Club Jade

New Dune adaption dead. The latest attempt to film Frank Herbert’s Dune has officially thrown in the towel as Paramount’s rights lapsed. The novel has been filmed twice before – By David Lynch in 1984 and the Sci-Fi Channel in 2000. Neither version could quite capture the classic sci-fi novel… Is it simply not a book that translates well to screen, or has the right team just not attempted it yet? I’m sure we’ll see it adapted again either way.

That said, I must admit I am quite fond of Sci-Fi’s 2003 attempt at the second and third books in the series, Children of Dune. And it only has a little to do with James McAvoy spending half the thing running around with no shirt on.

The Hunger Games. They have their Katniss, but what about the rest of the cast? Television Without Pity, of all places, has a nice set of suggestions for casting everyone else. With the exception of Christopher Lee (he’s played that role a million times over) I wholeheartedly applaud their selections. Major props for a non-sexy Haymitch!

Chronicles of Narnia. Walden is skipping right over The Silver Chair to make prequel The Magician’s Nephew the next film in the series. Yay for having an actual reason to bring back their best character Tilda Swinton this time.

Inheritance Cycle. Knopf has released the cover for the final book in Christopher Paolini’s Star Wars meets Pern in Middle-earth series. It’s always nice to see John Jude Palencar getting work, I guess.

Lists. Topless Robot’s has 14 great but lesser-known sci-fi novels for lil’ nerds. I find it quite distressing that Paula Danzinger’s This Place Has No Atmosphere is considered a lesser known sci-fi novel. Danzinger is a YA goddess, people. RESPECT.

So last time, the traffic killed his server, but now he’s back with the third and final installment… Plus Zahn.

I saw Eragon yesterday. Owwie. Short review, not all that spoilery (IMO) under the cut.

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So Eragon is a lot like Star Wars, huh? I’m shocked.

Will Eragon be the next Lord of the Rings? Look, I’m just laying my bet now: no. Although comparing Eragon’s number of friends on MySpace to how many hits the Saw III website has is just silly.

Speaking of adaptions of beloved fantasy classics (in the vein of LOTR, not Johnny-come-lately Eragon) Walden Media’s adaption of The Dark is Rising now has a director: David Cunningham of The Path to 9/11 and (More hopefully? Maybe?) 2005′s Little House on the Prairie miniseries.

Tom Cruise wants a cameo the next Trek film. Pretty likely, given the (current) director is his buddy J.J. Abrams.

More Detris

• Shrek the Third Princesses

• Rachel McAdams to play the Time Traveler’s Wife.
• Naming sequels is better than just tacking a 2 on the title.

If Star Wars and [insert generic fantasy epic here] had a baby, it would probably look a hell of a lot like this. I’ve heard the plots are similar, but in the trailer alone we get a sunset gazing scene and familiar dialogue about the Force dragons.

Star Wars may be over, but ILM certainly isn’t slowing down – they have a staggering amount of work on their plate, including The Spiderwick Chronicles, Eragon, Transformers and the next Harry Potter film.

For folks wondering about some of the technical aspects involved, eWeek talks to ILM, among others, about digital storage.