Ubisoft has announced that it plans to make a game based on Bryan Lee O'Malley's six-book series, and it's certainly a game tie-in that makes sense. After all, the entire Scott Pilgrim universe seems to be trapped inside an indie rock arcade game. In each book, Scott must defeat one or more of his girlfriend Ramona's evil exes, who each present special challenges and possess otherworldly abilities. And whenever Scott defeats an enemy, he vanishes leaving behind some sort of reward (the most creepy being the extra life, shaped like Scott's head).

Ubisoft is looking to retain the character and charm of the books, opting for a classic side-scrolling design and working with O'Malley to develop the gameplay. As much as I'm geeking out over Edgar Wright's daily dispatches from the Scott Pilgrim film set, I suspect the game might prove a more apt adaptation, since the structure of the books is more suited to a video game. And O'Malley has promised plenty of fun gaming treats for fans:

It's still in the really early stages, but we're talking about having lots of characters, lots of Easter Eggs for readers of the books – a lot of stuff that couldn't fit into the movie but is more suited to the game. That's what I'd like to see and what we're working on.

[Comic Book Resources]

The writers' strike has caused incalculable damage to genre television, including helping to kill great shows like Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. But it's also inflicted maximum damage on this summer's movies. We detailed all the ways the strike impacted movies like Wolverine, Terminator Salvation, Transformers 2 and G.I. Joe a while back — it's probably no coincidence that the one movie whose script was in perfect shape before the strike hit, Star Trek, was also the only really watchable genre film in months.

(I think part of the reason I'm so over-the-moon about Trek is because I'm grading on a curve. Put it next to Iron Man and The Dark Knight, and it might not score quite so well. I was also thinking the other day that if The Incredible Hulk had come out in 2009, we might have appreciated it a bit more.)

So how about the movies coming this fall and winter, and even into next year? Did the strike hurt them as well? I did some digging, and here's what I found out about the crop of upcoming Hollywood movies:

District 9. (August 14) Not really a Hollywood movie, this Peter Jackson-produced alien imprisonment saga was filmed in South Africa and produced by QED Films. And reading between the lines of this Variety story from November 2007, it sounds as though director Neill Blomkamp and his partner Terri Tatchell had already written the script before the film was greenlit.

Pandorum. (September 4) This Dennis Quaid-Ben Foster space-horror film was greenlit in May 2008, a few months after the strike ended, and written by newcomer Travis Milloy. Which means it was a spec script, and unless it required major rewrites, it should be fine. The film only started shooting in August 2008, which means there should have been time to make rewrites, if any were needed.

Gamer. (September 4) This Gerard Butler-starring epic about prisoners who are forced to become video-game avatars for rich kids was actually filmed during the writer's strike, so its script was long since done. It's been on ice for quite some time — rumor has it test screenings in October 2008 produced almost entirely negative responses. The movie's gone through several titles, including Game and Citizen Game. So it may not be great... but that won't be the writers' strike's fault.

Splice. (September 18, limited release). Vincenzo Natali's genetic manipulation film stars Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley as researchers who mess with the human genome... and get burned. And there was a script in November 2007, when the writer's strike started. Or at least, producer Guillermo del Toro was able to say in a statement:

Vincenzo is taking Splice to really edgy places. The moment I cringed while reading the script, I knew I wanted to help him realize his vision.

And a still from the movie came out in February 2008, while the strike was still going on. (The movie's complex visual effects have required a long time to complete.)

The Surrogates. (September 25). This one's a bit unclear. Disney bought the rights to the robot-avatar graphic novel back in March 2007. They hired the writers of Terminators 3 and 4, Michael Ferris and John Brancato, to write the screenplay. The following November, Bruce Willis signed up to star, and T3 director Jonathan Mostow was announced as director. The film was supposed to start filming in February, but the rest of the cast wasn't announced until the following April, a few months after the strike ended. So it's entirely possible the script needed some rewrites. And got them. So it may be fine. Except that it's from the writers and director of Terminator 3.

