INTERVIEW: LORD JOEL SILVER

3.8.03
By Smilin' Jack Ruby
Contributing sources:

Okay, so yeah, we've talked to His Holiness, Lord Joel Silver, Genius of All Hollywood Filmmaking and Savior of the Action Genre before about the new Animatrix short film, Final Flight of the Osiris, but that was before I saw the film, so here we are BACK with Lord Silver and the director, Andy Jones (not the E! Online super-genius/super-sexy columnist, Anderson Jones, by the way, for those of you who know him as "Andy," too, but the animation director from Square who did the work on Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within) from the Dreamcatcher roundtables at the Park Hyatt today.

One can never interview Lord Joel enough, particularly when he's in a scoop-y mood. I mean, he said he was toying with the idea of remaking Superfly!!! HOW FUCKING COOL IS THAT??? After the semi-aborted Scott Rudin-produced attempt to bring back Shaft (Hey, Rudin – stick to lining famous American authors' pockets with option money for their great books that you'll subsequently never turn into movies and keep away from action movies), finally, someone with sense may turn one of the classics of seventies black-hero cinema (Pam Grier told me once to not call them "blaxploitation films" as she never felt exploited – you don't say "no" to Pam Grier) into a decent modern remake.

Though typically I'm against remakes, after what Silver did with House on Haunted Hill (it's ironic as Kasdan talked about how much he liked the John Carpenter-directed Thing remake today and how it got no respect when it came out and I couldn't help but think of HOHH), I think his sensibilities behind a Superfly remake would far surpass the John Singleton-directed Shaft remake. And yes, I think DMX would kick ass as Priest if that was Who Lord Silver Wanted To Have In That Role.

Anyway, Lord Joel will abide - oh yes, he will - and yes, admittedly, some of this roundtable I chopped up into bits for a future E! column and for Fangoria.com, so it's not complete (whatev), - but here he is with Jones talking about the kick-ass animated short film, Final Flight of the Osiris. And if you're keeping a scorecard, Lord Joel was wearing a black silk shirt with what looked like grinning serpentine devils all over it.

Question: Was there a bid out on doing The Animatrix? How did you come to work with the Wachowski Brothers on this?

Andy: Actually, the Wachowski Brothers sought us out. They looked for a lot of Japanese anime companies that were doing very creative animation work. They went to Japan and got all these great directors and they also liked what we had been doing as far as like Final Fantasy – the look of it – and thought it would be a good medium to tell the story in.

Question: Did you consciously do Final Flight of the Osiris in two parts? Was it ever going to be shorter or a two-part thing?

Andy: There's kind of a first and second act and it was planned out that way. The first act is setting up the feeling and emotion and a little bit of the characters and who they are. Then you get into the whole idea of what the story is about and what the Wachowskis wanted to tell, which is about the sentinel army and the existence of that and the fact that they need to get the information to Zion and that's the last thing they can possibly do. They can't possibly take out all these sentinels that are after him.

Question: Did they come to you specifically and say that they wanted to use you as the one working on the theatrical one?

Andy: Yeah. (to Lord Joel) You want to handle that?

Lord Joel: Yeah, when the whole thing started, we went to Japan in September of 1999 after the first movie opened for a promotional junket. The boys always had this scheme that they wanted to – being big fans of Japanese anime anyway – they wanted to find a way to incorporate their story in this process. Again, the key is to be clear that they wanted to tell the story in multiple mediums. So, the anime was one of the mediums which was available to them to tell the story. So, when the notion came up to do these and Warner Home Video got on board and we said, okay, we're going to do these stories, the plan was always to have this one story – Final Flight – which really sets up the entire saga, which really begins Reloaded. I say it's Matrix 1.5. It really starts the story from here on. The plan was always to do that in the most sophisticated and most spectacular animation fashion and that's what led them to Square and to Andy. At that time, we had other hopes and plans for Square. However, Square didn't last much longer after we finished this movie. They wrote this one and they wanted this one to be really incredible. It worked out that Dreamcatcher was coming out and it was coming out on March 21st and Larry Kasdan was a giant fan of The Matrix. We wanted to get it up on the screen. We felt that the fans should be able to watch this on the big screen. I mean, look, what is it? Is it a double-feature? It's not a trailer. It's not promotional. This is part of the story. We really felt that if we could get this out and up before the movie opened and give the people a chance to see it and understand it, it would lead them right into Reloaded.

Question: When looking at something like this with near photo-realistic actors, you wonder why spend $25 million on actors when you could just create the actors with computers and do a whole series.

Lord Joel: Nah, I don't know if it's so easy. Look, it's not easy. We are – and all the wonderful work that Andy has done in Final Flight, which is spectacular – we are far beyond it in the movie in Reloaded. We've gone far further than this. I just think that the notion of creating virtual actors is a fantasy of...

Question: Animation directors?

Lord Joel: (laughs) No. Look, I think you can use animation, in my opinion, as a tool to aid you to do things that you can't do with real actors. I mean, there are certain parts of this opening scene – the fight scene, the sparring program – which...the boys said, "What's sex like in the Matrix?" What can you do in the Matrix if you can have sex and that's just where the sparring program came from. There's things in that you just can't do with real actors and you can't pull something like that off or it would be extremely expensive. Even in the first Matrix, there was no Nebuchadnezzar ship – it was all done in computer animation. When it was over, me and the Wachowskis, we wanted the ship so we had to actually have it made after the movie was over because it didn't exist as a model. So, there are things that you can do with animation that you can't do. The notion of replacing the actor isn't a good idea.

Question: Will there be other Animatrix shorts appearing behind other Warner Brothers films?

Lord Joel: No. There's two that are already on the 'net. The first one – Second Renaissance – we had four million downloads in the first month and some of the hardware companies were pretty shocked that there was that much memory out there so that people were able to accept all this download. The second one went up which was called Program and we had 250,000 downloads in the first hour. That's the wonderful thing about AOL is that they do have this gigantic server.

Question: Is there any fear that people will come to watch the short film and not stay for Dreamcatcher?

Lord Joel: I hope that doesn't happen. I think that Larry made a wonderful movie and I think it's scary. I like those kinds of movies. I hope that they work together.

Question: They used to do that sort of thing all the time – with a cartoon before a feature – why do you think that doesn't happen anymore?

Lord Joel: I think Warners is doing it again with Looney Tunes. The problem is that exhibition is always so disturbed by it. I guess the theater owners think that the audiences won't want it. They just sat and watched 25 trailers! I remember there was a Mike Judge short a couple of years ago. Office Space was a short first that I saw in the theater that I thought was great. It works great for us.

Question: Do you think the exhibitors want to keep the time down and make sure they can show movies a certain number of times in a day?

Lord Joel: I just think...well, exhibition has their own problems now because of the proliferation of too many theaters. That's a whole 'nother conversation. The whole idea of The Matrix is about change. We maintain that change is inevitable, so maybe when we go to digital cinema it may be easier to just slam a short up. I don't know. Exhibition is concerned about it. One of the reasons we have it is because Larry Kasdan said, "Let's do it!" I mean, he's a filmmaker and said, "I love The Matrix – let's do it!" Other filmmakers may say, "I don't want a short on my movie. Fuck 'em! No way!" It all has to work together.

Question: With the first movie coming in May, what kind of business is this movie going to have to do to rival Star Wars and Lord of the Rings?

Lord Joel: I mean, look. It's an R-rated movie. I can't speak to that. I don't know what it's going to do. I'm telling you that the movie is sensational. It's going to blow people away. The ideas behind the visual effects are staggering. You're not going to believe what you're going to see.

Question: Can you tell us a couple of those things?

Lord Joel: Absolutely not.

Question: Is it over two hours?

Lord Joel: Just a little over two hours.

Question: With the sequels shrouded in secrecy, how do you decide what you can show?

Lord Joel: Well, look, the reason we ended up with this Newsweek cover in December was because we really haven't had that much out there. We have been careful. We don't want to bang our fans over the heads with it. We had one teaser that was out last May. We had a Super Bowl spot. We have a trailer coming out the beginning of April.

Question: With just how photo-realistic the ship-work is in Final Flight of the Osiris, was there ever a chance that Square was going to work on the Matrix sequels?

Andy: Yeah.

Lord Joel: Yeah.

Question: Because it looks very real – good enough to be in the feature.

Andy: Thank you.

Lord Joel: No, we wanted them to. I mean, that was one of the things we wanted. We loved the work Square did. The whole machine city – you don't see the machine city until...

Andy: We helped develop it and the Wachowskis liked what they saw.

Question: So, there's stuff that you did that's in Reloaded?

Andy: Well, the concepts of how [the sentinels] move and stuff like that. They liked it.

Question: So, the Wachowskis aren't going to be doing press for these movies? They're going to be reclusive?

