The new movie still lacks an official title. But it's a reworking of a spec script called Mysterious Travels that suggests that Treasure Island, Gulliver's Travels and Jules Verne's Mysterious Island all took place on the same island. It'll be funded entirely by New Line, although Walden Media (which co-financed Journey) will remain as co-producers. Also returning is director Eric Brevig; the involvement of Fraser and other actors from the original has not been confirmed as yet.

Another 3-D 'Journey' for New Line [Hollywood Reporter]

So what happened — why didn't the Mummy star get the role? Well the whole movie simply imploded around itself. It got as far as Fraser doing some test footage as Superman, which is still out there somewhere. Fraser was so excited, his teeth were sweating, but he still had to think about taking on such an iconic role. He was mulling it over for all of 28 minutes, but then it fell through, he explains to the Voices From Krypton:

It seems as if then the big monster studio machine and all the machinations behind it, all the cogs and wheels rolling, suddenly it went from an 'offer' to 'subject to a screen test' blah, blah, blah, 'subject to approval'...

Unless Abrams was looking to do a giant parody of Supes, I really can't even comprehend why he would want Fraser to star in this role. Fraser is at his best when he's playing a comedy role — you know, the wacky, zany hero that turns on the sexy charm to kill some mummies. He has entirely too much personality to play Superman.

Even when he's "you-killed-my-wife" angry, you can see a glimmer of a smirk in his big doe-eyes. Sorry, Fraser would have been to Superman what George Clooney was to Batman.

Fraser did, however, get a chance to see the Abrams' Superman script which he called deemed far superior to the Superman movie that actually got made:

"In my view, and I say this with respect, it's far superior than Bryan Singer's [Superman Returns film]. J.J. had a vision that was larger. It spanned galaxies. It was Lord of the Rings. I mean, it was that huge. It was like a Third World War on Earth involving different planets and universes, and brotherhoods - sibling rivalry and the collision of enormous powers. I mean, come on, it wasn't smacking you over the head with a symbolic hammer till you weren't paying attention. That's how good J.J. is."

Abrams' Superman: Flyby was another look at the Supes origin story which took place on the home planet of Kyrpton. Strangely enough in some of Abrams' drafts, Krypton was heavy with vegetation, quite different from the crystal palace look from comics and previous movies. Krypton was in a civil war and Supes' daddy (Jor-El) was leading one side against his evil bro Kata-Zor. Of course, Supes is sent to Earth for protection, but in Abrams' script it's from the war not from the impending planetary doom. In the end Kata-Zor tracks down Superman, who was raised by the Earthly Kents, for revenge.

On Earth, Lex Luthor is a CIA Agent who specializes in X-Files-type cases, Clark meets Lois Lane before she's a reporter, and the super suit is actually a living liquid contraption that sucks Clark Kent into it. Of course Kata-Zor finds Clark and sends his own son Ty-Zor to Earth to murder the son of his brother. In a surprising twist, Supes dies but his father (also dead) brings him back to life to defeat his cousin and his gang of Kryptonians. But wait, that's not it — it turns out Lex Luthor is also a Kryptonian and now they have to fight, ending in a massive cliff hanger.

Sounds crazy, no? It also sounds very different than the script version that Latino Review got hold of at the time. This movie went through so many generations it's hard to say where it all ended.

So what happened? After a battle over casting, the original director, Brett Ratner, left. Stepping up to fill his place was T4 director McG. At one point, Anthony Hopkins and Johnny Deep were being tossed around as Lex Luthor. After Fraser was in the running for Superman, other possiblities were Josh Hartnett, Jude Law (seriously?), Ashton Kutcher, Matthew Bomer and Paul Walker. (No wonder they had trouble, what a terrible round up.) As for the role of Lois Lane, there were mutterings of Scarlett Johansson and Selma Blair. But apparently, no one no one could come to terms with any of these ideas or budget concerns, because eventually McG walked.

Still what amazes me the most is that somewhere out there in Hollywood is a tape where Fraser is Superman, this I need to see. Again I applaud his humor: Tarzan, yes. Superman, no. Fraser, go make another Bedazzled, now that was some of your better parodying.