Zombieland. (October 9) This zombie buddy comedy didn't even snag star Woody Harrelson until late August 2008, a good six months after the strike ended. And co-star Jesse Eisenberg was "in talks" to appear in the film in October 2008. So I'm guessing there was plenty of time to get a script together at some point.

The Road. (October 16) This bleak Cormac McCarthy adaptation was filmed in Western Pennsylvania early in 2008, and has been on ice for a year — it was originally supposed to open in 2008. Now all we have to worry about is that producer Harvey Weinstein forced some unwise edits on the film in the interim.

The Wolfman. (November 6) This is another one that's been sitting on ice for ages — Benicio Del Toro signed up for the lead role in March 2006 (!) and there was a script review in August 2006. (If anything, looking at this crop of movies, I'm starting to wonder why so many were delayed for so long.) Del Toro got a costar, Emily Blunt, in January 2008, and it looks like the film was filmed soon after.

2012. (Nov. 13) We covered this in our rundown of the writer's strike and summer movies — because it was originally supposed to come out this summer. (Yes, another delayed film.) But the strike didn't actually impact this film much at all, because the script was bought right after the strike ended.

Avatar. (December 18) James Cameron has been working on this film since before you were born. And yes, I don't care how old you are, it's still true. In any case, chances are he's had plenty of opportunities to tinker with the script. Here he is, talking it up in 2006.

The Book Of Eli. (January 15). The Hughes Brothers (From Hell) signed up to direct this post-apocalyptic bibliophile samurai pic back in May 2007, and they were trying to rush it into production in the fall of 2007 "before a possible strike." Obviously, this didn't work out — the film's star, Denzel Washington, wasn't even announced until September 2008, and filming didn't happen until earlier this year. So count this as another film that was delayed — maybe due to the strike.

And I think from there on out, you're looking at movies that were greenlit after the strike, so you're probably all good. Looking at the crop of movies coming up this fall and winter, the main thing that's jumping out at me is that a lot of them were delayed for various reasons — probably not all to do with the strike. There are a lot of movies coming out from August to January, which were originally supposed to come out much earlier, but they were kept in the freezer. Make of that what you will.

God spare me from Marilyn Manson's "Sweet Dreams" song being used in yet another trailer or soundtrack but, besides that, this little foreign clip has sparked my interest. The movie is set in the near future, where Gerard Butler is on Death Row. Somehow, he winds up in a human video game where he's controlled from afar. As you might expect, Butler eventually tires of being controlled and seeks his independence from the game's creator, Hall.

Apart from all of the terrible reviews we've been hearing from Game test screenings - Apparently bad guy Michael C. Hall is laughably bad in it - I have to say that the action here looks pretty tasty.

Game will be out in theaters September 4th.

[Via Trailer Addict]

I'm not really sure what LOTR and GOW have in common, but I'm totally OK with Wiseman planning a trilogy for the video game movie adaptation. In an interview with Bloody Disgusting, Wiseman revealed that he didn't want just one movie adaptation of this amazing Locust Horde-murdering video game but three. And thank goodness, it's going to be more science fiction than straight-up horror:

"It’s going to be much more [on the] science fiction side of it than the creature side of it. I’ve always been much more of a sci-fi action fan than a horror fan,” he reveals also explaining that he wants the scope of the film to be told over the course of three films! “The hope is that we're wanting to do three movies, and really cover the bases on everything. Basically a harder edged Lord Of The Rings.”

Fan freaking tastic — come to think of it, the Hobbits would have been a bit more badass if they had used chainsaws. Just think of it, they'd be cutting everyone off at the knees. The story of Gears Of War is a solid science fiction tale: a rag tag military unit is the planet's last hope to defeat an mutant race living underneath the crust. As the game moves forward, so does your knowledge of the Locust Horde, and your love for Marcus Fenix grows.

But the problem with Gears Of War is, who's going to be Marcus Fenix? Who can fill in the shoes of this great leader who swims in worm blood? Who? I thought Vin Diesel but he's too shiny and pretty. We need someone really roughed up, does Mickey Rourke have a younger, equally tragic, brother?

