io9: matthieu kassovitz

Space Station Film Will Actually Be Filmed In Zero G

Meredith Woerner — Thu, 22 May 2008 08:40:00 PDT

A new apocalyptic space film called MNP will use all the space technology that director Mathieu Kassovitz (Gothika) can get his hands on. For MNP, named for the space station where much of the movie takes place, Kassovitz will workclosely with actual space stations and aeronautical organizations to bring actual science to the movie. Kassovitz will also use zero-gravity simulator planes for some scenes. The movie will follow two US actors and eight other international actors aboard the space station. Filming begins in 2011. [Hollywood Reporter]

Help Build Ozymandias' Empire, In Watchmen

Charlie Jane Anders — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 14:30:00 PDT

You can help to flesh out the dark alternate 1985 in next year's Watchmen movie, by becoming the ad agency for psychotic ex-superhero Adrian Veidt, aka Ozymandias. Director Zack Snyder says he realized there were a lot of TV screens in the background during the film, which needed to be filled with images. So he's launching a contest for you to create your own ads for Veidt Enterprises' products, including perfumes, shoes and air travel. (He provides logos and animated product images, plus a couple of sample ads like the one above.) But Watchmen isn't the first dark scifi movie to have a contest for user-generated video.

Last year, dystopian future movie Babylon A.D. held a contest on MySpace to generate user video to appear on video screens in the background of some of the film's scenes:

[Director] Mathieu [Kassovitz]'s goal is to enhance the authenticity of this film by adding futuristic and innovative ads and fake news footage. We will integrate them, throughout the film on various screens : futuristic TVs, personal tablets, vehicles and especially on a huge scale, on the sides of New York buildings. That is why he thought he should launch this contest to give a chance to anyone who wishes to show their vision of the future.

A surprisingly long list of people "won" the contest, which means Vin Diesel will be scowling his way past loads of weird video made by tweens using FinalCutPro. Which is sort of awesome, actually. Also, I think Diary Of The Dead had a similar contest recently. [Watchmen YouTube contest, thanks to Michael]

They Tore Down Babylon!

Charlie Jane Anders — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 10:10:00 PDT

We reported a while back that U.S. audiences will see a drastically shorter cut of Babylon A.D. than Europeans this August — but apparently it's worse than we'd feared. The dystopian action movie, directed by Matthieu Kassovitz (Gothika) and starring Vin Diesel, will run roughly 160 minutes in most of Europe. But the U.S. and British cut will only be a quick-and-dirty 90 minutes, or slightly more than half as long. What's worse, the 90-minute version just got the British equivalent of a PG-13 rating in England, which means all of Kassovitz's trademark violence is gone.

To be fair, we already didn't have high hopes for this film, based on reports that Diesel threw a ton of hissy fits on the set, and the filming went severely over budget and off schedule. And the synopsis sounds very Ultraviolet-esque: In the near future, society has collapsed, as it tends to in near-future movies. And Dieslel is a mercenary, who's hired to bring a young woman (Melanie Thierry) and a nun (Michelle Yeoh!) from Russia to China. But it turns out the girl carries a virus that allows you to shape your own DNA, or attain a new level of consciousness, or something. It's really not clear. And a whole bunch of different groups are fighting over her, including religious nuts. Diesel has to keep her safe through demilitarized zones and fight clubs and Blade Runner-esque nightmares.

It sounds like something you'll want to watch on DVD — in the director's cut. [Twitch Film]