Lord Joel: It's not reclusive. Look, I'm not trying to make a Kubrickian connection here, but I don't think Kubrick ever explained what the Monolith meant. He didn't want to and he didn't have to. The boys just don't feel that if they sit and make themselves available to discuss the elements of the story, it's a finite response. They really want the audience to take from the movie what you take from it. They don't want to say what they are. I'm going to help the process because I can speak 800 words in one breath according to Newsweek, but they don't want to talk about it and they also don't feel comfortable talking about it and it's the only part of the process that they are [like that about]. Believe me, they are involved in everything. They wrote four of these episodes. They wrote the two movies. They wrote 600 pages of game material. They write everything, but they don't want to be involved in this part of the process, so they don't have to be.

Question: Are they both finished – or at least the first one?

Lord Joel: The first one's not finished. We're finishing it as we speak. The second one is not as close as the first one. They're finished shooting, but they're not finished yet. They have a lot of work to do.

Question: With Square gone, what are you doing now?

Andy: Square closed. I'm actually at Digital Domain again. I'm an animation director there. Animation directing in live-action films.

Question: How hands-on are you with all your films?

Lord Joel: Look, it depends on the picture...

Question: How many movies will you have out this year?

Lord Joel: Four. I have...Cradle came out last weekend, I have Reloaded in May, then I have a picture I'm doing, my Dark Castle movie with Halle Berry and Penelope Cruz and Robert Downey called Gothika, which will come out next Halloween. And then that will be followed up a week or so later by Revolutions.

Question: Do you think we're burned out on comic book movies?

Lord Joel: I don't know. I loved last weekend. Cradle 2 The Grave was a fun movie. It made a lot of money. It was number one. It's nice to hear that. It's a very different kind of movie than The Matrix. It's a different experience.

Question: But you know how to make those and keep the budgets down...

Lord Joel: I try. That movie is far less than The Matrix and our Dark Castle are far less than that. So, it just allows us to have all these different genres of movies.

Question: Which is your next Bartkowiak movie?

Lord Joel: I'm not doing [his next]. He's doing a picture called Pathfinder for Paramount.

Question: So, which is the next mid-level [budget] one for you? (S.J.R. Note: Yeah, okay, so I get a little crazy looking for scoops – sue me)

Lord Joel: I don't know. I always was fascinated by an old movie called Superfly, which I kind of wanted to play with again. So, we have a plan of making a kind of different kind of version of that.

Question: Laurence Fishburne was saying the production had a real hard time with the death of Gloria Foster as she was so great, but was also a major part of the third Matrix movie – what was done about that?

Lord Joel: We had a terrible thing happen with Aaliyah, too. Well, the boys had always planned on the Oracle changing form, so this was a possibility they had talked about. But she is very well-featured in Reloaded. She has a really great, cool scene in Reloaded. We had not done the Revolutions sequence yet and it ended up being another actor.

Question: So, is Westworld for next summer?

Lord Joel: I don't even know. There's a lot of stuff we're working on.

Question: With the Oscars right around the corner, do you see the two Matrix movies competing against each other for Best Picture? (S.J.R. Note: For the record, no, this was not my question – though it sounds like me)

Lord Joel: Oh, please. I don't know. I never think about that.

Joel Silver is God and deserves a Thalberg or two. Praise Him on the message boards.

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Bellucci keeps mum about 'Matrix' sequels

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Monica Bellucci is saying little about the "Matrix" sequels.

The only thing the actress will reveal about "The Matrix Reloaded" and "The Matrix: Revolutions" is her character's name: Persephone.

"(She's) dangerous, sensual, with some sense of humor," she told AP Radio. "I have another way to be dangerous ... but you'll see in the movie."

In Greek mythology, Persephone is the daughter of Zeus and Demeter who's kidnapped by Hades to be his wife in the lower world.

Bellucci says there's more acting than action on her part -- she doesn't get to walk on the walls like Keanu Reeves.

As for her latest film, "Tears of the Sun," she got to work with another action star: Bruce Willis. According to Bellucci, Willis was a big help when it came time to shoot her close-up.

"He cried for me, to give me the emotion. He did it for every take," she said. "It was purely professional."

Such professionalism also came in handy in filming the action scenes. "In the middle of the jungle, with all the things going on, I was scared because it can be dangerous for us, too," Bellucci said. "It's an action movie -- it's always difficult and dangerous to do an action movie. Anything can happen."

The "Matrix" sequels are set to be released later this year. "Tears of the Sun" is in theaters now.

2 tibits from Sci-wire

A new theatrical trailer will tout the DVD release of Die Another Day in upcoming showings of The Matrix Reloaded and X2, the sequel to X-Men, Variety reported. The DVD comes out June 3.

Warner Brothers is in talks with the Cannes Film Festival to screen the upcoming first Matrix sequel film, The Matrix Reloaded, in conjunction with the film's U.S. opening on May 15, Variety reported.

Silver Goes Gothika

Producer Joel Silver told SCI FI Wire that the upcoming horror film Gothika—in which a criminal psychologist (Halle Berry) awakens as a ghost-haunted patient—will be far scarier than his previous House on Haunted Hill, Thirteen Ghosts or Ghost Ship. Those films were also released under Silver and Bob Zemeckis' Dark Castle Entertainment banner.

"When I saw the success of The Ring—and frankly I liked The Ring—I didn't think it would have such tremendous appeal," Silver said in an interview. "But I thought The Ring was scary. So we said, 'Let's try and go in that direction.'"

Silver added that Oscar winner Berry signed on after reading writer Sebastian Gutierrez's script, which the producer described as "really, really scary." Penelope Cruz and Robert Downey have also joined the cast, under director Mathieu Kassovitz. Silver said that he's been watching Kassovitz's career.

"He made this picture, The Crimson Rivers, which I thought was really eerie and weird," Silver said. "I thought that he could be like a Darren Aronofsky-type guy, who could do a movie that could have weight and punch to it, and that would still be scary and eerie." Gothika begins shooting in a few weeks.

Weaving Reloaded For Matrix

Hugo Weaving, who reprises his role as Agent Smith in the upcoming sequel films The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, told SCI FI Wire that his character's ability to replicate himself made for some interesting challenges during the filming. "We achieved the multi Smiths in a number of different ways," Weaving said in an interview. "Sometimes I would move into a room, say, and do it 10 times and end up in 10 slightly different positions. And then there would be 10 of me."

Weaving, who is also known to audiences as Elrond in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, added, "Then there are other scenes where there are stunt doubles or doubles of me, men the same height as me, and there would be face replacements done afterwards. And then there would be completely CG Smiths in other scenes, and then also sometimes there were dummies. There were just stationary dummies."

In addition to the new duplication ability, Weaving said there will be another big change in his character. Smith has broken away from the Matrix and is now a free agent within the system. "He's basically working for himself," Weaving said. "But he has the same goal and the same purpose and focus, which is to destroy Neo." The Matrix Reloaded opens May 15 and The Matrix Revolutions opens Nov. 7.

Samsung starts testing next 'Matrix' phone

By Martyn Williams February 25, 2003

Samsung has landed a deal with AOL Time Warner unit Warner Bros. Pictures to provide a cell phone that will be used in 'The Matrix Reloaded,' the sequel to 1999's 'The Matrix' movie, a Samsung spokesman told IDG News Service on Tuesday.

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Not much is known about Samsung's Matrix phone except for a teaser Web site, at http://www.thematrixphone.com, which is already live. The Web site allows anyone to sign up for e-mail updates and a Flash animation communicates " 15 May, 2003" and "Samsung" before providing a brief flash of the handset. The date corresponds to the date of the movie's planned premier.

A company spokesman confirmed that Samsung had reached a "certain agreement" with Warner Bros. but declined to provide more information ahead of an official announcement.

The deal gives Samsung a high-profile platform from which to promote its cellular telephones and could help contribute to reaching the company's goal of selling 20 percent more cellular handsets in 2003 than it did last year. The company has set a shipment target of between 50 million and 52 million for the current year, against 42 million last year, and has stated a particular emphasis on overseas markets.

Samsung would not be the first handset maker to benefit from a Matrix association. Nokia's 8110 handset became a must-have item for some after it was featured in the last Matrix movie and even sparked a small business in "Matrix-style sliding covers," which third party vendors were offering to replace the face plates on other Nokia models.

Samsung became the No. 3 cellular handset maker in the third quarter of 2002, according to the most recent estimates from market research company Dataquest. During that three-month period, Samsung sold 11.1 million handsets to place it behind Nokia and Motorola and ahead of Siemens and Sony.

E(2/24) German Upstart Lands In Hollywood

(From The Wall Street Journal Europe)
By Charles Goldsmith

Berlin -- In the much anticipated sequels to the Warner Bros. movie "The Matrix," some of the special effects come from an unlikely source: a bunch of geometry and math whizzes at Mental Images GmbH, a small firm with offices near the zoo in Berlin.

The computer wizardry for the two sequels, due to be released later this year, is being coordinated by California visual-effects experts. But some of the most realistic images are the brainchild of Mental Images. If it were a movie, it might be called "The German Eggheads Who Stormed Hollywood," pitting the European upstarts against U.S.-based Pixar Animation Studios.

Mental Images will be honored Saturday in Beverly Hills, California, by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with a technical achievement award for its "mental ray" technology.

