#442. Movie Buzz
1. 'Star Trek' screened in space
"Star Trek" has been beamed aboard the International Space Station.Paramount Pictures said they transferred director J.J. Abrams' sci-fi franchise reboot to NASA's Mission Control in Houston. The movie was uplinked to the space station on Thursday.NASA astronaut Michael Barratt watched the film on a laptop Friday inside the Unity module.The 50-year-old astronaut said he remembered "watching the original 'Star Trek' series and, like many of my NASA co-workers, was inspired by the idea of people from all nations coming together to explore space."
2. Ninja scribe lands Brothers in Arms gig
Ninja Assassin co-writer Matthew Sand has landed a new gig, as rewrite man on a WW2 film set to be directed by Denzel Washington, The Hollywood Reporter says.The tale, Brothers in Arms, is about an all-black tank battalion which overcame the prejudices of the time to prove itself with honour.
The 761st Tank Battalion was at the forefront of the Allies' push into Germany and liberated more than 30 towns en route.The movie will be based on a non-fiction book co-written by Anthony Walton and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Yes, THE Kareem Abdul-Jabbar of the NBA and Game of Death fame.
3. Berg to board Battleship game-to-movie project?
Hasbro's classic boardgame Battleship is heading for the big screen as an epic naval adventure, according to The Hollywood Reporter.You know the game - it's the one where you and an opponent place your battleships, cruisers, submarines etc on a grid without revealing the location.Then each of you calls out "shots" to particular points on the grid and an opponent must declare if a shot hit, thereby allowing the player to focus fire on that area in the hope of sinking a ship.
While it's not hard to figure out how this play mechanic is going to be transferred to the movie, we wonder how the excitement and interest are going to be sustained over the course of a whole movie.Well, for starters, the project is wooing Peter Berg to come on board and direct it. Berg does bring a kind of edge to ordinary-sounding projects (The Rundown) and his Very Bad Things still sticks in the head till today. It wasn't exactly naval, but it certainly didn't sink either.
