Things have changed since 1983, and according to Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, the level of secrecy surrounding the production of JJ Abrams’ Star Wars: Episode VII is going to reflect this.

We’ve got at least two years of rabid SW nerd rumor-mongering to look forward to, and the tactics used to keep Return of the Jedi under wraps, such as hiding behind pseudonyms (Blue Harvest, Revenge of the Jedi), just won’t cut it in the Internet Age.

According to an interview Kennedy recently had with ScreenSlam, the secrecy surrounding the highly-anticipated film is something they’re going to “monitor, pay attention to and think differently about.” Whatever that really means…

The gist seems to be that Lucasfilm is aware that they won’t be able to get away with keeping fans entirely in the dark this time, so rather than allow wild speculation (which is gonna happen anyway), they’re going to carefully control what, and how much information is released, while endeavoring to keep fans at least somewhat in the loop.

This is what Kennedy had to say when asked about “secrecy”:

We talk about that all the time. I think the whole issue of confidentiality is gonna be fascinating as we move into making the movie. If we’re shooting anything outside, it’s almost impossible to not have things end up on the Internet. So my feeling is, you need to embrace that, especially with the fans around something like Star Wars. You need to recognize they’re important to the process and acknowledge there are things you’re gonna want to make sure they get to know. So I think that’s something we’re going to monitor, pay attention to and think differently about.

Abrams is notorious for the nearly paranoid level of secrecy he likes to employ for his projects, so it will be interesting to see how he reacts to his employers’ apparent policy of semi-transparency regarding this film.

Here’s the interview with ScreenSlam, skip ahead to 1:15 to hear Kennedy weigh in on this matter.

Star Wars: Episode VII is still due to be released in 2015, just in case you weren’t paying attention

Source: /Film

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Since fans and critics everywhere have all but universally declared Fede Alvarez’s Evil Dead remake even Eviler and Deader than the original – not to mention pulled in a tidy $26 million for the studio over the past weekend – it comes as no surprise whatsoever that talk of a sequel, or even a whole new franchise is in the air.

Alvarez and original Evil Dead trilogy star/J.R “Bob” Dobbs avatar Bruce Campbell recently sat down with IGN and rapped about the future of the Evil Dead series. With any luck, we’ll have both a second installment of Alvarez’s Evil Dead – AND Army Of Darkness 2 to look forward to…not to mention a possible crossover between the respective fictional universes.

Let’s give ‘em a listen, shall we?

In the meantime, I’ve yet to encounter anyone who has anything negative to say about the new Evil Dead. I haven’t been fortunate enough to see it, but I hope to remedy this soon.

Evil Dead is now playing at theaters nationwide.

Source: GeekTyrant

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Despite never claiming the crown in a fancy reality TV competition, Chris Hardwick (aka @Nerdist) could rightly be called King of the Nerds. A stand-up comic, Hardwick burst into our consciousness as the guy who stood next to Jenny McCarthy on Singled Out. Later, he would contribute to Attack of the Show, travel the country MCing panels at various Comic Cons and start the Nerdist podcast. Now, Hardwick is working as the host of AMC’s Walking Dead aftershow, The Talking Dead and his new show, The Nerdist, is about to kick off on BBC America as a part of their Supernatural Saturday’s lineup.

Given the chance to talk to Hardwick on a conference call this afternoon, we asked about his late night ambitions, which Doctor he’d like to bring back for the 50th Anniversary, and the chances of a Singled Out Kickstarter. Before we get to that, though, take a look at what Hardwick had to say when a some of the other writers on the call asked about his new show and whether he would choose The Walking Dead or Doctor Who if forced to make a choice.

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Matt Kindt is the creator of Mind MGMT, a mind bending monthly comic book from Dark Horse. Here, we talk to Kindt about his role on Ridley Scott‘s recently announced adaptation, having a set end for his opus,whether he’ll tie up loose ends, what is and isn’t real, the rumors that he might take the baton from Geoff Johns on DC’s Green Lantern book, and more.

Matt Kindt gets into your head after the jump.

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This edition of Crowdfund Confidential features an exclusive interview with James Deen, the producer of Cowboys and Engines and the star of Bret Easton Ellis and Paul Schrader‘s The Canyons… aka, that Lindsay Lohan film from the now notorious New York Times profile.

We did ask Deen about The Canyons, his career in porn, and whether he worries about Lohan’s infamy, but this article is really about Cowboys and Engines, a sci-fi/steampunk project that Deen is trying to get funded through Kickstarter. After all, that’s what Crowdfund Confidential is all about — introducing that you to a project creator that is trying to get funding for a comic, film, or other like creative endeavor that is both independent and interesting.

Here’s James Deen… (more…)

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In 2012, All-Star Marvel and DC artist Mike Norton further moved toward creator owned projects, continuining his Eisner Award winning Battlepug saga online (and in collected editions through Dark Horse) while also co-creating Image Comics’ rural noir zombie book Revival and Dark Horse Comics’ brand new costumed hero book, The Answer, which debuts today.