Read the rest of the interview at Bloody Disgusting, and let's all hope that Len Wiseman does it justice.

Deadline Games is bringing us Watchmen: The End Is Nigh, where Rorschach and Night Owl clean up the mean streets in 1972, so it's a prequel...written by who exactly? But apparently Dave Gibbons is attached to the work.

Tiscali Games has a whole mess of stills from the new Watchmen video game that is set to release in March, 2009 available on PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.

What I'm most interested in is the "rage" power line, complete with Watchmen typography . So what will The Comedian's gauge be? An "I hate myself and shoot hookers" gauge? What do you think? I'd like to know your insights on this.

[Tiscali Games via Slashfilm]

It's no mystery why pop culture is on course for more darkness and nastiness. That's what's done well in the past year or two. And the entertainment industry always wants to give us more of what we've already liked, even if conditions have changed in the meantime.

Just looking at the "Dystopia" tag on io9, I see lots and lots of posts which say something like, "in the upcoming movie _______, everybody eats their own reprocessed shit and then bathes in the blood of their own parents, before being eaten by zombies." There are a lot of vaguely satirical movies coming, about people forced to compete in evil game shows or video games turned real, like Game, or Fortuna.

We also have a few years of apocalyptic movies on the way, including the reliably Irwin Allen-esque Roland Emmerich, with 2012. I tried to read the script for 2012 and found myself developing a spontaneous case of TMJ disorder. There are also several post-apocalyptic movies on the slate, including Wynter Dark and The Road. There are literally 10,000 zombie movies coming out in the next couple of years, enough to keep a zombie army entertained forever.

And as for television? The shows that seem likely to be still on the air in a year or so are all pretty dark, including the increasingly twisted Lost and the quirky-but-dark Fringe. The new shows that are on the way are sardonic as fuck, including Ron Moore's Virtuality, a claustrophobic tale of astronauts trapped in a sardine-can ship with a virtual reality system that's getting scarier and scarier. And Joss Whedon's Dollhouse, a show about a woman who's had literally everything taken away from her, including her name and identity, so she can be a plaything for the rich. It's not exactly Pennies From Heaven, y'all.

If you're excited for another few years of bleak, no-way-out entertainment, then skip the rest of this piece. But if you're actually hoping for more fun, a more upbeat approach to storytelling, and maybe a bit of lightness, then read on. What could move things in that direction?

First of all, hope that Star Trek and Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen are not just hits, but mega hits. It seems like a safe enough bet, actually. Both films seem much shinier and friendlier than the big films of this past summer, especially Iron Man, Incredible Hulk, Dark Knight and even Indiana Jones 4, which featured Indie being accused of being a Commie, plus lots of angst about getting older. If either Trek or Transformers does better than Dark Knight, then you can bet we'll see Hollywood rearranging its priorities pretty quick. Another possible oasis of escapist fun next summer: another toy movie, G.I. Joe.

Conversely, you may want to root against Watchmen, which features rapist superheroes and a morally ambiguous ending. And Terminator Salvation, which McG is promising will take place in a super-dark future: "This picture takes place after Judgment Day. It happened. Everything is gone. The story of the movie is the 'brink moment' Reese always talked about." You may also want to root against Wolverine, depending on how much Fox succeeded in watering down the Wolverine movie's allegedly dark tone. (Last we heard, there were vague rumblings the director and the Fox suits were fighting over just how dark and gritty the Wolverine film would be allowed to be, even down to the way the sets were painted.)

Second, hope that Hollywood backs off its "all superhero films should be like The Dark Knight" meme pretty fast. Chances are, a slew of Dark Knight clones wouldn't be all that good, and they would mostly flop.

Third, accept that pop culture is always going to be a mix of light and dark. I shouldn't even need to say this, but I'll say it anyway. We need our Watchmens as well as our Incredibles. So what we're really talking about here is the ratio of light to dark. We'll always want both, and we'll always have both.