[Voices From Krypton via Coventry Telegraph]

The Montreal Gazette reports that around 130 special effects artists who worked on the movie have been owed payment since November of last year, when Meteor Studios - the producers of the film, who have since filed for bankruptcy - closed their effects studio upon completion of their work. After months of unsuccessfully trying to get paid by Meteor's parent companies, Evergreen Digital LLC and Discovery Trademark Holding Co., the artists have resorted to the lawsuit and even more desperate measures:

Brendan Fraser, star of the 3D action film that has grossed more than $102 million U.S. worldwide to date, has even gone to bat for the former Meteor Studios Inc. workers by making personal calls to the shareholders of the local company, which filed for bankruptcy in March.

Meteor's bankruptcy papers blamed the WGA strike as the main source of financial losses. Both parent companies aren't commenting on the case:

"Discovery Communications held a passive non-controlling shareholder interest in Meteor Studios, an independent company incorporated under the Quebec Companies Act," Katie Wolfgang, vice-president of international communications at Discovery, said in an email from her Maryland office yesterday.
"All matters related to the management of Meteor Studios, its employees and operations have been handled directly by Meteor Studios principals since the inception of the company."

Evergreen spokesman John Hernandez wasn't available for comment at the company's Denver headquarters.

Centre of the Earth effects artists file suit to recover their lost wages [Canada.com]

For a remake of a 49-year-old movie based upon a 144-year-old book, the movie industry is looking at upcoming Brendan Fraser flick Journey To The Center Of The Earth as a sign of things to come. Why, you may wonder? Well, it's got something to do with another retro technology as well as Disney's tween popstar Hannah Montana.

The movie, released on July 11th, is being seen by many as a test for just how well live-action 3-D movies will do with the summer blockbuster audience:

Live-action 3-D pics are considered risky to start with, and producing them carries extra cost. Although they can still be unspooled on 2D screens, 3-D is more problematic for [DVD and video]... "It's sort of a tricky proposition right now to make live action 3-D movies because you have to make sure it works on both formats," acknowledges New Line topper Toby Emmerich. "We think it does."

The movie will play on 800 3-D screens nationally (many of them owned by co-producer Walden Media's boss, Philip Anschutz), and the people behind the movie are hopeful that it can at least equal the record of the last major 3-D live action success: Disney's Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert (You may mock, but it made $65.3 million in limited release last year in the US alone. That's about $20 million more than Speed Racer). If it fails at the box office, expect minor panic from all of the other 3-D movies currently in production (including James Cameron's Avatar, Tim Burton's live-action remake of Alice In Wonderland and the fourth installment of the Final Destination franchise).

Will viewers make 'Journey' in 3-D?" [Variety]

Warner Bros. has released a new synopsis of Journey:

During a scientific expedition in Iceland, visionary scientist Trevor Anderson (Brendan Fraser), his nephew Sean (Josh Hutcherson) and their beautiful local guide, Hannah (Anita Briem), are unexpectedly trapped in a cave from which their only escape is to go deeper and deeper into the depths of the Earth. Traveling through never-before-seen worlds, the trio comes face-to-face with surreal and unimaginable creatures—including man-eating plants, giant flying piranha, glow birds and terrifying dinosaurs from days past. The explorers soon realize that as volcanic activity increases around them, they must find a way back to the earth's surface before it is too late.

With spectacular photo-real environments and revolutionary new filmmaking techniques, "Journey to the Center of the Earth" is an epic adventure that takes audiences directly into the heart of our heroes' voyage, bringing them along for a wild, visceral ride

