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Screenwriting duo Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg had the idea for Superbad way before they had the ability to actually make a movie. The two Canadian teens didn’t let go of the idea and many years later it ended up being a huge hit.    Read about their newest project, This Is the End, and how they keep their best ideas alive here. [Image courtesy of Sony Pictures]

Screenwriting duo Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg had the idea for Superbad way before they had the ability to actually make a movie. The two Canadian teens didn’t let go of the idea and many years later it ended up being a huge hit.   

Read about their newest project, This Is the End, and how they keep their best ideas alive here.

[Image courtesy of Sony Pictures]

Historically, video-game-themed movies and adaptations are the second-class citizens of cinema, frowned upon by critics and audiences alike. But “Wreck-It Ralph” worked. Last weekend, it became the biggest opening for Walt Disney Animation ever, topping the box office with $49.1 million. Does the critical and box office success of “Wreck-It Ralph” spell the beginning of a new era for video game films?

Historically, video-game-themed movies and adaptations are the second-class citizens of cinema, frowned upon by critics and audiences alike. But “Wreck-It Ralph” worked. Last weekend, it became the biggest opening for Walt Disney Animation ever, topping the box office with $49.1 million. Does the critical and box office success of “Wreck-It Ralph” spell the beginning of a new era for video game films?

Three months before Laika’s 3-D stop-motion feature ParaNorman was set to start production, the company’s breakthrough workflow technology—making puppet faces via 3-D color printing—was spitting out disasters.

“They looked awful,” says Brian McLean, Laika’s director of rapid prototyping (RP, or 3-D printing). “The skin tones were terrible and inconsistent. What you saw on the computer screen was completely different than what printed out. There were some ‘Oh shit!’ moments when we realized we’d jumped head first into shooting this movie using this process, and we now had to figure out a way to make it work.”

By sheer force of will, scientific process, and ulcer medication, McLean’s team solved the system quirks.

Behind ParaNorman’s Breakthrough 3-D-Printing-Driven Animation Process

The deputy chief scientist from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory consulted on the movie Prometheus, in case you didn’t already have a reason to go see this film. Opening June 8 in the U.S., the prequel to Scott’s 1979 Alien chronicles an ill-fated exploration team that travels to a distant planet in search of humankind’s origin. To ground the plot in scientific plausibility, Scott turned to Kevin Hand, JPL’s deputy chief scientist for solar system exploration, to explain the kind of terrain, atmosphere, or ecosystem astronauts might encounter on a planet outside of our solar system. “I met with Ridley and his creative team early in the process to see how science could be utilized in plotlines,” says Hand. “They had lots of questions about what it takes for humans to travel to distant worlds, how those worlds might be uninhabitable for humans, the constraints to consider when thinking about alien life, and how it might have adapted to that environment. It became a creative brainstorming session where we bounced ideas and questions off one another. My goal was to help them get the science right while maintaining a plot that tells a compelling story.” HOW PROMETHEUS GOT ITS ATMOSPHERE

The deputy chief scientist from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory consulted on the movie Prometheus, in case you didn’t already have a reason to go see this film.

Opening June 8 in the U.S., the prequel to Scott’s 1979 Alien chronicles an ill-fated exploration team that travels to a distant planet in search of humankind’s origin. To ground the plot in scientific plausibility, Scott turned to Kevin Hand, JPL’s deputy chief scientist for solar system exploration, to explain the kind of terrain, atmosphere, or ecosystem astronauts might encounter on a planet outside of our solar system.

“I met with Ridley and his creative team early in the process to see how science could be utilized in plotlines,” says Hand. “They had lots of questions about what it takes for humans to travel to distant worlds, how those worlds might be uninhabitable for humans, the constraints to consider when thinking about alien life, and how it might have adapted to that environment. It became a creative brainstorming session where we bounced ideas and questions off one another. My goal was to help them get the science right while maintaining a plot that tells a compelling story.”

HOW PROMETHEUS GOT ITS ATMOSPHERE

One of the year’s most anticipated movies, The Dark Knight Rises, may be over two months away, but the online campaign began this week with a mysterious site leading to a new trailer. Read more->

Inside The Hunger Games’ Social Media Machine.

“Within Twitter what we did was expand on that. We started assigning fans different roles within this virtual world. We have district mayors and district recruiters, which really got them active and sharing over Facebook and Twitter. I mean, that’s what Facebook and Twitter are—it’s like your way of identifying who you are and sharing that with your friends. So, by giving them an occupation within their district, we gave them an identity.”

Read more->


I didn’t know the Winklevii twins from The Social Network were the same actor, just digitally duplicated. Otoy, the company behind that feat, is now offering celebrities a kind of fountain of youth: they’ve developed an image capture breakthrough that will allow actors to play their current age indefinitely.

Find out how->