Fourth, bear in mind that escapist fun often starts from a dark place. Look at the original Battlestar Galactica, or the Glen Larson Buck Rogers, both of which are post-apocalyptic. Oftentimes, the funnest heroes are the ones who come out of the worst bogholes and rise above.
It's often part of the light-hearted heroic formula.

Fifth — and this may be the most important — support books and comics that are bright and optimistic. The book and comics industries have a slow development process, but they can respond to a hit faster than TV and movies can. Buy upbeat space opera novels about capable people surmounting problems. The next time Mark Waid psyches himself up to write something cute and fun like Brave and the Bold, do your part to make it a mega-hit. You'll be helping to support the source material for Hollywood's next sunny, cheery hit.

In Game, convicts take part in a kind of video game, being controlled remotely via brain chips by viewers. The game is a brutal online fight where many will perish. Michael C. Hall, of Dexter fame, plays the villain and Gerard Butler plays the action-figure man controlled from a far.

Sexy Whisk (the AICN spy) insists that the movie is, "beyond boring and the action was completely unexciting."

Simply said:

I'm sure most of you remember "Children of Men" - whether you loved it or hated it - you must agree how amazingly chaotic and action packed it was without ever having to cut the camera! Now that is talent. GAME however is the complete opposite - it's trying sooo hard to be exciting and fresh and appeal to "gamers" - its cuts from dark to computer screens to action to more computer screens to close-ups...

The informant insists that the movie tries way too hard and delivers nothing. The action scenes are apparently so confusing they become boring, and not even Gerard Butler can save the terrible work. Also they claim that Hall isn't used at all and got a meager few minutes on screen — and he has a weird accent.

Still this is a very early screening, and they've pushed the release date way back, hopefully to deal with many of these issues. Game won't be released until the summer of 2009.

[AICN]

Game:

In the upcoming film about playing prisoners as video games, how does the video-game control work? Allow co-star Ludacris to explain: "Because it's all about people playing actual other people as video games, there's a chip involved. [The game works by] planting a chip in someone's brain in order to control their mind and play them as a video game." He plays a leader of the dissidents who oppose making people play in the games, and he never actually goes inside the game himself. [Sci Fi Wire]

Kick Ass:

Here are a few more set photos for Kick Ass, which pretty much reveal that the movie will have cars in it. No way! More at the link. [CanMag]

Battlestar Galactica:

Because it's kind of a slow spoiler day, I poked around the IMDB listings for the final episodes of BSG. As we reported before, William Adama's son Zak appears in the last few episodes — either because he's the last Cylon or because it's a flashback. But also, Xeno Fenner, the foreman of that fuel refining ship where Tyrol led a strike, also appears in the last episode. Could this be because there's a last-minute crisis on the fuel refining ship? Or because he gets drafted into the final battle? Or... because he's the final Cylon???

Also, Crewman Specialist Prosna, a deckhand who dies in the first miniseries when his compartment is on fire and gets vented, is in the second-to-last episode. (A flashback? Final Cylon? You decide.)

And the marine, Nowart, who appeared briefly in the most recent episodes, shows up in a bunch of upcoming episodes. As usual with IMDB listings, slight grain of salt is indicated. [IMDB]

Fringe:

We'll see actor Mark Valley on Fringe again, but we may not see the late John Scott, because he may actually be dead. It's like on Alias, where nobody's ever exactly dead, but they come back in new and surprising forms. And we'll learn why Olivia became a cop, and those qualities are the same reasons Nina is so eager to recruit her. We may learn more about Nina's past, and she's not the villain we thought she was. [E! Online]

Lost:

One of the Dharma stations that our heroes have to visit in Australia — specifically, on or near Ayers Rock, where Bernard and Rose went on their honeymoon. [E! Online again]

Heroes:

Wasn't that a crazy episode last night? It just gets crazier. Good news: Adam Monroe dies next week. For good. Maya the mascara-malfunction girl will also die at some point this season. And we'll learn how and why Claire is "different." And as you gathered, Pinehearst, run by Arthur Petrelli and Maury Parkman, is the rival to the Company. And Claire's bio-mom shares her flamey powers with another relative. Also, Elle gets a lot of scenes with Sylar coming up — and she's seeking revenge for her father's murder. [The ODI and E! Online]