• Brendan hadn't read the original Journey book and went out to find a copy at his local Borders. He found the last copy in a Jules Verne anthology.
• He found out that during World War I, soldiers on all sides of the conflict it was being read by soldiers in the trenches in multiple translations.
• He compared the first version of the script he saw to a three-day old smorgasborg, "It would give you indigestion because so many people had already been going through it." So he pitched a new version to director Eric Brevig, and they made extensive changes to the script, returning it closer to Verne's original version.
• Fraser remembered being wowed by the computer-generated knight coming out of the stained glass window in Young Sherlock Holmes, and we now take amazing effects for granted.
• They were able to view "morninglies" and "nightlies" since they were shooting with digital cameras, instead of viewing them once at the end of the day, or the next day, which is traditionally how it happens.
• 60% of the film has digital enhancements and CGI elements of some kind.
• Brendan's favorite films from his own career are: Gods and Monsters, The Quiet American, The Mummy, and George of the Jungle.
• He went on to say "I'd like to take this opportunity to publicly apologize for Monkeybone," and he called it an "$80 million dollar arthouse film."
• When a fan asked Brendan what advice he'd give to an up and coming actress, he said "I'll give you the same three words I was given when I was in training in Seattle, 'Have courage.'" When asked what the third word was, he said "I'm not very good at math."
• Brendan wants all of us to "take a leap of faith" with this "beta" version of where we're heading with 3D filmmaking, and he says the movie is as important as when sound first came to the movies in The Jazz Singer. Based on the trailer we've seen, we're not sure if we'll be leaping into that hole. However, the 3D footage they showed late sure looked tactile and tasy.

Journey sucks you deep into its zooming roller-coaster sequences (3D allows depth as well as making things stick out at you), throws glowing birds out into the theater to float around your head, and in one memorable moment snaps your face off with a toothy fish that jumps right off screen and into the audience. After about a minute of adjustment, it's easy to forget you've got those dorky-cool 3D glasses on your face (thankfully they fit easily over real glasses) and just get into the film.

You don't get that grody stomach-clenching feeling of old-school 3D like It Came From Outer Space because this stuff is all shot on digital. In past 3D flicks, people reported getting nauseated because their perspective changed so dramatically from shot to shot. But Cameron's digital 3D system lets editors can manipulate the film directly and change the vertical or horizontal slightly to make it easier for your eyes to adjust from shot to shot. So when we went from looking deep into a cave, to having stuff jump out at us, it just felt like looking at the real world, where sometimes things are far away and sometimes things run at you quickly.

But back to the crucial point: This movie is not only fun to look at, but it does not scrimp on the monsters. You've got human-eating 3D venus fly traps the size of your torso, full of scary throbbing vadge stuff, zooming at your head. You've got a HUGE albino dinosaur (duh, center of the Earth, no sun) drooling into your face (this is an effect borrowed from Beowulf, which certainly did not scrimp on the 3D drool). In my favorite scene there were SEA MONSTERS. Yes, an entire stormy sea full of flying, fanged fish being eaten by really, really big sea monsters with long necks, toothy mouths (coming out into the theater), and full chomping action.

I can't tell you how great it was to see a movie whose creators and fans had no illusions about what it was: a super fun eyeful of spectacle. Nobody pretended Journey was great art, or even brilliantly-plotted. As star Brendan Fraser said, "People fall into hole, and try to get out. That's the movie." If you want a stab at human drama with your giant monster, go see Cloverfield. If you want monsters with a political message, go see 28 Days Later. But if you just want to see big huge stuff come flying at your head in a way that makes you jump and laugh out loud, Journey is the flick for you.

Fraser's scientist character has been discredited because of his crazy theories, but then he discovers the passageway into the deep caverns underground. The film was shot using the 3-D camera system developed by James Cameron for 2009's Avatar.

• Brendan Fraser rules in art films like The Quiet American and Gods And Monsters, but he has a history of Monkeybone-ing his way through a horrendous spate of lighter films.
• The lack of buzz about a movie coming out in July is a little worrying.
• Let's just pray that an earlier Journey script, in which an explorer finds vampires at the Earth's center, left no trace on this one.
• It's another pointless 3-D movie, cashing in on Beowulf's success and Avatar anticipation.
• Fraser has a 13-year-old nephew tagging along, played by Josh Hutcherson (Zathura, Little Manhattan).
• Director Eric Brevig is another newbie who's only done special effects work before (just like Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem's Strause brothers.)

[Slashfilm]