Hasta La Gadget!

Writing a decent story is hard enough, but taking that story and turning it into a watchable film is even more complicated. But new software called Plotagon aims to turn anyone into a one-man movie-making machine. It uses a simple menu-based interface that helps you build a script, which turns into a computer-animated video as you’re writing it. Is it perfect? Nope. Far from it. It looks really fun though.

As you can see in the image above, Plotagon is divided into two parts: on the left is where you’ll write your manuscript, and on the right is a video player that shows you what your movie looks like. You don’t need to know the proper format for a manuscript or even have a deep vocabulary, because Plotagon cheats.

Since it would take an insanely complex program to read your mind or even parse your paragraph and figure out what you’re describing, Plotagon instead has a bank of scenes, characters, actions and more. As you pick out each element, it appears on your manuscript and is visualized in the video player almost instantaneously. It’s a bit like playing The Sims.

The only thing you can’t pick from Plotagon’s stock is the dialogue, which your digital actors will speak in silly synthesized voices. I don’t know if it supports other languages besides English though.

Plotagon is currently in beta, and is available for both Windows and OS X. You can download a free trial version on its official website, where you can also see a few short films made with the program. Plotagon will make money from its store, which will sell more characters, settings, etc. Imagine a Marvel character pack or a Star Wars location bundle. In fact, Stan Lee is going to make four new superheroes just for Plotagon. Imagine sharing co-creating duties with Stan the Man himself!

[via Mashable]

If you’re a fan of the MMO video game series World of Warcraft, you may have been interested a few weeks back when I mentioned that actor Colin Farrell had been tipped to play the lead in the film. One thing that we didn’t know when those other rumors about the movie surfaced was when it might hit theaters. The official release date for the movie was recently announced via the World of Warcraft Twitter page.

According to the tweet, the movie will be released by Universal Pictures on December 18, 2015. The movie is being produced by Legendary Pictures and directed by Duncan Jones (Moon, Source Code). The real question here is will this movie suck horribly? At least they’ve got a good director attached.

World of Warcraft certainly has enough fans and enough cinematic elements in the game to get a lot of people interested. Colin Farrell isn’t exactly the biggest name out there, but he is a big name to be attached to a video game movie. I’m cautiously optimistic that the Warcraft flick won’t end up another failed video game movie like Doom or Super Mario Bros.

[via Kotaku via Nerd Approved]

Colin Farrell has been in a number of movies, one of the most recent being the Total Recall remake that didn’t totally suck. Farrell is reportedly up for the lead role in a movie based on a video game, and an incredibly popular video game at that. Word is that Farrell could play one of the lead roles in the upcoming video game movie based on World of Warcraft.

The actress tipped to be in contention for the female lead in the film is Paula Patton. Patton was in this summer’s 2 Guns and was in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol as well. Production for the film is tipped to begin in January of 2014. The film is slated to be directed by Duncan Jones, who created Moon and Source Code (and also happens to be David Bowie’s son.)

Producers attached to the film for Legendary include Thomas Tull and Jon Jashni. Charles Roman and Alex Gartner are also tipped to be producing for Blizzard and Atlas Entertainment respectively. It’s hard to pull off a decent video game movie, so here’s hoping this one does the popular video game justice.

[via Comingsoon.net

As I said before, I’m a big fan of Star Wars – particularly the original three films. I’ve seen the prequels several times too, but they’re not nearly as good as the originals in my opinion. Still, I’m rather excited and anxious at the same time that Disney purchased the Star Wars franchise and will be producing new movies.

I’m excited because I can’t wait to see the new films but I’m also anxious that Disney could really screw them up. The good news is that the first new film will hit theaters in 2015. The company also promises a new movie set in the Star Wars universe each year from 2015 on.

Disney plans to release a new film trilogy as a follow-up to the original trilogy picking up after the events of Return of the Jedi, with the first film to be directed by J.J. Abrams. There are also plans for a string of original films looking at some of the major characters’ back stories. I’m really looking forward to these – I sure hope the movies turn out good. Though nothing could possibly be as bad as Midichlorians and Jar-Jar Binks.

[via ContactMusic]

I’ll admit I’ve been out of the loop when it comes to the new Robocop movie the last several months. Last time I mentioned it here, Hugh Laurie, the guy that played House, was set play the CEO of OmniCorp. It looks like while I wasn’t paying attention they made a few changes.

Nowhere in the trailer do we see Hugh Laurie, but you do see that bad motherfu**** himself Samuel L Jackson. It’s hard to tell from the trailer, but it appears that Jackson is playing the Chief Executive A-Hole of OmniCorp. The trailer also shows a Robocop who is more human than he was in the old-school 80s flick.

Notably, Robocop isn’t doing the robot at each turn. He appears to be quite fluid and has an auto-retracting face shield. The trailer also shows that while Robocop thinks he’s in control, he actually doesn’t have as much free will as he believes. I’m particularly glad to see not a single Ford Taurus in any of the scenes.