Also, we'll see Arthur Petrelli wield his powers next week. [E! Online]

Eleventh Hour:

That upcoming episode we mentioned before, involving a viral outbreak in Pittsburgh? It infects a demolition site. And one actor is playing a character referred to as "skeletal body." Yay! [SpoilerTV]

Smallville:

This is a big season for Lois and Clark. And Lois makes a big love confession soon, says Eric Durance. You're going to see some vulnerability from Lois. [EW]

Here are some promo images from the next couple of episodes, "Prey" and "Identity." [Multiple Verses via OSCK]

Additional reporting by Katharine Duckett.

Tapping into current fears of economic collapse and the vanishing middle class, Fortuna portrays a world of extreme wealth stratification:

Set in 2100, "Fortuna" envisions an Earth where a collapsed economy and climate crises have eliminated the middle class, leaving a few very wealthy and the teeming masses in severe poverty. To give hope and avoid revolt, the elite create Fortuna, a mysterious game where one in a thousand wins a big payday and joins the upper classes. But their hidden goal to "reduce poverty" by 30% over 50 years comes with a deadly price tag.

Freddy Rodriguez and Lost’s Dominic Monaghan will play two of the game’s impoverished players, as will the film’s writer-director Barthelemy Grossmann.

[The Hollywood Reporter]

Created by husband and wife design team Chris and Lynn Lund, The Outbreak puts you in a seemingly abandoned house with four other survivors while the zombies are quickly closing in. At the end of each "chapter," you are asked to make a decision that will affect your ultimate survival: Do you save the injured guy or blow his brains out? Do you stay in the house or try to drive toward salvation? Only one sequence of choices will guarantee your survival, but if you die, you can use the chapter select menu to revise any of your earlier decisions. Zombie-filled trailer below:

The Outbreak [via Metafilter]

In an interview with Bridges, the L.A. Times got a somewhat more coherent synopsis than we've seen before:

Gerard Butler ("300") plays Kable, a death-row convict who is plucked from his cell and dropped into the rock-'em, sock-'em combat. He's proves so adept at carnage that he becomes a pop-culture star to the global audience watching the grisly game unfold. Bridges plays a character nicknamed Humanz who is not a fan; he's part of a resistance effort that sees the game as an ethical affront and have a plan to use Kable to bring down the entire game.

Dexter's Michael C. Hall plays the evil genius who created the game, and Kyra Sedgwick (The Closer) plays someone named Gina Parker Smith. (Weirdly, the article doesn't even mention Milo Ventimiglia's character, whom Ventimiglia has described as "Moonraker, silver grill, with a latex outfit making him look like a bumblebee. [Laughs.] With I think the perverse nature of...a teenage boy on speed." Sure, Milo, sure. Whatever you say.)

Bridges' character is a "renaissance man" who gets upset that convicts like Kable are having chips put in their brains to control them. The "intense" Game comes from writer/director duo Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, who created the insane Crank movies, so it'll probably be way more demented than Death Race, and possibly a lot better as well. [LA Times]

Terminator Salvation:

UGO has a roundup of Terminator Salvation spoilers, most of which we've already touched on at some point. A few details that jump out at me: T4 will be about the development of the Model 101 Terminator, which looks like Arnie. The T-600s, the ancestors of Arnie's T-800 model, are like Soviet tanks. And it's rumored there will be some Terminators with human brains inside them. [UGO]

Death Race:

Why does Joan Allen's evil prison warden organize a "Death Race" as a spectator sport? Because prisons have all become privately owned corporations, and they're all geared to make money. She's a sort of high-powered CEO type. [Sci Fi Wire]

Super Max:

The movie about superhero Green Arrow inside a supervillain prison features a prison building that's almost a character in its own right, says writer Justin Marks. As you'd expect, the prison has all sorts of special features to contain the super-powered baddies locked up there, such as a cell that can neutralize Icicle's freezing powers. "So to escape from Super Max they have got to go through the most elaborate heist we've ever seen, involving superpowers. Because the prison itself kind of has superpowers!" says Marks. Also, Green Arrow's squeeze Black Canary isn't in the film at this point, but Marks hopes she'll be written in. [MTV via Comic Book Resources]