This so-called rendering technique, first used in computer-aided design for the likes of Mercedes-Benz cars, in recent years has begun to attract filmmakers. It has been used in 120 movies -- including the most recent "Star Wars" and "Harry Potter" films -- and in thousands of television commercials, such as a Levi Strauss & Co. ad featuring 600 stampeding bison. Executives at The Mill, a London graphics firm that created the bison images, praise mental ray's ability to create life-like hair on the beasts.

Through advanced modeling techniques, mental ray "doesn't just emulate light, it simulates what light does" as it bounces off many surfaces, says Ed Jones, chief executive of special-effects firm ESC Entertainment of Alameda, California, which is using mental ray in the forthcoming films "Matrix Reloaded" and "The Matrix Revolutions." Hollywood filmmakers "really want to blow people away, and mental ray allows them to do that," adds Marc Stevens, development director at Montreal-based Softimage, a unit of Avid Technology Inc., of Tewksbury, Massachusetts, which has incorporated mental ray into its own content-creation software package.

The idea behind mental ray is that a ray of light doesn't just illuminate an object once; it bounces several times off walls, floors and other surfaces to create varying degrees of shadow, light and reflections. By computing what fraction of light will reach the object at different places, and off various types of surfaces, mental ray is particularly successful at creating highly reflective objects such as an animal's eyeball (the house elf Dobbie in "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets") or a glass-fronted skyscraper.

"Artists like [Albrecht] Duerer and Leonardo da Vinci knew all about this -- they just didn't have computers," says Rolf Herken, the 48-year-old chief executive of closely held Mental Images, which he founded in 1986 while working on a doctoral thesis (never finished) on "Complexity Aspects of Quantum Gravity" at the Free University of Berlin.

Mental ray's chief competitor is the older RenderMan technology sold by Pixar, the Silicon Valley concern headed by Steve Jobs; Pixar's rendering skills were honored at the 2001 Academy Awards for helping put computer graphics into the "mainstream" of movie-making, but there are signs that RenderMan is showing its age, some special-effects practitioners say.

Some special-effects shops use both technologies. Industrial Light & Magic, or ILM, founded by George Lucas, says RenderMan is still its primary renderer. But Cliff Plumer, chief technology officer at ILM, adds that mental ray creates a "more photorealistic image" for many shiny or even translucent objects, such as an earlobe.

The Pixar technology involves so-called scanline rendering, based on the order in which an image is displayed on the screen -- somewhat like the way images are pushed onto a television screen (thus the lines often captured in photographs of TV images). Mental ray instead uses "ray tracing" technology, which is based on algorithms that trace the behavior of light. The most recent RenderMan model, unveiled late last year, for the first time incorporates ray tracing as well.

"Mental ray as a renderer has gotten better," acknowledges Pixar co-founder and President Ed Catmull, but he insists that film studios will still choose RenderMan for complicated tasks such as the thousands of characters in the army of Orcs created for the "Lord of the Rings" movies. "There are hundreds and hundreds of millions of different surface elements" in such scenes, he says, and RenderMan excels in computing in such a "tremendously complex environment."

There's a touch of Hollywood studio politics at play in the RenderMan-mental ray rivalry. A film studio like DreamWorks SKG, says Ed Leonard, its head of technology, doesn't want to be "dependent on any key piece" of technology from a rival like Pixar, whose film division made "Toy Story" in conjunction with Walt Disney Co. Mr. Leonard says DreamWorks used an internal rendering system for its hit "Shrek," but will use mental ray for some scenes in its forthcoming computer-generated movie "Sharkslayer," an underwater mafia yarn.

One worry for some studios is that Pixar would save its best tricks for its own film unit. Mr. Catmull of Pixar says the company once delayed public release of one piece of technology, a subtle technique for shading hair, but decided it was "stupid and a mistake" -- and insists there is now a firewall between the company's film and software divisions.

Mental Images employs 30 people, most of them software developers, in three floors of an office building in Berlin, not far from the apartment where it was founded. The office is lined with such books as "Wavelet Analysis" and "Curves and Surfaces in Geometric Modeling" -- but, in a nod to its current work, also has a poster from the original "Matrix" movie signed by the writing-directing brother team, Larry and Andy Wachowski.

The market for high-end rendering in films is modest, perhaps valued at about $10 million a year, but Mental Images says the broader market for rendering is about $50 million -- and growing rapidly.

The company is working on moving mental ray into the online entertainment sector -- with an eye to protecting games from being pirated. "The idea is to give the user access only to the image, not the content," Mr. Herken says. If this approach is perfected, he says, "you'll be able to walk through a spaceship and interact with it, but you can't take the spaceship."

Roadshow's inner-spring Matrix punt

By Rachel Browne
February 23 2003

Carrie-Anne Moss and Keanu Reeves in a scene from The Matrix Reloaded.

Entertainment giant Village Roadshow is staking its fortunes on a Keanu Reeves-led recovery this year.

The company has unveiled plans to dramatically expand its business, committing an extra $206 million to film production, making it one of the biggest independent production houses in the world.

It's a risky stance to take, but one the company hopes will pay huge rewards when Keanu Reeves's two Matrix sequels, The Matrix: Reloaded and The Matrix: Revolutions are released.

Both films were shot in Sydney last year, contributing an estimated $200million to the NSW economy.

The Matrix: Reloaded is set for release in May and is already tipped to be one of the biggest films of the year.

Village Roadshow managing director Graham Burke said he hoped The Matrix: Reloaded would match the success of the first Matrix film which grossed $US400 million ($670 million).

"The first Matrix was considered to be a sleeper, as they say in the industry," Mr Burke said.

"People discovered it towards the end of its season and, while it did very well theatrically, the pay-off, the extraordinary, phenomenal pay-off, was in DVD and video sales.

"At one point, across the entire world, for every DVD machine sold, there was a Matrix DVD being sold with it. It really was amazing."

Mr Burke said the anticipated success of the Matrix sequels would only help boost Australia's film industry, along with the major restructuring of Village Roadshow's filmmaking business.

"It's terrific that Australia can now be in such a strong position for producing films," Mr Burke said.

"We have an enormous proclivity to make films here because the dollar equation is very favourable and we get great support from the Australian Government.

"We are very passionate about making films here."

The new structure will also give Village Roadshow the ability to make bigger-budget films, although Mr Burke said the company would still make those small-budget pictures primarily for the Australian market, such as Tony Martin's crime caper, Bad Eggs, and Fat Pizza, a feature film spin-off of the SBS TV series.

"We will certainly look at bigger-budget films but only if we get the right properties," Mr Burke said.

"As Shakespeare is alleged to have said, 'The play is the thing'. There's no point throwing big money at something without the foundation of a good idea to hold it up.

"We remain committed to lower-budget Australian films, based on good ideas, made mainly for the Australian market."

With its pockets newly fattened after a disappointing 2002 in which its stock crashed after suspending dividend payments on ordinary shares, Mr Burke said things could only improve.

"That's why we are working hard to give this new deal every chance of success," he said.

To that end, the company is scouting for new film talent, such as that which emerges in the annual Tropfest short-film festival.

"We are already looking at a number of films but it's a bit too early to talk about them now," Mr Burke said.

"We want to put the message out that we are open to talking to anyone about their ideas; we are looking for new screenplays and good properties."

Moviemakers do a total mind-meld with video-game industry

`Piglet's Big Game' has Disney's permission to beam in the sights and sounds from `Piglet's Big Movie' and to release it simultaneously

By Michel Marriott
NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE

Sunday, Feb 23, 2003,Page 12 As if in a shadow play of a major Hollywood premiere, photographers pressed up to a procession of film stars strolling into a theater aglow with hype and klieg lights. Keanu Reeves chatted on camera with Access Hollywood and MTV reporters. Will Smith and his wife, the actress Jada Pinkett Smith, waved to onlookers. Carrie-Anne Moss and Laurence Fishburne glittered on a black carpet ordered for the occasion.

The event at Warner Brothers Studios was a sort of coming-out party for Enter the Matrix. No, it's not one of the long-anticipated sequels to The Matrix, the cyber-chic 1999 thriller. It is, instead, a video game.

With a production cost that some industry experts estimate at as much as US$20 million, it is likely to be the most expensive video game yet made. More importantly, the game, laced with an hour of new Matrix film scenes and megabytes of cinematic tricks, represents the closest collaboration so far between the converging orbits of moviemaking and game production in an entertainment universe that is finding new profits, partnerships and possibilities in ever more sophisticated digital technologies.

The game's 244-page equivalent of a shooting script was written by Larry and Andy Wachowski, the brothers who wrote and directed The Matrix for Warner Brothers Pictures as well as two sequels being readied for release this year. (The game's release by Shiny Entertainment is to coincide with the May 15 opening of the first sequel, The Matrix Reloaded.) Similarly, the films' set and custom designers and much of their departments did double duty for the game, as did the movies' famed Hong Kong fight choreographer, Yuen Wo Ping, and the films' lead actors.

