Any news on WOTW?

[Governor of Rowe Island]

I've had a quick look at the Pendragon Pictures site but there doesn't seem to be a release date for the faithful version yet. Does anyone have any news on this version?
A quick google for news just seems to turn up stuff on the Spielberg version. The only thing I could find was a possible release date of late last month!

[Ant]

Maybe this is what you found?

The exact April [sic] theatrical release date of H.G. WELLS' THE WAR OF THE WORLDS will be announced shortly, though the DVD release is locked. The picture is presold for DVD into 60,000 retail stores in the U.S. and Canada and will hit the shelves June 15th, 2005. Worldwide DVD presales are in progress.

Straight to DVD?

Ciao,
Ant

[Governor of Rowe Island]

No, I didn't see anything about a DVD release, thanks Ant. Let's hope it doesn't happen, I would love to see it on the big screen.

[Marc]

Me too.

[Hawksun]

Having been a fan of WOTW since I heard Jeff Wayne's rock album, I've been following the progress of the Pendragon picture for some time now. Frankly, I'm getting pretty skeptical of it even getting a distributor, what with the Paramount version hogging all the attention. Rumour has it that the film itself doesn't even exist beyond the teasers on the websites. I'm not sure how true that is, but I'm not holding my breath for the release, either.

[Anonymous]

I can inform you all that Spielberg and co have basically frozen the release of the Pendragon WOTW. Their argument being that it is direct competition with their own film and could affect income. Personally I can't see that it'll do that at all.

The film was meant to be the central focus of the Wells series at the National Film Theatre this month, but due to threats of legal action, they pulled the plug on it.

I am in contact with Chuck Keller, the US HG Wells Society president (and adviser on the Pendragon version) and he obviously furious and disgusted with what is going. However, he is not at liberty to fill me in on the finer details, for legal reasons.

Anyhow, he has seen the finished version, so any rumour about the film not being finished is malicious gossip.

[Blackbeard]

Sorry, that was my post above. I forgot I was logged out.

[L'Etranger]

Just discovered it is Tom Cruise in this movie =
one viewer here who won't go and see it. Too bad.

[Blackbeard]

Yeah, Tom Cruise is in the Spielberg version :(

[Governor of Rowe Island]

Thanks for the update Blackbeard.
Poor ol' Steven Spielberg, eh? Poor sod must be down to his last few hundred millions. We couldn't begrudge him our last penny could we?

Does that mean he'll be trying to stop all the other summer blockbusters, as well? After all, they'll be in direct competition too.

[L'Etranger]

You know what they did here? Allegedly to prevent video piracy UIP refused journalists and film critics to see the movie before it was released. The critics were pretty grumpy about it and speculations soared that the movie must be really bad if the studios and distributors didn't dare show the movie to the professional critique.
Was the same behaviour shown elsewhere?

[Governor of Rowe Island]

They didn't show it to critics in the UK either. Apparently the last time this happened was when The Avengers came out. And that wasn't exactly a spectacular success, was it?

[Governor of Rowe Island]

Just came across this link, a review of the film from SF Crowsnest.

Shame, but it doesn't appear it will get a theatrical release. Quite surprised to hear of the style it appears to have been made in, too.
Does anyone have any idea what the third version of the film/story might be that the reviewer mentions? I haven't a clue.

[devilchicken]

Amazon are selling the DVD of the Pendragon Pictures effort http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...s=dvd&n=507846

Review is not too positive mind you....

H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds is a quirky if well-meaning, labor-of-love adaptation of Wells' seminal 1898 science fiction novel. A website for the film's production company, Pendragon Pictures, explains that this version of Wells's thinly disguised prediction of World War I actually began as a modern-day variation on the story. Terrorist attacks in America on September 11, 2001, however, convinced co-writer and director Timothy Hines to set the project instead in the late 19th century period Wells imagined.

By coincidence, Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise's contemporary take on War of the Worlds began production shortly after Hines's adjustment. While hardly a competitive threat to Spielberg's movie, Pendragon's War might have made an interesting complement to it. Unfortunately, Hines and company seriously blew their opportunity. While there is some money and impressive special-effects wizardry on the screen, this embarrassing, seemingly endless feature is doomed by a crazy effort to marry the look and texture of Silent Era epics to Computer Age manipulation. Not that War is a silent picture, mind you. But much of it is tinted in expressive rainbow hues that were common in films a century ago; the cast of unknowns' performances are mannered and exaggerated in a silly impression of pre-optical soundtrack acting; and primitive effects (e.g., printing a scene backwards for an ethereal feel) are unflattering. As if that's not bad enough, no one involved with this movie appears to know basic editing principles for compressing time and action. On the plus side, the extraterrestrial killers and their awesome machines of destruction are startling to behold. The image of Big Ben's clock tower blown apart over a flaming London is persuasive indeed. --Tom Keogh