Game:

So not only does a teenager control Gerard Butler in Game, but the teen doesn't realize that Butler is a real person, a death-row prisoner who's forced to compete in deadly sports. The teen thinks Butler is just a sim character. But somehow, Butler still manages to use his incredible fighting skills to escape the Slayers game and bring down its creator, Ken Castle. [CinemaBlend]

Lost:

Lost season five has already started filming... and the show has been needing Spanish-speaking extras. [Spoilers Lost]

Heroes:

Adam aka Takezo Kensei gets dug up in episode four of the new Heroes season, and he's pissed. Ando, Hiro and the Haitian have one scene together early on in the season that will have you in a fit of giggles. (Really.) And as we've mentioned, William Katt plays a reporter who harrasses Ali Larter's character about her past as a webcam girl, which she's not aware of. [E! Online]

BuddyTV visited the Heroes set during the filming of episode six, and found Ali Larter in a car with Adrian Pasdar. Hiro is shining his sword in a magic shop for some reason, and he makes an Anakin Skywalker reference. Hiro stabs someone in the fifth episode of the season, and it's "not who you'd think." Also, Adrian Pasdar (Nathan) says it's not just about choosing between good and evil, but also between mom and dad. [BuddyTV]

And here's a preview video, that contains revelations such as "this season will be slam-packed with excitement." [Heroes The Series]

Knight Rider:

Just because I know you guys love it when we post Knight Rider stuff, here's another new video, which shows a way better look at KITT's Turbo Boost. [Knight Rider Online]

Chuck:

And speaking of upcoming NBC shows about dweebs who interface with technology, here's another Chuck promo. [Spoiler TV]

Also, apparently the mysterious guy in the Fed-Ex uniform has two targets: Chuck and Sarah. [TV Guide]

And in the Awesomes' wedding episode, Father Awesome offers to walk Ellie down the aisle because her own father isn't around, but this just freaks her out. [E! Online]

Battlestar Galactica:

Was it clear to you from watching BSG's midseason finale that the supposed Earth the fleet found had been destroyed in a nuclear holocaust? Well, apparently that was what had happened. Also, there is still some doubt as to whether it's really Earth, despite everything we've been told. [TV Guide]

Eureka:

So S.A.R.A.H., the smart house on Eureka, has her own Twitter feed. And today, she happened to mention that someone on the show is pregnant. Pressed for details, she clammed up. [Gin200168]

Game:

Here's another new image from Game, the new movie about Gerard "300" Butler being trapped in a video game and forced to kill to survive. [First Showing]

Starship Troopers: Marauder:

The Starship Troopers 3 fansite got some new images from the direct-to-DVD movie, including what the new marauder armor will look like, some kind of lander vehicle, and Jolene Blalock looking awesome. More pics at the link. [Starship Troopers 3 via JoBlo]

Lost:

Lost producer Carlton Cuse spilled some new info. In Lost season five, Jack will become more of a man of faith, and Locke will become more of a man of science. We'll learn what happened to Locke (and the Others) after he embraced his destiny to be "in charge" of the island. Also, Locke's story isn't done yet, and there's a hint that he may have a Jesus-esque resurrection. Meanwhile, Kate will end up with either Jack or Sawyer eventually.