"We had a notion to take the stars of the movies and have them play supportive roles in the video game and tell a story that is a companion story to the movies,'" said Joel Silver, the films' producer. Blending the productions, he said, became essential to maintaining the quality and requirements of the "content-driven" projects.

"There are scenes that start in the video game and will complete the movie," he said, noting that the game was conceived to "feel like it's a part and experience of the movie." Some of the plot lines intersect, and one of the player's missions is to get a character to a location pivotal to the story in Reloaded.

Bruno Bonnell, chairman and chief executive of Infogrames, which recently acquired Shiny Entertainment, calls the phenomenon "a revolution in interactive entertainment."

Of her months of work on both the Matrix sequels and the game as the tough hovercraft pilot known as Niobe, Pinkett Smith said, "It's all one project."

Some of the bigger video game developers, like Activision and Electronic Arts, have also been quick to capitalize on securing licenses to movies, gambling millions of dollars on whether movie premises and characters can make top-selling games.

This year, besides Enter the Matrix, game enthusiasts can expect a slew of movie-related video games that are being developed with the increasingly close cooperation of the moviemakers and actors.

Even Disney's Piglet's Big Movie, due in theaters March 21, is being accompanied by a video game, Piglet's Big Game, made by Gotham Games. It took advantage of Disney's willingness to help blur the line between movie and game by giving both the same look, feel and vocals, said Greg Ryan, general manager of Gotham Games.

Last year, Activision, with games like Spider-Man: The Movie, and Electronic Arts, with Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, struck gold with movie-to-game projects. Both games, executives for the companies note, were created with unusually high access to the films' makers, including having the movies' actors reprise their roles specifically for the games.

And at an average retail price of US$50 a game, the economics of translating a blockbuster movie into a game that could sell in the millions is attractive, many gamemakers and moviemakers note.

"I think what is going on is that everyone has realized that we are going after the same target audience," said Kathy Vrabeck, an executive vice president at Activision, referring to young males. "I'm not surprised to see more convergence of movies and video games, bringing that experience into the interactive realm where they can continue that experience for hours and hours."

Neil Young, an Electronic Arts vice president in charge of production for the company's Lord of the Rings game franchise, said he had video conference calls from his office in Redwood City, California, with Peter Jackson, director of the film trilogy.

"It is important to keep him in the loop," Young said. "We're trying to understand the language of the film and adopt and retain its core essence, but diverge in ways that are right for the game medium."

Trying to capture box-office lightning in a game cartridge is not new. Some of the first mass-market video games to emerge in the late 1970s were inspired by Star Wars.

But video games based on popular films have often disappointed gamers. For years, they tended to be marketing afterthoughts or blatant money grabs churned out with little more imagination than it took to flood the market with movie-themed lunch boxes and T-shirts, critics note.

Only in recent years, with explosively powerful microprocessors and 3-D graphics chips, as well as the immense popularity of consoles like PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube, have game technologies matured enough to begin to approach film-like qualities, said David Perry, president of Shiny Entertainment.

"And we're still in our infancy," he added.

Matrix's silver lining

Michele Manelis
22feb03

JOEL Silver, producer of the eagerly anticipated sequels The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, promises to shock, stun and awe audiences who saw the original, genre-defining action blockbuster.

Written and directed by brothers Larry and Andy Wachowski, The Matrix's paranoiac world attracted gross takings of $US456 million ($760 million) worldwide in 1999.

Supporting the upcoming sequels, which allegedly cost $US300 million combined, is the franchise's first video game, Enter The Matrix, plus a series of jaw-dropping, photo-realistic DVDs which will accompany the movies.

Silver's enthusiasm in the Matrix phenomenon is evident.

"It's this simple. No other movie can compete with us, period. And I'm not saying that to start a battle with other films coming out this year (such as The Hulk starring Eric Bana, or the X-Men sequel with Hugh Jackman).

"I'm not being a gladiator in the ring yelling, 'Bring on the lions!' It's not like that," he says.

"These effects have never been done before and it's impossible to copy, simply because of the time (two years) it's taken to make."

Despite the curse of countless big-budget sequels, often just empty imitation of predecessors, Silver says: "Look, I've been involved in a lot of sequels that maybe shouldn't have been made (he produced Lethal Weapon 2, 3 and 4, as well as Die Hard 2: Die Harder).

"But The Matrix is one story designed to be told over three movies. It's a trilogy. When I did Die Hard, the story ended, but then the studio made money, and said, 'Let's make a sequel', and the story didn't make sense.

"But if The Matrix hadn't been a success, we wouldn't have made these movies and you wouldn't know the end of the story."

The hi-tech, effects-laden original Matrix relied heavily on its visual appeal. Fans of this world of hyper-reality were more than happy to ogle the view, some of whom watched it several times over without necessarily understanding its multi-layered plot.

"Well, the sequels are more complicated than the first one," warns Silver. "But when you analyse it, it's really a very small movie. It's about a little group of renegade fighters who isolate one guy (Keanu Reeves) they think can solve their problems," he says.

"Although some of the mature audience members didn't understand it, the younger, more computer-savvy had an easier time getting it. But the themes are pretty universal – man against machine.

"In the sequels, the story continues, resulting in the potential fight at the end of hundreds of years between man and machine."

Along with Reeves, the principal cast members – Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, and newcomer to this futuristic world, Jada Pinkett Smith – didn't hesitate to complete the trilogy.

The sequels were shot simultaneously in Sydney at Fox Studios.

"It's not just the cost-effective element of shooting in Australia that appeals to Hollywood. I've done four movies in a row and I feel that I'm a big part of the Australian film industry now.

"The financial side is a significant factor, but the crews and the art departments in Australia are geniuses. And although we have great crews in America, the Australians seem to have such a passion for it."

During the past four years, any movie-goer has recognised elements of The Matrix in films ranging from animated family fare such as Shrek to the kitschy Charlie's Angels, both of which used the effect referred to as "bullet time" in which the actors' martial arts pose is frozen in mid-air while the camera moves 360 degrees around him.

"In the beginning, we all thought it was cute and funny (to be imitated) but then it became de rigueur. It was like, 'If you're going to make a hard-edged action movie, then you had to include a 'bullet time' shot.'

"Even Daredevil took elements from it in their fight scenes, but wait until you see what we have now. The Wachowski Brothers feel that this time they've made something that can't be copied.

"Actually, when I showed Warner executives some Matrix stuff last week, two of the guys got really angry. They said, 'You really f--- it up for us. How can we possibly follow this?'

"But we've been very careful. When I say that no one out there can compete with us – I mean it. We're going to change the world with these sequels."

• The Matrix Reloaded opens on May 15. The Matrix Revolutions opens on November 7.

Loaded Matrix

According to NSTP,the Malaysian branch had written to its headquarters, Warner Bros Studios, in the United States, regarding the allegation.Here is their quote.

The site, the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), had listed the character played by Stuart Wells as Allah.

This prompted not only worldwide protests from Muslims and associations representing them, but also e-mails calling on Muslims all around the globe to boycott the movie.

One such e-mail has also been widely circulated among Malaysians since last November.

A spokesman for the distributor of the movie here said the Malaysian branch had written to its headquarters, Warner Bros Studios, in the United States, regarding the allegation.

"We were told that the mistake was made by IMDb, a movie reference website used by many to get the latest on movies." The spokesman assured movie-goers, especially Muslims, that there is no character by the name of Allah in the movie as mentioned in the website.

Asked what the character's actual name was, the spokesman said she was unsure but was told it sounded close to Allah.

She said she had been informed that the character's name could be Ali.

The mix-up could be due to the pronounciation. The name could sound like Allah if pronounced with a thick accent.

It was learnt that Warner had received numerous queries and e-mails from Muslims all around the world following the IMDb listing.

It was also learnt that many had written protest letters reminding Warner to be sensitive and not commit a blasphemous act and offend Muslims all around the world.

A check in the Internet revealed that there were many websites dedicated to this subject, with many of them calling on Muslims to boycott the movie.

A website run from Oman, www.omanforum.com, called on Muslims not to just take the insult but instead let the movie producers feel the heat by boycotting the movie.

Another website from Pakistan called www.pakistanlink.com claimed that it had received many e-mails from members who also got the boycott e-mail. It claimed that many have since e-mailed Warner for a clarification.

All the websites quoted the IMDb website at www.IMDb.com as the source of the Allah character name.

However, the website did not have the character's name when The Malay Mail checked it. The opposing websites had also attached a copy of the controversial cast listing taken from IMDb to prove that it had come from the site.

# In the Internet forum, Talking Islam to The World, it was reported that Warner Bros, the producer of Matrix Reloaded has said there is no 羨llah' character in their soon-to-be-released movie.

In one of the postings, it was said that Warner had told the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) that there was no such character in the film, despite reports in movie-related websites.

Top Agencies Compete For Video Game Business

By John Gaudiosi

For more stories from The Hollywood Reporter Click Here Last year, the success of the video game-based film "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" caught Hollywood's attention. Today, the video game business has not only gone Hollywood, it's got an agent. Or two.