Here, Norton tells us about how he picks his projects, why he doesn’t hide from superhero tropes, how Revival isn’t your typical zombie book, battling zombie fatigue, and if he’d like to see Battlepug live on as a cartoon series.

Along the way, we also discuss the challenges of telling a slow burn story, the appeal of The Answer‘s female lead, and how a costumed hero fits in at Dark Horse.

All that and more with Mike Norton after the jump.  (more…)

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Veteran nerdy musicians Paul and Storm, of w00tstock! fame, are already known for their nerdy music and catchy Twitter hashtags but they’re about to catapult into geek royalty with their new show Learning Town. The show, which centers around the shenanigans of the duo as they try their hand at children’s television, premiers on Geek and Sundry January 15th. Check out the interview below to see Paul and Storm dish about being nerds, setting puppets on fire and what makes them geek-out.

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This is the first of what we hope will become a series. An article that introduces you to a project creator that is trying to get funding for a comic, film, or other like creative endeavor that is both independent and interesting.

Here now is Jesse Grillo, comic book writer and the creator of Bleeding Ink Productions on his project, Blackwood.

In 100 words or less, tell us about your project:

Jesse Grillo: Blackwood is an ongoing horror series about Kai Blackwood. A man that has been able to see monsters his whole life and believes he suffers from a mental illness. Turns out, he is one of a handful of people that have the ability to see and possibility stop these creatures that are slowly invading from other dimensions. This Kickstarter is to help us pay for the first 3 issues.

Why Kickstarter?

Grillo: It’s one of the thousand roads I’m taking in an attempt to create comics. Crowdfunding has become an amazing thing for comic-book creators of all kinds. It’s still really tough to get funding, but Kickstarter is one of the tools creators can use to help bring their projects to life.

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Comic writer Steve Niles lets us know about utilizing Kickstarter, staying fresh, writing DC and Marvel characters, and merging Criminal Macabre and 30 Days of Night for Criminal Macabre: The Final Night — The 30 Days of Night Crossover.

Your Kickstarter with Ben Templesmith and menton3 for Lust was recently funded. What was the impetus that drove you to funding through Kickstarter? How do you think that funding like this will change – or, maybe, has already started changing – the nature of comics or comics publishing?

Steve Niles: There were a lot of reasons to try Kickstarter. As indie creators we don’t have many publishing options and the weirder the project the harder it is to find a home for.

We knew coming out of the gate that we wanted Lust to be something different, a bit of an experiment. That right there put us at risk in the eyes of most publishers. The other is, also as an indie creator, we have trouble getting our books to fans so Kickstarter offered us a way to go directly to fans. The biggest reason though was a great chance to work with Templesmith and Menton again. I love those guys and I’m hoping this is the first of many “weird” projects.

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An iconic character actor with a flush resume, Lance Henriksen could book work on reputation and his gravelish voice alone, but for the last year and a half, the actor has somehow found a way to continue his hectic career in TV, film, and video games (like Mass Effect 3 and SEGA’s Aliens: Colonial Marines) while also pouring his passions into a new project that he first imagined two decades ago.

That project, To Hell You Ride, is a 5 part comic series from Dark Horse Comics that debuts today (12/12/12). Last week I had the opportunity to talk to Mr. Henriksen about ‘Hell’, how it came to be, and both the chances of a Millennium comic and an update on the potential movie.

What pulled you toward telling this story as a comic? Was it always meant to be a comic or did it start as something else?

Lance Henriksen: It started as a movie that I wrote twenty years ago and the script was lost. I got divorced at one point and the script got thrown away with a lot of the other stuff. You know how that goes… but anyway, when it came up with Mike Richardson down at Comic-Con, he just asked me “would I like to do a comic?” and because [Tom] Mandrake and Sienkiewicz and Eric Powell and all these guys had done drawings for me for my biography, I was aware of comics and I love these guys and I thought “Why not?”

I met Tom Mandrake at one of those conventions and I really liked the guy and he had done a drawing, a pumpkin head, for my biography and it was a great drawing. Then Joe Maddrey and I wrote the book together and worked together before and we all joined forces and Dark Horse agreed that we could work the way that we wanted to, which was staying in real great communication. It wasn’t just us turning in a script and Tom Mandrake drawing it.

What happened was, we decided that we wanted to talk all the time and write from the pencils all the way through to the finished product and we’ve been working on it for a year and a half. We have five issues coming out and three of them are done and we’ve got two more [to do] and by the time the third one comes out and onto the market, the other ones will be finished.

It’s a phenomenal adventure for me, man, because normally films are my thing and the restraint and the drama that has to be so specific in a comic — it’s been a great thing to learn and understand. These guys are talented, Mandrake does such dramatic work, it’s beautiful and it fits perfect with what our mythology is in our story.

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