Also, people's theories about the show are wrong because you don't have enough information and the explanation for everything isn't simple. [Lost Spoilers]

Heroes:

The first four episodes of Heroes season one are called "The Butterfly Effect," "Dreamtime," "One Of Us, One Of Them," and "The Year Of Our Lord." ("Dreamtime" introduces that Aboriginal storyteller we've mentioned.) And the fifth episode introduces a mean SOB named Eric Doyle, a white guy in his thirties or forties, who's "hideous, horrible and big," and who "delights in controlling others." He'll also be in the sixth episode, and possibly beyond. [Spoilerfix]

And remember that spoiler we posted about a dark-haired Claire (from a future/alternate dimension) shooting her uncle Peter and saying she's always loved him? Well, here are a couple of pics of that scene being filmed. Also visible: Future Peter, complete with scar. (More pics at the link.) [Just Jared]

Eureka:

Eureka will introduce a new character this season: Lexi (Ever Carradine), the free-spirited sister of Sheriff Carter, who appears in at least four of this summer's eight episodes. [Hollywood Reporter]

Doctor Who:

As usual, Digital Spy has posted some spoilers for this Saturday's "Doctor Who episode, along with three fake spoilers. The one about K-9 rescuing the Doctor's daughter from a black hole seems obviously fake, although you never know. And it's definitely true that Wilf wields a cricket bat, since it's in the trailer. Here's the list:

• Wilf wields a cricket bat.
• Davros has been harvesting bees into a new army of Daleks.
• The Daleks know the identity of a certain former Prime Minister.
• Captain Jack becomes angry at Paul O'Grady's effect on Ianto Jones.
• A certain body part in a jar is bubbling.
• A Dalek exterminates the Torchwood pterodactyl.
• The fate of a character from 'Voyage Of The Damned' is revealed.
• Wilf was banned from using a webcam as there were suspicions over what he might use it for.
• Project Indigo holds the key to salvation.
• The Doctor's daughter Jenny is trapped near a black hole, but K-9 is sent to rescue her.
• A Dalek speaks to Mr. Smith.
• The Time War was 'time locked', or so thought The Doctor.

And here's a new teaser trailer featuring the sporty red Dalek. And another trailer, with Davros speaking! [TARDIS Base]

Also, the official cast list for Saturday's episode includes Martha's mother, Sarah Jane's computer "Mr. Smith," Sarah Jane's adoptive son Luke, plus Richard Dawkins and talk show host Paul O'Grady playing themselves. [Doctor Who Hideout]

We've blogged about this movie a couple times, but not recently. In a nutshell, Butler is Kable, a convict who's stuck in a deadly online multi-player game (like Death Race, but without cars) and if he wins 30 games, he gets his freedom. A resistance group that opposes inventor Ken Castle's online games sees Kable as a crucial part of their effort to take down the game. Acording to Neveldine and Taylor, there's a huge action sequence involving a battered old truck and two snow-plows. The movie also features B-movie babe Amber Valletta, in a candy-floss blue wig, and Milo Ventimiglia (Peter from Heroes) as a nasty guy named Rick Rape.

The duo are currently working on Crank 2, and they speculate about how cool it would be to have Crank star Jason Statham fight Game star Butler in a cage match — or maybe the two could star in a gay porn together. (Tonight, we bareback in Hell?) [Empire, via Rama's Screen]

This game is based on a trilogy of novels by Russian author Alexander Zorich, which present an alternate future where the Russians end up dominating outer space. As they struggle to control their extraterrestrial colonies and work with four different alien races, you take command of a ship and help quell uprisings and explore the universe. Complete planetary systems are modeled, and you can take your ships all the way from high orbit down into the atmosphere for your peeping pleasure. Hopefully you've developed some extrasensory abilities along the way as well, because it looks like you'll need them to keep track of everything happening on-screen at once. The Tomorrow War will be out for PC gamers later this year, and with any luck there will be an English translation coming soon after.

Daniel Dociu of ArenaNet has worked on many pieces of award winning art, including the Crab Fort above, and the Fish Fort, which looks like it could be a great model for a drive through fish restaurant. He won two Master Awards from EXPOSÉ 4, one for Environment Design (the crab fort), and one for his Urban Canal which won in the Cityscape category. You'll get 'em both if you pick up the book from the showcase.

He was raised in Transylvania, worked as a toy designer for years, and now focuses on creating concept artwork for Guild Wars. If we can find proof that he's actually a vampire, he might officially the coolest concept artist haunting the halls of gaming companies to this day. The link below includes massive versions of the above artwork that make for perfect wallpapers. [ConceptArt.org]

• In 1978 Taito was a Japanese company that was struggling to make a profit on Pachinko machines. With the rise of electronic arcade games, Tomohiro Nishikado designed Space Invaders and created history.