Hollywood's top talent brokers are moving in on the fast-growing gaming sector, embracing it as the next big thing to fill their commission coffers amid a tough environment for the traditional film, TV and music businesses.

Talent agency Brahmins are hauling out the big guns and all their leveraging tricks to cut ever-richer deals for original video game properties, to bring name talent to video game titles and to pave a two-way street for the hottest gaming creative talent in movies and television. At the same time, studios are commanding more and more coin for the gaming rights to their homegrown movies and TV shows.

The flurry of activity explains why three of the largest agencies -- CAA, ICM and Endeavor -- have recently formed video game departments with dedicated staffs to further the crossover boom.

At id Software, an independent game developer in Mesquite, Texas, with just 20 employees, CAA has already helped get movie deals for "Doom III" with Warner Bros. Pictures and "Return to Castle Wolfenstein" with Sony.

"We couldn't dream of making these kinds of deals on our own," id CEO Todd Hollenshead said.

ICM has created a games division with industry veteran Keith Boeske in charge. Boeske brokered the deal for Paramount's "Tomb Raider" movie when he worked at Eidos Entertainment. And in the second-biggest video game-to-movie hit, "Resident Evil," director Paul Anderson and actress Milla Jovovich are both ICM clients.

"Games are certainly an exciting growth opportunity and, as proven by the current frenzy to acquire game properties, it's a fertile area to launch franchises," Boeske said. But -- recalling how he pitched "Tomb Raider" to multiple uninterested studios -- he said there's still a tremendous communication gap between the gaming industry and Hollywood.

It's a gap he intends to fill.

"Our games department is devoted solely to servicing members of the video game community and members of the entertainment industry who want to access the video game community," Boeske said. "This is unique in Hollywood. This is not part of some larger catch-all division. We are focused on the establishment of film franchises. Our job is to find those deals which are financially and creatively interesting."

Another top agency, Endeavor, whose clients include Vin Diesel, Jennifer Garner, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, recently hired Rob Sebastian as its managing director of games and technology. Endeavor will represent corporate partnerships and programming for the Ultimate Gamers Expo in Los Angeles, Aug. 15-17.

"Many of our younger clients grew up playing games and understand the importance of the medium," Sebastian said. "We're helping them make intelligent decisions for their businesses."

The types of deals that agencies are cutting in the video game realm vary widely from project to project, and agencies often stand to reap more than a standard 10% commission. Agencies might get packaging fees and be paid royalties from both the game publisher and developer. A well-structured deal -- from the agent's point of view -- might bring in a $500,000 fee off a million-selling video game property.

Having agency representation is attractive to gamers because they are in a position to marry old media with new in the early stages of a game's creation. But there is still skepticism in the close-knit gaming community about whether a video game gold rush in Hollywood will truly materialize.

"Whether or not a traditional agent can make enough money just in the games space remains to be seen," said American McGee, founder of Carbon 6, an ICM-repped company that links movie studios to game makers.

"Most game companies aren't interested in the game rights to an unproven movie like 'The Fast and the Furious' -- which was passed over by every game studio -- before it comes out. And after it's a hit, there's no need for an agent to sell the property. Anyone would buy it," McGee said.

CAA got into business last year with Microsoft to turn its first-party PC and Xbox games into TV shows or movies, including the best-selling Xbox game "Halo," which CAA is shopping as a feature film.

The agency also represents Will Wright, creator of the hugely successful "Sims" game franchise, who is pitching two TV show concepts. And CAA is helping Lorne Lanning and Sherry McKenna, creators of the "Oddworld" video game, bring their vision for Abe, a hero of the stories, beyond the game realm and into TV and movies.

"The key to Hollywood is knowing who to talk to and the relationships that exist between production houses and studios," Lanning said. "Even though we originally came from Hollywood, went to video games and now want to expand our property to linear entertainment, we don't know these relationships."

CAA is working with former Microsoft executive Jordan Weisman and his new company WizKids in the hopes of bringing the fantasy role-playing game "Mage Knight" to linear entertainment. Producer Mark Gordon is working with Weisman on the movie concept.

"We don't have just a games division, we focus on all areas of entertainment so that our clients get the full resources of our agents that deal with the film, TV, music and games industries," CAA agent Larry Shapiro said.

CAA worked with Pierce Brosnan and Electronic Arts to have the actor cyber-scanned for the James Bond game "Nightfire." The virtual Brosnan is featured in the best-selling game, his picture is on the box art and film clips from "Die Another Day" appear in the EA game ad.

CAA client Danny Bilson wrote the last two James Bond games and oversees development of EA's movie-based game franchises such as "Harry Potter," "The Lord of the Rings" and "James Bond." CAA-repped comedian Orlando Jones is working on a new video game franchise in which he will star and also write and co-create.

"Our agency's strength is integrating all of our departments so that our clients have opportunities to branch out," Shapiro said.

For sure, Hollywood talent has been actively seeking gaming opportunities for voice work, writing, special effects, motion-capture and CGI work. And the next generation of game consoles, expected in 2005, will feature picture quality much nearer to movies, a technological reality that might further entice Hollywood talent.

Such talent, though, commands a high price that only the top video game publishers, like Electronic Arts, Take-Two Interactive, THQ and Activision, can afford. That could hurt the smaller players in the game industry.

"I think you'll see the big game companies get bigger and the smaller companies get acquired, and some of the medium-sized companies will simply go away," said James Lin, managing director and senior analyst at Jefferies and Co.

The most exciting convergence of video games might be coming from Andy and Larry Wachowski, writer-directors of Warner Bros.' "Matrix" feature franchise. The newly launched video game extension of the "Matrix" brand, "Enter the Matrix," was created by gamemaker Shiny Entertainment, which worked with the Wachowski brothers and Warner Bros. to ensure that the movie's key talent was also involved in the game.

"This game, which introduces a parallel story to the films, is not a license for the movie, it's a collaboration with the movie makers," Shiny president Dave Perry said.

Carrie-Anne Moss: "Matrix"

Carrie-Anne Moss: "Matrix" Mommy

by Lia Haberman
Feb 20, 2003, 1:00 PM PT

No word if the Oracle predicted this one, but Matrix star Carrie-Anne Moss has revealed she's in the family way.

It's a first child for Moss and her hubby, fellow thespian Steven Roy, confirms the actress' publicist Jennifer Allen, telling E! Online Moss, "feels amazing. She and her husband can't be more thrilled."

Moss, 35, is due in early fall, Allen says. No other details were released.

The Canadian couple were married in 1999 and live in Beverly Hills, California.

Moss has spent most of the last two years shooting the Matrix sequels in Sydney, Australia, where Roy traveled to propose to the super-svelte action star. Shooting on the mind-bending sci-fi sequels wrapped in August 2002.

The Vancouver-born actress broke into Hollywood a decade ago with a role on Models Inc., Aaron Spelling's 1994 primetime paean to pretty faces. The series was canceled after one season, and Moss made the guest-star rounds of small-screen sci-fi shows such as FX: The Series and Spider-Man.

Then came a star-making turn as Trinity, Neo's tough-as-nails love interest, in 1999's The Matrix. Memorable roles followed in Memento and Chocolat and the not-so-memorable Red Planet. Next up, Moss escapes the sci-fi mold with a role in a modern-day thriller Suspect Zero with Aaron Eckhart. The movie's drop date (October 24) roughly coincides with Moss' delivery date.

Meanwhile, the much-hyped deliveries fans are waiting for: The Matrix: Reloaded and The Matrix: Revolutions are slated for release May 15 and November 7, respectively.

The Matrix, where films and games meet

BURBANK, California As if in a shadow play of a major Hollywood premiere, photographers pressed up to a procession of film stars strolling into a theater aglow with hype and klieg lights. Keanu Reeves chatted on camera with "Access Hollywood" and MTV reporters.

Will Smith and his wife, the actress Jada Pinkett Smith, waved to onlookers. Carrie-Anne Moss and Laurence Fishburne glittered on a black carpet ordered for the occasion.

The event at Warner Brothers Studios was a sort of coming-out party for Enter the Matrix. No, this is not one of the long-anticipated sequels to "The Matrix," the cyber-chic 1999 thriller. It is a video game.

With a production cost that some industry experts estimate at as much as $20 million, it is likely to be the most expensive video game yet made. More importantly, the game, laced with an hour of new "Matrix" film scenes and megabytes of cinematic tricks, represents the closest collaboration so far between the converging orbits of moviemaking and game production in an entertainment universe that is finding new profits, partnerships and possibilities in ever more sophisticated digital technologies.

The game's 244-page equivalent of a shooting script was written by Larry and Andy Wachowski, the brothers who wrote and directed "The Matrix" for Warner Brothers Pictures as well as two sequels being readied for release this year. (The release of the game by Shiny Entertainment is to coincide with the May 15 U.S. opening of the first sequel, "The Matrix Reloaded.") Similarly, the films' set and custom designers and much of their departments did double duty for the game, as did the movies' famed Hong Kong fight choreographer, Yuen Wo Ping, and the films' lead actors.

