanwhile, took an approach very different from all the hype surrounding Avatar, announcing that he was screening all of the "boring" parts from The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus so that people would still have to go and pay to see the good stuff in theaters. (Let's hope we get the chance. Last I heard, the film still didn't have an American distributor.)

PANDORUM CLIP ONLINE: Courtesy of the fine folks at Shock 'Till You Drop, here's a nasty clip from the upcoming sci-fi horror picture:



BURTON, DEPP CONFIRMED FOR DARK SHADOWS: While Tim Burton was promoting his Alice remake, he was cornered by the press about the rumors he's working on an update of the late-'60s vampire TV soap opera, Dark Shadows. Burton confirmed that he is indeed planning to take on Dark Shadows next. Given that Johnny Depp's production company owns the rights to the soap and Depp is in almost every film that Burton makes, it's safe to assume that Depp will star as Barnanus Collins, the tortured vampire played so memorably by Johnathan Frid in the original. (Given that Depp has looked about 30 for the last 15 years or so, I'm starting to wonder if he is a vampire.)

CABIN IN THE WOODS TEASER POSTERS: Shock Till You Drop has also posted a few teaser images for the upcoming horror movie from Joss Whedon and frequent collaborator Drew Goddard. The copy is pretty funny, although I'm getting an awfully strong whiff of the Scream series in those horror movie "rules."

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