• 
  
• The game was inspired by Atari's Breakout, by the descriptions of the aliens in H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, and by a freaky dream that Nishikado had about aliens appearing in the sky instead of Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. Which means you get lines and lines of relentlessly invading creatures, who all happen to look like an octopoids.
• 
  
• Arcades opened in Japan featuring nothing but rows and rows of Space Invaders games, so if you thought your corner convenience store with Galaga and Pole Position hardly had any choices, think again.
  
• The game was so popular in Japan that it caused a major shortage of coins, and they had to quadruple yen production to keep up with the demand.
• 
  
• Space Invaders was one of the first games to feature endless gameplay, as previous games had all worked on a timer. If you were good, you could go on blasting aliens forever... or until the game ran out of memory.
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• The upright cabinet version of the game in arcades actually had the monitor below the eyeline of the player, and the gamefield was reflected onto a piece of plastic on the back of the cabinet, which had cool artwork painted on it. The resulting combination had the gamefield on top of a lunar landscape.
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• The original Taito version of the game used joysticks, but the American version from Midway used buttons to control the laser cannon.
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• The game ran on an Intel 8080 as its processor, running at 2 MHz.
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• It was estimated that the game pulled in $500 million in its first year of release in the arcades alone, which still makes it one of the most profitable games ever developed.
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• In 1980 a version of Space Invaders was released for the Atari 2600, and it quickly became one of the "must have" games for the system.
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• Versions came out for other home gaming consoles, but due to copyright infringement they would have to be retitled. Like Space Armada for the Intellivision.
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• Coca-Cola even asked Atari to create a version for the 2600 called Pepsi Invaders, featuring invading letters spelling out Pepsi, so you could blast them out of the sky. Coke gave the 125 cartridges out to its employees.
  
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• Numerous sequels have appeared in arcades over the years, including Space Invaders Part II (or Space Invaders Deluxe), Return of the Invaders, Majestic Twelve: The Space Invaders Part IV (or Super Space Invaders '91), Space Invaders DX, and Akkan-vaders (or Space Invaders '95: The Attack Of The Lunar Loonies).
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• Guillaume Reymond created a human version of the game in 2006, which you can watch in all of its glory right here:
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• Shigeru Miyamoto, who created Donkey Kong and a slew of other games for Nintendo, has said that Space Invaders was what inspired him to get into game development.
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• The cover for Boston's "Don't Look Back" album was inspired by Space Invaders.
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• In an episode of Futurama, Fry fights off invading aliens because he's a master of Space Invaders. All he needs to rock the game are a two-liter bottle of Shasta, and a Rush mix tape.

You'll control a squad of four Colonial Marines in the game, issuing commands and dealing with their different personalities as you investigate the disappearance of Ellen Ripley and the team of Colonial Marines she left with aboard the U.S.S. Sulaco. Key areas in the game include the derelict spacewreck from the first Alien movie, and the LV-426 colony from Aliens. You'll use weapons like the pulse rifle, the M240 flamethrower, and the M56 Smart Gun that Vasquez kicked much ass with.

The thing sure looks a bit like Doom meets Quake, but we loved the world of the Colonial Marines so much that we'd watch a television show or movie about them even if it didn't have a single Alien in it. Oh wait, we did... and it was called Starship Troopers. Actually, there were a lot of aliens in that, except they looked like bugs instead of creepy H.R. Giger nightmares. Still, we loved it and have high hopes for Part 3, especially if it includes shower scenes.

Colonial Marines was originally being developed for the PS2, but was cancelled by Fox back in 2001. Then SEGA announced in 2006 that they were working on a game set in the Aliens world, and it'll be out for the PC, the PS3, and the Xbox 360 in late 2008. Which of course means we're going to have to wait on it, a lot more than 17 days. As Hicks would say. "17 days?!?! We're not gonna last 17 hours!"