"We had a notion to take the stars of the movies and have them play supportive roles in the video game and tell a story that is a companion story to the movies'," said Joel Silver, producer of the films. Blending the productions, he said, became essential to maintaining the quality and requirements of the "content-driven" projects.

"There are scenes that start in the video game and will complete the movie," he said, noting that the game was conceived to "feel like it's a part and experience of the movie." Some of the plot lines intersect, and one of the player's missions is to get a character to a location pivotal to the story in "Reloaded."

Bruno Bonnell, chief executive of Infogrames Entertainment SA, which recently acquired Shiny Entertainment Inc., called the phenomenon "a revolution in interactive entertainment."

Some of the bigger developers of video games, such as Activision Inc. and Electronic Arts, have also been quick to capitalize on securing licenses to movies, gambling millions of dollars on whether movie premises and characters can make top-selling games.

This year, besides Enter the Matrix, game enthusiasts can expect a slew of movie-related video games developed with the increasingly close cooperation of the moviemakers and actors.

Last year, Activision and Electronic Arts both struck gold with movie-to-game projects such as Spider-Man: The Movie and Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Both games, executives for the companies note, were created with unusually high access to the filmmakers, including having actors reprise their movie roles for the games.

At an average retail price of $50 a game, the economics of translating a blockbuster movie into a game that could sell in the millions is attractive, many gamemakers and moviemakers note.

"I think what is going on is that everyone has realized that we are going after the same target audience," said Kathy Vrabeck, an executive vice president at Activision - by which she means young men.

"I'm not surprised to see more convergence of movies and video games, bringing that experience into the interactive realm where they can continue that experience for hours and hours," she said.

Neil Young, an Electronic Arts vice president in charge of production for the company's "Lord of the Rings" game franchise, said he had video conference calls from his office in Redwood City, California, with Peter Jackson, the New Zealand-based director of the film trilogy. "It is important to keep him in the loop," Young said.

"We're trying to understand the language of the film and adopt and retain its core essence, but diverge in ways that are right for the game medium," he added.

Trying to capture box-office lightning in a game cartridge is not new. Some of the first mass-market video games to emerge in the late 1970s were inspired by "Star Wars." But video games based on popular films have often disappointed gamers. For years, they tended to be marketing afterthoughts or blatant money grabs churned out with little more imagination than it took to flood the market with movie-themed lunch boxes and T-shirts, critics note.

Only in recent years, with explosively powerful microprocessors and 3-D graphics chips, as well as the immense popularity of consoles like PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube, have game technologies matured enough to begin to approach filmlike qualities, said David Perry, president of Shiny Entertainment.

High on a California hillside in temporary quarters near Laguna Beach, Perry, 35, is overseeing Shiny Entertainment's completion of Enter the Matrix, its most ambitious project since the company was founded 10 years ago. Because of the game's crucial tie-in with the film's U.S. release in May, the game must be finished in April.

So, Perry said with cool confidence, the pressure is on him and his 70-member team to complete the game, which will be available for PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube and PC.

Characters new to "The Matrix" in its film sequels - Niobe, portrayed by Pinkett Smith, and Ghost, a weapons expert portrayed by Anthony Wong - are the figures that can be guided through the game's seven major missions, which cross several game genres, including shooting, fighting, flying and driving. The goal is to help Neo and his crew save humanity. "We're really, really focusing on letting people have fun," Perry said. "That's the most important thing." BURBANK, California As if in a shadow play of a major Hollywood premiere, photographers pressed up to a procession of film stars strolling into a theater aglow with hype and klieg lights. Keanu Reeves chatted on camera with "Access Hollywood" and MTV reporters.

Matrix sequel to woo fans

THREE years ago its impressive special effects won the film legions of fans and scored one of its Australian crew an Oscar.

On May 15, Australians will be the first in the world - due to international time differences - to see Matrix Reloaded, the second in the trilogy created by Larry and Andy Wachowski. And already the marketing of the film, which was filmed in Sydney at Fox Studios, is in full swing.

An exclusive release of a picture of Neo and Trinity (former Sydneysiders Keanu Reeves and Carrie Moss) was accompanied by producer Joel Silver doing the rounds to talk up the film.

"It's this simple. No other movie can compete with us, period," he said.

Matrix: a movie inside a game inside a movie inside

The 1999 movie hit "The Matrix," featuring the slow-motion martial arts skills of star Keanu Reeves, is a peek into a fantastical future.

But the movie sequel could usher in the real future of Hollywood entertainment.

When "The Matrix Reloaded" hits the big screen this May, producers also plan to roll out a ground-breaking video game, "Enter the Matrix." It features a plot that weaves in and out of the movie's and includes video scenes of the film's actors that were shot exclusively for the game.

For instance, star Jada Pinkett Smith learned lines for the video game as well.

Makers of "The Matrix" also are hitting the Web with a series of nine downloadable animated films - modern-day comics of sorts - based on the movies but written and produced exclusively for the Internet.

The high-tech triple assault on the senses is a harbinger of the growing convergence between film and video games.

It's also exactly what writer-directors Andy and Larry Wachowski had in mind when planning their trilogy of "Matrix" movies, said producer Joel Silver. Also due late this year is "The Matrix Revolutions."

"They really wanted to tell the story in multiple venues," Silver said. The movies, the game and the animated Internet films are linked but separate, he said.

"If the audience doesn't see (the animated films), if they don't play the video game, they're still going to love 'The Matrix,'・ Silver said.

Like their big-screen cousins, the animated films use cutting-edge computer graphics technology. At an invitation-only premiere of the first of the films and the video game at a Warner Bros. studio Tuesday night, the cartoon characters were so lifelike they could hardly be distinguished from actors in the film.

The animated shorts are free, but the game is designed to be a big profit-maker, just like the movies.

The Wachowskis supervised all the writing, and as a result are more intimately tied to the films than any previous movie-related game.

While the movie was being shot, the Wachowskis also shot video scenes produced exclusively for the game - a full hour's worth. The footage and the plot of the game are intended to pick up where scenes in the movie left off, and vice versa.

Last, the actors from the movie also star in the game, both as animations and in film.

Actor Anthony Wong described the 15-month production of "The Matrix Reloaded" as a mixture of filming for the big screen and for the computer screen.

"We had to do a lot of acting in these special motion-capture suits," Wong said. "It was kind of bizarre, because they sort of look like clown suits."

The elaborate coordination soon could be commonplace.

Video game sales are surging. Spurred by the success of such consoles as Nintendo's GameCube, Sony's PlayStation 2 and Microsoft's Xbox, the gaming industry's growth last year is estimated at 7 percent and 14 percent, according to game research company DFC Intelligence.

Especially with techno-thrillers such as "The Matrix" that appeal to the core under-30 gaming crowd, ties between games and movies probably will only grow stronger as game makers continue looking for new titles.

"The lines between Hollywood films and video games are really blurring," actor Wong said.

Ironically, the makers of "The Matrix" films turned to an icon of video gaming's past for their future-minded venture.

Atari, which brought the world "Pong," produced "Enter the Matrix," which will be available for most breeds of consoles and for the PC.

"This is a new revolution in interactive entertainment," said Bruno Bonnell, chairman of Infogrames Inc., which now owns the Atari brand. "Not only can you watch 'The Matrix,' you can live it, breathe it and actually be one of the characters in it."

For both the movie producers and Infogrames, the venture is a big bet.

Paying computer geeks to create games and animated films in a warehouse is one thing; paying big-name actors to star in them and movie directors and producers to back them is another.

Bonnell declined to say how much it cost to make "Enter the Matrix" but admitted it was substantial.

"It's definitely one of the highest production costs in the industry," he said.

The pricey project comes at a time when many investors are starting to wonder whether, despite their strong sales, game companies are overhyped and overpriced.

Game makers have seen their market value decline 35 percent during the past year, according to DFC Intelligence. Infogrames has been among the hardest hit, with its stock dropping more than 70 percent in the past year.

Whether the new form of Hollywood convergence between games and movies will pay off won't be known for months. Game sales could soar if the next "Matrix" movie is a hit, but they also could languish if the flick is a flop.

What will happen to the game if the movie doesn't do well? Bonnell answered with pure Hollywood optimism.

"It won't," he said. "That just wont happen."

Wait is over for Matrix

19feb03

IT'S Star Wars for grown ups - a futuristic trilogy so complex many diehard fans can't understand it.

But that doesn't stop the next Matrix episode being one of the most anticipated films of the year. The Matrix Reloaded, which opens on May 15, and the third episode, The Matrix Revolutions, opening November 7, were shot back-to-back over 200 days in Sydney, the longest shoot in Australian film history.

Producer Joel Silver claims: "When I say no one out there can compete with us, I mean it. We're going to change the world with these sequels."

Silver also paid tribute to the Australian crew who helped make The Matrix such a hit.

"The financial side is a significant factor, but the crews and the art departments in Australia are geniuses," he said.

The Herald Sun's Hit entertainment magazine available at newsagents on Thursday has an exclusive page of pictures from the forthcoming Matrix sequels, plus an interview with Silver.

FISHBURNE GOES “MATRIX” AND BEYOND: Laurence signs up for “The Alchemist.”

*Laurence Fishburne isn’t caught up in the “Matrix.” The critically acclaimed actor is working on other hot projects besides the two sequels of the popular sci-fi flick. Fishburne will direct and star in the movie “The Alchemist,” which is based on the Paulo Coehlo best-selling novel of the same name.

“The Alchemist” is set during the Spanish Inquisition and is about a traveler’s journey of self-discovery and the search for man’s purpose. Fishburne is currently starring in the motorcycle action flick “Biker Boyz.”

The “Matrix” sequels, “Matrix Reloaded” and “Matrix Revolution,” are both complete and coming up later this year.

Fishburne will also be starring with Sean Penn and Tim Robbins in Clint Eastwood’s “Mystic River,” reports People.

P.O.D. For Matrix Reloaded

P.O.D. have recorded the lead off single for The Matrix Reloaded, the sequel to the hit Keanu Reeves movie.

The soundtrack album is due May, around the same time as the movie hits screens around the world.

In The Matrix Reloaded Keanu Reeves returns as neo, Laurence Fishburne is once again Morpheus, Hugo Weavings plays Agent Smith and Christine Anu gets a starring role playing Lazarus.

For P.O.D., this will also be their first new music since the release of their platinum selling Satellite album.

The band were in Germany last weekend where they picked up their first major music award, "2003 International Group of the Year."

Next week they are up for two Grammy's.

By Paul Cashmere

'Matrix' games go to next level

By Bob Keefe, Palm Beach Post-Cox News Service
Monday, February 17, 2003

HOLLYWOOD, Calif. -- The 1999 movie hit The Matrix, featuring the slow-motion martial arts skills of star Keanu Reeves, is a peek into a fantastical future.

But the movie's sequel could usher in the real future of Hollywood entertainment.

When The Matrix Reloaded hits the big screen this May, producers plan to simultaneously roll out a ground-breaking video game, Enter the Matrix. It features a plot that weaves in and out of the movie's, and includes video scenes starring the film's actors that were shot exclusively for the game.

The Matrix's makers also are hitting the Web with a series of nine downloadable animated films -- modern-day comics of sorts -- based on the movies but written and produced exclusively for the Internet.

The high-tech triple assault on the senses is a harbinger of the growing convergence between film and video games.

It is also exactly what writer-directors Andy and Larry Wachowski had in mind when planning their trilogy of Matrix movies, explained producer Joel Silver. Also due late this year is The Matrix Revolutions.

"They really wanted to tell the story in multiple venues," Silver said. The movies, the game and the animated Internet films are linked, but also separate, he said.

If those in the audience don't see the animated films, "if they don't play the video game, they're still going to love The Matrix," Silver said.

Like their big-screen cousins, the animated films use cutting-edge computer graphics technology. At an invitation-only premiere of the first of the films and the video game at a Warner Brothers studio Tuesday night, the cartoon characters were so lifelike they could hardly be distinguished from real-life actors in the film.

The animated shorts are free, but the game is designed to be big a profit-maker, just like the movies.

The plot was written under the supervision of the Wachowskis, and as a result is more intimately tied to the films than any previous movie-related game.

Also, video scenes produced exclusively for the game -- a full hour's worth -- were shot by the Wachowskis while making the movie. The footage and the plot of the game are intended to pick where scenes in the movie left off, and vice versa.

Lastly, the actors from the movie also star in the game, both as real and animated characters.

Actor Anthony Wong described the 15-month production of The Matrix Reloaded as a mixture of filming for the big screen and for the computer screen.

"We had to do a lot of acting in these special motion-capture suits," Wong said. "It was kind of bizarre, because they sort of look like clown suits."

The elaborate coordination soon could be commonplace.

Video game sales are surging. Spurred by the success of consoles such as Nintendo's GameCube, Sony's PlayStation 2 and Microsoft's Xbox, the video-game industry's growth last year is estimated at between 7 percent and 14 percent, according to game research company DFC Intelligence.

Especially with techno-thrillers such as The Matrix that appeal to the core under-30 video-game crowd, ties between games and movies are likely to grow stronger as game makers continue looking for new titles.

"The lines between Hollywood films and video games are really blurring," actor Wong said.

Ironically, the makers of The Matrix films turned to an icon of video gaming's past for their future-minded venture.

Atari, which brought the world Pong, produced Enter the Matrix, which will be available for most makes of consoles and for the PC.

"This is a new revolution in interactive entertainment," said Bruno Bonnell, chairman of Infogrames Inc., which now owns the Atari brand. "Not only can you watch The Matrix, you can live it, breathe it and actually be one of the characters in it."

The venture is a big bet for both the movie producers and Infogrames.

Paying computer geeks to create games and animated films in a warehouse is one thing; paying big-name actors to star in them and movie directors and producers to back them is another.

In an interview, Bonnell declined to say how much it cost to make Enter the Matrix, but conceded it was substantial.

"It's definitely one of the highest production costs in the industry," he said.

The pricey project comes at a time when many investors are starting to wonder whether game companies are over-hyped and over-priced, despite their strong sales.

Game makers have seen their market value decline by 35 percent during the past year, according to DFC Intelligence. Infogrames has been among the hardest hit, with its stock dropping by more than 70 percent.

Whether the new form of Hollywood convergence between games and movies will pay off, of course, won't be known for months. While game sales could soar if the next Matrix movie is a hit, they also could languish if the flick is a flop.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/02/17/1045330534716.html

February 18 2003

Laurence Fishburne, top, as Morpheus and Carrie-Anne Moss, above, as Trinity in The Matrix Reloaded.

Garry Maddox dodges the hype for a sneak peek at the eagerly awaited Matrix sequels.

The actors file into a small building at Sydney's Fox Studios. There is Keanu Reeves, who plays computer hacker turned saviour of humanity Neo; Carrie-Anne Moss, better known as the black leather-clad Trinity; Laurence Fishburne, the Zen-like rebel leader Morpheus; and Hugo Weaving, who plays the relentless Agent Smith.

For close on 200 days they have been filming the two sequels to sci-fi blockbuster The Matrix in the giant soundstages across the road. Now it is time to talk, but it is bear-like Hollywood producer Joel Silver who provides the colour.

Never one for understatement, Silver declares that the visual effects in The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions were so time-consuming and expensive that they will never be repeated. "I really think that the bar has been raised so high that there is no more bar," he says.

The two films will have cost more than $US300 million ($508 million) to make, initially with a shoot on a specially constructed three-kilometre freeway in California, before shifting continents to Sydney, then back to California for another miniatures shoot.

So, the hype has begun. And it will be going full-blast by the time Reloaded reaches screens in May, followed by Revolutions in November.

The success of the original Matrix in 1999 makes selling the sequels relatively easy. The first teaser trailer, which appeared last year, was downloaded from the net more than two million times within 72 hours. The promotional campaign took a giant Neo-style leap forward recently when Newsweek declared "The Year of The Matrix" on its cover.

There was another mighty step when a high-energy commercial aired during the top-rating Superbowl telecast in the US. It showed Reeves fighting a small army of replica Agent Smiths, more of the gravity-defying fight scenes that were a trademark of the original, a furious motorcycle chase along a freeway, an agent crushing a car and Neo soaring over a city. In a hauntingly topical statement, a sombre Morpheus declared: "This is a war and we are soldiers."

Just released on the net is the first of nine animated shorts devised by The Matrix writers Andy and Larry Wachowski, called The Animatrix. The rest are due for release either online or on DVD by mid-year. Together, they sketch a Matrix back story, including the machines' rise to power and the enslavement of the human race.

One of these films, the nine-minute The Final Flight of the Osiris, will screen with the worldwide release in March of director Lawrence Kasdan's supernatural thriller Dreamcatcher. So, as well as revolutionising visual effects and redefining the action film, the Wachowskis are pioneering the return of the short before the main feature in cinemas.

Inevitably, there is also a video game, Enter the Matrix, due at the same time as the first sequel. And a tricked-out Samsung mobile phone, just like the one Neo and his cohorts will use, is heading to stores.

To appreciate why the hype is building, you have to go back to where it began. Shot in Sydney by the Wachowskis, who had previously only made the thriller Bound, The Matrix became an unexpected international blockbuster. It was set in a dark, atmospheric future run by machines that enslave humans to extract the energy produced by their bodies. After meeting an all-knowing oracle, Neo becomes The One who can save humanity.

It quickly became a classic sci-fi film, up there with 2001: A Space Odyssey, Bladerunner, Alien and Star Wars.

Costing about $US65 million to produce, the film took $US458 million in cinemas around the world. It won four Academy Awards: for editing, sound-effects editing, visual effects and sound, which brought golden statuettes for Australians Steve Courtley and David Lee.

Even non-science fiction fans appreciated the engaging story, philosophical reflections, action-film pace, cool style and groundbreaking special effects that included 360-degree multi-camera action shots. Imitations of Reeves dodging slow-moving bullets quickly became a staple of commercials and Hollywood comedies, including Shrek and Charlie's Angels.

Although some critics faulted its plot and structure, The Matrix was a successful Hollywood stew that drew on Eastern philosophy, kung fu films, the Bible, comic books, Alice in Wonderland and Japanese animation. The film had another hugely successful life on DVD, where its layers and visual effects could be appreciated. It is said to have sold 25 million videos and DVDs.

Even its biggest fans might not have seen the 1995 Japanese animated film Ghost in the Shell, which features a cyborg with a jack in the back of its head, streaming code, bodies transferring down telephone lines, virtual memories and experiences, kung fu fights and black helicopters hovering in a futuristic urban landscape.

However much they drew on this film, the two little-known brothers from Chicago created a cinematic universe with its own integrity in The Matrix. In the second and third instalments, they are expected to take us into Zion - the last remaining haven for humans - then to a showdown between Neo and the forces of evil.

After endless speculation and fake scripts written by fans on the net, Reeves at the Sydney press conference gave one of the first glimpses of what happens to his character.

As fans of the Star Wars series can attest, the challenge is maintaining the storytelling without being dazzled by the technological possibilities for new visual effects.

Reloaded reputedly begins with the machines having learned the location of Zion near the Earth's core. They plan to tunnel down and use thousands of sentinels (kamikaze squid-like creatures) to obliterate the city. Revealing more of the plot than some cinemagoers will want, Newsweek said the humans' only hope is to track down a tiny character called The Keymaker, who has access to all the doors into the machine world. He is being guarded by The Twins, albinos with dreadlocks who can vanish and reappear like ghosts.

In the absence of comment from the Wachowskis - they apparently have a contract that excuses them from doing any publicity for their films - Silver insists the sequels will be more than just escapist action.

"It's so weird to say this, but it's a treatise on our times and where we're going and how to not go there. It's about global warming and the Catholic Church. It's about all that stuff that's going on in our lives that we can't really grab on to."

Maybe so, but the build-up is, at least, now tangible.

The Matrix Reloaded opens on May 15. The Matrix Revolutions opens on November 7.

'Matrix' hype floods Internet

By Mike Snider / USA TODAY

Get ready to re-enter "The Matrix."

A massive multimedia campaign is now under way on the Net with the release of a new animated short film set in "The Matrix" universe. Three additional shorts will be posted free on the Web during the next three months at www.thematrix.com.

With a pair of "Matrix" sequels headed to theaters this year, the movie's makers will maximize their marketing opportunities with two "Matrix" DVDs -- a compilation of nine animated shorts (including the four on the Net) called "The Animatrix" and a revamped version of the original hit film -- plus a highly anticipated video game tied closely to the movies. All are due by summer.

The game stars "The Matrix's" new cast member, Jada Pinkett-Smith, and it incorporates film footage shot especially for it.

The multimedia bonuses fit into the larger "Matrix" concept devised by writer-directors Andy and Larry Wachowski. The animations provide the back story that "really bridges" the films, said Paul Hemstreet of Warner Home Video. Such complex story development and promotion across various media is "something that really hasn't been done before," he said.

Your first chance to jack into "The Matrix" world arrives with the free download of "The Second Renaissance: Part One," a nine-minute wide-screen short. The segment is directed by Mahiro Maeda, who directed the Japanese animated series "Blue Submarine No. 6." Among other noted anim・filmmakers involved are Koji Morimoto ("Akira") and Peter Chung (creator of "Aeon Flux").

The shorts, developed at studios in Japan, South Korea and the United States over three years, are close to the Wachowskis' hearts, because anim・inspired "The Matrix's" style and look. "This is a chance to really go wide in introducing anim・to the American audience," Hemstreet said. Bonus timetable

1. March 21. Another "Animatrix" episode, "The Final Flight of the Osiris," a nine-minute film written by the Wachowski brothers and animated by Andy Jones ("Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within"), appears in theaters with the Warner film "Dreamcatcher."
   
   
2. April 29. "The Matrix Special Edition" two-disc, $28 DVD arrives, including all of the original extras from previous "Matrix" and "Matrix Revisited" DVDs, plus "Preloaded," a new behind-the-scenes preview of "The Matrix Reloaded."
   
   
3. May 15. "The Matrix Reloaded," which reunites Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Laurence Fishburne and Hugo Weaving, arrives in theaters. "Enter the Matrix," the video game, hits stores.
   
   
4. June 3. "The Animatrix" DVD is released. Reeves and Moss provide voices for two shorts. Among the bonus features is a history of anime.
   
   
5. Nov. 7. "The Matrix Revolutions" arrives in theaters.
   
   

ENTERTAINMENT; Video-game spinoffs common for action films

[Snipped for "Enter the Matrix"]

When Perry started work on "Enter the Matrix," a game version of the upcoming sequel "The Matrix Reloaded," the film's writer-directors, Andy and Larry Wachowski, promised unprecedented cooperation.

They created a new story that wove in and out of the movie plot and shot an hour of footage exclusively for the game using the same cast, crew and sets as the film.

"This is where the page turns and the new chapter begins," Perry said. The game is set for release on all game consoles May 15 - the same day the movie opens.

Jada Pinkett Smith, who co-stars as Niobe in the film, is the game's main character, while stars Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne and Carrie-Anne Moss take on supporting roles.

"There are scenes that start in the video game that will complete in the movie, and there are scenes that will start in the movie and happen at the same time in the game," said "The Matrix" film producer Joel Silver.

In addition to the game's added movie footage, Pinkett Smith spent months using motion-capture technology to help create her digital doppelganger's jumps, kicks, punches and facial expressions.

"I just thought it would be cool to see myself as a video game character," she said. "I was surprised to know how extensive it was going to be. ... This was much more difficult (than film)."

It is newcomers and supporting players such as Pinkett Smith who will show A-list actors how to reach new fans through game acting, predicted LucasArts designer Jon Knoles.

For instance, his recent game "Star Wars: Bounty Hunter," about the masked mercenary Jango Fett from "Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones," was a chance for actor Temuera Morrison to expand on his character, a favorite among "Star Wars" fans.

INTERVIEW-Infogrames moves to tackle debt

By Dominique Vidalon

PARIS, Feb 13 (Reuters) - Europe's biggest video games maker Infogrames said on Thursday that buying back some of its 2005 convertible bonds was a step towards tackling its debt but that it continued to explore other financial solutions.

"This seemed like a good opportunity but debt is a complex issue and other (financing) solutions still remain valid," Chief Executive Officer Bruno Bonnell told Reuters.

The company, whose brands include "Civilization", Driver" and games based on major league baseball and Warner Bros' "Looney Tunes", earlier reported a decline in first-half core profit.

Infogrames said on its Web site operating profit after royalty write-offs for the six months ended December 31 dropped to 14.1 million euros from 16.1 million euros a year earlier.

It posted a first-half net loss of 37.4 million euros, swinging from a net profit of more than 15 million euros a year earlier.

However, it confirmed guidance for full-year 2002/2003 sales growth of 20 percent.

Infogrames has said previously options to cut group debt ranged from refinancing and finding new strategic investors to renegotiating terms with convertible bond holders.

It said earlier that it had slashed outstanding debt by more than 100 million euros, or roughly 20 percent, in January.

The reduction consisted of lowering its convertible debt by 87 million euros to 347 million by buying back 1.9 million bonds expiring in 2005 and by reducing net banking debt by 14 million euros from end-June 2002 levels.

The bonds buy-back was financed for 8.3 million euros through the swap of Infogrames treasury shares and for 16.7 million euros through the activation of hedging tools on bonds redemption premiums.

The programme was no drain on group operating cash flow and was not detrimental to shareholders, Bonnell said.

"We used the treasury shares and the hedging tools as a currency of exchange to buy back the debt on the market," Bonnell said.

As of January 31, 2003, Infogrames convertible debt consisted of 125 million euros in bonds expiring in 2004 and of 222 million in bonds expiring in 2005.

Investor concerns over how Infogrames would repay debt without resorting to financing solutions that could hurt shareholders depressed the share price 78 percent last year.

But the shares have partly rebounded. They closed 1.10 percent higher at 3.68 euros on Wednesday, up 34 percent so far in 2003.

Bonnell repeated Infogrames was focusing on generating cash flow through cost reductions and sales growth of 20 percent.

"Our priority for the year is cash flow generation. The company will strive to both generate cash flow and improve profitability, but cash flow generation is the priority,"

Infogrames, which aims to be cash-flow positive this year managed an operating cash flow of 48 million in the first-half.

The company also plans to launch its "Enter the Matrix" game, seen as crucial for sales and cash flow, on May 15. The game is based on a sequel to the hit action film "The Matrix".

"Matrix should account for 15 percent of full year 2002/03 sales," Bonnell said.

Infogrames has budgeted to sell 2.5 million copies of Matrix, but Bonnell said he hoped commercial sales would top that target.

He said he was "not surprised" by recent talk Matrix had the potential to sell three million copies.

Copyright 2003, Reuters News Service